THE KING AND THE WORKMAN.
The king drew back as if a viper had sprung out from the iron he was
filing, when the workman who had entered his presence so strangely made
this direct appeal. Anger, astonishment, and something like
consternation, rose to his face. Perhaps a King of France had never been
addressed in such language before by a man of the people. The fact
seemed incredible, even to the kindest and least exacting monarch of his
race.
“Who is it that dares use words like these to the king?” he said, at
length, drawing his heavy figure up with dignity.
“One who loves his king better than anything on earth, save France,” was
the reply given firmly, but with profound respect.
“Our grandfather used to say that the king _was_ France,” answered
Louis, so impressed by the earnestness of the man that he forgot, for
the moment, his low origin.
“A good king, who loves his people as fathers love their children, might
say this, and ask God’s blessing upon it. Ah, sire! it is in this spirit
the people would recognize their sovereign: let him represent France in
his own person; let him open his heart to their love, his mind to their
great needs, his hand to help them; and no monarch ever lived who would
be worshiped like Louis the Sixteenth. Oh! think of this when the proud
men who surround you seek to crowd back the people from your presence.”
The locksmith fell upon his knees as he spoke, and clasping his hard
hands, held them up, quivering with emotion; for, brave as he was, this
interview with the king, face to face, shook his stout frame from head
to foot.
Louis stood up proudly above him—for that moment the man was striving
nobly against all the traditions and prejudices of the monarch. He was
angry that any human being should dare to address him with the manner
and words used by this workman, whom he now thought had gained access to
his presence by a strategem. But the humble position and absolute
bravery of the man awoke more generous feelings in the really good heart
of the monarch. After the first rush of angry surprise, he rested one
hand on the work-bench, and said almost smiling,
“Stand upon your feet, my good friend, and for once let me hear from my
people directly through one of their number. If you are, indeed, what
your appearance indicates, a worker in iron, and nothing more, even
though your craft has been used as a device, I will forgive it. Speak
the truth, and that fearlessly, as if this were your work-shop, and not
mine.”
This speech, so different to what the man expected, took all his
presence of mind away. Anger he could have borne; danger he was prepared
for; but this generous composure took him unawares. He began to tremble
with a rush of strong emotions; once or twice the rough hand was drawn
across his eyes. When he did speak, his voice was low and broken.
“My king, I thank you.”
Louis smiled. He liked the generous homage betrayed in this rude
emotion, better than the position this man had just left at his feet.
“Speak frankly. We will leave our work for awhile, and learn if you are
as well skilled in state craft as in this other, of which you, indeed,
seem to be master. Half an hour ago this lock was chaotic fragments of
iron, which puzzled my poor brain sadly. Now it is almost compact, its
bolts slide with a touch of the key—all its parts are in harmony. Tell,
if you have the knowledge, can my kingdom be so arranged?”
“Not with its present workmen,” answered the smith, resuming all his
powers of mind; “never while the nobility hedge their king in from the
common people as with a wall of granite. Sire, sire, old traditions are
melting away, the people are losing their reverence for the greatness
which has for generations set its heel upon them. They begin to
understand that labor has its privileges, and should not forever be
taxed that arrogance and idleness may become more powerful, and only use
that power for oppression. They want the King of France to be the
monarch of all the people of France, not of a privileged class.”
“That is, they desire the king to commence a revolution, and begin it by
despoiling himself of power, and his court of rights hereditary since
the foundations of the monarchy. By what excuse can he wrest privileges
from one class and distribute them to another?”
“By the right of humanity he should do it, and human progress will give
him the power. Those vast privileges were secured to the nobility in the
ignorance of the many and grasping ambition of the few. Then physical
might ruled supreme, and the people were in fact serfs; now mind,
thought, energy, are at work through the masses. They begin to feel the
great strength that lies in numbers; they clamor for a share of God’s
blessings. Yes, sire, a spirit of revolution is abroad among the people
who love their king, and ask him to be at the head of a grand reform.”
Louis listened gravely, while troubled shadows settled upon his face. He
felt dimly all the truth that lay in his strange visitor’s words, but
still more clearly the formidable powers opposed against them. Nobility
clinging to the rights which, in fact, upheld his throne; the clergy,
which in no country ever loosened its grasp on wealth or power without a
death-struggle—all were to be braved and despoiled in behalf of a people
of whom he, personally, knew nothing, and for whom his sympathies had
never been thoroughly enlisted. The people, had, in fact, never
approached their king, save in clamorous multitudes, or in committees,
that sometimes appealed to his reason, seldom to his sympathies.
The most difficult man to deal with in the world is one of just mind and
kind heart, who, holding power, has not the mental force and stern will
necessary to its vigorous execution. To such men half-measures are sure
to present themselves, and as certain to prove inadequate to the
occasion when great difficulties are to be overcome. Indeed, it is
seldom that they thoroughly understand the danger until it is upon them.
This was true with regard to Louis the Sixteenth. It required a gigantic
mind even to comprehend the dangers that had each year crowded closer
and closer to his throne; and he had no ministers capable of giving him
thorough enlightenment, because they did not themselves understand these
terrible signs of the future.
Was it strange, then, that he received the suggestions of this singular
man with astonishment; that his kind heart swelled to his rude
eloquence, and he felt, for the time, ready to lead his people on to the
broader liberty they asked for?
Was it strange, either, that while the man was talking, the influences
which had surrounded the king for life came back and stifled the
generous impulse? He knew that in order to benefit a class of which he
knew little, he must first enter into bitter contest with those who had
been the friends and supporters of his house since it was royally
planted on the throne!
“These are vast questions, and involve much which my people do not
understand,” said Louis, a little impatiently; for if his reason had not
been convinced, it certainly was disturbed. “I am not sorry, even in
this way, to meet one of the people who dares to speak the truth. Had it
been a courtier, now, or even a minister, who ventured so far, I am not
sure that he would have been a stranger to our prison of the Bastille
to-morrow morning.”
The locksmith shuddered.
“Ah! that fearful prison, sire, planted in the very heart of Paris, it
has become so hateful to the people, that they mutter curses on it in
passing.”
“That bespeaks them unreasoning and factious. Nations that build up
thrones, at the same time lay the foundation of prisons; crime must be
punished that the people may live. The palace in which I stand is not
more an appendage of royalty than the prison of the Bastille.”
Louis spoke the truth; despotism had no monument more closely allied to
itself than the Bastille. It had so long been an appendage to royalty,
that no king, not even the kind-hearted Louis, ever thought of its
horrors, save as necessary to the punishment of those who were
considered as his enemies.
“Sire,” answered the locksmith, turning pale under the memories that
crowded upon him, “I have been in the Bastille, and know all the horrors
of its dungeons. Has any man ever told your highness of the deep, fetid
caves and cells that are dug to a level with the common-sewers of the
city, where men born, perhaps, to luxury, have to struggle with toads,
rats, and every species of foul vermin, for the privilege of breathing
the pestilential air? Have they told you of strong men chained by the
waist to walls reeking with slime, till they become little better than
skeletons; when the rusty girdles were unclasped, and they were carried,
in the dead of night, to the cemetery of St. Paul, and buried without
name and without record, save some rude inscription scratched upon the
walls of a dungeon by the rusted nail, which some poor wretch had
hoarded as a treasure?”
The king turned white as the man who addressed him with such passion and
power, that the picture of the Bastille seemed to loom up, and cast its
gaunt shadows over them both.
“Have they told you of this cruel man, Latude, crawling back and forth,
like some wild animal, on those ponderous rope ladders, by which he
descends the grim towers, and swings himself to the earth? Do the dainty
commissioners, who go once each year to examine this place of horrors,
tell the king of these things, and can he still say that this monster
pile is an appendage of the throne?”
The king made a gesture with his hands, and turned away, as if this
description revolted him. But the locksmith had plunged into the subject
with all the fierce energy of a man so completely in earnest, that he
lost all sense of the rank and power of his auditor.
“And if these enormities exist now under a monarch that all men know to
be good and merciful, what must it have been when men less gracious held
sway over the palaces and prisons of France? How many generations of
Frenchmen have moaned, and suffered, and perished, under those black
towers? How many innocent hearts have broken in despair? What oceans of
rageful tears have been spent in vain! How many heads have been dashed
against those pitiless stones? It stands there yet! Ay, king, it stands
there yet! Innocent men are even now buried within its walls, sent there
in the wantonness or cruelty of your grandfather—not many, not many.
They do not live so long in the Bastille; but that old man——”
“Silence, I command you!” broke forth the king, pale with agitation,
trembling with anger.
The locksmith dropped his uplifted arm, the word upon his lip broke in
an angry sob.
“Sire, forgive me! I was standing in that awful prison. I heard the
moans of agonized men coming up from under my feet; I heard the clank of
chains, and saw such sights. Sire, forgive, or punish me; I, who have no
self-command, and should claim little mercy.”
The king sat down and wiped away the beaded drops from his forehead; his
breath came unevenly, his white hands shook.
“Tell me, in one word—is what you have said the truth?”
The locksmith fell upon his knees, and again held up his clasped hands.
“As heaven sees me, sire, every word I have uttered is a terrible
truth.”
“And for this I am responsible!” said the king, as if speaking to
himself. “It shall be remedied! It shall be remedied! Good man, I thank
you! It is seldom that a monarch hears the truth, when it cuts him to
the heart like this. I can listen to no more,” he added, lifting his
hand as the locksmith opened his lips to speak. “Some other time you
shall come to me again, but not here. I had hoped in this place to
escape from all cares of state; but I do not complain. You have
performed the duty of a good citizen, and have the king’s gratitude.
Mark me, when the people say that Louis is inaccessible to his subjects,
tell them that he not only sees them, but listens to painful truths
without anger, when they are honestly told. Some day hereafter I may
need you as a medium between me and the people, for whom you plead so
boldly.”
The locksmith bent his head in deeper reverence than he had yet given to
the monarch.
“When I entered the gates of Versailles, sire, my heart went out first
to the people of France, then to the king. I go away with them united so
firmly in my love, that death itself shall not tear them apart.”
The locksmith laid one hand on his breast as he said this, bent low, and
turned to quit the room. Louis recalled him.
“Your name, citizen?”
“They know me as ‘Monsieur Jacques’ in the city.”
“Leave that and your address with the guard as you go out. You may be
wanted.”
“At the gate!” These words seemed to arrest the man, and he turned
suddenly. But the king had arisen, and was leaving the room by another
door. Whatever Monsieur Jacques wished to say was thus rendered
impossible; and he left the work-room with a baffled and dejected look.
This was the second time he had represented De Witt, the locksmith, very
successfully; but he could hardly hope to gain access to the king in
that way again; and in the excitement of his patriotism, he had utterly
forgotten the most immediate object of his visit until it was too late.
“Heaven forgive me! It will break her heart! And he would have done it—I
am sure he would have done it!” exclaimed the noble-hearted man who had
forgotten everything in his love of France.