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

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.