Taking the Bastile

The count went down on one knee and kissed the hem of her dress with the reverence of the ancients for a goddess.

"Oh, count, my only friend, do you know what Countess Diana is doing?"

"Leaving the country," returned Charny.

"He guesses rightly," muttered the Queen, "how could he tell that?"

"Oh, goodness – anything can be surmised at this hour."

"But if flight is so natural, why do not you and your family take it?"

"I do not do so, in the first place, because I have pledged myself not only to your Majesty, but to myself, not to leave you during the storm. My brothers stay, as they regulate their movements by mine: and my wife remains because she loves your Majesty most sincerely, I believe."

"Yes, Andrea has a most noble heart," said the lady with visible coldness.

"That is why she will not quit Versailles," replied Charny.

"It follows that I shall always have you near me," went on the Queen, in the same glacial tone, awarded to prevent the hearer telling whether she felt disdain or jealousy.

A witness could have divined this secret, however, from their manner in this privacy.

Meeting romantically, without either knowing the other's quality, Marie Antoinette and George Charny had fallen in love with each other. The royal dame had left the passion swell to the highest point, when the King had surprised the pair in dangerous intimacy. There was only one way to save her reputation: she blurted out the first name of a lady that occurred to her, and protested that the count was at her knees sueing for this lady to be his wife, with the royal approval.

The Queen had named Andrea Taverney, her companion, and the King, his suspicions dismissed, consented that she should be withdrawn from the convent where she had taken refuge, to fulfill the pretendedly wish of Charny. Was it religion that impelled her, or love on her own side for Charny? It was love, for she eagerly accepted the proffered hand, and the wedding took place, all the more as she had had the misfortune to learn that she was used as the cover for the royal amour.

But at the churchdoor they separated and had dwelt apart ever since.

Had she been truly a wife, the experiment of Dr. Gilbert might have failed, for mesmerism succeeds best with the single.

"Your Majesty," resumed the count, "made me Lifeguards lieutenant at Versailles, and I should not have quitted my post only you ordered me to guard the Tuileries Palace, You called it a necessary exile. Your Majesty knows that the countess neither approved nor disapproved, as she was not consulted."

"True," observed the other, still cold.

"I now believe my place is here," proceeded the officer with intrepidity: "I have broken my orders and come, hoping it will not displease you. Whether Lady Charny fears the course of events and goes away or not, I remain by the Queen, unless you break my sword: then, being unable to die in your presence, I can be killed at your door or on the pavement without."

He spoke so royally and plainly these simple words straight from the heart that the sovereign fell from her high pride, behind which she had hidden a feeling more human than royal.

"Count, never utter that word, never say you will die for me, as I feel that you will do so."

"I must say so, for the time comes when those who love monarchs must die for them – I fear so."

"What gives you this fatal presentiment, my lord?"

"Alas", returned the nobleman, "at the time of the American War, I was fired like others with the fever of independence thrilling society. I also wish to take a hand in the liberation of the slaves of Great Britain, as was said in those days, and I became a Free Mason, an Invisible like the Lafayettes and Lameths, under the redoubtable Balsamo, the King-Destroyer. Do you know the aim of that secret society? the wrecking of thrones. Its motto: 'Trample down the Lilies,' expressed in Latin as 'Lilia Pedibus Destrue!' in three letters for the initiated: 'L. P. D.' I retired with honor when I learnt this, but for one who shrank, twenty took the oath. What happens to-day is merely the first act of a grand tragedy which has been rehearsed during twenty years in the darkness. I have recognized the Bounden brothers at the head of the men who govern at the City Hall, occupy the Palais Royal, and took the Bastile. Do not cheat yourself; these accomplished deeds are no accidents, but Revolution planned long beforehand."

"Do you believe this, dear friend?" sobbed Marie Antoinette.

"Do not weep, but understand," said the count.

"Understand that I, the Queen, born mistress of thousands of men, subjects created to obey, must look on at them revolting and killing my friends – No, never will I understand this."

"You must, madam: for you have become the enemy of these subjects as soon as obedience weighed upon them, and while they are lacking the strength to devour you, they are testing their teeth on your friends, whom they detest as much as you, more than you."

"Perhaps you think they are right, Master Philosopher?" sneered the Austrian.

"Alas, yes, they are right," replied the Lifeguards Lieutenant, in his bland, affectionate voice, "for when I idly rode along the street, with handsome English horses, in a gold-laced suit, and my servants wearing more gold braid than would have kept three families, your people, twenty-five thousand wretches without daily bread, asked me to my teeth what use was I, who set up as a man above his fellow-men?"

"You serve them, my lord," said the Queen, grasping the count's swordhilt, "with this blade, which your fathers used as heroes on many a celebrated battlefield. The French nobility shielded the masses in war times; they won their gold by losing their blood. Do not you ask what use you are, George, while you, a brave man, swing the sword of your fathers."

"Do not speak of the nobles' blood," returned the count, "the commoners have blood to shed also; go and see the streams of it on Bastile Square. Go and count their dead in the gutters and know that those hearts, now ceased to beat, throbbed as nobly as a knight's when your cannon thundered against them. They sang in the showers of grapeshot while handling unfamiliar weapons, and the oldest grenadiers would not make a charge with that lightness. Lady and Queen, do not look at me with that angry eye, I beseech you. What matters to the heart whether it is clad in steel or rags? The time is come to think of this: you have no longer millions of slaves, or subjects, or mere men in France – but soldiers."

"Who will fight against me?"

"Yes, for they fight for Liberty and you stand between them and that goddess."

A long silence succeeded the words, and the woman was first to break it.

"You have spoken the truth which I begged you to keep back," she said.

"Because it is before you, veiled, seen distorted, but there. You may sleep to forget it, but it sits on your bedside and it will be the phantom in your dreams as it is the reality of your waking moments."

"I know one sleep it will not trouble," said she, proudly.

"I do not fear that kind more than your Majesty – I may desire it as much," said the count.

"Oh, you think it our only refuge?"

"Yes: but we must not hurry towards it. We shall earn it by our exertions during the day of storm."

They were sitting beside each other, but a gulf divided them; their thoughts so diverged.

"A last word, count," said Marie Antoinette, "swear to me that you came back solely on my account? that Lady Charny did not write to you? I know that she was going out – to meet you? swear that you have not come back for her sake!"

At this was heard a slight tapping at the door.

It was the servant to announce that the King had finished supper. Charny frowned with wonder.

"Tell his Majesty," said the Queen without sitting apart from her favorite, "that I have news from the capital, and will impart to him. Continue," she added to Charny: "the King having supped must be given time to digest."

This interruption had not weakened the woman's jealousy as a loving one, or as a queen.

"Your Majesty asks if I came back on account of my wife?" he asked as soon as the door was closed. "Do you forget that I am a man of my word and the engagement I made?"

"It is the oath that goads me, for in immolating yourself to my happiness, you give grief to a fair and noble woman – a crime the more."

"You exaggerate. Be it enough that I keep my word. Call it not a crime what was born of chance and necessity. We have both deplored this union which shielded the Queen's good fame. I have been obliged to submit to it these four years."

"Yes, but do you believe that I do not see your sorrow and chagrin translated under the form of the deepest respect?" reproached the Queen.

"For mercy's sake, do me justice for what you see me do; for if I have not yet suffered and made others suffer enough, I might double the burden without rising to the level of the gratitude I owe you eternally."

His speech had irresistible power like all emanating from a sincere and impassioned heart.

"Yes, yes, I know all, and I am wrong. Forgive me. But if you worship some secret idol to whom you offer a mystic incense, if you cherish one adored woman – I dare not utter the words, they frighten me lest the syllables should scatter through the air and vibrate on my ear – oh, if one exists, keep her hidden from all; and do not forget that you have a fair and youthful wife, who should be publicly encompassed with cares and assiduity; she should lean on your arm and on your heart."

Charny frowned so that the pure lines of his visage were altered for a space.

"What are you seeking? that I should depart from the Countess of Charny? you are silent – that is your meaning. I am ready to obey you, but reflect that she is alone in the world. Andrea is an orphan, her father the baron having died last year, like a good old nobleman of the former time who did not wish to see the present. Her brother, the Knight of Redcastle, only appears once a-year at court to bow to your Majesty, kiss his sister, and go away without anybody knowing whither. Reflect, madam, that this lady of Charny, might be called unto God as a maiden, without the purest of the angels surprising in her mind any womanly memory."

"Yes, I know your Andrea is an angel on earth, and deserves to be loved. That is why I think the future will be hers when it flees from me. No, no; but I am not speaking like a queen. I forget myself, but there is a voice in my heart singing of love and happiness, while without roars war, misery and death. It is the voice of my youth which I have outlived. Forgive one, Charny, who is no longer young, and will smile, and love no more."

The unhappy woman pressed her long, thin fingers to her burning eyes and tears, regal diamonds more becoming than the finest in the Diamond Necklace, trickled between them.

"Oh, order me to quit you, but do not let me see you weep," pleaded the count, again falling on one knee.

"The dream is over," said Marie Antoinette, rising.

With a witching movement she tossed back her thick, powdered tresses, unrolling down her white and swanline neck.

"I shall afflict you no more. Let us drop such folly. Is it odd that a woman should be so weak when a queen stands in such need of comfort? Let us talk of serious matters – such as you bear from Paris."

"From Paris, madam, where I witnessed the ruin of royalty."

"This is serious with a vengeance. You call a successful revolt the ruin of royalty? Because the Bastile is taken, Lord Charny, do you say royalty is abolished? You do not reflect that the Bastile has been built but in the Fourteenth Century while royalty struck in its roots six thousand years ago all over the globe."

"I would I could deceive," said the lieutenant sadly, "and proclaim consoling news instead of saddening your Majesty. Unfortunately the instrument gives forth no other sounds than it was shaped to send."

"Stay, I will set you to a cheerier tune! though I am but a woman. You say the Parisians have revolted. In what proportion?"

"Twelve out of fifteen: the calculation is easy. The populace stand in that proportion to the classes, the other two fifteenths being the nobility and the clergy."

"But six of the rate are women, and – "

"Women and children are not the least of your foes. You are proud and courageous yourself, do not omit the women and the children. One day you may reckon them as demons."

"What do you mean, count?"

"Do you not know the part the women and children play in civil commotions? I will tell you and you will own that a woman is equal two soldiers."

"Are you mad, my lord?"

"Had you seen your sex at the taking of the Bastile," he said with a mournful smile: "hounding the men on to arm themselves, while under the fire, threatening with their naked fist your Swiss soldiers caparisoned for war, yelling maledictions over the slain in a voice which made the living bound unto death. Had you seen them boiling pitch, rolling cannon, giving the fighting men cartridges and the more timid a kiss with the cartridges! Do you know that as many women as men dashed across the Bastile draw-bridges, and that if its stones are coming down now, the picks are wielded by female hands? Oh, my lady, you must include the women, and the children who cast the bullets, sharpen the swords and hurl paving-stones from the roofs. The bullet cast by a boy will kill your best general from afar; the sword he sharpened will hamstring your finest war-horse; the blind pebble from this David's sling will put out the eye of your Dragoon Samson and your Lifeguards Goliath.

"Count the old men, too, for they who have no strength to swing the sabre, serve as buckler for the active fighters. At the taking of the Bastile old men were on hand: they stood so that the younger ones could rest their guns on their shoulder so that the balls of your Switzers might be buried in the useless old body, the rampart of the able man. Include them among your foes, for they have been relating in the chimney corner for ever so many years, what affronts their mothers endured, the poverty of the estates over which the nobles hunted, the shame of their caste humbled under feudal privileges. When the sons took up the gun, they found it loaded with the curses of the aged as well as with powder and shot. In Paris now, women and children as well as the men are cheering for liberty and independence. Count them all as eight hundred thousand warriors."

"Three hundred Spartans vanquished Xerxes' army," retorted the Queen.

"Yes, but the Spartans are nearly a million and it is your army that is Xerxes."

"Oh, I would rather be hurled from the throne," she cried, as she rose with clenched fists and face flaming with shame and ire, "I would rather your Parisians hewed me to pieces, than hear from a Charny, one of my supporters, such speech as this!"

"Charny would not so address your Majesty unless every drop of blood in his veins were worthy of his sires and given to you."

"Then let us march upon Paris and let us die together!"

"Shamefully, without any battle," said the noble. "We shall not fight but disappear entirely like Philistines. March on Paris? when, as soon as we enter within her walls, all the houses will tumble down upon us, like the Red Sea waves overwhelming Pharaoh, and you will leave a cursed name, and your children will be hunted down like wolf-cubs."

"How must I fall, pray tell me, count?" demanded the sovereign haughtily; "teach me."

"As a victim," was the answer, "like a Christian queen, smiling and forgiving those who strike you. If I had five hundred thousand like myself, I might say, Let us have at them this night, and to-morrow you would sleep in the Tuileries, the throne conquered!"

"Woe is me! you despair on whom was set my final hope."

"I despair because all France thinks like Paris, and your army if victorious in the capital, will be engulfed by the other towns. Have courage enough, my lady, to sheathe the sword."

"Is this why I have gathered brave men around me? why I breathed courage into them?" wailed the Queen.

"If you are not of my opinion, madam, order, and we march at once to Paris! Speak."

So much devotion was in this offer that the hearer was appalled. She threw herself disconsolate on a sofa, where she struggled for a long time with her pride.

"Count," she said at length, "I shall remain inactive as you desire. I am not cross, though I have one thing to scold you for. I only learn by chance that you have a brother in the military service."

"Valence is in Bercheny's Hussars, yes, madam."

"Why have you never spoken of the young man? he deserves a higher grade in the regiment."

"He is young and inexperienced; he is not fit to command. If your Majesty deigned to lower your view upon me, a Charny, that is no reason for me to elevate my family at the expense of brave gentlemen worthier than brothers of mine."

"You have other brothers?"

"Isidore is another; two ready to die for your Majesty."

"Does he need nothing?"

"Nothing; we are lucky enough to place not merely life but wealth at your Majesty's feet."

As he spoke, the Queen thrilled with this delicate probity; a moan from the next room aroused them.

Rising, the Queen ran to the door, opened it and screamed loudly. She saw a woman writhing on the carpet in dreadful spasms.

"It is the countess, your wife," she faltered. "Can she have overheard us?"

"No," said he, "otherwise, she would have let us know that she could hear us."

He sprang towards Andrea and caught her up in his arms. Two paces off, the Queen stood, pale and cold, but trembling with anxiety.