The Royal Life Guard; or, the flight of the royal family.

The Royal Life Guard; or, the flight of the royal family.
Alexandre Dumas

Alexandre Dumas

The Royal Life Guard; or, the flight of the royal family. / A historical romance of the suppression of the French monarchy

CHAPTER I.

A NEW LEASE OF LIFE

France had been changed to a limited monarchy from an absolute one, and King Louis XVI. had solemnly sworn to defend the new Constitution. But it had been remarked by shrewd observers that he had not attended the Te Deum at the Paris Cathedral, with the members of the National Assembly: that is, he would tell a lie but not commit perjury.

The people were therefore on their guard against him, while they felt that his Queen, Marie Antoinette, the daughter of Austria, was ever their foe.

But the murders by the rabble had frightened all property holders and when the court bought Mirabeau, the popular orator, over to its cause by paying his debts and a monthly salary the majority of the better classes, who had not fled from France in terror, thought the Royal Family would yet regain their own.

In point of fact, Mirabeau had obtained from the House of Representatives that the King should have the right to rule the army and direct it and propose war, which the Assembly would only have the sanction of. He would have obtained more in the reaction after the Taking of the Bastile but for an unknown hand having distributed full particulars of his purchase by the royalists in a broadside given away by thousands in the streets.

Hence he retired from the senate broken by his victory, though carrying himself proudly.

In face of danger the strong athlete thought of the antagonist, not of his powers.

On going home, he flung himself on the floor, rolling on flowers. He had two passionate loves: for the fair sex, because he was an ugly though robust man, and for flowers.

This time he felt so exhausted that he resisted his attendant feebly, who wanted to send for a doctor, when "Dr. Gilbert" was announced.

A man still young though with a grave expression like one tried in the furnace of personal and political heats, entered the room. He was clothed in the wholly black suit which he introduced from America, where it was popular among Republicans, for he was a friend of Washington and Marquis Lafayette, who like him had returned to make a sister Republic of France to that of the Thirteen United States.

Dr. Gilbert was a friend of Mirabeau, for he wished to preserve the King at the head of the State though he knew it was but the gilded figurehead without which, if knocked off in the tempest, the Ship rights itself and lives through all without feeling the loss.

Nevertheless, Gilbert, who was one of the Invisibles, that Secret Society which worked for years to bring about the downfall of monarchy in Europe, had been warned by its Chief, the Grand Copt Cagliostro, alias Balsamo the Mesmerist, alias Baron Zannone – since he had escaped from the Papal dungeons under cover of his being supposed dead and buried there – that the Queen cajoled him and that royalty was doomed.

"I have come to congratulate you, my dear count," said the doctor to the orator, "you promised us a victory, and you have borne away a triumph."

"A Pyrrhic one – another such and we are lost. I am very ill of it. Oh, doctor, tell me of something, not to keep me alive but to give me force while I do live."

"How can I advise for a constitution like yours," said the physician, after feeling the nobleman's pulse: "you do not heed my advice. I told you not to have flowers in the room as they spoil the air, and you are smothered in them. As for the ladies, I bade you beware and you answer that you would rather die than be reft of their society."

"Never mind that. I suffer too much to think of aught but myself. I sometimes think that as I am slandered so that the Queen hesitated to trust me, so have I been physically done to death. Do you believe in the famous poisons which slay without knowing they are used until too late?"

"Yes; I believe," for Gilbert frowned as he remembered that his secret brotherhood was allowed to use the Aqua Tofana where an enemy could not be otherwise reached: "but in your case it is the sword wearing out its sheath. The electric spark will explode the crystal chamber in which it is confined. Still I can help you."

He drew from his pocket a phial holding about a couple of thimblefuls of a green liquid.

"One of my friends – whom I would were yours – deeply versed in natural and occult sciences, gave me the recipe of this brew as a sovereign elixir of life. I have often taken it to cure what the English call the blue devils. And I am bound to say that the effect was instant and salutary. Will you taste it?"

"I will take anything from your hand, my dear doctor."

A servant was rung up, who brought a spoon and a little brandy in a glass.

"Brandy to mollify it," said Mirabeau: "it must be liquid fire, then!"

Gilbert added the same quantity of his elixir to the half-dozen drops of eau-de-vie and the two fluids mixed to the color of wormwood bitters, which the exhausted man drank off.

Immediately he was invigorated and sprang up, saying:

"Doctor, I will pay a diamond a drop for that liquor, for it would make me feel invincible."

"Count, promise me that you will take it only each three days, and I will leave you a phial every week."

"Give it, and I promise everything."

"Now, I have come for another matter. I want you to come out of town for carriage exercise and at the same time to select a residence there."

"It chances that I was looking for one, and my man found a nice house at Argenteuil, recommended by a fellow countryman of his, one Fritz, whose master, a foreign banker, had lived in it. It is delightful and being vacant could be moved into at once. My father had a house out there, whence he drove me with his cane."

"Let us go to Argenteuil, then," said Gilbert; "your health is so valuable that we must study everything bearing upon it."

Mirabeau had no establishment and a hack had to be called for the gentlemen. In this they proceeded to the village where, a hundred paces on the Besons Road, they saw a house buried in the trees. It was called the Marsh House.

On the right of the road was a humble cottage, in front of which sat a woman on a stool, holding a child in her arms who seemed devoured with fever.

"Doctor," said the orator, fixing his eyes on the sad sight, "I am as superstitious as an ancient. If that child dies, I would not live in this house. Just see what you think of the case."

Gilbert got down while the carriage went on.

A gardener was keeping the house which he showed to the inquirer. It belonged to St. Denis Abbey and was for sale under the decree confiscating Church property. Over against the gardener's lodge was another, a summerhouse simply overgrown with flowers. Mirabeau's passion for them made this sufficient lure; for this alone he would have taken the house.

"Is this little cottage, this Temple of Flora, on the property?" he asked.

"Yes, sir: it belongs to the big house but it is at present occupied by a lady with her child, a pretty lady, but of course she will have to go if the house and estate are bought."

"A lovely neighbor does no harm," said the count: "Let me see the interior of the house."

The rooms were lofty and elegant, the furniture fine and stylish. In the main room Mirabeau opened a window to look out and it commanded a view of the summerhouse. What was more, he had a view of a lady, sewing, half reclining, while a child of five or six played on the lawn among flowering shrubs.

It was the lady tenant.

It was not only such a pretty woman as one might imagine a Queen among the roses, but it was the living likeness of Queen Marie Antoinette and to accentuate the resemblance the boy was about the age of the Prince Royal.

Suddenly the beautiful stranger perceived that she was under observation for she uttered a faint scream of surprise, rose, called her son, and drew him inside by the hand, but not without looking back two or three times.

At this same moment Mirabeau started, for a hand was laid on his shoulder. It was the doctor who reported that the peasant's child had caught swamp fever from being set down beside a stagnant pool while the mother reaped the grass. The disease was deadly but the doctor hoped to save the sufferer by Jesuit's Bark, as quinine was still styled at this date.

But he warned his friend against this House in the Marsh, where the air might be as fatal to him as that of the senate house, where bad ventilation made the atmosphere mephitic.

"I am sorry the air is not good, for the house suits me wonderfully."

"What an eternal enemy you are to yourself? If you mean to obey the orders of the Faculty, begin by renouncing the idea of taking this residence. You will find fifty around Paris better placed."