Marie Antoinette and Her Son Part 16

"Let the poor hungry man go through," cried the young man, pressing up to him. "Only see how exhausted he is. Come, old fellow, give me your hand; support yourself on me."

And he took the man by the arm, and with his powerful elbows forced a way through the crowd. The people let them pa.s.s, and directed their attention again to the door of the prison.

"The verdict is p.r.o.nounced?" asked the young man, softly.

"Yes, Mr. Toulan," he whispered, "the councillor gave me just now, as I was handing him a gla.s.s of water, the paper on which he had written it."

"Give it to me, John, but so that n.o.body can see; otherwise they will suspect what the paper contains, and they will all grab at it and tear it in bits."

The servant slid, with a quick motion, a little folded paper into the hand of the young man, who thanked him for it with a nod and a smile, and then quickly dropped his arm, and forced his way in another direction through the crowd. Soon, thanks to his youth and his skill, he had worked through the dense ma.s.s; then with a flying step he sped through the street next to the square, then more swiftly still through the side streets and alleys, till he reached the gate that led out to the street of Versailles. Outside of this there was a young man in a blue blouse, who, in an idle and listless manner, was leading a bridled horse up and down the road.

"Halloo, Richard, come here!" cried the young man.

"Ah! Mr. Toulan," shouted the lad in the blouse, running up with the horse. "You have come at last, Mr. Toulan. I have been already waiting eight hours for you."

"I will give you a franc for every hour," said Mr. Toulan, swinging himself into the saddle. "Now go home, Richard, and greet my sweetheart, if you see her."

He gave his horse a smart stroke, pressed the spurs into his flanks, and the powerful creature sped like an arrow from a bow along the road to Versailles.

In Versailles, too, and in the royal palace, this day had been awaited with anxious expectations. The king, after ending his daily duties with his ministers, had gone to his workshop in order to work with his locksmith, Girard, upon a new lock, whose skilful construction was an invention of the king.

The queen, too, had not left her room the whole day, and even her friend, the d.u.c.h.ess Julia de Polignac, had not been able to cheer up the queen by her pleasant talk.

At last, when she saw that all her efforts were vain, and that nothing could dissipate the sadness of the queen, the d.u.c.h.ess had made the proposition to go to Trianon, and there to call together the circle of her intimate friends.

But the queen sorrowfully shook her head, and gazed at the d.u.c.h.ess with a troubled look.

"You speak of the circle of my friends," she said. "Ah! the circle of those whom I considered my friends is so rent and broken, that scarcely any torn fragments of it remain, and I fear to bring them together again, for I know that what once is broken cannot be mended again."

"And so does your majesty not believe in your friends any more?"

asked the d.u.c.h.ess, reproachfully. "Do you doubt us? Do you doubt me?"

"I do not doubt you all, and, before all things else, not you," said Marie Antoinette, with a lingering, tender look. "I only doubt the possibility of a queen's having faithful friends. I always forgot, when I was with my friends, that I was the queen, but they never forgot it."

"Madame, they ought never to forget it," replied the d.u.c.h.ess, softly. "With all their love for your majesty, your friends ought never to forget that reverence is due you as much as love, and subjection as much as friendship. They ought never to make themselves your majesty's equals; and if your majesty, in the grace of your fair and gentle heart, designs to condescend to us and make yourself like us, yet we ought never to be so thoughtless as to raise ourselves to you, and want to make ourselves the equals of our queen."

"Oh, Julia! you pain me--you pain me unspeakably," sighed Marie Antoinette, pressing her hand to her heart, as if she wanted to keep back the tears which would mount into her eyes.

"Your majesty knows," continued the d.u.c.h.ess, with her gentle, and yet terribly quiet manner, "your majesty knows how modestly I make use of the great confidence which you most graciously bestow upon me; how seldom and how tremblingly my lips venture to utter the dear name of my queen, of whom I may rightly talk only in intimate converse with your exalted mother and your royal husband. Your majesty knows further--"

"Oh! I know all, all," interrupted the queen, sadly. "I know that it is not the part of a queen to be happy, to love, to be loved, to have friends. I know that you all, whom I have so tenderly loved, feel yourselves more terrified than benefited; I know, that with this confession, happiness has withdrawn from me. I look into the future and see the dark clouds which are descending, and threatening us with a tempest. I see all; I have no illusions more. The fair days are all past--the sunshine of Trianon, and the fragrance of its flowers."

"And will your majesty not go there to-day?" asked the d.u.c.h.ess. "It is such beautiful weather, the sun shines so splendidly, and we shall have such a glorious sunset."

"A glorious sunset!" repeated Marie Antoinette, with a bitter smile.

"A queen is at least allowed to see the sun go down; etiquette has not forbidden a queen to see the sun set and night approach. But the poor creature is not allowed to see the sun rise, and rejoice in the beauty of the dawn. I have once, since I was a queen, seen the sun rise, and all the world cried 'Murder,' and counted it a crime, and all France laughed at the epigrams and jests with which my friends punished me for the crime that the queen of France, with her court, had seen the sun rise. And now you want to allow me to see it set, but I will not; I will not look at this sad spectacle of coming night. In me it is night, and I feel the storms which are drawing nigh. Go, Julia, leave me alone, for you can see that there is nothing to be done with me to-day. I cannot laugh, I cannot be merry. Go, for my sadness might infect you, and that would make me doubly sad."

The d.u.c.h.ess did not reply; she only made a deep reverence, and went with light, inaudible step over the carpet to the door. The queen's face had been turned away, but as the light sound of the door struck her ear, she turned quickly around and saw that she was alone.

"She has left me--she has really gone," sighed the queen, bitterly.

"Oh! she is like all the rest, she never loved me. But who does love me?" asked she, in despair. "Who is there in the world that loves me, and forgets that I am the queen? My G.o.d! my heart cries for love, yearns for friendship, and has never found them. And they make this yearning of mine a crime; they accuse me that I have a heart. 0 my G.o.d! have pity upon me. Veil at least my eyes, that I may not see the faithlessness of my friends. Sustain at least my faith in the friendship of my Julia. Let me not have the bitterness of feeling that I am alone, inconsolably alone."

She pressed her hands before her face, and sank upon a chair, and sat long there, motionless, and wholly given over to her sad, bitter feelings.

After a long time she let her hands fall from her face, and looked around with a pained, confused look. The sun had gone down, it began to grow dark, and Marie Antoinette shuddered within herself.

"By this time the sentence has been p.r.o.nounced," she muttered, softly. "By this time it is known whether the Queen of France can be slandered and insulted with impunity. Oh! if I only could be sure.

Did not Campan say--I will go to Campan." And the queen rose quickly, went with a decisive step out of her cabinet; then through the toilet-room close by, and opened the door which led to the chamber of her first lady-in-waiting, Madame de Campan.

Madame de Campan stood at the window, and gazed with such a look of intense expectation out into the twilight, that she did not notice the entrance of the queen till the latter called her loudly by name.

"The queen!" cried she, drawing back terrified from the window. "The queen! and--here, in my room!"

Marie Antoinette made a movement of impatience. "You want to say that it is not becoming for a queen to enter the room of her trusted waiting-maid, that it is against etiquette. I know that indeed, but these are days, my good Campan, when etiquette has no power over us, and when, behind the royal purple, the poor human heart, in all its need, comes into the foreground. This is such a day for me, and as I know you are true, I have come to you. Did you not tell me, Campan, that you should receive the news as soon as the sentence was p.r.o.nounced?"

"Yes, your majesty, I do hope to, and that is the reason why I am standing at the window looking for my messenger."

"How curious!" said the queen, thoughtfully. "They call me Queen of France, and yet I have no one who hastens to give me news of this important affair, while my waiting-maid has devoted friends, who do for her what no one does for the queen."

"I beg your majesty's pardon," answered Madame de Campan, smiling.

"What they do to-day for me, they do only because I am the waiting- maid of the queen. I was yesterday at Councillor Bugeaud's, in order to pay my respects to the family after a long interval, for his wife is a cousin of mine."

"That means," said the queen, with a slight smile, "that you went there, not to visit your cousin, the councillor's wife, but to visit the councillor himself. Now confess, my good Campan, you wanted to do a little bribery."

"Well, I confess to your majesty, I wanted to see if it was really true that Councillor Bugeaud has gone over to the enemy. Your majesty knows that Madame de Marsan has visited all the councillors, and adjured them by G.o.d and the Holy Church, not to condemn the cardinal, but to declare him innocent."

"That is, they will free the cardinal that I may be condemned," said the queen, angrily. "For to free him is the same as to accuse me and have my honor tarnished."

"That was what I was saying to my cousin, Councillor Bugeaud, and happily I found supporters in his own family. Oh, I a.s.sure your majesty that in this family there are those who are devoted, heart and soul, to your majesty."

"Who are these persons?" asked the queen. "Name them to me, that in my sad hours I may remember them."

"There is, in the first place, the daughter of the councillor, the pretty Margaret, who is so enthusiastic for your majesty that she saves a part of her meagre pocket-money that she may ride over to Versailles at every great festival to see your majesty; and then particularly there is the lover of this little person, a young man named Toulan, a gifted, fine young fellow, who almost worships your majesty--he is the one who promised me to bring news at once after the sentence is p.r.o.nounced, and it is more owing to his eloquence than to mine that Councillor Bugeaud saw the necessity of giving his vote against the cardinal and putting himself on the right side."

At this instant the door which led into the antechamber was hastily flung open, and a lackey entered.

"The gentleman whom you expected has just arrived," he announced.

"It is Mr. Toulan," whispered Madame de Campan to the queen; "he brings the sentence. Tell the gentleman," she then said aloud to the lackey, "to wait a moment in the antechamber; I will receive him directly.

"Go, I beg your majesty," she continued as the lackey withdrew, "I beg your majesty to graciously allow me to receive the young man here."

"That is to say, my dear Campan," said the queen, smiling, "to vacate the premises and leave the apartment. But I am not at all inclined to, I prefer to remain here. I want to see this young man of whom you say that he is such a faithful friend, and then I should like to know the news as soon as possible that he brings. See here, the chimney-screen is much taller than I, and if I go behind, the young man will have no suspicion of my presence, especially as it is dark. Now let him come in. I am most eager to hear the news."

The queen quickly stepped behind the high screen, and Madame Campan opened the door of the antechamber.

"Come in, Mr. Toulan," she cried, and at once there appeared at the open door the tall, powerful figure of the young man. His cheeks were heated with the quick ride, his eyes glowed, and his breathing was rapid and hard. Madame Campan extended her hand to him and greeted him with a friendly smile. "So you have kept your word, Mr.

Toulan," she said. "You bring me the news of the court's decision?"