Taking the Bastile

She went away with weeping eyes but the Queen's were scorching, as she paced her room.

She gave order that she was to be disturbed on no account unless for news from Paris.

At the supposition that Charny had at last perceived that his wife was still young and fair, the Queen found that misfortune is nothing to a heart-chagrin.

But in the midst of her feverish torment came the cruel consolation. According to Andrea's confession she had been wronged in a mesmeric trance and Gilbert had humbled her pride forever. Somewhere was the visible token of her defeat – like a trophy of his shameful triumph, the young man had borne away in the wintry night the offspring of the occult love of the gardener's boy for his suzerain's daughter!

She could not but be wonderstricken at the magical combination of wayward fortune, by which a peasant lad had been made to love the fine lady who was to be the favorite of the Queen of France.

"So the grain of dust has been lifted up to glitter like the diamond in the lustre of the skies," she mused.

Was not this lowborn lover the living symbol of what was happening at the time, a man of the people swaying the politics of a great empire, one who personified, by privilege of the evil spirit who soared over France, the insult to its nobility and the attack on royalty by the plebeians?

While shuddering, she wanted to look upon this monster who by a crime had infused his base blood into the aristocratic blue: who had caused a Revolution that he should be delivered from the castle; it was his principles which had armed Billet, Gonchon, Marat, and the others.

He was a venomous creature and terrible; for he had ruined Andrea as her lover and wrecked the Bastile as the hater of kings.

She ought to know him to avoid him or the better to fight him. Better still to make use of him. At any price she must see him and judge him.

Two thirds of the night were passed in reverie before she sank into troubled slumber.

But even here the Revolution was her nightmare. She had a dream that she was walking in one of her German forests when a gnome seized her from behind a tree and she knew that it was Gilbert.

She shrieked and, waking, found Lady Tourzel, an attendant, by her pillow.

"The Queen is sick," she called out. "Fetch the doctor."

"What doctor is in waiting?" asked the Queen.

"Dr. Gilbert, the new honorary physician whom the King has appointed."

"You speak as if you knew him, and yet he has only been a week in this country from America, and only a day out of the Bastile?"

"Your Majesty, I read his writings, and I was so curious to see the author," said the lady, "that I had him pointed out to me as he was in his rooms."

"Ah! well, let him begin his duties. Tell him I am ailing and request his presence."

Surprised and profoundly affected, though he seemed but a little uneasy, Gilbert appeared before the Queen. With her aristocratic intelligence she read that he felt timid respect for the woman, tranquil audacity for the patient and no emotion whatever for the sovereign. She was vexed, too, that he could look so well in the black suit worn by the third class of society and one the Revolutionists chose.

The less provoking he was in bearing, the more her anger grew. She had fancied the man an odious character, one of the heroes of impudence whom she had often seen around her. She had represented as a Mirabeau, the man she hated next to Cardinal Rohan and General Lafayette, this author of Andrea's woes. He was guilty in her eyes for looking the gentleman. The proud Austrian conceived a wild hatred against one whom she thought had stolen the semblance of the rank he had no business to aspire to.

As he had not ceased to look at her while she was dismissing all her ladies, his persistency exasperated her like importunity.

"Well, sir," she snapped at him like a pistol-shot, "what are you doing in staring at me instead of telling what ails me?"

This furious apostrophe, accompanied with visual lightning, would have blasted any courtier into dropping at her feet and sueing for mercy though he was a hero, a marshal, or a demigod.

But Gilbert made answer quietly:

"The physician judges by the eyes in the first place, my lady. As your Majesty summoned me, I come not from idle curiosity but to obey your orders and fulfill my duty. As far as in my power lays, I study your Majesty."

"Am I sick?"

"Not in the usual meaning of the word, but your Majesty is superexcited."

"Why not say I am out of temper?" she queried with irony.

"Allow me to use the medical term, since I am a medical man called in."

"Be it so. Whence this superexcitement?"

"Your Majesty is too intelligent not to know that a man of medicine only judges the material state: he is not a wizard to sound at the first glance the mind of man."

"Do you mean to imply that at the second, or third time, you could not merely tell me my bodily ail but a mental one?"

"Possibly," returned Gilbert coldly.

She darted at him a withering look while he was simply staring at her with desperate fixedness. Vanquished, she tried to wrench herself away from what was alarming while fascinating, and she upset a stand so that a chocolate cup was smashed on the floor. He saw it fall and the cup shiver, but did not budge. The color flew to her brow, to which she carried her chilly hand; but she dared not direct her eyes again on the magnetizer.

"Under what master did you study?" she inquired, using a scornful tone more painful than insolence.

"I cannot answer without wounding your Majesty."

The Queen felt that he gave her an advantage and she leaped in at the opening like a lioness on a prey.

"Wound me?" she almost screamed. "I vow that you mistake. Dr. Gilbert, you have not studied the French language in as good sources as medicine, I fear. Members of my class are not wounded by inferiors, only tired."

"Excuse me, madam," he returned, "I forgot I was called in to a patient. You are about to stifle with excitement and I shall call your women to put you to bed."

She walked up and down the room, infuriated at being treated like a great child, and, turning, said:

"You are Dr. Gilbert? Strange – I have a girlish memory of one of your name. A boy who looked unkempt, tattered and torn like a little Jean Jacques Rousseau when a vagabond, who was delving the ground with the spade held in his dirty, crooked hands."

"It was I," replied the other calmly. "It was in 1772, that the little gardener's boy to whom you kindly allude, was earning his bread by working in the royal gardens of Trianon. That is seventeen years ago, and much has happened in that time. It needed no longer to make the wild boy a learned man: revolutionary eras are the forcing-beds of mind. Clear as your glance is, your Majesty does not see that the youth is a man of thirty; it is wrong to be astonished that little Gilbert, simple and uncouth, should have become a learned philosopher in the breath of two revolutions."

"Simple? perhaps we will recur to that on another occasion," said the Queen vindictively: "but let us have to do with the learned philosopher, the improved and perfect man whom I have under my eyes."

Gilbert did not notice the sneer though he knew it was a fresh insult.

"You are appointed medical attendant to the King," she continued: "it is clear that I have the welfare of my husband too near my heart to entrust his health to a stranger."

"I offered myself, madam," responded Gilbert, "and his Majesty accepted me without any doubts on my capacity and zeal. I am mainly a political physician, vouched for by Minister Necker. But if the King has need of my knowledge of the scalpel and drugs, I can be as good a healer as human science allows one of our race to be. But the King most wants, besides the good adviser and physician, a good friend."

"You, a friend of the King?" exclaimed the lady, with a new outbreak of scorn. "By virtue of your quackery and charms? have we gone back to the Dark Ages and are you going to rule France with elixirs and jugglery like a Faust?"

"I have no pretentions that way."

"Oh, why have you given that branch? you might, in the same way as you sent Andrea to sleep, put the monsters under a spell who howl and spit fire on our threshold."

This time Gilbert could not help blushing at the allusion to mesmerizing Andrea, which was of inexpressible delight to her who baited him as she believed she had left a wound.

"For you can send people to sleep," she pursued: "you no doubt have studied magnetism with those villains who make slumber a treacherous weapon and read our secrets in our sleep."

"Indeed, madam, I have studied magnetism under the wise Cagliostro."

"That teacher of moral theft, who taught his disciples how to rifle bodies and souls by his infamous practice!"

Gilbert understood all by this, and she shuddered with joy to the core at seeing him lose color.

"Wretch," she rejoiced, "I have stung him to the quick and the blood flows."

But the deepest emotions did not long hold the mesmerizer in their spell. Approaching the Queen who was rash enough to look up in her triumph and let her eyes be caught, he said:

"You are wrong to judge fellow-creatures so harshly. You denounce Cagliostro as a quack when you had a proof of his real science; when you were the Archduchess of Austria and first came to France. When I saw you at Taverney, did not that wonder-worker whom you decry show to your Majesty in a clear cup of water such a picture of your fate that you swooned away?"

Gilbert had not seen the forecast, but he knew from his master, no doubt, what Marie Antoinette had been shown. He struck so hard that she turned dreadfully pale.

"Yes," she said in a hoarse voice, "he showed me a hideous machine of bloodshed. But I do not yet know that such a thing exists."

"I know not that, but he cannot be denied the rank of sage who held such might over his fellow-beings."

"His fellows?" sneered the Queen.

"Nay, his power was so great that crowned heads sank beneath his level," went on Gilbert.

"Shame! I tell you that Cagliostro was a cowardly charlatan, and his mesmeric sleep a crime. In one case it resulted in a deed for which human justice, represented by me, shall seize the author and punish him."

"Madam, be indulgent for those who have sinned."

"Ho, ho! you confess then?"

She thought by the gentleness of his tone that he was imploring her mercy. Some forgot herself and looked at him to scorch him with her indignation.

But her glance crossed his only to melt like a steel blade on which the electric fluid falls and she felt her hatred change to fright, while she recoiled a step to elude coming wrath.

"Ah, madam, do you understand what the power is I had from the master whom you defamed? believe that if I were not the most respectful of your subjects, I could convince you by a terrible experiment. I might constrain you to write down with your own hands lines that would convince you when you read them at your release from the charm. But mark how solid is the patience and the generosity of the man whom you have been insulting, and whom you placed in the Bastile. You regret it was broken open because he was released by the people. And you will hate me, and continue to doubt when I relax the bond with which I hold you."

Ceasing to govern her with glances and magnetic passes, he allowed her to regain some self-control, like the bird in the vacuum, to whom a little air is restored.

"Send me to sleep – force me to speak or write while sleep-bound," cried the Queen, white with terror. "Have you dared? Do you know that your threat is high-treason? a crime punishable with death!"

"Do not cry out too soon. If I thus charmed you and forced you to betray your inmost secrets it would be with a witness by. He would repeat your revelations so as to leave you no doubt."

"A witness? but, think, sir, that a witness to such a deed would be an accomplice."

"A husband is not the accomplice to an experiment he favors on his wife."

"The King?" screamed Marie Antoinette with dread, revealing rather the wife than the medium reluctant to make a scene for the spiritualist: "fie, Dr. Gilbert!"

"The King, your natural defender, your sustainer," replied Gilbert quietly. "He would relate, when you were awakened, how respectful I was, while proud in proving my science on the most venerated of sovereigns."

He left her to meditate on the depth of his words.

"I see," she said at length, "you must be a mortal enemy – "

"Or a proven friend – "

"Impossible; friendship cannot dwell beside fear or distrust."

"Between subject and monarch, friendship cannot live but on the confidence the subject inspires. I have made the vow not to use my weapons but to repulse the wrongs done me. All for defense, nothing for offence!"

"Alas," moaned the Queen: "I see that you set a trap. After frightening the woman, you seek to rule the Queen."

"No, lady, I am not a paltry speculator. You are the first woman in whom I have found all feminine passions with all the dominant faculties of man. You can be a woman and a friend. I admire you and would serve you. I will do it without receiving aught from you – merely to study you. I will do more to show you how I serve you: if I am in the way send me forth."

"Send you hence," said she with gladness.

"But no doubt you will reflect that my power can be exercised from afar. It is true: but do not fear – I shall not employ it."

The Queen was musing, unable to reply to this strange man when steps were heard in the corridor.

"The King," she exclaimed.

"Then point out the door by which I may depart without being seen by him."

"Stay," she said.

He bowed, and remained impassible while she sought to read on his brow to what point triumph rose in him more plain than anger or disquiet.

"At least he might have shown his delight," she thought.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE PRIVATE COUNCIL

Louis entered briskly but heavily as was his wont. His manner was busy and curious, strongly contrasting with the Queen's cold rigidity.

His high color had not left him. An early riser and proud of the heartiness he had imbibed with the morning breeze, he breathed noisily and set his foot vigorously on the floor.

"The doctor – what has become of the doctor?" he inquired.

"Good morning, Sire! how do you feel this morning? are you tired?"

"I have slept six hours, my allowance. I feel very well, and my head is clear. But you are a little pale. I heard you had sent for the new doctor."

"Here is Dr. Gilbert," said the Queen, standing aside from a window recess where the doctor had been screened by the curtains.

"But were you unwell that you sent for him?" continued the monarch: "You blush – you must have some secret, since you consult him instead of the regular doctors of the household. But have a care! Dr. Gilbert is one of my confidential friends, and if you tell him anything he will repeat it to me."

The Queen had become purple from being merely red.

"Nay, Sire," said Gilbert, smiling.

"What, has the Queen corrupted my friends?"

Marie Antoinette laughed one of those dry, half-suppressed laughs signifying that the conversation has gone far enough or it fatigues: Gilbert understood but the King did not.

"Come, doctor, since this amuses the Queen, let me hear the joke."

"I was asking the doctor why you called him so early. I own that his presence at Versailles much puzzles me," said the Queen.

"I was wanting the doctor to talk politics with him," said Louis, his brow darkening.

"Oh, very well," said she, taking a seat as if to listen.

"But we are not going to talk pleasant stuff; so we must go away to spare you an additional pang."

"Do you call business matters pangs?" majestically said the Queen. "I would like you to stay. Dr. Gilbert, surely you will not disobey me."

"But I want the doctor's opinion and he cannot give it according to his conscience if you are by us."

"What risk does he run of displeasing me by speaking according to his conscience?" she demanded.

"That is easy to understand, madam; you have your own line of policy, which is not always ours; so – "

"You would clearly imply that the Gilbert policy runs counter to mine?"

"It should be so, from the ideas your Majesty knows me to entertain," said Gilbert. "But your Majesty should know that I will speak the truth before you as plainly as to his Majesty."

"That is a gain," said Marie Antoinette.

"Truth is not always good to speak," observed the monarch.

"When useful?" suggested Gilbert.

"And the intention good," added the Queen.

"We do not doubt that," said King Louis. "But if you are wise, madam, you will leave the doctor free use of his language, which I stand in need of."

"Sire, since the Queen provokes the truth, and I know her mind is too noble and powerful to dread it, I prefer to speak before both my sovereigns."

"I ask it."

"I have faith in your Majesty's wisdom," said Gilbert, bowing to the lady. "The question turns on the King's glory and happiness."

"Then you were right to have faith in me. Commence, sir."

"Well, I advise the King to go to Paris."

A spark dropping into the eight thousand pounds of gunpowder in the City Hall cellars would not have caused the explosion of this sentence in the Queen's bosom.

"There," said the King who had been startled by her cry, "I told you so, doctor."

"The King," proceeded the indignant woman, "in a city revolted; among scythes and pitchforks, borne by the villains who massacred the Swiss, and murdered Count Launay and Provost Flesselles; the King crossing the City Hall Square and slipping in the blood of his defenders: you are insane to speak thus, sir!"

Gilbert lowered his eyes as in respect but said not a word. The King writhed in his chair as though on a red hot grid.

"Madam," said the doctor at last, "I have seen Paris, and you have not even been out of the palace to see Versailles, Do you know what Paris is about?"

"Storming some other Bastile," jeered the Queen.

"Assuredly not; but Paris knows there is another fortress between it and the King. The city is collecting the deputies of its forty-eight wards and sending them here."

"Let them come," said the Queen, with fierce joy. "They will be hotly received."

"Take care, madam, for they come not alone but escorted by twenty thousand National Guards."

"What is that?"

"Do not speak lightly of an institution which will be a power one day. It will bind and unbind."

"My lord," you have ten thousand men who are equal to these twenty thousand," said the Queen: "call them up to give these blackguards their chastisement, and the example which all this revolutionary spawn has need of. I would sweep them all away in a week, if I were listened to."

"How deceived you are – by others," said Gilbert, shaking his head, sadly. "Alas! think of civil war excited by a queen. Only one did so, and she went down to the grave with the epithet of the Foreigner."

"Excited by me? what do you mean? did I fire on the Bastile without provocation?"

"Pray, instead of urging violence, hearken to reason," interposed the King. "Continue," he said to Gilbert.

"Spare the King a battle with doubtful issue; these hates which grow hotter at a distance, these boastings which become courage on occasion. You may by gentleness soften the contact of this army with the palace. Let the King meet them. These twenty thousand are coming perhaps to conquer the King: let him conquer them, and turn them into his own body-guard; for they are the people."

The King nodded approval.

"But do you not know what will be said?" she cried, "that the King applauds what was done, the slaying of his faithful Switzers, the massacre of his officers, the putting his handsome city to fire and blood. You will make him dethrone himself and thank these gentlemen!"

A disdainful smile passed over her lips.

"No, madam, there is your mistake. This conduct would mean, there was some justice in the people's grievances. 'I come to pardon where they overstepped the dealing of wild justice. I am the King and the chief; the head of the French Revolution as Henry Fourth was head of the League and the nation. Your generals are my officers, your National Guards my soldiers; your magistrates my own. Instead of urging me on, follow me if you can. The length of my stride will prove that I lead in the footsteps of Charlemagne.'"

"He is right," the King said ruefully.

"Oh, Sire, for mercy's sake, do not listen to this man, your enemy."

"Her Majesty tells you what she thinks of my suggestion," said Gilbert.

"I think, sir, that you are the only person who has ever ventured to tell me the truth," commented Louis XVI.

"The truth? is that what you have told?" exclaimed the Queen. "Heaven have mercy!"

"Yes, madam," said Gilbert, "and believe me that it is the lamp by which the throne and royalty will be prevented rolling into the abyss."

He bowed very humbly as he spoke, to the Queen, who appeared profoundly touched this time – by his humility or the reasoning?

The King rose with a decisive air as though determined on realization. But from his habit of doing nothing without consulting with his consort, he asked:

"Do you approve?"

"It must be," was her rejoinder.

"I am not asking for your abnegation but support to my belief."

"In that case I am convinced that the realm will become the meanest and most deplorable of all in Christendom."

"You exaggerate. Deplorable, I grant, but mean?"

"Your ancestors left you a dreary inheritance," said Marie Antoinette sorrowfully.

"Which I grieve you should share," added Louis.

"Allow me to say, Sire, that the future may not be so lamentable," interposed Gilbert, who pitied the dethroned rulers; "a despotic monarchy has ceased, but a constitutional one commences."

"Am I the man to found that in France?" asked the King.

"Why not?" exclaimed the Queen, catching some hope from Gilbert's suggestion.

"Madam, I see clearly. From the day when I walk among men like themselves, I lose all the factitious strength necessary to govern France as the Louis before me did. The French want a master and one who will wield the sword. I feel no power to strike."

"Not to strike those who would rob your children of their estate," cried the Queen, "and who wish to break the lilies on your crown?"

"What am I to answer? if I answer No, I raise in you one of those storms which embitter my life. You know how to hate – so much the better for you. You can be unjust; I do not reproach you, for it is an excellent trait in the lordly. Madam, we must resign ourselves: it takes strength to push ahead this car with scythe-bladed wheels, and we lack strength."

"That is bad, for it will run over our children," sighed Marie Antoinette.

"I know it, but we shall not be pushing it."

"We can draw it back, Sire."

"Oh, beware," said Gilbert, deeply, "it will crush you then."

"Let him speak what the newspapers have been saying for a week past. At any rate he wraps up the bitterness of his free speech," said the King. "In short, I shall go to Paris."

"Who knows but you will find it the gulf I fear?" said the Queen in a hollow, irritated voice. "The assassin may be there with his bullet, who will know among a thousand threatening fists, which holds the dagger?"

"Fear nothing of that sort, they love me," said Louis.

"You make me pity you for saying that. They love you who slay and mangle and cut the throats of your representatives? The Governor of the Bastile was your image. They killed that brave and faithful servitor, as they would kill you in his stead. The more easy as they know you and that you would turn the other cheek to the smiter. If you are killed, what about my children?" concluded the Queen.

"Madam," struck in Gilbert, deeming it time he intervened, "the King is so respected that I fear that his entry will be like that of Juggernaut, under whose wheels the fanatics will throw themselves to be crushed. This march into Paris will be a triumphal progress."

"I am rather of the doctor's opinion," said the monarch.

"Say you are eager to enjoy this triumph," said the Queen.