“Yes, Sire.”
“What is your age?”
“Thirty-two years, Sire; but study and misfortune double age. Treat me as if I were an old man.”
“Why did you omit so long to present yourself to me?”
“Because, Sire, I did not wish to tell your Majesty aloud what I could write to you more freely and more easily.”
Louis XVI. reflected.
“Had you no other reason?” said he, suspiciously.
“No, Sire.”
“But still, either I am mistaken, or there were some peculiar circumstances which ought to have convinced you of my kindly feeling towards you.”
“Your Majesty intends to speak of that sort of rendezvous which I had the temerity to give the king, when, after my first memoir, I begged him, five years ago, to place a light near his window, at eight o’clock in the evening, to indicate that he had read my work.”
“And—?” said the king, with an air of satisfaction.
“And on the day and at the hour appointed, the light was, in fact, placed where I had asked you to place it.”
“And afterwards?”
“Afterwards I saw it lifted up and set down again three times.”
“And then?”
“After that I read the following words in the ‘Gazette:’—
“‘He whom the light has called three times may present himself to him who has raised it three times, when he will be compensated.'”
“Those are, in fact, the very words of the advertisement,” said the king.
“And there is the advertisement itself,” said Gilbert, drawing from his pocket the number of the ‘Gazette’ in which the advertisement he had just alluded to had been published five years previously.
“Well—very well,” said the king. “I have long expected you. You arrive at a moment I had quite ceased to expect you. You are welcome; for you come, like good soldiers, at the moment of battle.”
Then, looking once more attentively at Gilbert:—
“Do you know, sir,” said he to him, “that it is not an ordinary thing for a king to await the arrival of a person to whom he has said, ‘Come to receive your reward,’ and that that person should abstain from coming.”
Gilbert smiled.
“Come now, tell me,” said Louis XVI., “why did you not come?”
“Because I deserved no reward, Sire.”
“For what reason?”
“Born a Frenchman, loving my country, anxious for its prosperity, confounding my individuality with that of thirty millions of men, my fellow-citizens, I labored for myself while laboring for them. A man is not worthy of reward when he labors for his own interest.”
“That is a paradox, sir; you had another reason.”
Gilbert did not reply.
“Speak, sir; I desire it.”
“Perhaps, Sire, you have guessed rightly.”
“Is not this it?” asked the king in an anxious tone. “You found the position a very serious one, and you kept yourself in reserve.”
“For one still more serious. Yes, Sire, your Majesty has divined the truth.”
“I like frankness,” said the king, who could not conceal his agitation; for he was of a timid nature, and blushed easily.
“Then,” continued Louis XVI., “you predicted the king’s fall to him, and you feared to be placed too near the ruins.”
“No, Sire, since it is just at the moment that danger is most imminent that I come to face the danger.”
“Yes, yes; you have just left Necker, and you speak like him. The danger!—the danger! Without doubt it is dangerous at this moment to approach me. And where is Necker?”
“Quite ready, I believe, to obey the orders of your Majesty.”
“So much the better; I shall want him,” said the king, with a sigh. “In politics we must not be headstrong. We think to do good, and we do wrong. We even do good, and some capricious event mars our projects; and though the plans laid were in reality good, we are accused of having been mistaken.”
The king sighed again. Gilbert came to his assistance.
“Sire,” said he, “your Majesty reasons admirably; but what is desirable at the present moment is, to see into the future more clearly than has been done hitherto.”
The king raised his head, and his inexpressive eyebrows slightly frowned.
“Sire, forgive me,” said Gilbert; “I am a physician. When the danger is imminent, I speak briefly.”