“Judith! still Judith!” cried the king, laughing.
“Oh, Judith had not the heavy pistol which I took from your armory, and which I made Weber load for me.”
“A pistol?”
“Undoubtedly. You ought to have seen us running in the dark, startled, agitated at the slightest noise, avoiding everybody for fear of their being indiscreet, creeping like two little mice along the deserted corridors. Campan locked three doors and placed a mattress against the last, to prevent our being overheard; we put the cuirass on one of the figures which they use to stretch my gowns on, and placed it against a wall. And I—with a firm hand, too, I can assure you—struck the breastplate with the knife; the blade bent, flew out of my hand, and bounding back, stuck into the floor, to our great terror.”
“The deuce!” exclaimed the king.
“Wait a little.”
“Did it not make a hole?” asked Louis XVI.
“Wait a little, I tell you. Campan pulled the knife out of the board. ‘You are not strong enough, Madame,’ she said, ‘and perhaps your hand trembles. I am stronger, as you shall see.’ She therefore raised the knife, and gave the figure so violent a blow, so well applied, that my poor German knife snapped off short against the steel mail.”
“See, here are the two pieces, Sire. I will have a dagger made for you out of one of them.”
“Oh, this is absolutely fabulous!” cried the king; “and the mail was not injured?”
“A slight scratch on the exterior ring, and there are three, one over the other.”
“I should like to see it.”
“You shall see it.”
And the queen began to undress the king again with wonderful celerity, in order that he might the sooner admire her idea and her high feats in arms.
“Here is a place that is somewhat damaged, it would appear to me,” said the king, pointing to a slight depression over a space of about an inch in circumference.
“That was done by the pistol-ball, Sire.”
“How! you fired off a pistol loaded with ball? you?”
“Here is the ball completely flattened, and still black. Here, take it; and now do you believe that your life is in safety?”
“You are my tutelary angel,” said the king, who began slowly to unhook the mailed waistcoat, in order to examine more minutely the traces left by the knife and the pistol-shot.
“Judge of my terror, dear king,” said Marie Antoinette, “when on the point of firing the pistol at the breast-plate. Alas! the fear of the report—that horrible noise which you know has so frightful an effect upon me—was nothing; but it appeared to me that in firing at the waistcoat destined to protect you, I was firing at you yourself. I was afraid of wounding you; I feared to see a hole in the mail, and then my efforts, my trouble, my hopes, were forever lost.”
“My dear wife,” said Louis XVI., having completely unhooked the coat of mail and placed it on the table, “what gratitude do I not owe you!”
“Well, now, what is it you are doing?” asked the queen.
And she took the waistcoat and again presented it to the king. But with a smile replete with nobleness and kindness:—
“No,” said he, “I thank you.”
“You refuse it?” said the queen.
“I refuse it.”
“Oh, but reflect a moment, Sire.”
“Sire,” cried Madame Campan, in a supplicating tone.
“But,” said the queen, “’tis your salvation; ’tis your life!”
“That is possible,” said the king.
“You refuse the succor which God himself has sent us.”
“Enough! enough!” said the king.
“Oh, you refuse! you refuse!”
“Yes, I refuse.”
“But they will kill you.”
“My dear Antoinette, when gentlemen in this eighteenth century are going out to battle, they wear a cloth coat, waistcoat, and shirt; this is all they have to defend them against musket-balls. When they go upon the field of honor to fight a duel, they throw off all but their shirt,—that is for the sword. As to myself, I am the first gentleman of my kingdom; I will do neither more nor less than my friends; and there is more than this,—while they wear cloth, I alone have the right to wear silk. Thanks, my good wife; thanks, my good queen; thanks.”