Ange Pitou by Alexandre Dumas part one

“Child,” said he, “what is the last word your father wrote to you?”

“Work,” replied Sebastien.

“Well, then, work here. We are going to work down yonder; only our work is called destroying and killing.”

The young man did not utter a word in reply. He hid his face with both hands, without even pressing the hand of Pitou, who embraced him; and he fell into such violent convulsions that he was immediately carried into the infirmary attached to the college.

“To the Bastille!” cried Billot.

“To the Bastille!” cried Pitou.

“To the Bastille!” shouted the crowd.

And they immediately commenced their march towards the Bastille.

Chapter XIII

The King is so good! the Queen is so good!

AND now we request our readers to allow us to give them an insight into the principal political events that have occurred since the period at which, in a previous publication, we abandoned the court of France.

Those who know the history of that period, or those whom dry, plain history may alarm, may skip this chapter, and pass on to the next one, which connects exactly with Chapter XII.; the one we are now writing being intended for those very precise and exacting spirits who are determined to be informed on every point.

During the last year or two something unheard of, unknown, something emanating from the past and looking towards the future, was threatening and growling in the air.

It was the Revolution.

Voltaire had raised himself for a moment, while in his last agony, and, leaning upon his elbow in his death-bed, he had seen shining, even amidst the darkness in which he was about to sleep forever, the brilliant lightning of this dawn.

When Anne of Austria assumed the regency of France, says Cardinal de Retz, there was but one saying in every mouth,—”The queen is so good!”

One day Madame de Pompadour’s physician, Quesnoy, who had an apartment in her house, saw Louis XV. coming in. A feeling altogether unconnected with respect agitated him so much that he trembled and turned pale.

“What is the matter with you?” said Madame de Hausset to him.

“The matter is,” replied Quesnoy, “that every time I see the king I say to myself, ‘There is a man who, if he should feel so inclined, can have my head cut off.'”

“Oh, there’s no danger of that,” rejoined Madame de Hausset. “The king is so good!”

It is with these two phrases—”The king is so good!” “The queen is so good!”—that the French Revolution was effected.

When Louis XV. died, France breathed again. The country was delivered at the same moment from the king, the Pompadours, the Dubarrys, and the Parc aux Cerfs.

The pleasures of Louis XV. had cost the nation very dear. In them alone were expended three millions of livres a year.

Fortunately, after him came a king who was young, moral, philanthropic, almost philosophical.

A king who, like the Émile of Jean Jacques Rousseau, had studied a trade, or rather, we should say, three trades.

He was a locksmith, a watchmaker, and a mechanician.

Being alarmed at the abyss over which he was suspended, the king began by refusing all favors that were asked of him. The courtiers trembled. Fortunately, there was one circumstance which reassured them,—it was not the king who refused, but Turgot,—it was, that the queen was not yet in reality a queen, and consequently could not have that influence to-day which she might acquire to-morrow.

At last, towards the year 1777, she acquired that influence which had been so long desired. The queen became a mother. The king, who was already so good a king, so good a husband, could now also prove himself a good father.

How could anything be now refused to her who had given an heir to the crown?

And, besides, that was not all; the king was also a good brother. The anecdote is well known of Beaumarchais being sacrificed to the Count de Provence; and yet the king did not like the Count de Provence, who was a pedant.

But, to make up for this, he was very fond of his younger brother, the Count d’Artois, the type of French wit, elegance, and nobleness.

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