Ange Pitou by Alexandre Dumas part two

“Oh, Sire,” answered the queen, “I am always happy to do so; but is the time well chosen?”

“I believe that it is. You desire that there should be no hostile demonstration. Did you not this moment say so?”

“I did.”

“But you have not explained to me your reason.”

“You did not ask me.”

“Well, I now ask you.”

“Impotence!”

“Ah! that is the reason, is it? If you thought yourself the stronger, you would make war.”

“If I thought that I was the stronger, I should burn Paris.”

“Oh, I was certain that your motives for not wishing war were not the same as mine.”

“Well, let us hear yours.”

” Mine?” asked the king. “Yes,” answered Marie Antoinette, “yours.”

“I have but one.”

“Mention it.”

“Oh, that is soon done! I do not wish to enter into war with the people, because I find that the people are right.”

Marie Antoinette made a gesture of surprise.

“Right!” she exclaimed, “the people right in rebelling!”

“Certainly.”

“Right in storming the Bastille, in killing the governor, in murdering the provost of the merchants, in exterminating your soldiers?”

“Yes, by Heaven, they were!”

“Oh,” exclaimed the queen, “these are your reflections, and it was such reflections as these that you wished me to hear!”

“I have told you them as they occurred to me.”

“At dinner?”

“Good!” said the king, “we are about to fall back on the subject of nourishment. You cannot pardon me for eating. You would have me poetic and ethereal. What do you wish! In my family we eat. Not only did Henry IV. eat, but he was also a hard drinker; the great and poetic Louis XIV. eat enough to make one blush; King Louis XV., to make sure of good eating and drinking, baked his biscuits with his own royal hands, and had his coffee made by Madame Dubarry. As for me, what would you have? When I am hungry, I cannot resist my appetite; I am compelled to follow the example of my ancestors, Louis XV., Louis XIV., and Henry IV. If this is a constitutional necessity, pray be lenient with me; if it is a fault, forgive me.”

“But, Sire, you must confess—”

“That I ought not to eat when I am hungry; no,” said the king, tranquilly shaking his head.

“I am not talking of that: I speak of the people.”

“Ah!”

“You must confess that the people have been in the wrong.”

“In rebelling? Not at all. Come, let us review all our ministers. Since we began to reign, how many have really concerned themselves about the welfare of the people? Two,—Turgot and Monsieur de Necker. You and your coterie have banished them. For one of these gentlemen the people have raised a tumult; for the other they will perhaps raise a revolution. Let us speak a little of the others! Ah! they are charming fellows, are they not? Monsieur de Maurepas, that creature of my aunts, a song-writer! It is not the ministers who should sing, it is the people. Monsieur de Calonne? That epigrammatic answer he made you was admirable, I know well,—a sentence that will live. Once when you asked him for something,—I forget what,—he gallantly replied: ‘If it is possible, it is done: if it is impossible, it shall be done.’ That epigram cost the people to the tune of a hundred millions. You should not be astonished, therefore, if they find it a little less witty than you do. In truth,—pray understand me, Madame,—if I retain all those who fleece the people, and dismiss all those who love them, it will not be the best means of tranquillizing them and of making them more attached to our government.”

“Good! Then insurrection is a right. Proclaim this principle from the house-tops. In truth I am glad that it is to me alone that you have communicated such ideas. If others heard you!”

“Oh, yes, yes!” replied the king; “you tell me nothing new. Yes, I know well that if Polignac, Dreux-Brézé, Clermont-Tonnerre, and Coigny heard me, they would shrug their shoulders behind me,—I know it well; but in reality they pity me after a very different fashion. That Polignac, to whom one fine morning you made over the county of Fénestrange, which cost you twelve hundred thousand livres; Sartine, to whom I have already given a pension of eighty-nine thousand livres, and who has just received from you two hundred thousand livres ostensibly as a stipendiary fund; the prince of Deux-Ponts, to whom you compelled me to grant nine hundred and fortyfive thousand livres to clear off his debts; Marie de Laval and Madame de Magneville, who each finger a pension of eighty thousand livres; Coigny, who is loaded with all sorts of pensions, and who once, when I thought of making some reduction in his appointments, hedged me in between two doors, and would have beaten me, I believe, if I had not consented to give him all that he wished,—all these people are your friends, are they not? Well, speak about them. But this much I will say, and I know you will not believe it, because it is the truth; if instead of being at court, these friends of yours had been in the Bastille, the people would have fortified the place instead of demolishing it.”

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *