“No, thank you, I like better to walk while speaking; by thus walking, I attend to my health, about which nobody else seems to take the slightest concern; for though my appetite is good, my digestion is bad. Do you know what they are saying at this moment? They are saying: ‘The king has supped; the king sleeps.’ Now you see how I sleep,—bolt upright, trying to aid my digestion while I talk on politics with my wife. Ah, Madame, I am expiating,—expiating!”
“Expiating what, if you please?”
“The sins of a century whose scapegoat I am; I am expiating the sins of Madame de Pompadour, Madame Dubarry, the Parc-aux-Cerfs; the sins of poor Latude, who for thirty years rotted in dungeons, and was immortalized by suffering,—one more victim who caused the Bastille to be detested. Poor fellow! Ah, Madame! what blunders I have made in giving effect to the stupid measures of others! Philosophers, political economists, scientists, men of letters, I have taken part in persecuting them all. Good Heavens! these men asked for nothing better than to love me. If they had loved me they would have at once constituted the glory and the happiness of my reign. Monsieur Rousseau, for example, that bugbear of Sartines and others—ah well! I saw him one day myself, that day you made him come to Trianon, you recollect. His clothes, it is true, were ill brushed, and it is also true that his beard was long; but he was nevertheless a good man. If I had donned my rough gray coat and thick stockings, and had said to Monsieur Rousseau, ‘Let us go and gather mosses in the woods of Ville d’Avray—'”
“Ah, well! what then?” interrupted the queen, with supreme contempt.
“Well, then Monsieur Rousseau would not have written the ‘Vicar of Savoy’ nor the ‘Social Contract.'”
“Yes, yes, I am well aware of that; that is the way you reason,” said Marie Antoinette. “You are a prudent man; you fear your people as the dog does his master.”
“Not so, but as the master fears his dog; it is something to be sure that one’s dog will not bite him. Madame, when I walk with Médor, that Pyrenean hound of which the king of Spain made me a present, I feel quite proud of his friendship. Laugh if you will, but it is nevertheless true that Médor, if he was not my friend, would chew me up with his great white teeth. You see I say to him: ‘Pretty Médor, good Médor,’ and he licks me. I prefer his tongue to his tusks.”
“Be it so, then; flatter the revolutionists, caress them, throw titbits to them.”
“Oh, the very thing I am going to do I have no other project, believe me. Yes, my decision is taken. I will lay up a little money, and then I will deal with these gentlemen as if they were so many Cerberi. Ah, but stay! There is Monsieur de Mirabeau—”
“Oh, yes! tell me about that ferocious brute.”
“With fifty thousand livres a month he will be a Médor, whereas if we wait, he will not perhaps be satisfied with less than half a million.”
The queen laughed scornfully.
“Oh, the idea of flattering people like him!”
“Monsieur Bailly,” continued the king, “having become minister of arts—an office which I am going to institute for my amusement—will be another Médor. Pardon me, Madame, if I do not entertain the same views that you do, but I am of the same opinion as my ancestor Henry IV. He was a profound politician if there ever was one, and I remember well what he said.”
“What did he say?”
“‘Flies are not caught with vinegar.'”
“Sancho said that also, or something very like it.”
“Well, Sancho would have made the people of Barataria very happy, had there been such a place as Barataria.”
“Sire, your ancestor Henry IV., whom you bring forward, caught wolves as well as flies. Witness Marshal de Biron, whose throat he cut. He could say then what he pleased. By reasoning like Henry and acting as you do, you take all prestige from royalty, which can only exist by prestige. You degrade the principle, ‘What will majesty become?’ Majesty, I am aware, is but a word, but in this word centre all the royal virtues: ‘He who respects, loves; he who loves, obeys—'”