“But, Sire, I do not at all contest what you have done me the honor to say to me. I resigned myself to it yesterday; this morning I am still resigned.”
“Then, Madame; why all this preamble?”
“I do not make any.”
“Pardon me, pardon me! then why all these questions regarding my dress, my projects?”
“As to your dress, that I admit,” answered the queen, endeavoring again to smile; but that smile, from so frequently fading away, became more and more funereal.
“What observation have you to make upon my dress?”
“I wish, Sire, that you would take off your coat.”
“Do you not think it becoming? It is a silk coat, of a violet color. The Parisians are accustomed to see me dressed thus; they like to see me in this, with which moreover, the blue ribbon harmonizes well. You have often told me so yourself.”
“I have, Sire, no objection to offer to the color of your coat.”
“Well, then?”
“But to the lining.”
“In truth, you puzzle me with that eternal smile. The lining—what jest—”
“Alas! I no longer jest.”
“There! now you are feeling my waistcoat; does that displease you too? White taffeta and silver, the embroidery worked by your own hand,—it is one of my favorite waistcoats.”
“I have nothing to say against the waistcoat, either.”
“How singular you are! Is it, then, the frill or the embroidered cambric shirt that offends you? Why must I not appear in full dress when I am going to visit my good city of Paris?”
A bitter smile contracted the queen’s lips,—the nether lip particularly, that which the “Austrian” was so much reproached for; it became thicker, and advanced as if it were swelled by all the venom of hatred and of anger.
“No,” said she, “I do not reproach you for being so well dressed, Sire; but it is the lining,—the lining, I say again and again.”
“The lining of my embroidered shirt! Ah, will you at least explain yourself?”
“Well, then, I will explain. The king, hated, considered an encumbrance, who is about to throw himself into the midst of seven hundred thousand Parisians, inebriated with their triumph and their revolutionary ideas,—the king is not a prince of the Middle Ages, and yet he ought to make his entry this day into Paris in a good iron cuirass, in a hemlet of good Milan steel; he should protect himself in such a way that no ball, no arrow, no stone, no knife, could reach his person.”
“That is in fact true,” said Louis XVI., pensively. “But, my good friend, as I do not call myself either Charles VIII., or Francis I., or even Henry IV.; as the monarchy of my day is one of velvet and of silk,—I shall go naked under my silken coat, or to speak more correctly, I shall go with a good mark at which they may aim their balls, for I wear the jewel of my orders just over my heart.”
The queen uttered a stifled groan.
“Sire,” said she, “we begin to understand each other. You shall see,—you shall see that your wife jests no longer.”
She made a sign to Madame Campan, who had remained at the farther end of the room, and the latter took from a drawer of the queen’s chiffonnier a wide oblong flat parcel, wrapped up in a silken cover.
“Sire,” said the queen, “the heart of the king belongs, in the first place, to France,—that is true; but I fully believe that it belongs to his wife and children. For my part, I will not consent that this heart should be exposed to the balls of the enemy; I have adopted measures to save from every danger my husband, my king, the father of my children.”
While saying this, she unfolded the silk which covered it, and displayed a waistcoat of fine steel mail, crossed with such marvellous art that it might have been thought an Arabian watered stuff, so supple and elastic was its tissue, so admirable the play of its whole surface.
“What is that?” said the king.
“Look at it, Sire.”
“A waistcoat, it appears to me.”
“Why, yes, Sire.”
“A waistcoat that closes up to the neck.”