Part 37 (1/2)
”Ah, see,” cried Madame Elizabeth, with a smile, ”I believe now our Louis has fallen asleep.”
But the child quickly raised his head and looked at the smiling young princess with a reproachful glance.
”Ah, my dear aunt,” cried he, reprovingly, ”how could any one sleep when mamma sings?” [Footnote: The dauphin's own words.--See Beauchesne, vol. i., p. 27.]
Marie Antoinette drew the child within her arms, and her countenance beamed with delight. Never had the queen received so grateful a compliment from the most flattering courtier as these words of her fair-haired boy conveyed, who threw his arms around her neck and nestled up to her.
The Queen of France is still a rich, enviable woman, for she has children who love her; the Queen of France ought not to look without courage into the future, for the future belongs to her son. The throne which now is so tottering and insecure, shall one day belong to him, the darling of her heart, and therefore must his mother struggle with all her power, and with all the means at her command contend for the throne for the Dauphin of France, that he may receive the inheritance of his father intact, and that his throne may not in the future plunge down into the abyss which the revolution has opened.
No, the dauphin, Louis Charles, shall not then think reproachfully of his parents; he shall not have cause to complain that through want of spirit and energy they have imperilled or lost the sacred heritage of his fathers.
No, Queen Marie Antoinette may not halt and lose courage,--not even when her husband has done so, and when he is prepared to humbly bow his sacred head beneath that yoke of revolution, which the heroes and orators selected by the nation have wished to put upon his neck in the name of France.
This makes hers a double duty, to be active, to plan, and work; to keep her head erect, and look with searching eye in all directions to see whence help and deliverance are to come.
Not from without can they come, not from foreign monarchs, nor from the exiled princes. Foreign armies which might march into the country would place the king, who had summoned them to fight with his own people, in the light of a traitor; and the moment that they should pa.s.s the frontiers of France, the wrath of the nation would annihilate the royal couple.
Only from those who had called down the danger could help come. The chiefs of the revolution, the men who had raised their threatening voices against the royal couple, must be won over to become the advocates of royalty. And who was more powerful, who more conspicuous among all these chiefs of the revolution, and all the orators of the National a.s.sembly, than Count Mirabeau!
When he ascended the Speaker's tribune of the National a.s.sembly all were silent, and even his opponents listened with respectful attention to his words, which found an echo through all France; when he spoke, when from his lips the thunder of his speeches resounded, the lightning flashed in his eyes, and his head was like the head of a lion, who, with the shaking of his mane and the power of his anger, destroyed every thing which dared to put itself in his way.
And the French nation loved this lion, and listened in reverential silence to the thunder of his speech, and the throne shook before him. And the excitable populace shouted with admiration whenever they saw the lion, and deified that Count Mirabeau, who, with his powerul, lace-cuffed hand, had thrust these words into the face of his own caste: ”They have done nothing more than to give themselves the trouble to be born.”
The people loved this aristocrat, who was abhorred by his family and the men of his own rank; this count whom, the n.o.bility hated because the Third Estate loved him.
CHAPTER XVII.
MIRABEAU.
”Count Mirabeau must be won over,” Count de la Marck ventured to say one day to Marie Antoinette. ”Count Mirabeau is now the mightiest man in France, and he alone is able to bring the nation back again to the throne.”
”It is he,” replied the queen, with a glow, ”who is most to blame for alienating the nation from the throne. Never will the renegade count be forgiven! Never can the king stoop so low as to pardon this apostate, who frivolously professes the new religion of 'liberty,'
and disowns the faith of his fathers.”
”Your majesty,” replied Count de la Marck, with a sigh, ”it may be that in the hand of this renegade lies the future of your son.”
The queen trembled, and the proud expression on her features was softened.
”The future of my son?” said she. ”What do you mean by that? What has Count Mirabeau to do with the dauphin? His wrath follows us only, his hatred rests upon us alone! I grant that at present he is powerful, but over the future he has no sway. I hope, on the contrary, that the future will avenge the evil that Mirabeau does to us in the present.”
”But how does it help, madame, if vengeance hurries him on?” asked Count de la Marck, sadly. ”The temple which Samson pulled down was not built again, that Samson might be taken from its ruins; it remained in its dust and fragments, and its glory was gone forever.
Oh, I beseech your majesty, do not listen to the voice of your righteous indignation, but only to the voice of prudence. Master your n.o.ble, royal heart, and seek to reconcile your adversaries, not to punish them!”
”What do you desire of me?” asked Marie Antoinette, in amazement.
”What shall I do?”
”Your majesty must chain the lion,” whispered the count. ”Your majesty must have the grace to change Mirabeau the enemy into Mirabeau the devoted ally and friend!”
”Impossible, it is impossible!” cried the queen, in horror. ”I cannot descend to this. I never can view with friendly looks this monster who is accountable for the horrors of those October days. I can only speak of this man, who has created his reputation out of his crimes, who is a faithless son, a faithless husband, a faithless lover, a faithless aristocrat, and a faithless royalist--I can only speak of him in words of loathing, scorn, and horror! No, rather die than accept a.s.sistance from Count Mirabeau! Do you not know, count, that he honors me his queen with his enmity and his contempt? Is it not Mirabeau who caused the States-General to accept the words 'the person of the king is inviolable,' and to reject the words 'and that of the queen?' Was it not Mirabeau who once, when my friends exhorted him to moderation, and besought him to soften his words about the Queen of France, had the grace to answer with a shrug, 'Well, she may keep her life!' Was it not Mirabeau who was to blame for the October days? Was it not Mirabeau who publicly said: 'The king and the queen are lost. The people hate them so, that they would even destroy their corpses?'” [Footnote: The queen's own words.--See Goncourt, ”Marie Antoinette,” p. 305.]