Taking the Bastile (39 page)

The queen could not withhold a gesture of impatience. She rose, then seated herself again, and darted a penetrating and cold look at the doctor, as if to divine his thoughts.

Louis XVI., seeing that there was no longer any means of escaping, seated himself in his armchair, opposite Gilbert, and heaved a deep sigh.

‘What is the point in question?’ asked the queen, as soon as this singular species of council had been thus constituted and installed.

‘Gilbert looked at the king once more, aa if to ask him for his authority to speak openly.

‘Speak I go on, sir, sine* the queen desires it.’

‘Well, then, madame,’ said the doctor, ‘ I will inform your majesty in a few words of the object of my early visit to Versailles. I came to advise his majesty to proceed to Paris.’

Had a spark fallen among the night thooaand pormds

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of gunpowder at the H6tel de Ville, it could not have produced the explosion which those words caused in the queen’s heart.

‘The king proceed to Paris ! The king 1 ah I and she uttered a cry of horror that made Louis XVI. tremble. ‘Is it possible,’ continued the queen, ‘that such an idea should have found a place in an intelligent mind in a French heart ? What, sir 1 Do you not, then, know that you are speaking to the successor of St Louis to the great-grandson of Louis XIV.?’

The king was beating the carpet with his feet.

‘I do not suppose, however,’ continued the queen, ‘that you desire to deprive the king of the assistance of his guards and his army, or that you are seeking to draw him out of his palace, which is a fortress, to expose him alone and defenceless to the blows of his infuriated enemies; you do not wish to see the king assassinated, I suppose, Monsieur Gilbert?’

‘If I thought that your majesty for a single moment entertained an idea that I am capable of such treachery, I should not be merely a madman, but should look upon myself as a wretch. But Heaven be thanked, madame 1 you do not believe it any more than I do. No; I came to give my king this counsel, because I think the counsel good, and even superior to any other. You do not know all I have to tell your majesties. You think yourself surrounded by an army which is firm, devoted to your cause, and ready to die for you; it is an error. Of the French regiments, one half are conspiring with the re-generators to carry out their revolutionary ideas.’

‘Sir,’ exclaimed the queen, ‘beware 1 You are insulting the army If

‘On the contrary, madame said Gilbert, ‘I am its greatest eulogist. We may respect our queen and be devoted to the king, and still love our country, and devote ourselves to liberty.’

The queen cast a flaming look, like a flash of lightning, at Gilbert. ‘Sir I’ said she to him, ‘this language ‘

‘Yes, this language offends you, madame. I can readily understand that; for, according to all probability, your majesty hears it now for the first time.’

‘We must, nevertheless, accustom ourselves to it,’ muttered Louis XVI., with the submissive good sense

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‘Never!’ exclaimed Marie Antoinette, ‘never I’

‘Let us see; listen I listen I I think what the doctor says is full of reason.’

Gilbert continued.

‘I was going to say, madame, that I have seen Paris, ay, and that you have not even seen Versailles. Do you know what Paris wishes to do at this moment?’

‘Perhaps it does not wish to take the Bastille a second time I” said the queen contemptuously.

‘Assuredly not, madame,’ continued Gilbert; ‘but Paris knows that there is another fortress between the people and their sovereign. Paris proposes to assemble the deputies of the forty-eight districts of which it is composed, and send them to Versailles.’

‘Let them cornel let them come!’ exclaimed the queen, in a tone of ferocious joy. ‘Oh I they will be well received here I*

‘Wait, madame,’ replied Gilbert, ‘and beware; these deputies will not come alone. They will come supported by twenty thousand National Guards.’

‘National Guards I’ said the queen; ‘what are they?’

‘Ah I madaine, do not speak lightly of that body; it will one day become a power it will bind and loosen.’

‘Twenty thousand men 1’ exclaimed the king.

‘Well, sir,’ replied the queen, in her turn, ‘you have here ten thousand men that are worth a hundred thousand rebels; call them, call them, I tell you; the twenty thousand wretches will here find their punishment, and the example needed by all this revolutionary slime which I would sweep away, ay, in a week, were I but listened to for an hour.’

Gilbert shook his head sorrowfully.

‘Oh I madame,’ said he, ‘how you deceive yourself, or rather how you have been deceived. Alas 1 alas 1 Have you reflected on it? a civil war, provoked by a queen; one only has done this, and she carried with her to the tomb a terrible epithet : she was called the foreigner.’

‘Provoked by me, sir I How do you understand that? Was it I who fired upon the Bastille without provocation ?’

‘Ah ! madame,’ cried the king, ‘instead of advocating violent measures, listen to reason.’

‘To weakness 1’

‘Come, now, Antoinette, listen to the doctor,’ said the king austerely. ‘The arrival ol twenty thousand men is T.B. i

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not a trifling matter, particularly if we should have to fire grape-shot upon them.’

Then, turning towards Gilbert : ‘Go on, sir,’ said he; ‘go on.’

‘All these hatreds, which become more inveterate from estrangement all these boastings, which become courage when opportunity is afforded for their realisation all the confusion of a battle, of which the issue is uncertain oh 1 spare the king, spare yourself, madame, the grief of witnessing them,’ said the doctor; ‘you can perhaps by gentleness disperse the crowd which is advancing. The crowd wishes to come to the king let us forestall it; let the king go to the crowd; let him, though now surrounded by his army, give proof to-morrow of audacity and political genius. Those twenty thousand men of whom we are speaking might, perhaps, conquer the king and his army. Let the king go alone and conquer these twenty thousand men, madame; they are the people.’

The king could not refrain from giving a gesture of assent, which Marie Antoinette at once observed.

‘Wretched man I’ cried she to Gilbert; ‘but you do not then perceive the effect which the king’s presence in Paris would produce, under the conditions you require?’

‘Speak, madame.’

‘It would be saying, ” I approve; ” it would be saying, ” You did right to kill my Swiss; ” it would be saying, ” You have acted rightly in murdering my officers, in setting fire to and making my capital stream with blood; you have done rightly in dethroning me. I thank you, gentlemen, I thank you.” ‘

And a disdainful smile rose to the lips of Marie Antoinette.

‘No, madame, your majesty is mistaken. It would be saying, ” There has been some justice in the grief of the people. I am come to pardon. It is I who am the chief of the nation, and the king. It is I who am at the head of the French revolution. Your generals are my officers, your national guards my soldiers, your magistrates are my men of business.” ‘

‘I think, sir,’ said the king, ‘that yon are the first who up to this moment has dared to speak the truth to me.’

‘The truth 1’ cried the queen.

‘Yes, madame,’ rejoined Gilbert, ‘and impress yourself fully with this fact, that Truth is the only torch which

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can point out and save royalty from the dark abyss into which it is now being hurried.’

For the first time, the queen appeared deeply moved. Moreover, the king had risen from his seat with a determined air; he was thinking of the execution of Gilbert’s project. However, from the habit which he had acquired of doing nothing without consulting the queen,

‘Madame,’ said he to her, ‘do you approve it?’

‘It appears it must be so,’ replied the queen.

‘I do not ask you for any abnegation,’ said the king.

‘What is it, then, you ask?’

‘I ask you for the expression of a conviction which will strengthen mine.’

‘Oh 1 if it be only that I am convinced, sir.’

‘Of what?’

‘That the moment has arrived which will render monarchy the most deplorable and the most degrading position which exists in the whole world.’

‘Oh P said the king, ‘you exaggerate : deplorable, I will admit, but degrading, that is impossible.’

‘Sir, the kings, your forefathers, have bequeathed to you a very mournful inheritance,’ said the queen sorrowfully.

‘Yes,’ said Louis XVI., ‘an inheritance which I have the grief to make you share, madame.’

‘Be pleased to allow me, sire,’ said Gilbert, who truly compassionated the great misfortunes of his fallen sovereigns; ‘I do not believe that there is any reason for your majesty to view the future in such terrific colours as you have depicted it. A despotic monarchy has ceased to exist, a constitutional empire commences.’

‘Ah I sir,’ said the king, and am I a man capable of founding such an empire in France?’

‘And why not, sire?’ cried the queen, somewhat comforted by the last words of Gilbert.

‘Madame,’ replied the king, ‘I am a man of good sense and a learned man. I see clearly, instead of endeavouring to see confusedly into things, and I know precisely all that is necessary for me to know, to administer the government of this country. From the day on which L shall be precipitated from the height of the inviolability of an absolute prince, I lose aJJ the factitious strength which alone was necessary to govern France, since, to speak truly, Louis XIII., Louis XIV., and Louis XV.

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sustained themselves completely, thanks to this factitious strength. What do the French now require? A master. I feel that I am only capable of being a father. What do the revolutionists require? A sword. I do not feel that I have strength enough to strike.’

‘You do not feel that you have strength to strike !’ exclaimed the queen, ‘to strike people who are destroying the property of your children, and who would carry off, even from your own brow, one after the other, every gem that adorns the crown of France.’

‘What answer can I make to this?’ calmly said Louis XVI.; ‘would you have me reply NO? By doing so I should raise up in your mind one of those storms which are the discomfort of my life. You know how to hate. Oh 1 so much the better for you. You know how to be unjust, and I do not reproach you with it. It is a great quality in those who have to govern.’

‘Do you, perchance, consider me unjust towards the revolution? Now tell me that?’

1 In good faith, yes. If you were the wife of a plain citizen, my dear Antoinette, you would not speak as you do.’

‘I am not one.’

‘And that is the reason for my excusing you, but that does not mean that I approve your course. No, madame, no, you must be resigned; we succeeded to the throne of France at a period of storm and tempest. We ought to have strength enough to push on before us that car armed with scythes, and wL.ch is called Revolution, but our strength is insufficient. ‘

‘So much the worse,’ said Marie Antoinette, ‘for it is over our children that it will be driven.’

‘ Alas I that I know; but at all events we shall not urge it forward.’

‘We will make it retrograde, sire I’

‘Oh 1’ cried Gilbert, with a prophetic accent, ‘beware, madame; in retrograding, it will crush you.’

‘Sir,’ said the queen impatiently, ‘I observe that you carry the frankness of your counsels very far.’

‘Oh ! good Heaven ! let him speak on,’ said the king; ‘what he has now announced to you, if he has not read it in twenty newspapers during the last eight days, it is because he has not chosen to read them. You should, at least, be thankful to him that he does not convey the truths he utters in a bitter spirit.’

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Marie Antoinette remained silent for a moment; then, with a deep drawn sigh: ‘I will sum up,’ she said, ‘or rather, I will repeat my arguments. By going to Paris voluntarily, it will be sanctioning all that has been done there.’

‘Yes,’ replied the king, ‘I know that full well.’ ‘Yes, it would be humiliating disowning your army, which is preparing to defend you.’

‘It is to spare the effusion of French blood,’ said the doctor.

‘It is to declare that henceforward tumultuous risings and violence may oppose such a direction to the will of the Jang as may best suit the views of insurgents and traitors.’

‘Madame, I believe,’ said Gilbert, ‘that you had just now the goodness to acknowledge that I had had the good fortune to convince you.’

‘Yes, I just now did acknowledge it; one corner of the veil had been raised up before me. But now, sir oh 1 now that I am again becoming blind, as you have termed it, and I prefer looking into my own mind, to see reflected there those splendours to which education, tradition, and history have accustomed me, I prefer considering myself still a queen, than to feel myself a bad mother to this people, who insult and hate me.’

‘Antoinette! Antoinette 1’ cried Louis XVI., terrified at the sudden paleness which pervaded the queen’s face, and which was nothing more than the precursor of a terrible storm of anger.

‘Oh I no, no, sire, I will speak,’ replied the queen. ‘Whither are you going? Of that I know nothing; but you are going whence you will never return.’

‘Why, no, madame; I am going simply and plainly to Paris,’ replied Louis XVI.

Marie Antoinette raised her shoulders. ‘Do you believe me to be insane?’ said she, in a voice of deep irritation. ‘You are going to Paris? ‘Tis well. Who tells you that Paris is not an abyss which I see not, but which I can divine? Who can say whether, in the tumultuous crowd by which you will necessarily be surrounded, you will not be killed ? Who knows from whence a chance shot may proceed ? Who knows, amid a hundred thousand upraised and threatening hands, which it is that has directed the murderous knife?’

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‘Oh I on that head yon need not have the slightest apprehension. They love mel’ exclaimed the king.