“To me, Madame?”
“Yes, it is now for you to speak. I understand you, do I not? To you it is quite another matter. You love France merely and simply for France herself.”
“Madame,” replied Gilbert, bowing, “I should fail in respect to your Majesty, should I fail in frankness.”
“Oh,” exclaimed the queen, “frightful, frightful period I when all people who pretend to be people of worth, isolate two things which have never been separated from each other; two principles which have always gone hand in hand,—France and her king. But have you not a tragedy of one of your poets, in which it is asked of a queen who has been abandoned by all, ‘What now remains to you?’ and to which she replies, ‘Myself’ Well, then, like Medea, I also will say, ‘Myself!’ and we shall see.”
And she angrily left the room, leaving Gilbert in amazement.
She had just raised to his view, by the breath of her anger, one corner of the veil behind which she was combining the whole work of the counter-revolution.
“Come, come!” said Gilbert to himself, as he went into the king’s room, “the queen is meditating some project.”
“Well,” said the queen to herself, as she was returning to her apartment, “decidedly, there is nothing to be made of this man. He has energy, but he has no devotedness.”
Poor princes! with whom the word devotednesss” is synonymous with “servility.”
Chapter XVI
What the Queen wished
GILBERT returned to Monsieur Necker after his professional visit to the king, whom he had found as tranquil as the queen was agitated.
The king was composing speeches; he was examining accounts; he was meditating reforms in the laws.
This well-intentioned man, whose look was so kind, whose soul was so upright, whose heart erred only from prejudices inherent to the royal condition,—this man was absolutely bent on producing trivial reforms in exchange for the serious inroads made on his prerogative. He was obstinately bent on examining the distant horizon with his short-sighted eyes, when an abyss was yawning beneath his feet. This man inspired Gilbert with a feeling of profound pity. As to the queen, it was not thus; and in spite of his impassibility, Gilbert felt that she was one of those women whom it was necessary to love passionately, or to hate even to the death.
When she had returned to her own apartment, Marie Antoinette felt as if an immense burden were weighing on her heart.
And in fact, whether as a woman or as a queen, she felt that there was nothing stable around her,—nothing which could aid her in supporting even a portion of the burden which was crushing her.
On whichever side she turned her eyes, she saw only hesitation and doubt.
The courtiers, anxious with regard to their fortunes, and realizing what they could.
Relatives and friends thinking of emigrating.
The proudest woman of them all, Andrée, gradually becoming estranged from her in heart and mind.
The noblest and the most beloved of all the men who surrounded her, De Charny, wounded by her caprice and a prey to doubt.
The position of affairs caused her great anxiety,—she, who was instinct and sagacity personified.
How could this man, who was purity itself, how could this heart without alloy have changed so suddenly?
“No, he has not yet changed,” said the queen to herself, sighing deeply, “but he is about to change.”
He is about to change!—frightful conviction to the woman who loves passionately, insupportable to the woman who loves with pride.
Now, the queen loved De Charny both passionately and proudly.
The queen was suffering therefore from two wounds.
And yet, at that very time,—at the time when she felt the consciousness of having acted wrongly, of the evil she had committed,—she had still time to remedy it.
But the mind of that crowned woman was not a flexible mind. She could not descend to waver, even though she knew she was acting unjustly; had it been towards an indifferent person, she might or would have wished to show some greatness of soul, and then she might perhaps have asked for forgiveness.
But to the man whom she had honored with an affection at once so tender and so pure, to him whom she had deigned to admit to a participation in her most secret thoughts, the queen considered it would be degrading to make the slightest concession.