Part 35 (1/2)
”Who of you could hinder me if I wanted to?” asked the man, with a laugh. ”See here, I hold the hand of the future King of France in my fist, and I can break it if I want to, and make it so that it can never lift the sceptre of France. The little monkey thought he would take hold of my hand and make me draw it back, and now my hand has got his and holds it fast. And mark this, boy, the time is past when kings seized us and trod us down; now we seize them and hold them fast, and do not let them go unless we will.”
”Sir!” cried the queen, motioning back with a commanding gesture the two lackeys who were hurrying up to release the dauphin from the hand of the man, ”sir, I beg you to withdraw your hand, and not to hinder us in our walk.”
”Ah! you are there, too, madame, the baker's wife, are you?” cried the man, with a horrid laugh. ”We meet once more, and the eyes of our most beautiful queen fall again upon the dirty, pitiable face of such a poor, wretched creature as, in your heavenly eyes, the cobbler Simon is!”
”Are you Simon the cobbler?” asked Marie Antoinette.
”It is true, I bethink me now, I have spoken with you once before.
It was when I carried the prince here, for the first time, to Notre Dame, that G.o.d would bless him, and that the people might see him.
You stood then by my carriage, sir!”
”Yes, it is true,” answered Simon, visibly flattered. ”You have, at least, a good memory, queen. But you ought to have paid attention to what I said to you. I am no 'sir,' I am a simple cobbler, and earn my poor bit of bread in the sweat of my brow, while you strut about in your glory and happiness, and cheat G.o.d out of daylight. Then I held the hand of your daughter in my fist, and she cried out for fear, merely because a poor fellow like me touched her.”
”But, Mr. Simon, you see very plainly that I do not cry out,” said the dauphin, with a smile. ”I know that you do not want to do me any harm, and I ask you to be so good as to take away your arm, that my mamma can go on in her walk.”
”But, suppose that I do not do as you want me to?” asked the cobbler, defiantly. ”I suppose it would come that your mamma would dictate to me, and perhaps call some soldiers, and order them to shoot the dreadful people?”
”You know, Master Simon, that I give no such command, and never gave any such,” said the queen, quickly.
”The king and I love our people, and never would give orders to our soldiers to fire upon them.”
”Because you would not be sure, madame, that the soldiers would obey your commands, if you should,” laughed Simon. ”Since we got rid of the Swiss guards, there are no soldiers left who would let themselves be torn in pieces for their king and queen; and you know well that if the soldiers should fire the first shot at us, the people would tear the soldiers in pieces afterward. Yes, yes, the fine days at Versailles are past; here, in Paris, you must accustom yourself to ask, instead of command, and the arm of a single man of the people is enough to stop the Queen and the Dauphin of France.”
”You are mistaken, sir,” said the queen, whose proud heart could no longer be restrained, and allow her to take this humble stand; ”the Queen of France and her son will no longer be detained by you in their walk.”
And with a quick movement she caught the dauphin, struck back at the same moment the fist of the cobbler, s.n.a.t.c.hed the boy away like lightning, and pa.s.sed by before Simon had time to put his arm back.
The people, delighted with this energetic and courageous action of the queen--the people, who would have howled with rage, if the queen had ordered her lackeys to push the cobbler back, now roared with admiration and with pleasure, to see the proud-hearted woman have the boldness to repel the a.s.sailant, and to free herself from him.
They applauded, they laughed, they shouted from thousands upon thousands of throats, ”Long live the queen! Long live the dauphin!”
and the cry pa.s.sed along like wildfire through the whole ma.s.s of spectators behind the fence, and all eyes followed the tall and proud figure of the queen as she walked away.
Only the eyes of Simon pursued her with a malicious glare, and his clinched fists threatened her behind her back.
”She shall pay for this!” he muttered, with a withering curse. ”She has struck back my hand to-day, but the day will come when she will feel it upon her neck, and when I will squeeze the hand of the little rascal so that he shall cry out with pain! I believe now, what Marat has so often told me, that the time of vengeance is come, and that we must bring the crown down and tread it under our feet, that the people may rule! I will have my share in it. I will help bring it down, and tread it under foot. I hate the handsome Austrian woman, who perks up her nose, and thinks herself better than my wife; and if the golden time has come of which Marat speaks, when the people are the master, and the king is the servant, Marie Antoinette shall be my waiting-maid, and her son shall be my ch.o.r.eboy, and his buckle shall make acquaintance with my shoe- straps!”
And while Master Simon was muttering this to himself, he was making a way through the crowd with those great elbows of his, a slipping along the fence, to be able to follow as long as possible the tall figure of the queen, who was now leading the dauphin by the hand, traversing the Arcadian Walk. At the end of it was the fence which led into the little garden reserved for the royal family. Through the iron gate, hard by, adorned with the arms of the kings of France, Marie Antoinette entered an asylum, which had been saved to the crown, free from the intrusion of the people, and she drew a free breath when one of the lackeys closed the gate, and she heard the key grate in the lock.
She stood still a moment to regain her composure, and then she felt that her feet were trembling, and that she scarcely had the power to go farther. It would have been a relief to her to have fallen there upon her knees, and poured all her sorrows and trials into the ear of G.o.d. But there were the lackeys behind her; there was her little son, looking up to her with his great eyes; and there was that dreadful cry coming up from the quay like the roaring of the sea.
The queen could not utter a word of grief or sorrow, she could not sink to the ground in her weakness; she had to show a cheerful face to her son, and a proud brow to her servants. G.o.d only could look into her heart and see the tears which glowed there like burning coals. Yet in all her sadness she had a feeling of triumph, of proud satisfaction. She had preserved her freedom, her independence; she was not Lafayette's prisoner! No, the Queen of France had not put herself under the protection of the people's general; she had not given him the power of watching her with his hated National Guard, and of saying to them: ”At this or that hour the queen takes her walks, and, that she may recreate herself, we will protect her against the rage of the people!”
No, she had defended herself, she had remained the queen all the while, the free queen, and she had gained a victory over the people by showing them that she did not fear them.
”Mamma,” cried the dauphin, interrupting her in her painful and proud thought--” mamma, there comes the king, there comes my papa!
Oh, he will be glad to hear that I was so courageous!”
The queen quickly stooped down and kissed him. ”Yes, truly, my little Bayard, yon have done honor to your great exemplar, and you have really been a little chevalier sans peur et sans reproche. But, my child, true bravery does not glory in its great deeds, and does not desire others to admire them, but keeps silent and leaves it to others to talk about them!”