The Countess of Charny; or, The Execution of King Louis XVI

The queen called for a light. Pitou picked up an extinguished link, lighted it at a lantern, and handed it to her, and she resumed the march. As they passed the entrance door, the queen pointed to it.

"He was killed there," she said.

Andrea did not reply; she seemed a specter haunting one who had called her up.

The queen lowered the torch to the floor in the lobby, saying: "Behold his blood."

Andrea remained mute.

The conductress went straight to a closet attached to the "Logographe" box, pulled the door open, and said, as she held up the light to illumine the interior:

"Here is his body."

Andrea entered the room, knelt down, and taking the head upon her knee, she said:

"Madame, I thank you; this is all I wanted of you."

"But I have something to ask you – won't you forgive me?"

There fell a short silence, as though Andrea were reflecting.

"Yes," she replied, at length, "for I shall be with him on the morrow."

The queen drew a pair of scissors from her bosom, where they were hidden like a weapon to be used in an extremity.

"Then would you kindly – " She spoke almost supplicatingly, as she held out the joined blades to the mourner.

Andrea cut a lock of hair from the corpse's brow, and handed it and the instrument to the other. She caught her hand and kissed it, but Andrea snatched away hers, as though the lips of her royal mistress had scorched her.

"Ah!" muttered the queen, throwing a last glance on the remains, "who can tell which of us loved him the most?"

"Oh, my darling George," retorted Andrea, in the same low tone, "I trust that you at least know now that I loved you the best!"

The queen went back on the way to her prison, leaving Andrea with the remains of her husband, on which a pale moonbeam fell through a small grated window, like the gaze of a friend.

Without knowing who she was, Pitou conducted Marie Antoinette, and saw her safely lodged. Relieved of his responsibility toward the soldier on guard, he went out on the terrace to see if the squad he had asked of Maniquet had arrived. The four were waiting.

"Come in," said Pitou.

Using the torch which he had taken from the queen's hands, he led his men to the room where Andrea was still gazing on her husband's white but still handsome face in the moonshine. The torch-light made her look up.

"What do you want?" she challenged of the Guards, as though she thought they came to rob her of the dead.

"My lady," said Pitou, "we come to carry the body of Count Charny to his house in Coq-Heron Street."

"Will you swear to me that it is purely for that?" Andrea asked.

Pitou held out his hand over the dead body with a dignity of which he might be believed incapable.

"Then I owe you apology, and I will pray God," said Andrea, "in my last moments, to spare you and yours such woe as He hath afflicted me with."

The four men took up the warrior on their muskets, and Pitou, with his drawn sword, placed himself at the head of the funeral party. Andrea walked beside the corpse, holding the cold and rigid hand in her own. They put the body on the countess's bed, when that lady said to the National Guardsmen:

"Receive the blessings of one who will pray to God for you to-morrow before Him. Captain Pitou," she added, "I owe you more than I ever can repay you. May I rely on you for a final service?"

"Order me, madame."

"Arrange that Doctor Gilbert shall be here at eight o'clock in the morning."

Pitou bowed and went out. Turning his head as he did so, he saw Andrea kneel at the bed as at an altar.

CHAPTER XVII.

WHAT ANDREA WANTED OF GILBERT

At eight precisely next day, Gilbert knocked at the house-door of the Countess of Charny.

On hearing of her request made to Pitou, he had asked him for full particulars of the occurrence, and he had pondered over them.

As he went out in the morning, he sent for Pitou to go to the college where his son and Andrea's, Sebastian, was being educated, and bring him to Coq-Heron Street. He was to wait at the door there for the physician to come out.

No doubt the old janitor had been informed of the doctor's visit, for he showed him at once into the sitting-room.

Andrea was waiting, clad in full mourning. It was clear that she had neither slept nor wept all the night through; her face was pale and her eyes dry. Never had the lines of her countenance, always indicative of willfulness carried to the degree of stubbornness, been more firmly fixed.

It was hard to tell what resolution that loving heart had settled on, but it was plain that it had come to one. This was comprehended by Gilbert at a first glance, as he was a skilled observer and a reasoning physician.

He bowed and waited.

"I asked you to come because I want a favor done, and it must be put to one who can not refuse it me."

"You are right, madame; not, perhaps, in what you are about to ask, but in what you have done; for you have the right to claim of me anything, even to my life."

She smiled bitterly.

"Your life, sir, is one of those so precious to mankind that I should be the first to pray God to prolong it and make it happy, far from wishing it abridged. But acknowledge that yours is placed under happy influences, as there are others seemingly doomed beneath a fatal star."

Gilbert was silent.

"Mine, for instance," went on Andrea; "what do you say about mine? Let me recall it briefly," she said, as Gilbert lowered his eyes. "I was born poor. My father was a ruined spendthrift before I was born. My childhood was sad and lonesome. You knew what my father was, as you were born on his estate and grew up in our house, and you can measure the little affection he had for me.

"Two persons, one of whom was bound to be a stranger to me, while the other was unknown, exercised a fatal and mysterious sway over me, in which my will went for naught. One disposed of my soul, the other of my body. I became a mother without ceasing to be a virgin. By this horrid event I nearly lost the love of the only being who ever loved me – my brother Philip.

"I took refuge in the idea of motherhood, and that my babe would love me; but it was snatched from me within an hour of its birth. I was therefore a wife without a husband, a mother without a child.

"A queen's friendship consoled me.

"One day chance sent me in a public vehicle with the queen and a handsome young gallant, whom fatality caused me to love, though I had never loved a soul.