WHY THE QUEEN WAITED.
A little calm succeeded at Versailles the political and mental tempests
which we have chronicled.
The King breathed again: and consoled himself with his regaled
popularity for what his Bourbon pride had suffered in truckling to
the Paris mob. The Nobility prepared to flee or to resist. The people
watched and waited.
Assured that she was the butt of all the slings and arrows of hatred,
the Queen made herself as inconspicuous as possible: she knew that for
her party she was the centre of all hopes.
Since the King went to Paris she had not seen Dr. Gilbert, but the
chance was offered her when they met in the vestibule of the royal
apartments.
"Going to the King?" she challenged as he bowed deeply. "As physician
or counsellor?" she continued with a smile betraying some irony.
"As doctor; it is my day on duty," he replied.
She beckoned him to follow her into a little sideroom.
"You see, sir," she began, "that you were wrong the other day when you
assured me that the King ran no risk of murder. A woman was killed by
a shot aimed at him and striking you, without injury. Who told me so?
gentlemen of the escort who saw your button fly."
"I do not believe it was a crime, or, if so, one to be imputed to the
people," returned Gilbert, hesitatingly.
"Who are we to attribute it to, then?" she demanded, fixing her eyes
upon him.
"I have been studying the masses some time," he responded: "when in
fury the mobs tear and slay like a tiger; but in cold blood, they seek
no go-betweens. They want to make the blood fly with their own claws
and fangs."
"As witness, Foulon and his son-in-law Berthier Savigny, accused of
complicity in the Great Grain Fraud, and ripped to pieces by the crowd?
and Flesselles, slain by a pistol! But the accounts of their atrocious
executions may be untrue, we crowned heads are so engirt by flatterers."
"Madam, you do not believe any more than I, that Flesselles was killed
by the mob. Others of higher degree were more interested in his death.
As for the King, those who love their country believe he is useful to
it, and these stand between him and the assassin eagerly."
"Alas," said she, "there was a time when a good Frenchman would have
expressed his sentiments in better terms than those. It was not
possible then to love his country without loving his rulers."
Gilbert blushed and bowed, feeling the thrill at his heart which the
Queen could impart in her periods of winning intimacy.
"Madam, I beg to boast that I love the monarchy better than many."
"Are we not at an era when it is not enough to say so, but actions
should speak?"
"Madam, I was your enemy yesterday, when you had me imprisoned, and now
I am your servant."
"But whence the change? it is not in your nature, doctor, to change
your feelings, opinion and belief so readily. You are a man with a
deep-rooted memory; you know how to lengthen out your vengeance. Tell
me the aim of your change?"
"Madam, you reproach me with loving my country too dearly."
"You love it so as to stoop to serve me, the foreigner? no I am a
Frenchwoman--I love my country. You smile--but it is my country. I have
adopted it. German by birth, I am French through the heart; but I love
France through the King and the respect due the God which consecrated
me to it. But I understand you; it is not the same thing. You love
France purely and simply for France's sake."
"Madam, I cannot be outspoken without disrespect," replied the doctor.
"Oh," she said, "dreadful is this epoch when men pretending to be
honorable isolate two principles that should never be parted, and have
always marched forward together: France and her King. Is there not a
tragedy in which a queen, abandoned by all, is asked: What remains?
and she answers 'I!' Well, like Medea, I am here--and we shall see the
outcome."
She passed out, in vexation, leaving Gilbert in stupor. By her fiery
breath she had blown aside a corner of the veil beyond which simmered
the hell-broth of the Anti-Revolution.
"Let us look to ourselves," thought Gilbert, "the Queen is nursing a
scheme."
"Plainly nothing can be done with this man," muttered the sovereign,
regaining her rooms. "He is a strong one, but he lacks devotion."
Poor princess, to whom servility is thought to be devotion!
Marie Antoinette felt the weight upon her most when alone.
As woman and queen, she had nothing to lean upon or help her support
the crushing burden.
Doubt or wavering was on either hand. Uneasy about their fortune,
the sycophants fled. Her relatives and friends brooded on exile. The
proudest of all, Andrea, gradually drew aside from her, body and soul.
The noblest and dearest man of all, Charny, was wounded by her
fickleness and was a prey to doubt.
She who was instinct and sagacity themselves, was fretted by the crisis.
"This pure, unalloyed heart has not changed, but it is changing," she
reasoned.
A dreadful conviction for the woman who loved with passion, and
insupportable for one who loved with pride, as the Queen did Charny.
Being a man, all that George understood was that the Queen was unfairly
jealous of his wife. Nothing pains a heart incapable of false play
so much as to be suspected of it. Nothing so points attention on the
person unjustly accused of inspiring an attachment than jealousy. The
suspected one reflects. It looks from the jealous heart to the one
believed to be its rival.
Indeed, how suppose that a noble and elevated creature should be vexed
over a trifle? What has a lovely woman to be worried about? what, the
powerful lady?
Charny knew that Andrea had been the bosom friend of the Queen, and
wondered why their love had cooled and the confidante stood away. He
had to look to her and the idol lost so much of the eye-adulation as
Andrea gained. By her unfairness and anger Marie Antoinette told Charny
that he must feel less a lover for her. He sought for the cause, and
naturally whither the Queen was frowning.
He pitied Andrea, who had married him by royal command, and was but
nominally his wife.
Marie Antoinette's burst of affection in receiving her husband on his
return from Paris had opened the eyes of the count.
He began to steel himself against her, and she, while ill-treating him,
resumed showering favor on Andrea.
The latter submitted, without astonishment but also with no gratitude.
Long since, she reckoned herself as belonging to her royal mistress and
she let the Queen do what she liked.
The result was a curious situation, such as women act and comprehend
best.
Andrea felt all her husband underwent, and she pitied him and showed
her pity, from her love being of the angelic kind which is not fed on
hope.
This compassion led to a gentle approach. She tried to comfort George
without letting him see that she needed the same consolation. This was
done with that delicacy called womanly because the softer sex best
practice it.
Marie Antoinette, trying to reign by dividing, saw she was on the
wrong road, and was forcing together the souls which she wanted to keep
aloof.
Hence, in the silence of night and the lonesomeness, she felt such
wrestlings with Giant Despair as must give the spirit a high idea of
its power since it can struggle with so vast a might.
She would have succumbed had it not been for the diversion of politics.
In her pride she ascribed her decay to the depreciation she had let
herself as a woman suffer lately. In her active mind, to think was to
act.
She set to work without losing a moment, but unfortunately the work was
for her perdition.
Seeing that the Parisians had turned into soldiers and appeared to
intend war, she resolved to show them what war really is.
For two months the King had been striving to retain some shred of
royalty: with the peerage and Mirabeau, he had tried to neutralize the
democratic spirit effacing it in France. In this strife the monarch had
lost all his power and part of his popularity; the Queen had gained the
nickname of "Lady Veto." She had been known as The Austrian, then as
Lady Deficit, on account of the hole in the Treasury attributed to her
generosity to her favorites; now, Lady Veto; she was to bear lastly the
title of The Widow Capet.
After the conflict in which the Queen had endeavored to engage her
friends by showing them that they were endangered with her, she
remarked that only sixty thousand passports had been applied for by the
higher classes, fleeing to foreign parts. This had struck the Queen.
She purposed her own escape, so as to leave the true royalists in
France to wage a civil war. Her plan was not bad, and it must have
succeeded had it not been for the evil genius who was plotting behind
the Queen. Strange destiny! this woman who inspired great devotion,
nowhere could attach discretion.
It was known all over town that she intended to take to wing before she
had settled herself: and from that time it was impracticable.
Meanwhile, the Flanders Regiment, famous for its royalist fervor,
arrived at Versailles, asked for by the town council, as the guarding
of the palace exceeded their powers at command.
It made a solemn entrance into the court-town, and received an ovation
from the courtiers, other soldiers, and a band of young nobles who
had set up a company of their own with a special uniform, to which
were joined the Knights of St. Louis, officers on the retired list and
adventurers.
Only one black spot marred the sky: Liege had revolted against the
Austrian Emperor and this made it difficult for him to succor the
daughter whom he had wedded to his brother on the French throne.
After the Flanders Regiment had been welcomed, the Lifeguards officers
voted to give them a dinner: it was fixed for the First of October. As
the King had no politics to trouble him, since the new government took
all business on themselves, he passed the days in hunting. The Queen
was applied to for the dinner to take place in the palace. She let the
guards officers have the theatre, which was boarded over to make more
room, and a hall adjoining.
She shut herself up alone, save for her children and Andrea, sad and
thoughtful, where the toasts and the clink of glasses should not
disturb her.
At the palace gates a crowd peeped in and sniffed the air, puffing
the fumes of roasts and wines, from the large dinner table. It was
imprudent to let the hungry inhale the vapor of good cheer and the
morose hear songs and cheers of hope and joy.
The feast went on without any interruption, however. At the second
course the Colonel of the Flanders Regiment proposed the regular toasts
of the Royal Family, which were hailed so loudly that the Queen may
have heard the echoes in her refuge.
An officer stood up. He was a man of wit and courage who foresaw the
issue of this banquet and was sincerely attached to the Royal Family;
or else he was a plotter who tried to challenge the anti-popular
opinion. He proposed the Health of the Nation.
It was hooted down, and the feast took its plain meaning--the torrent
resumed its down-hill rush.
To forget the country might pass: but to insult it was too much; it
would take revenge.
From that moment discipline was at an end: the privates hobnobbed with
their superiors, and it was really a brotherly meeting.
What a pity that the unfortunate King and sorrowful Queen could not
witness such a gathering!
Officious servants ran with exaggerated accounts of the festivities to
Marie Antoinette and urged that she should go with the young heir to
the throne by her side, in the monarch's absence.
"Madam, I entreat you to keep away," pleaded Count Charny. "I have come
away from the scene; they are too excited to make it seemly for your
Majesty."
She was in one of her sulky, whimsical moods and it suited her to tease
Charny by going counter to his advice. She looked at him with disdain
and was going to answer him tartly when he respectfully said:
"At least, see what the King says about it."
The King had just returned from hunting.
Marie Antoinette ran to meet him and dragging him with her, in his
riding boots and dusty as he was, she led him away, without a glance at
Charny, and crying:
"Come, my lord, to see a sight worthy of a King of France's regard!"
With her left hand, she led her son. The courtiers flowed before and
after the trio: she reached the theatre doors just as the glasses were
being emptied for the twentieth time to shouts of:
"God save the King! Long live the Queen!"
The applause burst like a mine exploding when the King and Queen and
Prince Royal were seen on the floor. The drunken soldiers and heated
officers waved their hats on their swords and shouted. The band began
to play from the Opera of Richard Coeur-de-lion, Blondel's song of "Oh,
Richard, oh, my King!" which so transparently alluded to the King in a
kind of bondage that all voices took up the song.
The enthusiastic Queen did not see that the soldiers were intoxicated:
the surprised King had too much good sense not to see more clearly, but
he was weak and flattered by this reception, so that he let the general
frenzy overcome him.
Charny, who had drunk nothing but water during the part of the banquet
which he attended, stood pale at this participation of the Royal Family
in what would now be a historical event by their presence.
But his apprehension was still greater when he saw his brother
Valence, the hussar lieutenant, approach the Queen and speak to her
when encouraged by a smile. It was consent, for she unpinned from her
cap the cockade she was wearing and presented it to her imprudent
Knight. It was not even a royal rosette, but that of Austria: the black
insignia of the foreign foe! This was not rashness but treason to the
country. So mad was the concourse that they to whom Valence Charny
presented the black cockade, tore off their white ones and they who
were wearing the tricolors trampled them under foot.
The exultation became so high that the august guests had pains to
return to their rooms without trampling on those who prostrated
themselves in their passageway.
All this might have been overlooked as the freak of an orgie, but after
the Royal Family departed, the guests turned the banquet hall into a
town taken by assault. The soldiers whooped and as the bugles blew
the charge--against what enemy? the absent nation! they climbed the
balconies where the ladies held over helping hands.
The first soldier to reach the boxes was a grenadier whom a nobleman
decorated with the ribbon he was wearing in his buttonhole: the Order
of Limburg, that is, of no value. But all the sham battle was fought
under the Austrian colors while the national one was shouted down. Only
a few dull protests were heard, drowned under the trumpet blasts, the
hurrahs, and the music of the band. The tumult came menacingly to the
crowd at the doors. Astonished at first, they were soon indignant as
it was known that the tricolor had been spurned and the black streamer
flaunted in its stead.
An officer of the National Guard had been badly beaten in the scuffle
to uphold the honor of the latter, but it was not known that Charny,
the Queen's favorite, had taken all the blame of the outrages on
himself.
The Queen had returned to her rooms, dazed by the scene. A swarm of
flatterers and adulators assailed her.
"See the true spirit of your troops," they said. "When the fury of the
mob is bragged of, think how it would melt away in the blast of this
wild ardor of the military for monarchical ideas."
She was still under the illusion that this fire would spread over the
kingdom from the palace, at her will, when, next day, receiving the
National Guard to whom she had promised to distribute their new flags,
she made this address:
"I am happy to make this presentation. The Nation and the army ought to
love the King, as we love them both. I was delighted with the rejoicing
yesterday!"
At these words, emphasized by her glittering glance and sweetest voice,
the crowd grumbled while the soldiers applauded noisily.
"She upheld us," said one party while the other muttered: "We are
betrayed!"
"Am I not brave?" she asked of Charny who looked on with sorrow and
listened with terror.
"To the point of folly," he replied with a deeply clouded face.