ANOTHER DUPE.
On arriving at Dormans, the party had to get out at an inn as nothing
was prepared for them. Either from Petion's orders or from the Royal
Family's snubbing him on the journey having vexed him, or because the
place was really full, only three garret rooms were available.
Charny got down the first to have the Queen's orders but she gave him a
look to imply that he was to keep in the background. He hastened to obey
without knowing the cause.
It was Petion who entered the hotel, and acted as quarter-master; he did
not give himself the trouble to come out again and it was a waiter who
told the Royals that their rooms were ready.
Barnave was embarrassed as he wanted to offer his arm to the Queen, but
he feared that she who had been wont to rail at exaggerated etiquette,
would nevertheless invoke it now. So he waited.
The King stepped out, followed by the Queen, who held out her arms for
her son, but he said as if he knew his part to please his mother:
"No, I want to stay with my friend Barnave."
Marie Antoinette submitted with a sweet smile. Barnave let lady
Elizabeth pass out with the Princess Royal before he alighted, carrying
the boy in his arms.
Lady Tourzel closed the march, eager to snatch the royal child from
these plebeian arms but the Queen made her a sign which cooled the ardor
of the aristocratic governess. Barnave did not say anything on finding
that the Virtuous Petion had taken the best part of the house, as he set
down the prince on the second landing.
"Mamma, here is my friend Barnave going away," cried he.
"Very right, too," observed the Queen on seeing the attics reserved for
her and her family.
The King was so tired that he wished to lie down, but the bed was so
short that he had to get up in a minute and called for a chair. With the
cane-bottomed one eking out a wooden one he lengthened the couch.
"Oh, Sire," said Malden, who brought the chair, "can you pass the night
thus?"
"Certainly: besides, if what the ministers say be true, many of my
subjects would be only too glad to have this loft, these chairs and this
pallet."
He laid on this wretched bed, a prelude to his miserable nights in the
Temple Prison.
When he came in to supper, he found the table set for six: Petion had
added himself to the Royal Family.
"Why not eight, then, for Messieurs Latour Maubourg and Barnave?" jeered
the King.
"M. Barnave excused himself, but M. Petion persisted," replied the
waiter.
The grave, austere face of the deputy appeared in the doorway.
The King bore himself as if alone and said to the waiter:
"I sit at table with my own family solely: or without guests. If not, we
do not eat at all."
Petion went away furious, and heard the door bolted after him.
The Queen looked for Charny during the meal, wishing that he had
disobeyed her.
Her husband was rising after finishing supper when the waiter came to
state that the first floor parlors were ready for them. They had been
decked out with flowers, by the forethought of Barnave.
The Queen sighed: a few years before she would have had to thank Charny
for such attentions. Moreover, Barnave had the delicacy not to appear
to receive his reward; just as the count would have acted. How was it
a petty country lawyer should show the same attentions and daintiness
as the most eminent courtier? There was certainly much in this to set a
woman--even a queen, a-thinking. Hence she did ponder over this mystery
half the night.
What had become of Count Charny during this interval?
With his duty keeping him close to his masters, he was glad to have the
Queen's signal for him to take some leisure for lonely reflection.
After having been so busy for others lately, he was not sorry to have
time for his own distress.
He was the old-time nobleman, more a father than a brother to his
younger brothers.
His grief had been great at Valence's death, but at least he had a
comfort in the second brother Isidore on whom he placed the whole of
his affection. Isidore had become more dear still since he was his
intermediary with Andrea.
The less Charny saw of Andrea the more he thought of her, and to think
of her was to love her. She was a statue when he saw her, but when he
departed she became colored and animated by the distance. It seemed to
him that internal fire sprang up in the alabaster mould and he could see
the veins circulate blood and the heart throb.
It was in these times of loneliness and separation that the wife was the
real rival of the Queen: in the feverish nights Charny saw the tapestry
cleft or the walls melt to allow the transparent statue to approach his
couch, with open arms and murmuring lips and kindled eye: the fire of
her love beamed from within. He also would hold out his arms, calling
the lovely vision, and try to press the phantom to his heart. But, alas!
the vision would flee and, embracing vacancy, he would fall from his
breathless dream into sad and cold reality.
Therefore, Isidore was dearer to him than Valence, and he had not the
chance to mourn over him as he had over the cadet of the family.
Both had fallen for the same fatal woman and into the abyss of the same
cause full of pitfalls. For them he would certainly fall.
Alone in an attic, shut up with a table which bore an old-fashioned
three-wicked oil lamp, he drew out the bloodstained papers, the last
relics of his brother. He sighed, raised his head and opened one letter.
It was from poor Catherine Billet. Charny had suspected the connection
some months before Billet had at Varennes given him confirmation of it.
Only then had he given it the importance it should have taken in his
mind.
Now he learnt that the title of mistress had become holy by its
promotion to that of mother, and in the simple language Catherine used,
all her woman's life was given in expiation of her fault as a girl. A
second and a third, showed the same plans of love, maternal joys, fears
of the loving, pains and repentance.
Suddenly, among the letters, he saw one whose writing struck him. To
this was attached a note of Isidore's, sealed with his arms in black
wax. It was the letter which Andrea had enjoined him to give her husband
in case he were mortally hurt or read to him if unable. The note
explained this and concluded:
"I league to my brother the Count of Charny poor Catherine Billet, now
living with my boy in the village of Villedovray."
This note had totally absorbed him: but finally he turned his attention
to that from his wife. But after reading the explanation three times, he
shook his head and said in an undertone:
"I have no right to open this letter; but I will so entreat her that she
will let me read it."
Dawn surprised him, devouring with his gaze this letter damp with
frequent pressing it with his lips.
Suddenly in the midst of the bustle for the departure, he heard his name
called and he hurried out on the stairs.
Here he met Barnave inquiring for the Queen and charging Valory to get
the order for the start. It was easy to see that Barnave had had no more
sleep than the count. They bowed to each other, and Charny would surely
have remarked the jealous gleam in the member's eye if he had been able
to think of anything but the letter of his wife which he pressed to his
heart under his arm.
On stepping into the coach once more the royal pair noticed they had
only the population of the town to stare at them and cavalry to escort
them. This was an attention of Barnave's.
He knew what the Queen had suffered from the squalid and infected
peasants pressing round the wheels, the severed head, the threats to
her guards. He pretended to have heard of an invasion by the Austrians
to help Marquis Bouille, and he had turned towards the frontier all the
irregularly armed men.
The hatred of the French for the foreign invader was such that it made
them forget for the moment that the Queen was one of them.
She guessed to whom she owed this boon, and thanked him with a look.
As she resumed her place in the conveyance she glanced out to see
Charny, who had taken the outer seat beside the Guards; he wanted to
be in the danger, in hopes that a wound would give him the right to
open his wife's letter. He did not notice her looking for him, and that
made her sigh, which Barnave heard. Uneasy about it, he stopped on the
carriage step.
"Madam," he said, "I remarked yesterday how incommoded we were in
here: if you like I will find room in the other carriage with M.
Latour-Maubourg."
While suggesting this, he would have given half his remaining days--not
that many were left him!--to have her refuse the offer.
"No, stay with us," she quickly responded.
At once the Dauphin held out his little hands to draw him to him,
saying:
"My friend Barnave! I do not want him to go."
Barnave gladly took his former place. The prince went over to his knee
from his mother's. The Queen kissed him on his cheek as he passed and
the member looked at the pink spots caused by the pressure like Tantalus
at the fruit hanging over his head. He asked leave to kiss the little
fellow and did it with such ardor that the boy cried out. She lost none
of this incident in which Barnave was staking his head.
Perhaps she had no more slept than Charny or the deputy; perhaps the
animation enflaming her eyes was caused by fever; any way, her purpled
lips and rosy cheeks, all made her that perilous siren who with one
golden tress would draw her adorers over the whirlpool's edge.
The carriage went faster and they could dine at Chateau Thierry. Before
they got to Meaux, at evening Lady Elizabeth was overpowered by sleep
and laid down in the middle of the vehicle. Her giving way had caused
her to lean against Petion, who deposed in his report that she had
tried to tempt him with love and had rested her head on his virtuous
shoulder--that pious creature!
The halt at Meaux was in the bishop's palace, a gloomy structure which
still echoed those sinister wails from Bossuet's study that presaged the
downfall of monarchy.
The Queen looked around for support and smiled on seeing Barnave.
"Give me your arm," she said, "and be my guide in this old palace. I
dare not venture alone lest the great voice is heard which one day made
Christianity shudder with the outcry: 'The Duchess Henriette is dead!'"
Barnave sprang forward to offer his arm, while the lady cast a last
glance around, fretted by Charny's obstinate silence.
"Do you seek some one?" he asked.
"Yes; the King."
"Oh, he is chatting with Petion."
Appearing satisfied, the Queen drew Barnave into the pile. She seemed
a fugitive, following some phantom and looking neither before her nor
behind. She only stopped, breathless, in the great preacher's sleeping
chamber, where chance placed her confronting the portrait of a lady.
Mechanically looking, she read the label: "Madam Henriette." She started
without Barnave understanding why. From the name he guessed.
"Yes," he observed, "not Henrietta Maria of England, not the widow of
the unfortunate Charles the First but the wife of the reckless Philip of
Orleans; not she who died of cold in the Louvre Palace, but she who died
of poison at St. Cloud and sent her ring to Bossuet. Rather would I have
it her portrait," he said after a pause "for such a mouth as hers might
give advice, but, alas! such are the very ones death seals up."
"What could Charles the First's widow furnish me in the way of advice?"
she inquired.
"By your leave, I will try to say. 'Oh, my sister (Seems to say this
mouth) do you not see the resemblance between our fates? I come from
England as you from Austria, and was a foreigner to the English as you
are to the French. I might have given my husband good counsel, but was
silent or gave him bad; instead of uniting him to his people, I excited
him to war against them; I gave him the counsel to march on London with
the Irish. Not only did I maintain correspondence with the enemies of
England but twice I went over into France to bring back foreign troops'.
But why continue the bloody story which you know?"
"Continue," said the Queen, with dark brow and pleated lip.
"The portrait would continue to say: 'Sister, finally the Scotch
delivered up their monarch, so that he was arrested just when he dreamt
of escaping into France. A tailor seized him, a butcher led him into
prison, a carter packed the jury, a beer-vendor presided over the
assembly, and that nothing should be omitted odious in the trial and the
sentence, it was carried out by a masked deaths-man striking off the
victim's head.' This is what the picture of Henrietta Maria would say.
God knows that nothing is lacking for the likeness. We have our brewer
in Santerre for Cromwell, our butcher in Lengedre, not Harrison, and all
the other plebeians who will conduct the trial; even as the conductor of
this array is a lowborn peasant. What do you say to the picture?"
"I would say: 'Poor dear princess, you are reading me a page of history
not giving me advice.'"
"If you do not refuse to follow it, the advice would be given you by the
living," rejoined Barnave.
"Dead or living, those who can advise ought to do so: if good, it should
be followed."
"Dead or living, one kind alone is given. Gain the people's love."
"It is so very easy to gain your people's love!"
"Why, madam, they are more your people than mine, and the proof is that
they worshiped you when you first came here."
"Oh, sir, dwell not on that flimsy thing, popularity."
"Madam," returned Barnave, "if I, springing from my obscure sphere,
won this popularity, how much easier for you to keep it than I to
conquer it? But no," continued he, warming with the theme, "to whom
have you confided this holy cause of monarchy, the loftiest and most
splendorous? What voices and what arms do you choose to defend it?
Never was seen such ignorance of the times and such forgetfulness of
the characteristics of France! Why, you have only to look at me for one
instance--who solicited the mission of coming to you with the single end
of offering myself, devoting myself----"
"Hush, some one is coming," interrupted the Queen; "we must refer to
this, M. Barnave, for I am ready to listen to your counsel and heed
you."
It was a servant announcing that dinner was waiting.
The two Lifeguards waited at table, but Charny stood in a window
recess. Though under the roof of one of the first bishops, the meal was
nothing to brag of: but the King ate heartily.
The Dauphin had been asking for strawberries but was told along the road
that there were none, though he had seen the country lads devouring them
by the handsful. So the poor little fellow had envied the rustic urchins
who could seek the fruit in the dewy grass like the birds that revel at
nature's bounteous board.
This desire had saddened the Queen, who called Charny in a voice hoarse
with emotion. At the third call he heard her and came, but the door
opened and Barnave appeared on the sill; in his hand was a platter of
the fruit.
"I hope the King and the Queen will excuse my intruding," he said, "but
I heard the prince ask for strawberries several times during the day, so
that, finding this dish on the bishop's table, I made so bold as to take
and bring it."
"Thank you, count," said the Queen to Charny, "but M. Barnave has
divined my want and I have no farther need of you."
Charny bowed without a word and returned to his place. The Dauphin
thanked the member, and the King asked him to sit down between the boy
and the Queen to partake of the meal, bad as it was.
Charny beheld the scene without a spark of jealousy. But he said, on
seeing this poor moth singe its wings at the royal light:
"Still another going to destruction! a pity, for he is worth more than
the others." But returning to his thought, he muttered: "This letter,
what can be in this letter?"