“Oh,” cried Gilbert, with a prophetic accent, “beware, Madame; in retrograding, it will crush you.”
“Sir,” said the queen, impatiently, “I observe that you can carry the frankness of your counsels very far.”
“I will be silent, Madame.”
“Oh, good Heaven! let him speak on,” said the king; “what he has now announced to you, if he has not read it in twenty newspapers during the last eight days, it is because he has not chosen to read them. You should, at least, be thankful to him that he does not convey the truths he utters in a bitter spirit.”
Marie Antoinette remained silent for a moment; then, with a deep-drawn sigh:—
“I will sum up,” she said, “or rather, I will repeat my arguments. By going to Paris voluntarily, it will be sanctioning all that has been done there.”
“Yes,” replied the king, “I know that full well.”
“Yes, it would be humiliating,—disowning your army which is preparing to defend you.”
“It is to spare the effusion of French blood,” said the doctor.
“It is to declare that henceforward tumultuous risings and violence may give such a direction to the will of the king as may best suit the views of insurgents and traitors.”
“Madame, I believe,” said Gilbert, “that you had just now the goodness to acknowledge that I had had the good fortune to convince you.”
“Yes, I just now did acknowledge it; one corner of the veil had been raised up before me. But now, sir,—oh, now that I am again becoming blind, as you have termed it, and I prefer looking into my own mind, to see reflected there those splendors to which education, tradition, and history have accustomed me, I prefer considering myself still a queen, than to feel myself a bad mother to this people, who insult and hate me.”
“Antoinette! Antoinette!” cried Louis XVI., terrified at the sudden paleness which pervaded the queen’s face, and which was nothing more than the precursor of a terrible storm of anger.
“Oh, no, no, Sire, I will speak,” replied the queen.
“Beware, Madame!” said he.
And with a glance the king directed the attention of Marie Antoinette to the presence of the doctor.
“Oh, this gentleman knows all that I was about to say; he knows even everything I think,” said the queen, with a bitter smile at the recollection of the scene which had just before occurred between her and the doctor; “and therefore why should I restrain myself? This gentleman, moreover, has been taken by us for our confidant, and I know not why I should have any fear of speaking. I know that you are carried, dragged away, like the unhappy prince in my dear old German ballads. Whither are you going? Of that I know nothing; but you are going whence you will never return.”
“Why, no, Madame; I am going simply and plainly to Paris,” replied Louis XVI.
Marie Antoinette raised her shoulders.
“Do you believe me to be insane?” said she, in a voice of deep irritation. “You are going to Paris? ‘Tis well. Who tells you that Paris is not an abyss which I see not, but which I can divine? Who can say whether, in the tumultuous crowd by which you will necessarily be surrounded, you will not be killed? Who knows from whence a chance shot may proceed? Who knows, amid a hundred thousand upraised and threatening hands, which it is that has directed the murderous knife?”
“Oh, on that head you need not have the slightest apprehension. They love me!” exclaimed the king.
“Oh, say not that, Sire, or you will make me pity you. They love you, and they kill, they assassinate, they massacre those who represent you on the earth; you, a king,—you, the image of God! Well, the governor of the Bastille was your representative; he was the image of the king. Be well assured of this, and I shall not be accused of exaggeration when I say it. If they have killed De Launay, that brave and faithful servant, they would have killed you, Sire, had you been in his place, and much more easily than they killed him; for they know you, and know that instead of defending yourself, you would have bared your breast to them.”