The Royal Life Guard; or, the flight of the royal family.

by Alexandre Dumas

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  CAGLIOSTRO'S COUNSEL.

  Paris had heard the fusillade and quivered, feeling that she had beenwounded and the blood was flowing.

  The Queen had sent her confidential valet Weber to the spot to get thelatest news. To be just to her and comprehend the hatred she felt forthe French, she had not only so suffered during the flight to Varennes,that her hair had turned white, but also after her return.

  It was a popular idea, shared in by her own retinue, that she was awitch. A Medea able to go out of window in a flying car.

  But if she kept her jailers on the alert, they also frightened her. Shehad a dream of scenes of violence, for they had always turned againsther.

  She waited with anxiety for her envoy's return, for the mobs might haveoverturned this old, decrepit, trimming Assembly of which Barnave hadpromised the help, and which might now want help itself.

  The door opened: she turned her eyes swiftly thither, but instead of herfoster-brother, it was Dr. Gilbert, with his stern face.

  She did not like this royalist whose constitutional ideas made him arepublican almost; but she felt respect for him; she would not have senthim in any strait, but she submitted to his influence when by.

  "You, doctor?" she said with a shiver.

  "It is I, madam. I bring you more precise news than those you expect byWeber. He was on the side of the Seine where no blood was spilt, whileI was where the slaughter was committed. A great misfortune has takenplace--the court party has triumphed."

  "Oh, _you_ would call this a misfortune, doctor!"

  "Because the triumph is one of those which exhaust the victor and layhim beside the dead. Lafayette and Bailly have shot down the people, sothat they will never be able to serve you again; they have lost theirpopularity."

  "What were the people doing when shot down?"

  "Signing a petition demanding the removal of the King."

  "And you think they were wrong to fire on men doing that?" returned thesovereign, with kindling eye.

  "I believe it better to argue with them than shoot them."

  "Argue about what?"

  "The King's sincerity."

  "But the King is sincere!"

  "Excuse me, madam: three days ago, I spent the evening trying toconvince the King that his worst enemies were his brothers and thefugitive nobles abroad. On my knees I entreated him to break offdealings with them and frankly adopt the Constitution, with revisionof the impracticable articles. I thought the King persuaded, for hekindly promised that all was ended between him and the nobles who fled:but behind my back he signed, and induced you to sign, a letter whichcharged his brother to get the aid of Prussia and Austria."

  The Queen blushed like a schoolboy caught in fault; but such a one wouldhave hung his head--she only held hers the stiffer and higher.

  "Have our enemies spied in our private rooms?" she asked.

  "Yes, madam," tranquilly replied the doctor, "which is what makes suchdouble-dealing on the King's part so dangerous."

  "But, sir, this letter was written wholly by the royal hand, after Isigned it, too, the King sealed it up and handed it to the messenger."

  "It has been read none the less."

  "Are we surrounded by traitors?"

  "All men are not Charnys."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Alas, Madam! that one of the fatal tokens foretelling the doom ofKings is their driving away from them those very men whom they ought to'grapple to them by hooks of steel.'"

  "I have not driven Count Charny away," said the Queen bitterly, "he wentof his own free will. When monarchs become unfortunate, their friendsfall off."

  "Do not slander Count Charny," said Gilbert mildly, "or the blood ofhis brothers will cry from their graves that the Queen of France is aningrate. Oh, you know I speak the truth, madam: that on the day whenunmistakable danger impends, the Count of Charny will be at his post andthat the most perilous."

  "But I suppose you have not come to talk about Count Charny," said shetestily, though she lowered her head.

  "No, madam; but ideas are like events, they are attached by invisiblelinks and thus are drawn forth from darkness. No, I come to speak tothe Queen and I beg pardon if I addressed the woman: but I am ready torepair the error. I wish to say that you are staking the woe or goodof the world on one game: you lost the first round on the sixth ofOctober, you win the second, in the courtiers' eyes, on this sad day;and to-morrow you will begin what is called the rub. If you lose, withit go throne, liberty and life."

  "Do you believe that this prospect makes us recede?" queried the proudone, quickly rising.

  "I know the King is brave and the Queen heroic; so I never try to doanything with them but reason; unfortunately I can never pass my beliefinto their minds."

  "Why trouble about what you believe useless?"

  "Because it is my duty. It is sweet in such times to feel, though theresult is unfruitful, that one has done his duty."

  She looked him in the face and asked:

  "Do you think it possible to save the King and the throne?"

  "I believe for him and hope for the other."

  "Then you are happier than I," she responded with a sad sigh: "I believeboth are lost and I fight merely to salve my conscience."

  "Yes, I understand that you want a despotic monarchy and the King anabsolute one: like the miser who will not cast away a portion of hisgold in a shipwreck so that he may swim to shore with the rest, you willgo down with all. No, cut loose of all burdens and swim towards thefuture."

  "To throw the past into a gulf is to break with all the crowned heads ofEurope."

  "Yes, but it is to join hands with the French people."

  "Our enemies," returned Marie Antoinette.

  "Because you taught them to doubt you."

  "They cannot struggle against an European Coalition."

  "Suppose a Constitutional King at their head and they will make theconquest of Europe."

  "They would need a million of armed men for that."

  "Millions do not conquer Europe--an idea will. Europe will be conqueredwhen over the Alps and across the Rhine advance the flags bearing themottoes: 'Death to tyranny!' and 'Freedom to all!'"

  "Really, sir, there are times when I am inclined to think the wise aremadmen."

  "Ah, you know not that France is the Madonna of Liberty, for whosecoming the peoples await around her borders. She is not merely a nation,as she advances with her hands full of freedom--but immutable Justiceand eternal Reason. But if you do not profit by all not yet committedto violence, if you dally too long, these hands will be turned to rendherself.

  "Besides, none of these kings whose help you seek is able to make war.Two empires, or rather an empress and a minister, deeply hate us butthey are powerless! Catherine of Russia and William Pitt. Your envoy toPitt, the Princess Lamballe, can get him to do much to prevent Francebecoming a republic, but he hates the monarch and will not promise tosave him. Is not Louis the Constitutional King, the crowned philosopher,who disputed the East Indies with him and helped America to wrestherself from the Briton's grasp? He desires only that the French willhave a pendant to his Charles the Beheaded."

  "Oh, who can reveal such things to you?" gasped the Queen.

  "The same who tell me what is in the letters you secretly write."

  "Have we not even a thought that is our own?"

  "I tell you that the Kings of Europe are enmeshed in an unseen netwhere they write in vain. Do not you resist, madam: but put yourself atthe head of ideas which will otherwise spurn you if you take the lead,and this net will be your defense when you are outside of it and thedaggers threatening you will be turned towards the other monarchs."

  "But you forgot that the kings are our brothers, not enemies, as youstyle them."

  "But, Madam, if the French are called your sons you will see how littleare your brothers according to politics and diplomacy. Besides, do younot perceive that all these monarchs are tottering towards the gulf,to sui
cide, while you, if you liked, might be marching towards theuniversal monarchy, the empire of the world!"

  "Why do you not talk thus to the King?" said the Queen, shaken.

  "I have, but like yourself, he has evil geniuses who undo what I havedone. You have ruined Mirabeau and Barnave, and will treat me thesame--whereupon the last word will be spoken."

  "Dr. Gilbert, await me here!" said she: "I will see the King for a whileand will return."

  He had been waiting a quarter of an hour when another door opened thanthat she had left by, and a servant in the royal livery entered. Helooked around warily, approached Gilbert, making a masonic sign ofcaution, handed him a letter and glided away.

  Opening the letter, Gilbert read:

  "GILBERT: You waste your time. At this moment, the King and the Queen are listening to Lord Breteuil fresh from Vienna, who brings this plan of policy: 'Treat Barnave as you did Mirabeau; gain time, swear to the Constitution and execute it to the letter to prove that it is unworkable. France will cool and be bored, as the French have a fanciful head and will want novelty, so that the mania for liberty will pass. If it do not, we shall gain a year and by that time we shall be ready for war.'

  "Leave these two condemned beings, still called King and Queen in mockery, and hasten to the Groscaillou Hospital, where an injured man is in a dying state, but not so hopeless as they: he may be saved, while they are not only lost but will drag you down to perdition with them!"

  The note had no signature, but the reader knew the hand of Cagliostro.

  Madam Campan entered from the Queen's apartments; she brought a note tothe effect that the King would be glad to have Dr. Gilbert's propositionin writing, while the Queen could not return from being called away onimportant business.

  "Lunatics," he said after musing. "Here, take them this as my answer."

  And he gave the lady Cagliostro's warning, as he went out.