Chapter IV
Decision
FOR the first time the queen appeared deeply moved. Was it from the reasoning, or from the humility, of the doctor?
Moreover, the king had risen from his seat with a determined air; he was thinking of the execution of Gilbert’s project.
However, from the habit which he had acquired of doing nothing without consulting the queen:—
“Madame,” said he to her, “do you approve it?”
“It appears it must be so,” replied the queen.
“I do not ask you for any abnegation,” said the king.
“What is it, then, you ask?”
“I ask you for the expression of a conviction which will strengthen mine.”
“You ask of me a conviction?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, if it be only that, I am convinced, sir.”
“Of what?”
“That the moment has arrived which will render monarchy the most deplorable and the most degrading position which exists in the whole world.”
“Oh,” said the king, “you exaggerate; deplorable, I will admit, but degrading, that is impossible.”
“Sir, the kings, your forefathers, have bequeathed to you a very mournful inheritance,” said the queen, sorrowfully.
“Yes,” said Louis XVI., “an inheritance which I have the grief to make you share, Madame.”
“Be pleased to allow me, Sire,” said Gilbert, who truly compassionate the great misfortunes of his fallen sovereigns; “I do not believe that there is any reason for your Majesty to view the future in such terrific colors as you have depicted it. A despotic monarchy has ceased to exist; a constitutional empire commences.”
“Ah, sir,” said the king, “and am I a man capable of founding such an empire in France?”
“And why not, Sire?” cried the queen, somewhat comforted by the last words of Gilbert.
“Madame,” replied the king, “I am a man of good sense and a learned man. I see clearly, instead of endeavoring to see confusedly, into things, and I know precisely all that is not necessary for me to know, to administer the government of this country. From the day on which I shall be precipitated from the height of the inviolability of an absolute prince—from the day on which it shall be allowed to be discovered that I am a mere plain man—I lose all the factitious strength which alone was necessary to govern France, since, to speak truly, Louis XIII., Louis XIV., and Louis XV. sustained themselves completely, thanks to this factitious strength. What do the French now require? A master. I feel that I am only capable of being a father. What do the revolutionists require? A sword. I do not feel that I have strength enough to strike.”
“You do not feel that you have strength to strike!” exclaimed the queen,—”to strike people who are destroying the property of your children, and who would carry off, even from your own brow, one after the other, every gem that adorns the crown of France!”
“What answer can I make to this?” calmly said Louis XVI.; “would you have me reply NO? By doing so I should raise up in your mind one of those storms which are the discomfort of my life. You know how to hate. Oh, so much the better for you! You know how to be unjust, and I do not reproach you with it. It is a great quality in those who have to govern.”
“Do you, perchance, consider me unjust towards the Revolution? Now tell me that.”
“In good faith, yes.”
“You say yes, Sire,—you say yes?”
“If you were the wife of a plain citizen, my dear Antoinette, you would not speak as you do.”
“I am not one.”
“And that is the reason for my excusing you; but that does not mean that I approve your course. No, Madame, no, you must be resigned; we succeeded to the throne of France at a period of storm and tempest. We ought to have strength enough to push on before us that car armed with scythes, and which is called Revolution; but our strength is insufficient.”
“So much the worse,” said Marie Antoinette, “for it is over our children that it will be driven.”
“Alas! that I know; but at all events we shall not urge it forward.”
“We will make it retrograde, Sire!”