Taking the Bastile

He stopped, thinking he had said enough to please both parties. If he had spoken thus at a Parliamentary session, he would have been applauded; but his audience of two personal enemies little heeded his conciliatory philosophy.

"But," recommenced Gilbert, "while not knowing me, you knew another Gilbert, whose crime weighs upon his Namesake. It is not my place to question the lady; will your Majesty deign to inquire of her ladyship what this infamous man did?"

"Countess, you cannot refuse so just a request."

"The Queen must know, since she authorized the arrest," said Andrea evasively.

"But it is not enough that the Queen should be convinced," said the sovereign, "it is necessary that the King also should know. The Queen is what she is, but I am the King."

"Sire, the Gilbert for whom the warrant was intended committed a horrible crime sixteen years ago."

"Will your Majesty please inquire what age this Gilbert is to-day?"

"He may be thirty-two," replied Andrea.

"Sire, then the crime was done by a boy, not a man, and does he not deserve some indulgence who has for sixteen years deplored his boyish crime?"

"You seem to know him? has he committed no other crime than this sin of youth?" demanded the King.

"I am less indulgent to him than others, but I can say that he reproaches himself with none other."

"Only with having dipped his pen in poison and written odious libels!"

"Sire, please ask my lady if the real cause of the arrest and committal of this Gilbert was not to enable his enemies – particularly one enemy – to get possession of a certain casket containing papers possibly compromising a great lady of the court?"

Andrea shuddered from head to foot.

"Countess, what casket is this?" inquired the King, who noticed the plain pallor and agitation of the lady.

"No more shifting and subterfuges," cried Gilbert, feeling that he was master of the situation. "Enough falsehoods on both sides. I am Gilbert of the crime, the libels, the casket, and you the real great lady of the court. I take the King as the judge. Accept him and we will tell our judge, under heaven and the King will decide."

"Tell his Majesty what you please, but I shall say nothing more – for I do not know you," responded the haughty lady.

"And the casket? you do not know about that?"

"No more than of you."

But she shook with the effort to make this denial, like a statue rocking at the base.

"Beware," said the doctor, "you cannot have forgotten that I am the pupil of Balsamo-Cagliostro the Magician, who has transmitted to me the power he had over you. Once only, will you answer the question? My casket?" then, lifting his hand, full of threatening, he thundered: "Nature of steel, heart of adamant, bend, melt, shatter under the irresistible pressure of my will! You shall speak, Andrea, and none, King or any powers less than heaven's, shall subtract you from my sway. You shall unfold your mind to the august witness and he shall read what you hid in the black recesses of your soul. Sire, you shall know all through her who refuses to speak. Sleep, Andrea Taverney, Countess of Charny, sleep and speak, for I will it."

Hardly were the words uttered before the woman, stopped short in beginning a scream, held out her arms for support as if struck by blindness. Finding none, she fell into the King's arms and he placed her in a chair.

"Ha!" exclaimed he, trembling like herself, "I have heard about hypnotism but never saw an exhibition. Is not this magnetic sleep to which you oblige her to succumb, doctor?"

"Yes, my lord. Take her hand, and ask her why she had me arrested."

Astounded by the scene, Louis receded but, interested, he did as directed. As Andrea resisted, the magnetizer touched the crown of her head with his palm, saying;

"Speak, I will it."

She sighed and her arms fell; her head sank back and she wept.

"Ugh, I hate you," she hissed.

"Hate away, but speak."

"So, countess," said the King, "you wanted to arrest and imprison the doctor?"

"Yes."

"And the casket?"

"How could I leave that in his hands?" muttered the lady, in a hollow voice.

"Tell me about that," said the King forgetting etiquette and kneeling beside the countess.

"I learnt that Gilbert, who had in sixteen years been twice back in France, purposed another voyage, to settle here. Chief of Police Crosne informed me that he had on a previous return bought an estate at Villers Cotterets: that his farmer enjoyed his trust, and I suspected that the casket with his papers was at his house."

"How could you suspect that?"

"I – I went to Mesmer's and had myself put into a trance, when, my own medium, I wrote down the revelations I wanted."

"Wonderful," exclaimed the Sovereign.

"I went to Chief Crosne and he lent me his best man, one Wolfstep, who brought me the casket."

"Where is it?" cried Gilbert. "No lying – where is my casket?"

"In my rooms at Versailles," said Andrea, trembling nervously and bursting into tears. "Wolfstep is waiting for me here by appointment since eleven."

Twelve was striking.

"Where is he?"

"Standing in the waiting room, leaning on the mantleshelf. The casket is on the table before him. Oh, haste! Count Charny, who was not to return before to-morrow, will be back to-night on account of the events. He is at Sevres now. Get Wolfstep away for fear my lord will see him."

"Your Majesty hears? This casket belongs to me. Will the King please order it to be returned to me?"

"Instantly."

Placing a screen before the countess, Louis called the officer on duty and gave him orders what to do.

This curiosity of a monarch whose throne was being undermined to a purely physical problem, would make those smile who expected him to be engrossed with politics.

But he concentrated himself on this private speculation and returned to see the mesmerizer and the medium.

In the mesmeric slumber Andrea's wondrous beauty was displayed in its entire splendor. She who had in her youth enthralled Louis XV. now enchanted his successor.

Gilbert turned his head away, sighing: he could not resist the prompting to give his adored this degree of supernal beauty; and now more unhappy than Pygmalion, for he knew how insensible was the lovely statue, he was frightened by his own work.

Gilbert knew how to own his ignorance, like all superior men. He knew what he could do, but not the wherefore.

"Where did you study the art? under Mesmer?" asked the King.

"I saw the most astonishing phenomena ten years before that German came into France. My master was a more amazing man, superior to any you can name, for I have seen him execute surgical operations of incredible daring. No science was unknown to him. But I ought not to utter his name before your Majesty."

"I should like to hear it, though it was Satan's itself."

"My lord, you honor me almost with a friend's confidence in speaking thus. My master was Baron Balsamo, afterwards Count Cagliostro."

"That charlatan!" exclaimed Louis, blushing, for he could not help remembering the plot of the Diamond's Necklace, in which Cagliostro had figured as friend of Cardinal Rohan and consequently enemy of Marie Antoinette. The King believed his wife but the world thought that she had participated in the fraud on the court jewelers. We have related the story according to our lights in the volume of this series entitled "The Queen's Necklace."

"Charlatan?" repeated Gilbert warmly. "You are right. The name comes from the Italian word meaning to patter, to talk freely – and no one was more ready than Cagliostro to talk instructively where the seed would fall on fruitful ground."

"This Cagliostro whom you praise was a great enemy of kings," observed Louis.

"Rather say of queen's," retorted Gilbert.

"In the trial of Prince Rohan, his conduct was equivocal."

"Sire, then as ever he fulfilled his mission to mankind. He may have acted mistakenly then. But I studied under the physician and philosopher, not under the politician."

"Well, well," said the King, suffering under the wound to his person and his pride; "we are forgetting the countess who is in pain."

"I will awaken her presently, for here is the casket coming."

In fact the messenger was arriving with the small box which he handed to the King. He nodded his satisfaction and the officer went out.

"Sire, it is my casket: but I would remark that it contains papers damning to the countess and – "

"Carry it away unopened, sir," said the monarch coldly. "Do not awaken the lady here, I detest shrieks, groans, noise."

"She will awaken wherever you suggest her removal."

"In the Queen's apartments will be best."

"How long will it take?"

"Ten minutes."

"Awaken in fifteen minutes," ordered the mesmerizer to the lady.

Two guardsmen entered and carried out the countess, seated on the chair.

"My lady fainted here," said the King to the officer, "bear her to the Queen."

"What can I do for you, Dr. Gilbert?" he asked when they were alone.

"I wish to be honorary house physician to your Majesty. It is a position which will do nobody umbrage and is more of trust than emolument and lustre."

"Granted! Good-by, Dr. Gilbert. Remind me affectionately to Necker. Bring me supper," he added, for nothing could make the King forget a meal.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE QUEEN AT BAY

While the King was learning to fight Revolution like a philosopher, and recreate himself with a spiritualistic seance, the Queen was rallying the combative around her in her rooms.

She sat at a table, with priests, courtiers, generals and her ladies surrounding her. At the doorways young officers, full of ardor and courage, rejoiced in the riots which gave them a chance to show their military gifts as at a tourney under view of their queens of beauty.

The Queen was no longer the sweet girl whom we saw in our work entitled "Balsamo the Magician," or the fair princess who went to Mesmer's Baths, with Princess Lamballe: but the haughty and imperious Queen who was neither Marie Antoinette, nor Queen of France, but the Austrian Eagless.

She looked up as Prince Lambesq arrived, dusty, splashed, his boots torn and his sabre bent so as not to be sheathed properly.

"Well, my lord," she said, "You come from Paris. What are the people doing?"

"Killing and burning."

"From madness or malice?"

"From ferocity."

"Nay, prince," she replied, after meditating: "the people are not ferocious. Hide nothing from me. Is it delirium or hate?"

"I believe it is hate at the point of delirium."

"Against me?"

"What does it matter?" said Dreux Breze, stepping forward. "The people may hate any one, saving your Majesty."

The Queen did not notice the flattery.

"The people," replied Lambesq, "are acting in hatred of – all above them."

"Good, that is the truth at last?" exclaimed the royal lady resolutely; "I feel that is so."

"I am speaking as a soldier," continued the cavalrist.

"Speak so. What is to be done?"

"Nothing."

"What?" cried she, emboldened by the protest from among the gold-laced coat and gold-hilted sword wearers, "nothing? do you, a Lorraine prince, tell this to the Queen of France when the people are killing and burning?"

A fresh murmur, this time approbative, hailed her speech. She turned, embraced all the gathering with flaring eyes, and tried to distinguish whose flamed the most brightly, thinking they would be the most loyal.

"Do nothing," repeated the prince, "for the Parisians will cool down if not irritated – they are warlike only when teased. Why give them the honors of a war and the risks of a battle? Keep tranquil, and in three days Paris will not talk about the matter."

"But the Bastile?"

"Shut the doors and trap all those who are inside."

Some laughs sounded among the groups.

"Take care, prince," said the lady; "now you are going to the other extreme, and too much encouraging me."

With a thoughtful mien, she went over to where her favorite, the Countess of Polignac, was in a brown study on a lounge. The news had frightened the lady; she smiled only when the Queen stood before her and that was a faint and sickly smile like a wilted lily.

"What do you say to this, countess?"

"Nothing," and she shook her head with unspeakable discouragement.

"Heaven help us, our dashing Diana is afraid," said the Queen, bending over her, "we want our intrepid Countess Charny here. It seems to me that we need her to cheer us up."

"The countess was going out when the King sent for her," explained an attendant.

Then only did Marie Antoinette perceive the isolation and stillness around her. The recent strange and unheard-of events had hit Versailles hard, making the hardest hearts tender, more by astonishment than fear. The sovereign understood that she must lift up these disheartened spirits.

"As nobody suggests any advice, I shall act on my own impulse," she said: "The people are not wicked but led astray." Everybody drew nearer. "They hate us because they do not know us; let us go up to them."

"To punish," interposed a voice, "for they know we are their masters, and to doubt us is a crime."

"Oh, baron," she said, recognizing Bezenval; "do you come to give us good advice?"

"I have given it."

"The King will punish, but as a kind father does."

"He loveth well who chasteneth soundly," replied the noble.

"Are you of this thinking, prince?" she asked of Lambesq. "The populace have committed assassinations – "

"Which they call retaliation," observed a sweet, fresh voice which made the Queen turn.

"Yes, but that is where their error lies, my dear Lamballe, so we shall be indulgent."

"But," resumed the princess with her bland voice, "before one talks of punishment one ought to be sure of winning the victory, methinks."

A general outcry rose against this piece of good sense from the noble lips.

"Not vanquish – with the Swiss troops – and the Germans – and the Lifeguards?"

"Do you doubt the army and the nobility?" exclaimed a young man in Bercheny Hussian uniform, "have we deserved such a slur? Bear in mind, royal lady, that the King can put in battle array forty thousand men, throw them into Paris by the four sides and destroy the town. Forty thousand proven soldiers are worth half a million of Parisian rioters."

The young lieutenant, emboldened to be the mouthpiece of his brother officers, stopped short on seeing how far his enthusiasm had carried him. But the Queen had caught enough to feel the scope of his outburst.

"Do you know the state of affairs, sir?" she inquired.

"I was in the riots yesterday," was his confused reply.

"Then, do not fear to speak. Let us have details."

The lieutenant stepped out, though he colored up.

"My Lords of Bezenval and Lambesq know them better than I," he said.

"Continue, young sir; it pleases me to hear them from you. Under whose orders are these forty thousand men?"

"The superiors are the two gentlemen I named; under whom rule Prince Conde, Narbonne-Fritzlar and Salkenaym. The park of artillery on Montmartre could lay that district in ashes in six hours. At its signal to fire, Vincennes would answer. From four quarters as many corps of ten thousand troops could march in, and Paris would not hold out twenty-four hours."

"This is plain speaking at least, and a clear plan. What do you say to this, Prince Lambesq?"

"That the young gentleman is a perfect general!"

"At least, he is a soldier who does not despair," said the Queen, seeing the lieutenant turn pale with anger.

"Thank your Majesty," replied the latter. "I do not know what your Majesty will decide, but I beg her to count me with the other forty thousand men, including the captains, as ready to die for her."

With these words he courteously saluted the general, who had almost insulted him. This courtesy struck the Queen more than the pledge of devotedness.

"Your name, sir?" said she.

"Viscount Charny," he responded.

"Charny," repeated Marie Antoinette, blushing in spite of herself; "any relation to Count Charny?"

"I am his brother, lady," bowing more lowly than before.

"I might have known that you were one of my most faithful servitors," said she, recovering from her tremor and looking round with confidence, "by the first words you spoke. I thank you, viscount; how comes this to be the first time I have the pleasure of seeing you at court?"

"My eldest brother, head of the family, ordered me to stay with the army, and I have only been in Versailles twice during seven years on the regimental roll-call."

She let a long look dwell on his face.

"You resemble your brother," she remarked. "I shall scold him for having waited for you to present yourself at court."

Electrified by this greeting to their young spokesman, the officers exaggerated their devotion to the royal cause and from each knot burst expressions of heroism able to conquer the whole of France.

These cries flattered Marie Antoinette's secret aspirations, and she meant to profit by them. She saw herself, in perspective, the leader of an immense army, and rejoiced over the victory against the civilians who dared to rebel. Around her, ladies and gentlemen, wild with youth, love and confidence, cheered their brilliant hussars, heavy dragoons, terrible Switzers, and thunderous cannoniers, and laughed at the home-made spikes fastened on clothes-poles, without dreaming that on these coarse spears were to be carried the noblest heads of the realm.

"I am more afraid of a pike than a musket," murmured Princess Lamballe.

"Because it is uglier, my dear Therese," said the Queen. "But you need not be alarmed. Our Parisian pikemen are not worth the famous spearmen of Moat, and the good Swiss of this day carry guns much superior to the spears of their forefathers. Thank God, they can fire true with them!"

"I answer for that," said Bezenval.

Lady Polignac's disheartenment had no effect beyond saddening her royal mistress. The enthusiasm increased among the rest of the gathering, but was damped when the King, coming in abruptly, called for his supper!

The simple word chilled the assemblage. She hoped that he did it to show how cool he was; but in fact, the son of Saint Louis was hungry. That was all.

The King was served on a small table in the Queen's sitting-room. While she was trying to revive the fire, he devoured. The officers did not think this gastronomical exercise worthy of a hero, and looked on as little respectful as they dared to be. The Queen blushed, and her fretfulness was displayed in all her movements. Her fine, nervy, and aristocratic nature could not understand the rule of matter over mind. She went up to him, asking what orders he had to give.

"Oh, orders," he said, with his mouth full: "Will you not be our Egeria in the pinch?"

"My lord, Numa was a peaceful King. But at present we think a belligerent one is wanted, and if your Majesty wants to model himself on an antique pattern, be Romulus if not Tarquin."

"Are these gentlemen all bellicose, too?" he asked with a tranquillity almost beatific.

But his eyes were bloodshot with the animation of the meal and they thought it was courage.

"Yes, Sire, war?" they chorussed.

"Gentlemen, you please me greatly by showing that I may rely upon you in case of need. But I have a Council and an appetite. The former advises me what to do, the other what I have done, to do."

And he chuckled while he handed the "Officer of the King's Mouth" the picked bones and chewed rejecta of his repast on the gold-fringed napkin.

A murmur of choler and stupor ran through the ranks of the nobles who were eager to shed their blood for the monarch. The Queen turned aside and stamped her foot. Prince Lambesq came up to her, saying:

"Your Majesty sees that the King thinks like me that to wait is the best course. It is prudence, and though not my strong card the best to keep in hand for the final rubber in the game we play."

"Yes, my lord, it is a highly necessary virtue," replied she, biting her lip till the blood came.

She was roused from her torpor by the sweet voice of Countess Jules Polignar who came up with her sister-in-law Diana, to propose that, as she and her party were hated by the people as the favorites of the Queen, they should be allowed to go out of the kingdom. At first the Queen would not hear of the sacrifice, but she saw that fear was at the bottom of it, and that the King's aunt Adelaide, had suggested it.

"You are right," she answered; "you run dangers from the rage of a people who are uncurbed. I cannot accept the devotion which prompts you to stay. I wish, I order you to depart."

She was choking with emotions mastering her in spite of her heroism, when the King's voice suddenly sounded in her ear. He was at the dessert.

"Madam," he said, "some one is in your rooms to see you, I am told."

"Sire," she answered, abjuring all thoughts but of royal dignity, "you have orders to give. Here are Lords Lambesq, Bezenval and the Marshal Duke Broglie. What orders for your generals?"

"What do you think of this matter, duke?" he inquired hesitatingly of old Broglie.

"Sire, if you retire your troops, the Parisians will say they daunted them: if you let them stand they will have to defeat them."

Lambesq shook his head, but Bezenval and the Queen applauded.

"Command the forward march," went on the duke.

"Very well, since you all wish it, let it be march!" said the King.

"But at this moment a note was passed to the Queen who read:

"Do not be in a hurry! I await an audience." It was Count Charny's writing.

"Is my lord Charny waiting?" she asked of the messenger.

"Yes; dusty and, I believe, bloody with hard riding."

"Please to await me a moment," said the Queen to Broglie and the others, as she hurried into her private apartments.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE QUEEN'S FAVORITE

On entering her boudoir, the Queen beheld the writer of the missive.

Count George Oliver Charny was a tall man of thirty-five, with a strong countenance warning one of his determination. His bluish grey eyes, quick and piercing as the eagle's, his straight nose, and his marked chin, all gave his physiognomy a martial expression, enhanced by the dashing elegance with which he wore his uniform of Lieutenant in the Royal Lifeguards.

His hands were still quivering under the torn lace ruffles: his sword had been so bent as to fit the sheath badly.

He was pacing the room, a prey to a thousand disquieting thoughts.

"My Lord Charny," cried Marie Antoinette, going straight up to him. "You, here?"

Seeing that he bowed respectfully, according to the regulations, however, she dismissed her servant, who shut the door.

Hardly giving it the time to close, the lady grasped the nobleman's hand with force, and said:

"Why have you come here, count?"

"Because I believe it my duty."

"No; your duty was to flee from Versailles; to do as agreed. To obey me; to act like all my friends – who are afraid of my ill fortune. Your duty is to sacrifice nothing for me; to keep away from me."

"Who keeps away from you?"

"The wise. Whence come you?"

"From Paris, boiling with excitement, intoxicated and bathed in blood."

The Queen covered her face with her hands.

"Alas, not one, not even you, brings me good news from that quarter."

"In such a time ask but one thing of the messengers: truth."

"You have an upright soul, my friend, a brave heart. Do not tell me the truth, at present, for mercy's sake. You arrive when my heart is breaking; for the first time my friends overwhelm me with this truthfulness always used by you. It is impossible for me to trifle with it any longer: it flashes out in everything. In the red sky, the air filled with ominous sounds, the courtiers' faces, now pale and serious. No, count, for the first time in your life, do not tell me the truth."

"Your Majesty is ailing?"

"No, but come and sit beside me. George, your brow is burning."

"A volcano is raging there."

"Your hand is cold," for she was pressing it between hers.

"My heart has been touched by the chill of death," he replied.

"Poor George! I told you we had best forget. Let me no longer be the Queen, hated and threatened; but just the woman. What is the realm, the universe to me, whom one loving heart suffices?"