The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty
Ah, if Charny could have surmised what a quantity of tears would follow
those, no doubt the immense grief would have made him fall at her feet,
and ask pardon for any grievances she had against him.
But the future is enveloped in mystery which no human hand can unveil
before the hour and the black garb which Marie Antoinette was to wear to
the scaffold, was too thickly embroidered with gold for one to spy the
gloom of it.
“Believe, my lady,” he said, “that I am truly grateful for your
remembrance of me and sorrow for my brother? unfortunately I must be
brief as the King has entrusted me with a mission so that I leave in an
hour.”
“What, do you abandon us like the others?”
“I repeat it is a mission.”
“But you refused the like a week ago!”
“In a week much happens in a man’s existence to alter his
determination.”
“Do you depart alone?” she asked, making an effort.
She breathed again when he answered: “Alone.”
“Where do you go?” she asked, recovering from her weakness.
“It is the King’s secret, but he has none from you.”
“My lord, the secret is ours alike,” said Marie Antoinette haughtily.
“But is it abroad or in the kingdom?”
“The King alone can give your Majesty the desired information.”
“So you go away,” said she, with profound sorrow overcoming the
irritation from Charny’s reserve, “to run into dangers afar, and I am
not to know what they are!”
“Wheresoever I go, you will have a devoted heart daring all for you: and
the dangers will be light since I expose my life in the service of the
two sovereigns whom I most venerate on earth.”
The Queen uttered a sob which seemed to tear out her heart; and she said
with a hand on her throat as if to keep down her gorge.
“It is well--go! for you love me no longer.”
Charny felt a thrill run through him; it was the first time this haughty
woman and ruler had bowed unto him.
At any other time and under any other circumstances, he must have fallen
at her feet if only to crave pardon; but the remembrance of what had
happened between him and the King recalled all his strength.
“My lady,” he said, “I should be a scoundrel if, after all the tokens of
kindness and confidence the King has showered on me, I were to assure
your Majesty of anything but my respect and devotion.”
“It is very well,” said she; “you are free to go.”
But when he departed without looking behind him, she waited till she
heard him, not returning, but continuing his departure, in the carriage
which rolled out of the courtyard.
She rang for her foster-brother.
“Weber,” she ordered, “go to the Countess of Charny’s residence and say
I must speak with her this evening. I had an appointment with Dr.
Gilbert, but I postpone that till the morning.”
She dismissed him with a wave of the hand.
“Yes, politics to-morrow,” she mused: “besides my conversation with
Andrea may influence me on the course I take.”
CHAPTER XX.
WITHOUT HUSBAND--WITHOUT LOVER.
The Queen was wrong for Charny did not go to his wife’s house. He went
to the Royal Post to have horses put to his own carriage. But while
waiting, he wrote a farewell to Andrea which the servant who took his
horses home, carried to her.
She was still dwelling over it, having kissed it with profound feeling,
when Weber arrived. Her answer to him was simply that she would conform
to her Majesty’s orders. And she proceeded to the palace without dread
as without impatience.
But it was not so with the Queen. Feverish, she had welcomed Count
Provence coming to see how Favras had been received, and she committed
the King more deeply than he had pledged himself.
Provence went away delighted, thinking that the King would be removed,
thanks to the money he had borrowed from the Genoese banker Zannone, and
to Favras and his Hectors. Then he stood a chance of becoming Regent of
the realm, perhaps foreseeing that he would yet be King as Louis XVIII.
If the forced departure of the King failed, he would take to flight with
what was left of the loan, and join his brothers in Italy.
On his leaving, the Queen went to Princess Lamballe, on whom she made it
a habit to pour her woes or her joys in the absence of her other
favorites, Andrea or the Polignacs.
Poor martyr! who dares grope in the darkness of alcoves to learn if this
friendship were pure or criminal, when inexorable History was coming
with feet red-shod in blood, to tell the price you paid for it?
Then she went to dinner for an hour, where both chief guests were absent
in thought, the King thinking of Charny’s quest, the Queen of the Favras
enterprise.
While the former preferred anything to being helped by the foreigners,
the Queen set them first: for of course they were her people. The King
was connected with the Germans, but then the Austrians are not German to
the Germans.
In the flight she was arranging she saw no such crimes as she was
afterwards taxed with: she felt justified in calling in the mailed hand
to avenge her for the slights and insults with which she was deluged.
The King, as we have shown him, distrusted kings and princes. He relied
on the priests. He approved of all the decrees against nobles and
classes but not of the decree against the priests, which he vetoed. For
them he risked his greatest dangers. Hence the Pope, unable to make a
saint of him, made him a martyr.
Contrary to her habit, the Queen gave little time to her children this
day; untrue to her husband in heart, she had no claim on their
endearments. Such odd contradictions are known only to woman’s heart.
The Queen retired early to her own rooms, where she shut herself up with
Weber as door-ward. She alleged that she had letters to write.
The King little noticed her going, as some minor events engrossed him;
the Chief of Police was coming to confer with him.
The Assembly had changed the old form in public documents of “King of
France and Navarre” to “King of the French”: and it was debating on the
Rights of Man, when it had better be seeing to the Bread Question, more
pressing than ever. The arrival of the “Baker” and his family from
Versailles had not fed the famished people and the bakeries had strings
of customers at their doors.
But the Assemblymen did not have to dance attendance for a loaf, and
they had a special baker, one François in Marchepalu Street, who set
aside rolls for them out of every baking.
The head of the police was discussing the bread riots with the ruler
when Weber ushered Andrea into his mistress’s presence.
Though she expected her, Marie Antoinette started when her visitor was
announced.
When they were girls together, at Taverney, they had made a kind of
agreement of love and duties exchanged in which the higher personage had
always had the advantage.
Nothing annoys rulers so much as senses of obligation, particularly in
matters of affection.
While thinking she had reproaches to cast on her friend, the Queen felt
under a debt to her.
Andrea was always the same: pure and cool as the diamond but cutting and
invulnerable like it, too.
“Be welcome, Andrea, as ever,” said the Queen to this cold, walking
ghost.
The countess shivered for she recognized some of the tone the Queen used
to speak with when the Dauphiness.
“Needs must I tell your Majesty that she should not have had to send for
me without the royal residence, if I had always been spoken to, in that
tone?” said the countess.
Nothing could better help the Queen than this opening: she greeted it as
facilitating her course.
“Alas, you ought to know that all womankind have not your immutable
serenity,” she said; “I, above all, who had to ask your aid so
generously accorded----“
“The Queen speaks of a time forgotten by me and I believed gone from her
memory.”
“The reply is stern,” said the other: “you might naturally hold me as
ungrateful: but what you took for ingratitude was but impotence.”
“I should have the right to accuse you, if ever I had asked you for
anything and my wish were opposed,” said the countess, “but how can your
Majesty expect me to complain when I have sought nothing?”
“Shall I tell you that it is just this indifference which shocks me;
yes, you seem a supernatural being brought from another sphere in some
whirlwind, and thrown among us like the crystal aerolites. One is
daunted by her weakness beside the never-weakening; but in the end
assurance returns, for supreme indulgence must be in perfection: it is
the purest source in which to lave the soul, and in profound grief, one
sends for the superhuman being for consolation, though her blame is
dreaded.”
“Alas, if your Majesty sends for me for this, I fear the expectation
will be disappointed.”
“Andrea, you forget in what awful plight you upheld me and comforted
me,” said the Queen.
Her hearer turned visibly paler. Seeing her totter and close her eyes
from losing strength, the Queen moved to support her but she resisted
and stood steady.
“If your Majesty had pity on your faithful servant, you would spare her
memories which she had almost banished from her: she is a poor comforter
who seeks comfort from nobody, not even heaven, from doubt that even
heaven hath power to console certain sorrows.”
“Then you have others to tell of than what you have entrusted to me? the
time has come for you to explain, and that is why I sent for you. You
love Count Charny?”
“I do,” replied Andrea.
“Oh!” groaned the Queen like a wounded lioness. “I thought as much. How
long since?”
“Since I first laid eyes on him.”
Marie Antoinette recoiled from this statue which confessed it was
animated by a spirit.
“And yet you said nothing?”
“You perceived it, because you loved him.”
“No; but you mean that you loved him more than I, because you perceived
my love. If I see it now, it is because he loves me no longer say?” and
she clutched her arm.
Andrea replied not by word, or sign.
“This is enough to drive one mad,” cried the royal lady. “Why not kill
me outright by telling me that he loves me not.”
“Count Charny’s love or indifference to other women than his wife are
secrets of Count Charny. They are not for me to reveal,” observed
Andrea.
“His secrets? I dare say he has made you his bosom friend, indeed,”
sneered the Queen with bitterness.
“The count has never spoken to me of his love or indifference towards
your Majesty.”
“Not even this morning?” She fixed a soul penetrative glance upon her.
“Not even this morning. He announced his departure to me by letter.”
“Ah, he wrote to you?” exclaimed the Queen in a burst which, like King
Richard’s cry: “My kingdom for a horse!” implied that she would give her
crown for that letter.
Andrea comprehended her absorbing desire but she wished to enjoy her
anxiety for a space, like a woman. At last, drawing the letter from her
corsage, warm and perfumed, she held it out to her royal mistress. The
temptation was too strong, and the latter opened it and read:
“MY LADY: I am leaving town on a formal order from the King. I
cannot tell even you whither I go, wherefore, or how long I am to
stay away: these are matters probably little in import to you, but
I ought none the less to wish I were authorized to tell you.
“I had the intention to take farewell of you: but I dared not
without your permission----“
The Queen had learnt what she wanted to know, and was about to return
the writing, but Andrea bade her read to the end as if she had a claim
to command.
“I refused the last mission offered me because, poor madman! I
believed that affection retained me in Paris: but I have
unfortunately acquired proof to the contrary, and I accept with joy
this opportunity to depart from hearts to which I am indifferent.