THE BITTER CUP.
When the Queen came to her senses she was in her sleeping room in the
Tuileries. Her favorite bed-chamber women, Lady Misery and Madam Campan
were at hand. Though they told her the Dauphin was safe, she rose and
went to see him: he was in sleep after the great fright.
She looked at him for a long time, haunted by the words of that awful
man: "I save you because you are needed to hurl the throne over into the
last abyss." Was it true that she would destroy the monarchy? Were her
enemies guarding her that she might accomplish the work of destruction
better than themselves? But would this gulf close after swallowing the
King, the throne and herself? Would not her two children go down in it
also? In religions of the past alone is innocence safe to disarm the
gods?
Abraham's sacrifice had not been accepted, but it was not so in
Jephthaph's case.
These were gloomy thoughts for a Queen, gloomier still for a mother.
She shook her head and went slowly back to her rooms. She noticed the
disorder she was in and took a bath and was attired more fitly.
The news awaiting her was not so black as she had feared; all three
Lifeguards had been saved from the mob, mainly by Petion who screened a
good heart under his rough bark. Malden and Valory were in the palace,
bruised, wounded, but alive. Nobody knew where Charny was in refuge
after having been snatched from the ruffians.
At these words from Madam Campan, such a deadly pallor came over the
Queen's countenance that the Lady thought it was from anxiety about the
count and she hastened to say:
"But there need be no alarm about his coming back to the palace; the
countess has a town house and of course he will hasten there."
This was just what she feared and what made her lose color.
She wanted to dress, as if she would be allowed to go out of the palace
prison to inquire about his fate, when he was announced as present in
the other room.
"Oh, he is keeping his word," muttered the Queen which her attendants
did not understand.
Her toilet hastily completed, she ordered the count to be introduced
into her sitting room, where she joined him.
He had also dressed for the reception, for he wore the naval uniform in
which she had first seen him. Never had he been calmer, handsomer and
more elegant, and she could not believe that this beau was the man whom
she had seen the mob fall upon a while before.
"Oh, my lord, I hope you were told how distressed I was on your behalf
and that I was sending out for tidings?"
"Madam, you may be sure that I did not go away till I learned that you
were safe and sound," was his rejoinder. "And now that I am assured by
sight, and hearing of the health of your children and the King, I think
it proper to ask leave to give personal news to my lady the countess."
The Queen pressed her hand to her heart as if to ascertain if this blow
had not deadened it, and said in a voice almost strangled by the dryness
of her throat:
"It is only fair, my lord, and I wonder how it is that you did not ask
before this."
"The Queen forgets my promise not to see the countess without her
permission."
"I suppose, though, in your ardor to see the lady again, you could do
without it?"
"I think the Queen unjust to me," he replied. "When I left Paris I
believed it was to part from her forever. During the journey I did all
that was humanly possible to make the journey a success. It is not my
fault that I did not lose my life like my brother or was not cut to
pieces on the road or in the Tuileries Gardens. Had I the honor to
conduct your Majesty across the frontier, I should have lived in exile
with you, or if I were fated to die, I should have died without seeing
the countess. But, I repeat, I cannot, being again in town, give the
lady this mark of indifference, not to show her I am alive, particularly
as I no longer have my brother Isidore as my substitute; at all events,
either M. Barnave is wrong or your Majesty was of the same opinion only
yesterday."
The Queen glided her arm along the chair-arm and following the movement
with her body said:
"You must love this woman fondly to give me this pain so coldly?"
"Madam, at a time when I did not think of such a thing, as there was
but one woman the world for me--it will soon be six years--this woman
being placed too high above me for me to hope for her, as well as under
an indissoluble bond--you gave me as wife Mdlle. Andrea Taverney,
imposed her on me! In these six years my hand has not twice touched
hers; without necessity I have not spoken a word to her and our glances
have not met a dozen times. My life has been occupied by another love,
the thousand tasks, cares and combats agitating man's existence in camp
and court. I have coursed the King's highways, entangling the thread
the master gave me in the intrigues of fatality. I have not counted the
days, or months or years, for time has passed most rapidly from my being
enwrapt in these tasks.
"But not so has fared the Countess of Charny. Since she has had the
affliction of quitting your Majesty, after having displeased you, I
suppose, she has lived lonely in the Paris summerhouse, accepting the
neglect and isolation without complaining, for she has not the same
affections as other women from her heart being devoid of love. But she
may not accept without complaint my forgetting the simplest duty and the
most commonplace attentions."
"Good gracious, my lord, you are mightily busy about what the countess
thinks of you according to whether you see her or not! Before worrying
yourself it would be well to know whether she does think of you in the
hour of your departure or in that of your return."
"I do not know about the hour of my return but I do know that she
thought about me when I departed."
"So you saw her before you went?"
"I had the honor of stating that I had not seen the countess since I
promised the Queen not to see her."
"Then she wrote to you? confess it!" cried Marie Antoinette.
"She confided a letter for me to my brother Isidore."
"A letter which you read? what does she say? but she promised me--but
let us hear quickly. What does she say in this letter? Speak, see you
not that I am on thorns?"
"I cannot repeat what it says as I have not read it."
"You destroyed it unread?" exclaimed she delightedly, "you threw it in
the fire? Oh, Charny, if you did that, you are the most true of lovers
and I was wrong to scold--for I have lost nothing."
She held out her arms to lure him to his former place, but he stood
firm.
"I have not torn it or burnt it," he replied.
"But then, how came you not to read it?" questioned she, sinking back on
the chair.
"The letter was to be given me if I were mortally wounded. But alas! it
was the bearer who fell. He being dead, his papers were brought to me
and among them was this, the countess's letter."
She took the letter with a trembling hand and rang for lights. During
the brief silence in the dusk, her breathing could be heard and the
hurried throbbing of her heart. As soon as the candlesticks were placed
on the mantle shelf, before the servant left the room, she ran to the
light. She looked on the paper twice without ability to read it.
"It is flame," she said, "Oh, God!" she ejaculated, smoothing her
forehead to bring back her sight and stamping her foot to calm her hand
by force of will. In a husky voice utterly like her own, she read:
"This letter is intended not for me but for my brother Count Charny,
or to be returned to the countess. It is from her I had it with the
following recommendation. If in the enterprise undertaken by the count,
he succeeds without mishap, return the letter to the countess."
The reader's voice became more panting as she proceeded.
"If he is grievously hurt, but without mortal danger, his wife prays to
be let join him."
"That is clear," said the Queen falteringly and in a scarcely
intelligible voice she added: "'Lastly, if he be wounded to the death,
give him the letter or read it to him if he cannot, in order that he
should know the secret contained before he dies.'
"Do you deny it now, that she loves you?" demanded the Queen, covering
the count with a flaming look.
"The countess love me? what are you saying?" cried Charny.
"The truth, unhappy woman that I am!"
"Love me? impossible!"
"Why, for I love you?"
"But in six years the countess has never let me see it, never said a
word!"
The time had come for Marie Antoinette to suffer so keenly that she felt
the need to bury her grief like a dagger in the depth of his heart.
"Of course," she sneered, "she would not breathe a word, she would not
let a token show, and the reason is because she was well aware that she
was not worthy to be your wife."
"Not worthy?" reiterated Charny.
"She cherished a secret which would slay your love," continued the
other, more and more maddened by her pain.
"A secret to kill our love?"
"She knew you would despise her after she told it."
"I, despise the countess? tut, tut!"
"Unless one is not to despise the girl who is a mother without being a
wife."
It was the man's turn to become paler than death and lean on the back of
the nearest chair.
"Madam, you have said too much or too little, and I have the right for
an explanation."
"Do you ask a queen for explanations?"
"I do," replied Charny.
The door opened, and the Queen turned to demand impatiently:
"What is wanted?"
It was a valet who announced Dr. Gilbert, come by appointment. She
eagerly bade him send him in.
"You call for an explanation about the countess," she continued to the
count: "well, ask it of this gentleman, who can give it, better than
anybody else."
Gilbert had come in so as to hear the final words and he remained on the
threshold, mute and standing.
The Queen tossed the letter to Charny and took a few steps to gain her
dressing room when the count barred her passage and grasped her wrist.
"My lord, methinks that you forget I am your Queen," said Marie
Antoinette, with clenched teeth and enfevered eye.
"You are an ungrateful woman who slanders her friend, a jealous women
who defames another, and that woman the wife of a man who has for three
days risked his life a score of times for you--the wife of George Count
of Charny. Justice must be rendered in face of her you have calumniated
and insulted! Sit down and wait."
"Well, have it so," railed the Queen. "Dr. Gilbert," she pursued,
forcing a shallow laugh, "you see what this nobleman desires."
"Dr. Gilbert, you hear what the Queen orders," rebuked Charny with a
tone full of courtesy and dignity.
"Oh, madam," said Gilbert, sadly regarding the Queen as he came forward.
"My Lord Count," he went on to the gentleman, "I have to tell you
of the shame of a man and the glory of a woman. A wretched earthworm
fell in love with his lord's daughter, the Lady of Taverney. One day,
he found her in a mesmeric trance, and without respect for her youth,
beauty and innocence, this villain abused her and thus the maid became
a woman, the mother before marriage. Mdlle. Taverney was an angel--Lady
Charny is a martyr!"
"I thank Dr. Gilbert," said the count, wiping his brow. "Madam," he
proceeded to the Queen, "I was ignorant that Mdlle. Taverney was so
unfortunate--that Lady Charny was so worthy of respect; otherwise,
believe me, six years would not have elapsed before I fell at her feet
and adored her as she deserves."
Bowing to the stupefied Queen, he stalked forth without the baffled one
making a move to detain him. But he heard her shriek of pain when the
door closed between them. She comprehended that over those portals the
hand of the demon of jealousy was writing the dread doom:
"Leave hope behind who enter here."