I. TWO DREAMS
In 1786 Bodard de Saint-James, treasurer of the navy, excited more
attention and gossip as to his luxury than any other financier in Paris.
At this period he was building his famous “Folie” at Neuilly, and his
wife had just bought a set of feathers to crown the tester of her bed,
the price of which had been too great for even the queen to pay.
Bodard owned the magnificent mansion in the place Vendome, which
the _fermier-general_, Dange, had lately been forced to leave. That
celebrated epicurean was now dead, and on the day of his interment his
intimate friend, Monsieur de Bievre, raised a laugh by saying that
he “could now pass through the place Vendome without _danger_.” This
allusion to the hellish gambling which went on in the dead man’s house,
was his only funeral oration. The house is opposite to the Chancellerie.
To end in a few words the history of Bodard,--he became a poor man,
having failed for fourteen millions after the bankruptcy of the
Prince de Guemenee. The stupidity he showed in not anticipating that
“serenissime disaster,” to use the expression of Lebrun Pindare, was
the reason why no notice was taken of his misfortunes. He died, like
Bourvalais, Bouret, and so many others, in a garret.
Madame Bodard de Saint-James was ambitious, and professed to receive
none but persons of quality at her house,--an old absurdity which is
ever new. To her thinking, even the parliamentary judges were of small
account; she wished for titled persons in her salons, or at all events,
those who had the right of entrance at court. To say that many _cordons
bleus_ were seen at her house would be false; but it is quite certain
that she managed to obtain the good-will and civilities of several
members of the house of Rohan, as was proved later in the affair of the
too celebrated diamond necklace.
One evening--it was, I think, in August, 1786--I was much surprised to
meet in the salons of this lady, so exacting in the matter of gentility,
two new faces which struck me as belonging to men of inferior social
position. She came to me presently in the embrasure of a window where I
had ensconced myself.
“Tell me,” I said to her, with a glance toward one of the new-comers,
“who and what is that queer species? Why do you have that kind of thing
here?”
“He is charming.”
“Do you see him through a prism of love, or am I blind?”
“You are not blind,” she said, laughing. “The man is as ugly as a
caterpillar; but he has done me the most immense service a woman can
receive from a man.”
As I looked at her rather maliciously she hastened to add: “He’s a
physician, and he has completely cured me of those odious red blotches
which spoiled my complexion and made me look like a peasant woman.”
I shrugged my shoulders with disgust.
“He is a charlatan.”
“No,” she said, “he is the surgeon of the court pages. He has a fine
intellect, I assure you; in fact, he is a writer, and a very learned
man.”
“Heavens! if his style resembles his face!” I said scoffingly. “But who
is the other?”
“What other?”
“That spruce, affected little popinjay over there, who looks as if he
had been drinking verjuice.”
“He is a rather well-born man,” she replied; “just arrived from some
province, I forget which--oh! from Artois. He is sent here to conclude
an affair in which the Cardinal de Rohan is interested, and his Eminence
in person had just presented him to Monsieur de Saint-James. It seems
they have both chosen my husband as arbitrator. The provincial didn’t
show his wisdom in that; but fancy what simpletons the people who sent
him here must be to trust a case to a man of his sort! He is as meek as
a sheep and as timid as a girl. His Eminence is very kind to him.”
“What is the nature of the affair?”
“Oh! a question of three hundred thousand francs.”
“Then the man is a lawyer?” I said, with a slight shrug.
“Yes,” she replied.
Somewhat confused by this humiliating avowal, Madame Bodard returned to
her place at a faro-table.
All the tables were full. I had nothing to do, no one to speak to, and
I had just lost two thousand crowns to Monsieur de Laval. I flung myself
on a sofa near the fireplace. Presently, if there was ever a man on
earth most utterly astonished it was I, when, on looking up, I saw,
seated on another sofa on the opposite side of the fireplace, Monsieur
de Calonne, the comptroller-general. He seemed to be dozing, or else he
was buried in one of those deep meditations which overtake statesmen.
When I pointed out the famous minister to Beaumarchais, who happened to
come near me at that moment, the father of Figaro explained the mystery
of his presence in that house without uttering a word. He pointed first
at my head, then at Bodard’s with a malicious gesture which consisted in
turning to each of us two fingers of his hand while he kept the others
doubled up. My first impulse was to rise and say something rousing to
Calonne; then I paused, first, because I thought of a trick I could play
the statesman, and secondly, because Beaumarchais caught me familiarly
by the hand.
“Why do you do that, monsieur?” I said.
He winked at the comptroller.
“Don’t wake him,” he said in a low voice. “A man is happy when asleep.”
“Pray, is sleep a financial scheme?” I whispered.
“Indeed, yes!” said Calonne, who had guessed our words from the mere
motion of our lips. “Would to God we could sleep long, and then the
awakening you are about to see would never happen.”
“Monseigneur,” said the dramatist, “I must thank you--”
“For what?”
“Monsieur de Mirabeau has started for Berlin. I don’t know whether we
might not both have drowned ourselves in that affair of ‘les Eaux.’”
“You have too much memory, and too little gratitude,” replied the
minister, annoyed at having one of his secrets divulged in my presence.
“Possibly,” said Beaumarchais, cut to the quick; “but I have millions
that can balance many a score.”
Calonne pretended not to hear.
It was long past midnight when the play ceased. Supper was announced.
There were ten of us at table: Bodard and his wife, Calonne,
Beaumarchais, the two strange men, two pretty women, whose names I will
not give here, a _fermier-general_, Lavoisier, and myself. Out of thirty
guests who were in the salon when I entered it, only these ten remained.
The two _queer species_ did not consent to stay until they were urged
to do so by Madame Bodard, who probably thought she was paying her
obligations to the surgeon by giving him something to eat, and pleasing
her husband (with whom she appeared, I don’t precisely know why, to be
coquetting) by inviting the lawyer.
The supper began by being frightfully dull. The two strangers and
the _fermier-general_ oppressed us. I made a sign to Beaumarchais to
intoxicate the son of Esculapius, who sat on his right, giving him to
understand that I would do the same by the lawyer, who was next to me.
As there seemed no other way to amuse ourselves, and it offered a
chance to draw out the two men, who were already sufficiently singular,
Monsieur de Calonne smiled at our project. The ladies present also
shared in the bacchanal conspiracy, and the wine of Sillery crowned our
glasses again and again with its silvery foam. The surgeon was easily
managed; but at the second glass which I offered to my neighbor the
lawyer, he told me with the frigid politeness of a usurer that he should
drink no more.
At this instant Madame de Saint-James chanced to introduce, I
scarcely know how, the topic of the marvellous suppers to the Comte
de Cagliostro, given by the Cardinal de Rohan. My mind was not very
attentive to what the mistress of the house was saying, because I was
watching with extreme curiosity the pinched and livid face of my little
neighbor, whose principal feature was a turned-up and at the same
time pointed nose, which made him, at times, look very like a weasel.
Suddenly his cheeks flushed as he caught the words of a dispute between
Madame de Saint-James and Monsieur de Calonne.
“But I assure you, monsieur,” she was saying, with an imperious air,
“that I _saw_ Cleopatra, the queen.”
“I can believe it, madame,” said my neighbor, “for I myself have spoken
to Catherine de’ Medici.”
“Oh! oh!” exclaimed Monsieur de Calonne.
The words uttered by the little provincial were said in a voice of
strange sonorousness, if I may be permitted to borrow that expression
from the science of physics. This sudden clearness of intonation, coming
from a man who had hitherto scarcely spoken, and then in a low and
modulated tone, surprised all present exceedingly.
“Why, he is talking!” said the surgeon, who was now in a satisfactory
state of drunkenness, addressing Beaumarchais.
“His neighbor must have pulled his wires,” replied the satirist.
My man flushed again as he overheard the words, though they were said in
a low voice.
“And pray, how was the late queen?” asked Calonne, jestingly.
“I will not swear that the person with whom I supped last night at the
house of the Cardinal de Rohan was Catherine de’ Medici in person.
That miracle would justly seem impossible to Christians as well as to
philosophers,” said the little lawyer, resting the tips of his fingers
on the table, and leaning back in his chair as if preparing to make
a speech. “Nevertheless, I do assert that the woman I saw resembled
Catherine de’ Medici as closely as though they were twin-sisters. She
was dressed in a black velvet gown, precisely like that of the queen in
the well-known portrait which belongs to the king; on her head was the
pointed velvet coif, which is characteristic of her; and she had the
wan complexion, and the features we all know well. I could not help
betraying my surprise to his Eminence. The suddenness of the evocation
seemed to me all the more amazing because Monsieur de Cagliostro had
been unable to divine the name of the person with whom I wished to
communicate. I was confounded. The magical spectacle of a supper, where
one of the illustrious women of past times presented herself, took from
me my presence of mind. I listened without daring to question. When
I roused myself about midnight from the spell of that magic, I was
inclined to doubt my senses. But even this great marvel seemed natural
in comparison with the singular hallucination to which I was presently
subjected. I don’t know in what words I can describe to you the state
of my senses. But I declare, in the sincerity of my heart, I no longer
wonder that souls have been found weak enough, or strong enough, to
believe in the mysteries of magic and in the power of demons. For
myself, until I am better informed, I regard as possible the apparitions
which Cardan and other thaumaturgists describe.”
These words, said with indescribable eloquence of tone, were of a nature
to rouse the curiosity of all present. We looked at the speaker and kept
silence; our eyes alone betrayed our interest, their pupils reflecting
the light of the wax-candles in the sconces. By dint of observing
this unknown little man, I fancied I could see the pores of his skin,
especially those of his forehead, emitting an inward sentiment with
which he was saturated. This man, apparently so cold and formal, seemed
to contain within him a burning altar, the flames of which beat down
upon us.
“I do not know,” he continued, “if the Figure evoked followed me
invisibly, but no sooner had my head touched the pillow in my own
chamber than I saw once more that grand Shade of Catherine rise before
me. I felt myself, instinctively, in a luminous sphere, and my eyes,
fastened upon the queen with intolerable fixity, saw naught but her.
Suddenly, she bent toward me.”
At these words the ladies present made a unanimous movement of
curiosity.
“But,” continued the lawyer, “I am not sure that I ought to relate what
happened, for though I am inclined to believe it was all a dream, it
concerns grave matters.
“Of religion?” asked Beaumarchais.
“If there is any impropriety,” remarked Calonne, “these ladies will
excuse it.”
“It relates to the government,” replied the lawyer.
“Go on, then,” said the minister; “Voltaire, Diderot, and their fellows
have already begun to tutor us on that subject.”
Calonne became very attentive, and his neighbor, Madame de Genlis,
rather anxious. The little provincial still hesitated, and Beaumarchais
said to him somewhat roughly:--
“Go on, _maitre_, go on! Don’t you know that when the laws allow but
little liberty the people seek their freedom in their morals?”
Thus adjured, the small man told his tale:--
“Whether it was that certain ideas were fermenting in my brain, or
that some strange power impelled me, I said to her: ‘Ah! madame, you
committed a very great crime.’ ‘What crime?’ she asked in a grave voice.
‘The crime for which the signal was given from the clock of the palace
on the 24th of August,’ I answered. She smiled disdainfully, and a few
deep wrinkles appeared on her pallid cheeks. ‘You call that a crime
which was only a misfortune,’ she said. ‘The enterprise, being
ill-managed, failed; the benefit we expected for France, for Europe,
for the Catholic Church was lost. Impossible to foresee that. Our
orders were ill executed; we did not find as many Montlucs as we
needed. Posterity will not hold us responsible for the failure of
communications, which deprived our work of the unity of movement which
is essential to all great strokes of policy; that was our misfortune!
If on the 25th of August not the shadow of a Huguenot had been left in
France, I should go down to the uttermost posterity as a noble image of
Providence. How many, many times have the clear-sighted souls of Sixtus
the Fifth, Richelieu, Bossuet, reproached me secretly for having failed
in that enterprise after having the boldness to conceive it! How many
and deep regrets for that failure attended my deathbed! Thirty years
after the Saint-Bartholomew the evil it might have cured was still in
existence. That failure caused ten times more blood to flow in France
than if the massacre of August 24th had been completed on the 26th. The
revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in honor of which you have struck
medals, has cost more tears, more blood, more money, and killed the
prosperity of France far more than three Saint-Bartholomews. Letellier
with his pen gave effect to a decree which the throne had secretly
promulgated since my time; but, though the vast execution was necessary
of the 25th of August, 1572, on the 25th of August, 1685, it was
useless. Under the second son of Henri de Valois heresy had scarcely
conceived an offspring; under the second son of Henri de Bourbon that
teeming mother had cast her spawn over the whole universe. You accuse
me of a crime, and you put up statues to the son of Anne of Austria!
Nevertheless, he and I attempted the same thing; he succeeded, I failed;
but Louis XIV. found the Protestants without arms, whereas in my reign
they had powerful armies, statesmen, warriors, and all Germany on their
side.’ At these words, slowly uttered, I felt an inward shudder pass
through me. I fancied I breathed the fumes of blood from I know not what
great mass of victims. Catherine was magnified. She stood before me like
an evil genius; she sought, it seemed to me, to enter my consciousness
and abide there.”
“He dreamed all that,” whispered Beaumarchais; “he certainly never
invented it.”
“‘My reason is bewildered,’ I said to the queen. ‘You praise yourself
for an act which three generations of men have condemned, stigmatized,
and--’ ‘Add,’ she rejoined, ‘that historians have been more unjust
toward me than my contemporaries. None have defended me. I, rich and
all-powerful, am accused of ambition! I am taxed with cruelty,--I who
have but two deaths upon my conscience. Even to impartial minds I am
still a problem. Do you believe that I was actuated by hatred, that
vengeance and fury were the breath of my nostrils?’ She smiled with
pity. ‘No,’ she continued, ‘I was cold and calm as reason itself. I
condemned the Huguenots without pity, but without passion; they were
the rotten fruit in my basket and I cast them out. Had I been Queen of
England, I should have treated seditious Catholics in the same way. The
life of our power in those days depended on their being but one God,
one Faith, one Master in the State. Happily for me, I uttered my
justification in one sentence which history is transmitting. When Birago
falsely announced to me the loss of the battle of Dreux, I answered:
“Well then; we will go to the Protestant churches.” Did I hate the
reformers? No, I esteemed them much, and I knew them little. If I felt
any aversion to the politicians of my time, it was to that base Cardinal
de Lorraine, and to his brother the shrewd and brutal soldier who spied
upon my every act. They were the real enemies of my children; they
sought to snatch the crown; I saw them daily at work and they wore me
out. If _we_ had not ordered the Saint-Bartholomew, the Guises would
have done the same thing by the help of Rome and the monks. The League,
which was powerful only in consequence of my old age, would have begun
in 1573.’ ‘But, madame, instead of ordering that horrible murder (pardon
my plainness) why not have employed the vast resources of your political
power in giving to the Reformers those wise institutions which made the
reign of Henri IV. so glorious and so peaceful?’ She smiled again and
shrugged her shoulders, the hollow wrinkles of her pallid face giving
her an expression of the bitterest sarcasm. ‘The peoples,’ she said,
‘need periods of rest after savage feuds; there lies the secret of
that reign. But Henri IV. committed two irreparable blunders. He ought
neither to have abjured Protestantism, nor, after becoming a Catholic
himself, should he have left France Catholic. He, alone, was in a
position to have changed the whole of France without a jar. Either not
a stole, or not a conventicle--that should have been his motto. To leave
two bitter enemies, two antagonistic principles in a government with
nothing to balance them, that is the crime of kings; it is thus that
they sow revolutions. To God alone belongs the right to keep good
and evil perpetually together in his work. But it may be,’ she said
reflectively, ‘that that sentence was inscribed on the foundation of
Henri IV.’s policy, and it may have caused his death. It is impossible
that Sully did not cast covetous eyes on the vast wealth of the
clergy,--which the clergy did not possess in peace, for the nobles
robbed them of at least two-thirds of their revenue. Sully, the
Reformer, himself owned abbeys.’ She paused, and appeared to reflect.
‘But,’ she resumed, ‘remember you are asking the niece of a Pope to
justify her Catholicism.’ She stopped again. ‘And yet, after all,’
she added with a gesture of some levity, ‘I should have made a good
Calvinist! Do the wise men of your century still think that religion had
anything to do with that struggle, the greatest which Europe has ever
seen?--a vast revolution, retarded by little causes which, however, will
not be prevented from overwhelming the world because I failed to smother
it; a revolution,’ she said, giving me a solemn look, ‘which is still
advancing, and which you might consummate. Yes, _you_, who hear me!’ I
shuddered. ‘What! has no one yet understood that the old interests and
the new interests seized Rome and Luther as mere banners? What! do they
not know Louis IX., to escape just such a struggle, dragged a population
a hundredfold more in number than I destroyed from their homes and left
their bones on the sands of Egypt, for which he was made a saint? while
I--But I,’ she added, ‘_failed_.’ She bowed her head and was silent
for some moments. I no longer beheld a queen, but rather one of those
ancient druidesses to whom human lives are sacrificed; who unroll the
pages of the future and exhume the teachings of the past. But soon she
uplifted her regal and majestic form. ‘Luther and Calvin,’ she said, ‘by
calling the attention of the burghers to the abuses of the Roman Church,
gave birth in Europe to a spirit of investigation which was certain
to lead the peoples to examine all things. Examination leads to doubt.
Instead of faith, which is necessary to all societies, those two men
drew after them, in the far distance, a strange philosophy, armed with
hammers, hungry for destruction. Science sprang, sparkling with her
specious lights, from the bosom of heresy. It was far less a question of
reforming a Church than of winning indefinite liberty for man--which is
the death of power. I saw that. The consequence of the successes won
by the religionists in their struggle against the priesthood (already
better armed and more formidable than the Crown) was the destruction
of the monarchical power raised by Louis IX. at such vast cost upon
the ruins of feudality. It involved, in fact, nothing less than the
annihilation of religion and royalty, on the ruins of which the whole
burgher class of Europe meant to stand. The struggle was therefore war
without quarter between the new ideas and the law,--that is, the old
beliefs. The Catholics were the emblem of the material interests of
royalty, of the great lords, and of the clergy. It was a duel to the
death between two giants; unfortunately, the Saint-Bartholomew proved to
be only a wound. Remember this: because a few drops of blood were spared
at that opportune moment, torrents were compelled to flow at a later
period. The intellect which soars above a nation cannot escape a great
misfortune; I mean the misfortune of finding no equals capable of
judging it when it succumbs beneath the weight of untoward events. My
equals are few; fools are in the majority: that statement explains
it all. If my name is execrated in France, the fault lies with the
commonplace minds who form the mass of all generations. In the great
crises through which I passed, the duty of reigning was not the mere
giving of audiences, reviewing of troops, signing of decrees. I may have
committed mistakes, for I was but a woman. But why was there then no man
who rose above his age? The Duke of Alba had a soul of iron; Philip II.
was stupefied by Catholic belief; Henri IV. was a gambling soldier and
a libertine; the Admiral, a stubborn mule. Louis XI. lived too
soon, Richelieu too late. Virtuous or criminal, guilty or not in the
Saint-Bartholomew, I accept the onus of it; I stand between those two
great men,--the visible link of an unseen chain. The day will come when
some paradoxical writer will ask if the peoples have not bestowed the
title of executioner among their victims. It will not be the first time
that humanity has preferred to immolate a god rather than admit its
own guilt. You are shedding upon two hundred clowns, sacrificed for a
purpose, the tears you refuse to a generation, a century, a world!
You forget that political liberty, the tranquillity of a nation, nay,
knowledge itself, are gifts on which destiny has laid a tax of blood!’
‘But,’ I exclaimed, with tears in my eyes, ‘will the nations never be
happy at less cost?’ ‘Truth never leaves her well but to bathe in the
blood which refreshes her,’ she replied. ‘Christianity, itself the
essence of all truth, since it comes from God, was fed by the blood of
martyrs, which flowed in torrents; and shall it not ever flow? You will
learn this, you who are destined to be one of the builders of the social
edifice founded by the Apostles. So long as you level heads you will be
applauded, but take your trowel in hand, begin to reconstruct, and your
fellows will kill you.’ Blood! blood! the word sounded in my ears like
a knell. ‘According to you,’ I cried, ‘Protestantism has the right to
reason as you do!’ But Catherine had disappeared, as if some puff of air
had suddenly extinguished the supernatural light which enabled my mind
to see that Figure whose proportions had gradually become gigantic.
And then, without warning, I found within me a portion of myself
which adopted the monstrous doctrine delivered by the Italian. I woke,
weeping, bathed in sweat, at the moment when my reason told me firmly,
in a gentle voice, that neither kings nor nations had the right to apply
such principles, fit only for a world of atheists.”
“How would you save a falling monarchy?” asked Beaumarchais.
“God is present,” replied the little lawyer.
“Therefore,” remarked Monsieur de Calonne, with the inconceivable levity
which characterized him, “we have the agreeable resource of believing
ourselves the instruments of God, according to the Gospel of Bossuet.”
As soon as the ladies discovered that the tale related only to a
conversation between the queen and the lawyer, they had begun to whisper
and to show signs of impatience,--interjecting, now and then, little
phrases through his speech. “How wearisome he is!” “My dear, when will
he finish?” were among those which reached my ear.
When the strange little man had ceased speaking the ladies too were
silent; Monsieur Bodard was sound asleep; the surgeon, half drunk;
Monsieur de Calonne was smiling at the lady next him. Lavoisier,
Beaumarchais, and I alone had listened to the lawyer’s dream. The
silence at this moment had something solemn about it. The gleam of the
candles seemed to me magical. A sentiment bound all three of us by some
mysterious tie to that singular little man, who made me, strange to say,
conceive, suddenly, the inexplicable influences of fanaticism. Nothing
less than the hollow, cavernous voice of Beaumarchais’s neighbor, the
surgeon, could, I think, have roused me.
“I, too, have dreamed,” he said.
I looked at him more attentively, and a feeling of some strange horror
came over me. His livid skin, his features, huge and yet ignoble, gave
an exact idea of what you must allow me to call the _scum_ of the earth.
A few bluish-black spots were scattered over his face, like bits of mud,
and his eyes shot forth an evil gleam. The face seemed, perhaps,
darker, more lowering than it was, because of the white hair piled like
hoarfrost on his head.
“That man must have buried many a patient,” I whispered to my neighbor
the lawyer.
“I wouldn’t trust him with my dog,” he answered.
“I hate him involuntarily.”
“For my part, I despise him.”
“Perhaps we are unjust,” I remarked.
“Ha! to-morrow he may be as famous as Volange the actor.”
Monsieur de Calonne here motioned us to look at the surgeon, with a
gesture that seemed to say: “I think he’ll be very amusing.”
“Did you dream of a queen?” asked Beaumarchais.
“No, I dreamed of a People,” replied the surgeon, with an emphasis which
made us laugh. “I was then in charge of a patient whose leg I was to
amputate the next day--”
“Did you find the People in the leg of your patient?” asked Monsieur de
Calonne.
“Precisely,” replied the surgeon.
“How amusing!” cried Madame de Genlis.
“I was somewhat surprised,” went on the speaker, without noticing the
interruption, and sticking his hands into the gussets of his breeches,
“to hear something talking to me within that leg. I then found I had the
singular faculty of entering the being of my patient. Once within his
skin I saw a marvellous number of little creatures which moved, and
thought, and reasoned. Some of them lived in the body of the man, others
lived in his mind. His ideas were things which were born, and grew, and
died; they were sick and well, and gay, and sad; they all had special
countenances; they fought with each other, or they embraced each other.
Some ideas sprang forth and went to live in the world of intellect. I
began to see that there were two worlds, two universes,--the visible
universe, and the invisible universe; that the earth had, like man, a
body and a soul. Nature illumined herself for me; I felt her immensity
when I saw the oceans of beings who, in masses and in species, spread
everywhere, making one sole and uniform animated Matter, from the stone
of the earth to God. Magnificent vision! In short, I found a universe
within my patient. When I inserted my knife into his gangrened leg I
cut into a million of those little beings. Oh! you laugh, madame; let me
tell you that you are eaten up by such creatures--”
“No personalities!” interposed Monsieur de Calonne. “Speak for yourself
and for your patient.”
“My patient, frightened by the cries of his animalcules, wanted to stop
the operation; but I went on regardless of his remonstrances; telling
him that those evil animals were already gnawing at his bones. He made a
sudden movement of resistance, not understanding that what I did was for
his good, and my knife slipped aside, entered my own body, and--”
“He is stupid,” said Lavoisier.
“No, he is drunk,” replied Beaumarchais.
“But, gentlemen, my dream has a meaning,” cried the surgeon.
“Oh! oh!” exclaimed Bodard, waking up; “my leg is asleep!”
“Your animalcules must be dead,” said his wife.
“That man has a vocation,” announced my little neighbor, who had stared
imperturbably at the surgeon while he was speaking.
“It is to yours,” said the ugly man, “what the action is to the word,
the body to the soul.”
But his tongue grew thick, his words were indistinct, and he said no
more. Fortunately for us the conversation took another turn. At the end
of half an hour we had forgotten the surgeon of the king’s pages,
who was fast asleep. Rain was falling in torrents as we left the
supper-table.
“The lawyer is no fool,” I said to Beaumarchais.
“True, but he is cold and dull. You see, however, that the provinces
are still sending us worthy men who take a serious view of political
theories and the history of France. It is a leaven which will rise.”
“Is your carriage here?” asked Madame de Saint-James, addressing me.
“No,” I replied, “I did not think that I should need it to-night.”
Madame de Saint-James then rang the bell, ordered her own carriage to be
brought round, and said to the little lawyer in a low voice:--
“Monsieur de Robespierre, will you do me the kindness to drop Monsieur
Marat at his own door?--for he is not in a state to go alone.”
“With pleasure, madame,” replied Monsieur de Robespierre, with his
finical gallantry. “I only wish you had requested me to do something
more difficult.”
End of Project Gutenberg’s Catherine de’ Medici, by Honore de Balzac