“Ah! let us speak of majesty,” interrupted the king, with a smile; “yes, let us speak of it. You, for example, are as majestic as one can be; and I know of none in Europe, not even your mother, Marie Thérèse, who has promoted as you have the science of majesty.”
“I understand you; you mean that my majesty does not prevent my being abhorred by the French people.”
“I do not say ‘abhorred,’ my dear Antoinette,” said the king, gently; “but perhaps you are not so much loved as you deserve to be.”
“Sir,” said the queen, deeply wounded, “you only echo all that is said. I have, nevertheless, injured nobody; on the contrary, I have often benefited my sub- jets. Why should they hate me as you say? Why should they not love me, were it not that there are people who make it their business to repeat daily, ‘The queen is not loved!’ Are you aware, sir, that one voice alone is needed to say that, in order that a hundred voices should repeat it; a hundred voices evoke ten thousand. Then, in unison with these ten thousand voices everybody repeats: ‘The queen is not loved!’ And the queen is not loved simply because one person said: ‘The queen is not loved!'”
“Good heavens!” muttered the king.
“Thank goodness,” interrupted the queen, “I have but little faith in popularity; but I also believe that my unpopularity is exaggerated. Praises are not showered down upon me, it is true; but I was once the popular idol, and because they loved me too much, they now run to the opposite extreme and hate me.”
“Stay, Madame,” said the king; “you know not the whole truth, and are still laboring under a delusion; were we not talking of the Bastille?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there was a large room in the Bastille full of all sorts of books written against you. They will surely have burned all that.”
“With what did these books accuse me?”
“Ah, you very well know, Madame, that I take not upon me to be your accuser, and have no wish to be your judge. When these pamphlets appeared, I had the whole edition seized and buried in the Bastille. But sometimes these books fall into my own hands. For instance, I have one here now,” said the king, striking his coat pocket, “and it is simply abominable.”
“Show it me,” cried the queen.
“I cannot,” said the king; “it contains engravings.”
“And have you come to that? Have you reached that point of blindness and imbecility that you do not even attempt to trace all these base slanders to their source?”
“That is just what I have done. I have traced them to their source; there is not one of my lieutenants of police who has not grown gray in that service.”
“Then you know the author of these indignities?”
“I know one of the authors, at least,—Monsieur Furth, the author of that one; there is his receipt for 22,500 livres. You see when the thing is worth the trouble, I do not regard the expense.”
“But the others,—the others!”
“Ah, they are often poor hungry wretches who vegetate in England or Holland. We are bitten, stung, irritated; we ferret them out, expecting to find a serpent, a crocodile, to crush, to kill. Nothing of the sort; but we find an insect, so mean, so base, so despicable, that we dare not dirty our hands by touching it, even to punish it.”
“That is all very fine! But if you care not to touch insects, why not accuse boldly the sun which calls them into existence. In truth, we may safely affirm that their sun is Philip of Orléans.”
“Ha!” exclaimed the king, clapping his hands, “are you there? Monsieur d’Orléans! nay, nay, seek not to embroil me with him.”
“Embroil you with your enemy, Sire! Oh, the idea is original!”
The king shrugged his shoulders.
“There now,” said he, “there is your system of interpreting matters. Monsieur d’Orléans! You attack Monsieur d’Orléans, who has just placed himself under my orders to fight the rebels,—who leaves Paris and hastens to Versailles! Monsieur d’Orléans my enemy! Truly, Madame, the hatred you bear to the house of Orléans surpasses all conception.”