“Sire,” respectfully replied Monsieur de Lafayette, “I think it would be well that your Majesty should show yourself on the balcony.”
The king asked Gilbert for his opinion, but merely by a look.
Louis XVI. then went straight to the window, and without hesitation opened it himself and appeared upon the balcony.
A tremendous shout, a unanimous shout, burst from the people, of:—
“Long live the king!”
Then a second cry followed the first:—
“The king to Paris!”
Between these two cries, and sometimes overwhelming them, some formidable voices shouted:—
“The queen! the queen!”
At this cry everybody shuddered; the king turned pale, De Charny turned pale, even Gilbert himself turned pale.
The queen raised her head.
She was also pale, but with compressed lips and frowning brow, she was standing near the window. Madame Royale was leaning against her. Before her was the dauphin, and on the fair head of the child reclined her convulsively clinched hand, white as the purest marble.
“The queen! the queen!” reiterated the voices, becoming more and more formidable.
“The people desire to see you, Madame,” said General de Lafayette.
“Oh, do not go, my mother!” said Madame Royale, in great agony, and throwing her arms round the queen’s neck.
The queen looked at Lafayette.
“Fear nothing, Madame,” said he to her.
“What!” she exclaimed, “and quite alone?”
Lafayette smiled; and respectfully, and with the delightful manner which he retained even to his latest days, he took the two children from their mother and made them first ascend the balcony.
Then offering his hand to the queen:—
“If your Majesty will deign to confide in me,” said he, “I will be responsible for all.”
And he conducted the queen on to the balcony.
It was a terrible spectacle, and one likely to cause the vertigo; for the marble courtyard was transformed into a human sea, full of roaring waves.
At the sight of the queen, an immense cry was uttered by the whole of this crowd; and no one could have been positive whether it was a cry of menace or of joy.
Lafayette kissed the queen’s hand; then loud applause burst forth.
In the noble French nation there is, even in the veins of the lowest-born, chivalric blood.
The queen breathed more freely.
“What a strange people!” she exclaimed.
Then, suddenly shuddering:—
“And my guards, sir,” said she, “my guards, who have saved my life? Can you do nothing for them?”
“Let me have one of them, Madame,” said Lafayette.
“Monsieur de Charny! Monsieur de Charny!” cried the queen.
But De Charny withdrew a step or two; he had understood what was required of him.
He did not wish to make an apology for the evening of the 1st of October.
Not having been guilty, he required no amnesty.
Andrée, on her side, was impressed with the same feeling. She had stretched out her hand to De Charny for the purpose of preventing him. Her hand met the hand of the count, and these two hands were pressed within each other.
The queen had observed this, notwithstanding she had so much to observe at that moment.
Her eyes flashed fire, and with a palpitating heart and broken accents:—
“Sir,” said she to another guard,—”sir, come here, I command you.”
The guard obeyed.
He had not, moreover, the same motives for hesitating as De Charny had.
Monsieur de Lafayette drew the guard on to the balcony, and taking his own tricolored cockade from his hat, placed it in that of the guard, after which he embraced him.
“Long live Lafayette! long live the body-guard!” shouted fifty thousand voices.
Some few wished to utter some hollow growling, the last threat of the disappearing tempest.
But these malcontents were overwhelmed by the universal acclamation.
“Come,” said Lafayette, “all is ended, and fine weather has returned.”
Then, stepping into the room:—
“But that it should not again be overcast, Sire, there still remains a sacrifice for you to make.”
“Yes,” said the king, pensively, “to leave Versailles, is it not?”
“And come to Paris,—yes, Sire.”
“Sir,” said the king, “you may announce to the people that at one o’clock I, the queen, and my children will set out for Paris.”