The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty

“Well, my lord, is not that the counsel I followed? The question is was I right? am I here as a King or a captive?”

“Speaking in full frankness, I disapproved of the banquet at Versailles, supplicating the Queen not to go there; I was in despair when she threw down the tricolor and set up the black cockade of Austria.”

“Do you believe that led really to the attack on the palace?”

“No, Sire; but it was the cover for it. You are not unjust for the lower orders; they are kindly and love you – they are royalist. But they are in pain from cold and hunger; beneath and around them are evil advisers, who urge them on, and they know not their own strength. Once started they become flood or fire, for they overwhelm or they consume.”

“Well, what am I to do? supposing, as is natural enough, I do not want to be drowned or burned.”

“We must not open the sluices to the flood or windows to the flame. But pardon me forgetting that I should not speak thus, even on a royal order – “

“But you will on a royal entreaty. Count Charny, the King entreats you – to continue.”

“Well, Sire, there are two strata of the lower orders, the soil and the mud; the one which may be reposed upon and the other which will yield and smother one. Distrust one and rest on the other.”

“Count, you are repeating at two hours’ interval, what Dr. Gilbert told me.”

“Sire, how is it that after taking the advice of a learned man, you ask that of a poor naval officer like me?”

“Because there is a wide difference between you, I believe. Dr. Gilbert is devoted to royalty and you to the King. If the principle remains safe, he would let the King go.”

“Then there is a difference between us, for the King and the principle are inseparable for me,” responded the nobleman; “under this head it is that I beg your Majesty to deal with me.”

“First, I should like to hear to whom you would apply in this space of calm between two storms perhaps, to efface the wreck made by one and soothe the coming tempest.”

“If I had the honor and the misfortune to be the wearer of the crown, I should remember the cheers I heard round my carriage, and I should hold out my hands to General Lafayette and Member Mirabeau.”

“Can you advise this when you detest one and scorn the other?”

“My sympathies are of no moment, the whole question is the safety of the crown and the salvation of the monarchy.”

“Just what Dr. Gilbert says,” muttered the hearer as though speaking to himself.

“Sire, I am happy to be in tune with such an eminent man.”

“But if I were to agree to such a union and there should be failure, what think you I ought to do?”

“Think of your safety and your family’s.”

“Then you suggest that I should flee?”

“I should propose that your Majesty should retire with such regiments as are reliable and the true nobles to some fortified place.”

“Ah,” said the King with a radiant face: “but among the commanders who have given proof of devotion, you knowing them all, to which would you confide this dangerous mission, of guarding and removing the King?”

“Sire,” replied Charny, after hesitation, “it is not because ties of friendship – almost of family – attach me to a certain nobleman that I name him, but because he is known for his steadfast devotion; as Governor of the Leeward Islands, he not only protected our possessions in the Antilles, but captured some islands from the British: he had been charged with various commands, and at present he is General Governor, I believe, at Metz – this is the Marquis of Bouille. Were I a father, I should trust my son to him; a subject, I would confide the King!”

At the name the hearer could not repress an outcry of joy. He held out a letter, saying:

“Read this address, my lord, and see if Providence itself did not inspire me to apply to you.”

The address ran: “To Lord François Claude Amour, Marquis of Bouille, General Commander at Metz.”

“After what has happened, I do not feel that I ought to keep anything back from you. I have thought of this flight before, but in all the propositions was the hand of Austria beckoning me into a trap, and I have recoiled. I do not love Austria more than you do yourself.”

“Sire, you forget that I am the faithful subject of the King and the Queen of France.” He emphasized the second title.

“I have already told you, count,” went on the King, “that you are a friend, and I can speak the more frankly as the prejudice I cherished against the Queen is completely effaced from my mind. But it was against my will that I received into my house the double enemy of my line, as an Austrian and a Lorrainer. After ten years’ struggle it was despite my will that I had to charge Lord Breteuil with the management of my household and the government of Paris; make the Premier of the Archbishop of Toulouse, an atheist; lastly, pay to Austria the millions she extorted from the Low Countries. At present speaking, who succeeds the dead Maria Theresa, to counsel and direct the Queen? Her brother Joseph II., who is luckily dying. He is advised by old women of councillors who sway the Queen of France through her hairdresser Leonard and her dressmaker Bertin.

“They are pensioned by us while they are leading her to alliance with Austria. Austria has always been fatal to France, either as foe or friend, as when she put the dagger in Jacques Clement’s or Ravaillac’s or Damien’s to slay our kings. Formerly it was Catholic and devout Austria, but she is abjuring now and is partly philosophical under Joseph; rashly, she runs against her own sword, Hungary: without foresight, she lets the Belgian priesthood rob her of the finest jewels in her crown, the Low Countries; become the vassal of Russia, she wears out her troops in fighting for it against the Turks, our allies. No, my lord, I hate Austria and I will not trust to her. But I was saying that her overtures of flight were not the only ones. I have had one proposed by Marquis Favras. Do you know him?”

“He was the captain in the Belgunze Regiment, and lieutenant in the Count of Provence’s own Guards.”

“You have hit it with the latter shot. What think you of him?”

“He is a brave soldier and a loyal gentleman. Unfortunately he has no means and this makes him restless and fit for mad projects and hazardous attempts. But he is a man of honor who will die without retreating a step, or uttering a complaint in order to keep his word. He may be trusted to make a dash but not to manage an enterprise.”

“He is not the leader,” said the King, with marked bitterness; “that is Provence, who finds the means and manages all; devoted to the end, he will remain while Favras bears me hence. This is not the plot of Austria but of the fugitive princes and peers.”

“But why should not your Majesty’s brother go with you? why would he remain?”

“Through devotion, and also to be at hand in case the people should be tired of revolution and seek a regent. I tell you what all know, my dear count, and what your brother wrote me yesterday from Turin. They debate about deposing me and ruling by a regent. You see that unless in an extremity I can no sooner accept the Favras plan than the Austrian. This is what I have said to nobody, my dear count, but yourself, and I do it in order that nobody, not even the Queen,” he laid stress on the last three words, “can make you more devoted to them than to me, since they cannot show more confidence.”

“Sire, am I to keep the journey a secret from everybody?” inquired Charny, bowing.

“It little matters, count, that it should be known whither you go, as long as the design is unknown. You know the situation, my fears and hopes, better than my Minister Necker and my adviser Gilbert. Act accordingly; I put the scissors and the thread in your hands – disentangle or cut, as you see fit.”

He held the letter open for him to read:

Tuileries Palace, Oct. 29th.

“I hope, my lord, that you continue contented with your post as Governor of Metz. Count Charny, Lieutenant of my Lifeguards, passing through your city, will inquire if among your desires are any I can gratify. In that event I will take the opportunity to be agreeable to you as I do this one to renew the assurance of my feelings of esteem for your lordship.

“Louis.”

“Now, my Lord Charny,” said the King, “you have full power to make promises to Bouille if you think he needs any; only do not commit me farther than I can perform.”

For the second time he held out his hand.

Charny kissed it with emotion forefending any fresh pledges, and went forth, leaving his master convinced that he had acquired by his trust, the heart of the servitor, better than by offerings of wealth and favors such as he had lavished in the days of his power.

CHAPTER XIX

A LOVING QUEEN

CHARNY left the King with his heart full of opposing feelings.

The primary one, mounting to the surface over the tumultuous waves of turbulent thoughts, was deep gratitude for the boundless confidence testified to him.

This imposed duties the more holy from his conscience not being dumb. He remembered his wrongs towards this worthy monarch who laid his hand on his shoulder as on a true friend at the time of danger.

The more Charny felt guilty towards his master, the more ready he was to devote himself to him.

The more this respectful allegiance grew the lesser became the less pure emotion which he had cherished for the Queen during years.

This is the reason why he – having lost the vague hope which led him towards Andrea for the test, as if she was one of those flowering shrubs on the precipice edge by which a falling man can save himself – grasped with eagerness this mission diverging him from the court. Here he felt the double torment of being still loved by the woman whom he was ceasing to love and of not being loved by her whom he was beginning to adore.

Profiting by the coldness lately introduced into his relations with the Queen, he went to her rooms with the intention of leaving a note to tell of his departure when he found Weber awaiting him.

The Queen wished to see him forthwith, and there is no eluding the wishes of crowned heads in their palace.

Marie Antoinette was in the opposite mood to her visitor’s, she was recalling her harshness towards him and his devotion at Versailles; at the sight of the count’s brother laid dead across her threshold she had felt a kind of remorse; she confessed to herself that had this been the count she would have badly paid him for the sacrifice.

But had she any right to expect aught else than devotion of Charny?

She admitted that she was stern and unfair towards him, when the door opened and the gentleman appeared in the irreproachable costume of the military officer on duty.

But there was in his deeply respectful bearing something chilly which repelled the magnetic flow from the Queen’s heart, to go and seek in his the tender, sweet and sad memories collected during four years.

The Queen looked round her as though to try to ascertain why he remained on the sill, and when assured it was a matter of his will, she said:

“Come, my lord: we are alone.”

“I see that, but I do not see what in that fact should alter the bearing of a subject to his sovereign.”

“When I sent Weber for you I thought that fond friends were going to speak with one another.”

Charny smiled bitterly.

“I understand that smile and that you say, inwardly, the Queen was unjust at Versailles and is capricious here.”

“Injustice or caprice, a woman is allowed anything,” returned Charny: “a queen more than all.”

“Whatever the caprice, my friend,” said Marie with all the witchingness she could put in a voice or smile, “the Queen cannot do without you as adviser or the woman without you as loved friend.”

She held out her hand, a little thinned but still worthy of a lovely statue. He kissed it respectfully and was about to let it fall when he felt her retain his.

“I ought to have wept with you over the loss of your brother, slain for my sake: well, I have been weeping these ten days since I have not seen you: they are falling yet.”

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.

“If, during this journey, that happens me which befel poor Valence, all my measures are taken for you, my lady, to be the first to know of the misfortune visiting me and the liberty restored to you. Then, only, will you learn what profound admiration was born in my heart from your sublime devotion, so poorly recompensed by her to whom you sacrificed youth, beauty and bliss.

“All I beseech of heaven and you is your according me a remembrance for having too late perceived the treasure he possessed.

“With all the respect in my heart,