Александр Дюма
The Royal Life Guard; or, the flight of the royal family.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE BITTER CUP
When the Queen came to her senses she was in her sleeping room in the Tuileries. Her favorite bed-chamber women, Lady Misery and Madam Campan were at hand. Though they told her the Dauphin was safe, she rose and went to see him: he was in sleep after the great fright.
She looked at him for a long time, haunted by the words of that awful man: "I save you because you are needed to hurl the throne over into the last abyss." Was it true that she would destroy the monarchy? Were her enemies guarding her that she might accomplish the work of destruction better than themselves? But would this gulf close after swallowing the King, the throne and herself? Would not her two children go down in it also? In religions of the past alone is innocence safe to disarm the gods?
Abraham's sacrifice had not been accepted, but it was not so in Jephthaph's case.
These were gloomy thoughts for a Queen, gloomier still for a mother.
She shook her head and went slowly back to her rooms. She noticed the disorder she was in and took a bath and was attired more fitly.
The news awaiting her was not so black as she had feared; all three Lifeguards had been saved from the mob, mainly by Petion who screened a good heart under his rough bark. Malden and Valory were in the palace, bruised, wounded, but alive. Nobody knew where Charny was in refuge after having been snatched from the ruffians.
At these words from Madam Campan, such a deadly pallor came over the Queen's countenance that the Lady thought it was from anxiety about the count and she hastened to say:
"But there need be no alarm about his coming back to the palace; the countess has a town house and of course he will hasten there."
This was just what she feared and what made her lose color.
She wanted to dress, as if she would be allowed to go out of the palace prison to inquire about his fate, when he was announced as present in the other room.
"Oh, he is keeping his word," muttered the Queen which her attendants did not understand.
Her toilet hastily completed, she ordered the count to be introduced into her sitting room, where she joined him.
He had also dressed for the reception, for he wore the naval uniform in which she had first seen him. Never had he been calmer, handsomer and more elegant, and she could not believe that this beau was the man whom she had seen the mob fall upon a while before.
"Oh, my lord, I hope you were told how distressed I was on your behalf and that I was sending out for tidings?"
"Madam, you may be sure that I did not go away till I learned that you were safe and sound," was his rejoinder. "And now that I am assured by sight, and hearing of the health of your children and the King, I think it proper to ask leave to give personal news to my lady the countess."
The Queen pressed her hand to her heart as if to ascertain if this blow had not deadened it, and said in a voice almost strangled by the dryness of her throat:
"It is only fair, my lord, and I wonder how it is that you did not ask before this."
"The Queen forgets my promise not to see the countess without her permission."
"I suppose, though, in your ardor to see the lady again, you could do without it?"
"I think the Queen unjust to me," he replied. "When I left Paris I believed it was to part from her forever. During the journey I did all that was humanly possible to make the journey a success. It is not my fault that I did not lose my life like my brother or was not cut to pieces on the road or in the Tuileries Gardens. Had I the honor to conduct your Majesty across the frontier, I should have lived in exile with you, or if I were fated to die, I should have died without seeing the countess. But, I repeat, I cannot, being again in town, give the lady this mark of indifference, not to show her I am alive, particularly as I no longer have my brother Isidore as my substitute; at all events, either M. Barnave is wrong or your Majesty was of the same opinion only yesterday."
The Queen glided her arm along the chair-arm and following the movement with her body said:
"You must love this woman fondly to give me this pain so coldly?"
"Madam, at a time when I did not think of such a thing, as there was but one woman the world for me – it will soon be six years – this woman being placed too high above me for me to hope for her, as well as under an indissoluble bond – you gave me as wife Mdlle. Andrea Taverney, imposed her on me! In these six years my hand has not twice touched hers; without necessity I have not spoken a word to her and our glances have not met a dozen times. My life has been occupied by another love, the thousand tasks, cares and combats agitating man's existence in camp and court. I have coursed the King's highways, entangling the thread the master gave me in the intrigues of fatality. I have not counted the days, or months or years, for time has passed most rapidly from my being enwrapt in these tasks.
"But not so has fared the Countess of Charny. Since she has had the affliction of quitting your Majesty, after having displeased you, I suppose, she has lived lonely in the Paris summerhouse, accepting the neglect and isolation without complaining, for she has not the same affections as other women from her heart being devoid of love. But she may not accept without complaint my forgetting the simplest duty and the most commonplace attentions."
"Good gracious, my lord, you are mightily busy about what the countess thinks of you according to whether you see her or not! Before worrying yourself it would be well to know whether she does think of you in the hour of your departure or in that of your return."
"I do not know about the hour of my return but I do know that she thought about me when I departed."
"So you saw her before you went?"
"I had the honor of stating that I had not seen the countess since I promised the Queen not to see her."
"Then she wrote to you? confess it!" cried Marie Antoinette.
"She confided a letter for me to my brother Isidore."
"A letter which you read? what does she say? but she promised me – but let us hear quickly. What does she say in this letter? Speak, see you not that I am on thorns?"
"I cannot repeat what it says as I have not read it."
"You destroyed it unread?" exclaimed she delightedly, "you threw it in the fire? Oh, Charny, if you did that, you are the most true of lovers and I was wrong to scold – for I have lost nothing."
She held out her arms to lure him to his former place, but he stood firm.
"I have not torn it or burnt it," he replied.
"But then, how came you not to read it?" questioned she, sinking back on the chair.
"The letter was to be given me if I were mortally wounded. But alas! it was the bearer who fell. He being dead, his papers were brought to me and among them was this, the countess's letter."
She took the letter with a trembling hand and rang for lights. During the brief silence in the dusk, her breathing could be heard and the hurried throbbing of her heart. As soon as the candlesticks were placed on the mantle shelf, before the servant left the room, she ran to the light. She looked on the paper twice without ability to read it.
"It is flame," she said, "Oh, God!" she ejaculated, smoothing her forehead to bring back her sight and stamping her foot to calm her hand by force of will. In a husky voice utterly like her own, she read:
"This letter is intended not for me but for my brother Count Charny, or to be returned to the countess. It is from her I had it with the following recommendation. If in the enterprise undertaken by the count, he succeeds without mishap, return the letter to the countess."
The reader's voice became more panting as she proceeded.
"If he is grievously hurt, but without mortal danger, his wife prays to be let join him."
"That is clear," said the Queen falteringly and in a scarcely intelligible voice she added: "'Lastly, if he be wounded to the death, give him the letter or read it to him if he cannot, in order that he should know the secret contained before he dies.'
"Do you deny it now, that she loves you?" demanded the Queen, covering the count with a flaming look.
"The countess love me? what are you saying?" cried Charny.
"The truth, unhappy woman that I am!"
"Love me? impossible!"
"Why, for I love you?"
"But in six years the countess has never let me see it, never said a word!"
The time had come for Marie Antoinette to suffer so keenly that she felt the need to bury her grief like a dagger in the depth of his heart.
"Of course," she sneered, "she would not breathe a word, she would not let a token show, and the reason is because she was well aware that she was not worthy to be your wife."
"Not worthy?" reiterated Charny.
"She cherished a secret which would slay your love," continued the other, more and more maddened by her pain.
"A secret to kill our love?"
"She knew you would despise her after she told it."
"I, despise the countess? tut, tut!"
"Unless one is not to despise the girl who is a mother without being a wife."
It was the man's turn to become paler than death and lean on the back of the nearest chair.
"Madam, you have said too much or too little, and I have the right for an explanation."
"Do you ask a queen for explanations?"
"I do," replied Charny.
The door opened, and the Queen turned to demand impatiently:
"What is wanted?"
It was a valet who announced Dr. Gilbert, come by appointment. She eagerly bade him send him in.
"You call for an explanation about the countess," she continued to the count: "well, ask it of this gentleman, who can give it, better than anybody else."
Gilbert had come in so as to hear the final words and he remained on the threshold, mute and standing.
The Queen tossed the letter to Charny and took a few steps to gain her dressing room when the count barred her passage and grasped her wrist.
"My lord, methinks that you forget I am your Queen," said Marie Antoinette, with clenched teeth and enfevered eye.
"You are an ungrateful woman who slanders her friend, a jealous women who defames another, and that woman the wife of a man who has for three days risked his life a score of times for you – the wife of George Count of Charny. Justice must be rendered in face of her you have calumniated and insulted! Sit down and wait."
"Well, have it so," railed the Queen. "Dr. Gilbert," she pursued, forcing a shallow laugh, "you see what this nobleman desires."
"Dr. Gilbert, you hear what the Queen orders," rebuked Charny with a tone full of courtesy and dignity.
"Oh, madam," said Gilbert, sadly regarding the Queen as he came forward. "My Lord Count," he went on to the gentleman, "I have to tell you of the shame of a man and the glory of a woman. A wretched earthworm fell in love with his lord's daughter, the Lady of Taverney. One day, he found her in a mesmeric trance, and without respect for her youth, beauty and innocence, this villain abused her and thus the maid became a woman, the mother before marriage. Mdlle. Taverney was an angel – Lady Charny is a martyr!"
"I thank Dr. Gilbert," said the count, wiping his brow. "Madam," he proceeded to the Queen, "I was ignorant that Mdlle. Taverney was so unfortunate – that Lady Charny was so worthy of respect; otherwise, believe me, six years would not have elapsed before I fell at her feet and adored her as she deserves."
Bowing to the stupefied Queen, he stalked forth without the baffled one making a move to detain him. But he heard her shriek of pain when the door closed between them. She comprehended that over those portals the hand of the demon of jealousy was writing the dread doom:
"Leave hope behind who enter here."
CHAPTER XXIV.
AT LAST THEY ARE HAPPY!
It is easy for us who know the state of Andrea's heart to imagine what she suffered from the time of Isidore's leaving. She trembled for the grand plot failing or succeeding. If succeeding, she knew the count's devotion to his masters too well not to be sure that he would never quit them in exile. If failure, she knew his courage too well not to be sure that he would struggle till the last moment, so long as hope remained, and beyond that.
So she had her eye open to every light and her ear to every sound.
On the following day, she learnt with the rest of the population that the King had fled from the capital in the night, without any mischance.
She had suspected the flight, and as Charny would participate, she was losing him by his going far from her.
Sighing deeply, she knelt in prayer for the journey to be happy.
For two days, Paris was dumb, without news; then the rumor broke forth that the King had been stopped at Varennes. No details, just the word.
Andrea hunted up on the map the little obscure point on which attention was centred. There she lived on hopes, fears and thought.
Gradually came the details precious to her, particularly when news came that a Charny, one of the royal bodyguard, had been killed: Isidore or George? for two days, while this was undecided, Andrea's heart oscillated in anguish indescribable.
Finally the return of the august prisoners were heralded. They slept at Meaux.
At eleven in the morning, veiled and dressed most plainly she went and waited till three o'clock at the east end, for it was supposed that the party would enter by St. Martin's suburb. At that hour the mob began to move away, hearing that the King was going round to enter through the Champs Elysees. It was half the city to cross afoot as no vehicles could move in the throng, unexampled since the Taking of the Bastile.
Andrea did not hesitate and was one of the first on the spot where she had still three mortal hours to wait.
At last the procession appeared, we know in what order.
She hailed the royal coach with a cry of joy for she saw Charny on the box. A scream which seemed an echo of her own, though different in tone, arose, and she saw a girl in convulsions in the crowd. She would have gone to her help, though three or four kind persons flew to her side, but she heard the men around her pour imprecations on the three on the box seat. On them would fall the popular rage as the scapegoats of the royal treachery; when the coach stopped they would be torn to pieces.
And Charny was one!
She resolved to do her utmost to get within the Tuileries gardens; this she managed by going round about but the crush was so dense that she could not get into the front. She retired to the waterside terrace where she saw and heard badly, but that was better than not seeing at all.
She saw Charny, indeed, on the same level, little suspecting that the heart beating for him alone was so near; probably he had no thought for her – solely for the Queen, forgetting his own safety to watch over hers.
Oh, had she known that he was pressing her letter on his heart and offering her the last sigh which he thought he must soon yield! At last the coach stopped amid the howling, groaning and clamor. Almost instantly around it rose an immense turbulence, weapons swaying like a steel wheat-field shaken by the breeze.
Precipitated from the box, the three Lifeguards disappeared as if dropped into a gulf. Then there was such a back-wave of the crowd that the retiring rear ranks broke against the terrace front.
Andrea was shrouded in anguish; she could hear and see nothing; breathless and with outstretched arms, she screamed inarticulate sounds into the midst of the dreadful concert of maledictions, blasphemy and death cries.
She could no longer understand what went on: the earth turned, the sky grew red, and a roar as of the sea rang in her ears.
She fell, half dead, knowing only that she lived from her feeling suffering.
A sensation of coolness brought her round: a woman was putting to her forehead a handkerchief dipped in river water. She remembered her as having fainted when the royal coach came into sight, without guessing what sympathy attached her to this mistress of her husband's brother – for this was Catherine Billet.
"Are they dead?" was her first question.
Compassion is intelligent: they around her understood that she asked after the three Lifeguardsmen.
"No, all three are saved."
"The Lord be praised! Where are they?"
"I believe in the palace."
Rising and shaking her head, seeing where she was in a distracted way, she went around to the Princes' Court and sprang into the janitor's room. This man knew the countess as having been in attendance when the court first came back from Versailles. He had also seen her go away, with Sebastian in her carriage.
He related that the Guardsmen were safe; Count Charny had gone out for a little while, when he returned dressed in naval uniform to appear in the Queen's rooms, where he probably was at that period.
Andrea thanked the good fellow and hastened home, now that George was safe. She knelt on her praying stand, to thank heaven, with all her soul going up to her Maker.
She was plunged in ecstasy when she heard the door open, and she wondered what this earthly sound could be, disturbing her in her deepest reverie.
The shadow in the doorway was dim but her instinct told her who it was without the girl announcing:
"My lord the Count of Charny."
Andrea tried to rise but her strength failed her: half turning, she slid down the slope of the stand, leaning her arm on the guard.
"The count," she murmured, disbelieving her eyes.
The servant closed the door on her master and mistress.
"I was told you had recently returned home? Am I rude in following you indoors so closely?" he asked.
"No, you are welcome, my lord," she tremblingly replied. "I was so uneasy that I left the house to learn what had happened."
"Were you long out?"
"Since morning; I was first out to St. Martin's Bars, and then went to the Champs Elysees; there I saw – " she hesitated – "I saw the Royal Family – you, and momentarily I was set at ease, though I feared for you when the carriage should set you down. Then I went into the Tuileries Gardens, where I thought I should have died."
"Yes, the crowd was great; you were crushed, and I understand – "
"No," said Andrea, shaking her head, "that was not it. I inquired and learned that you were unhurt, so that I hastened home to thank God on my knees."
"Since you are so, praying, say a word for my poor brother."
"Isidore – poor youth! was it he, then?" exclaimed Andrea.
She let her head sink on her hands. Charny stepped forward a few steps to regard the chaste creature at her devotions. In his look was immense commiseration, together with a longing restrained.
Had not the Queen said – or rather revealed that Andrea loved him?
"And he is no more?" queried the lady, turning round after finishing her prayer.
"He died, madam, like Valence, and for the same cause, fulfilling the same duty."
"And in the great grief which you must have felt, you still thought of me?" asked Andrea in so weak a voice that her words were barely audible.
Luckily Charny was listening with the heart as well as ear.
"Did you not charge my brother with a message for me?" he inquired. "A letter to my address?"
She rose on one knee and looked with anxiety upon him.
"After poor Isidore's death, his papers were handed to me and among them was this letter."
"And you have read it – ah!" she cried, hiding her face in her hands.
"I ought to know the contents only if I were mortally wounded and you see I have returned safe. Consequently, as you see, it is intact, as you gave it to Isidore."
"Oh, what you have done is very lofty – or very unkind," muttered the countess, taking the letter.
Charny stretched out his hand and caught her hand in spite of an effort to retain it. As Charny persisted, uttering a reproachful "Oh!" she sighed almost with fright; but she gave way, leaving it quivering in his clasp. Embarrassed, not knowing where to turn her eyes, to avoid his glance, which she felt to be fastened on her, and unable to retreat as her back was against the wall, she said:
"I understand – you came to restore the letter."
"For that, and another matter. I have to beg your pardon heartily, Andrea."
She shuddered to the bottom of her soul for this was the first time he had addressed her so informally. The whole sentence had been spoken with indescribable softness.
"Pardon of me, my lord? on what grounds?"
"For my behavior towards you these six years."
"Have I ever complained?" she asked, eyeing him in profound astonishment.
"No, because you are an angel."
Despite herself her eyes were veiled and tears welled out.
"You weep, Andrea," exclaimed Charny.
"Excuse me, my lord," she sobbed, "but I am not used to being thus spoken to. Oh, heavens!" She sank on an easy chair, hiding her face in her hands for a space but then withdrawing them, she said:
"Really, I must be going mad."
She stopped – while she had her eyes hid, Charny had fallen on his knees to her.
"Oh, you, on your knees to me?" she said.
"Did I not say I must ask your forgiveness?"
"What can this mean?" she muttered.
"Andrea, it means that I love you," he answered in his sweetest voice.
Laying her hand on her heart, she uttered a cry. Springing upright as though impelled by a spring under her feet, she pressed her temples between her hands and cried:
"He loves me? this cannot be."
"Say that it is impossible you should love me, but not that I should love you."
She lowered her gaze on the speaker to see if he spoke truly and his eyes said more than his tongue: though she might doubt the words she could not the glance.
"Oh, God, in all the world is there a being more unfortunate than me?" she cried.
"Andrea, tell me that you love me," continued Charny, "or at least that you do not hate me?"
"I, hate you?" she said, with a double flash from the calm eyes usually so limpid and serene. "Oh, my lord, it would be very wrong to take for hate the feeling you inspire."
"But if not hate or love, what is it?"
"It is not love because I am not allowed to love you; but did you not hear me call myself the unhappiest of God's creatures?"
"Why are you not allowed to love me when I love you with all the strength of my soul?"
"Oh, that I cannot, dare not, must not tell you," replied she, wringing her hands.
"But if another should tell me what you cannot, dare not, must not tell?" he demanded.
"Heaven!" she gasped, leaning her hands on his shoulder.
"Suppose I know? and that, considering you the more worthy because of the noble way you have borne that woe, it was that terrible secret which determined me upon telling you that I loved you?"
"If you did this, you would be the noblest and most generous of men."
"Andrea, I love you," cried he, three times.
"Oh, God, I knew not that there could be such bliss in this world," she said, lifting her arms heavenward.
"Now, in your turn, tell me that you love me."
"Oh, no, that I dare not, but you may read that letter," said Andrea.
While she covered her face with her hands, he sharply broke the letter seal, and exclaimed when he had read the first lines; parting her hands and with the same movement drawing her upon his heart, he said: "How shall I love you enough, saintly creature, to make you forget what you have undergone in these six years!"
"Oh, God, if this be a dream, let me never awake, or die on awakening," prayed Andrea, bending like a reed beneath the weight of so much happiness.
And now, let us forget these who are happy to return to those who hate, suffer or are struggling, and perhaps their evil fate will forget them, too.
