Part 31 (1/2)

”No, do not go. It is such a fearful sight, this raging ma.s.s at one's feet, it confuses one's senses. Do not go, Marie!”

But the cry below had now expanded into the volume of a hurricane, and made the very walls of the palace shake.

”You hear plainly, sire,” cried Marie Antoinette; ”there is just as much danger whether we see or do not see it. Let me do, therefore, what you have done! Come, children!”

And walking between the two little ones, the queen stepped out upon the balcony with a firm step and raised head, followed by the king, who placed himself behind Marie Antoinette, as if he were a sentinel charged with the duty of protecting her life.

But the appearance of the whole royal family did not produce the effect which Louis had, perhaps, antic.i.p.ated. The crowd did not now break out into snouts of joy.

They cried and roared and howled: ”The queen alone! No children! We want no one but the queen! Away with the children!”

It was all in vain that Louis advanced to the edge of the platform; in vain that he raised his arms as if commanding silence. The sound of his voice was lost in the roar of the mob, who, with their clinched fists, their pikes and other weapons, their horrid cry, so frightened the dauphin that he could not restrain his tears.

The royal family drew back and entered the apartment again, where they were received by the pale, trembling, speechless, weeping courtiers and servants.

But the mob below were not pacified. They appeared as though they were determined to give laws to the king and queen, and demand obedience from them.

”The queen! we will see the queen!” was the cry again and again.

”The queen shall show herself!”

”Well, be it so!” cried Marie Antoinette, with cool decision, and, pressing through the courtiers, who wanted to restrain her, and even impatiently thrusting back the king, who implored her not to go, she stepped out upon the balcony. Alone, without any one to accompany her, and having only the protection which the lion-tamer has when he enters the cage of the fierce monsters--the look of the eye and the commanding mien!

And the lion appeared to be subdued; his fearful roar suddenly ceased, and in astonishment all these thousands gazed up at the queen, the daughter of the Caesars, standing above in proud composure, her arms folded upon her breast, and looking down with steady eye into the yawning and raging abyss.

The people, overcome by this royal composure, broke into loud shouts of applause, and, during the continuance of these thousand-voiced bravos, the queen, with a proud smile upon her lips, stepped back from the balcony into the chamber.

The dauphin flew to her with open arms and climbed up her knee.

”Mamma queen, my dear mamma queen,” cried he, ”stay with me, don't go out again to these dreadful men, I am afraid of them--oh, I am afraid!”

Marie Antoinette took the little boy in her arms, and with her cold, pale lips pressed a kiss upon his forehead. For one instant it seemed as if she felt herself overcome by the fearful scene through which she had just pa.s.sed--as if the tears which were confined in her heart would force themselves into her eyes. But Marie Antoinette overcame this weakness of the woman, for she felt that at this hour she could only be a queen.

With the dauphin in her arms, and pressing him closely to her heart, she advanced to the king, who, in order not to let his wife see the tears which flooded his face, had withdrawn to the adjoining apartment and was leaning against the door.

”Sire,” said Marie Antoinette, entering the room, and presenting the dauphin to him, ”sire, I conjure you that, in this fearful hour, you will make one promise to me.”

”What is it, Marie?” asked the king, ”what do you desire?”

”Sire, by all that is dear to you and me,” continued the queen, ”by the welfare and safety of France, by your own and by the safety of this dear child, your successor, I conjure you to promise me that, if we ever must witness such a scene of horror again, and if you have the means to escape it, you will not let the opportunity pa.s.s,”

[Footnote: The very words of the queen.--See Beauchesne, ”Louis XVI., sa Vie,” etc., p 145.]

The king, deeply moved by the n.o.ble and glowing face of the queen, by the tones of her voice, and by her whole expression, turned away.

He wanted to speak, but could not; tears choked his utterance; and, as if he were ashamed of his weakness, he pushed the queen and the dauphin back from him, hastened through the room, and disappeared through the door on the opposite side.

Marie Antoinette looked with a long, sad face after him, and then returned to the balcony-room. A shudder pa.s.sed through her soul, and a dark, dreadful presentiment made her heart for an instant stop beating. She remembered that this chamber in which she had that day suffered such immeasurable pain--that this chamber, which now echoed the cries of a mob that had this day for the first time prescribed laws to a queen, had been the dying-chamber of Louis XIV. [Footnote: Historical.--See Goncourt, ”Marie Antoinette,” p. 195.] A dreadful presentiment told her that this day the room had become the dying- chamber of royalty.

Like a pale, b.l.o.o.d.y corpse, the Future pa.s.sed before her eyes, and, with that lightning speed which accompanies moments of the greatest excitement, all the old dark warnings came back to her which she had previously encountered. She thought of the picture of the slaughter of the babes at Bethlehem, which decorated the walls of the room in which the dauphin pa.s.sed his first night on French soil; then of that dreadful prophecy which Count do Cagliostro had made to her on her journey to Paris, and of the scaffold which he showed her. She thought of the hurricane which had made the earth shake and turn up trees by their roots, on the first night which the dauphin had pa.s.sed in Versailles. She thought too of the dreadful misfortune which on the next day happened to hundreds of men at the fireworks in Paris, and cost them their lives. She recalled the moment at the coronation when the king caught up the crown which the papal nuncio was just on the point of placing on his head, and said at the same time,

”It p.r.i.c.ks me.” [Footnote: Historical.]And now it seemed to her to be a new, dreadful reason for alarm, that the scene of horror, which she had just pa.s.sed through, should take place in the dying-chamber of that king to whom France owed her glory and her greatness.

”We are lost, lost!” she whispered to herself. ”Nothing can save us.