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

"Are we surrounded by traitors?"

"All men are not Charnys."

"What do you mean?"

"Alas, Madam! that one of the fatal tokens foretelling the doom of Kings is their driving away from them those very men whom they ought to 'grapple to them by hooks of steel.'"

"I have not driven Count Charny away," said the Queen bitterly, "he went of his own free will. When monarchs become unfortunate, their friends fall off."

"Do not slander Count Charny," said Gilbert mildly, "or the blood of his brothers will cry from their graves that the Queen of France is an ingrate. Oh, you know I speak the truth, madam: that on the day when unmistakable danger impends, the Count of Charny will be at his post and that the most perillous."

"But I suppose you have not come to talk about Count Charny," said she testily, though she lowered her head.

"No, madam; but ideas are like events, they are attached by invisible links and thus are drawn forth from darkness. No, I come to speak to the Queen and I beg pardon if I addressed the woman: but I am ready to repair the error. I wish to say that you are staking the woe or good of the world on one game: you lost the first round on the sixth of October, you win the second, in the courtiers' eyes, on this sad day; and to-morrow you will begin what is called the rub. If you lose, with it go throne, liberty and life."

"Do you believe that this prospect makes us recede?" queried the proud one, quickly rising.

"I know the King is brave and the Queen heroic; so I never try to do anything with them but reason; unfortunately I can never pass my belief into their minds."

"Why trouble about what you believe useless?"

"Because it is my duty. It is sweet in such times to feel, though the result is unfruitful, that one has done his duty."

She looked him in the face and asked:

"Do you think it possible to save the King and the throne?"

"I believe for him and hope for the other."

"Then you are happier than I," she responded with a sad sigh: "I believe both are lost and I fight merely to salve my conscience."

"Yes, I understand that you want a despotic monarchy and the King an absolute one: like the miser who will not cast away a portion of his gold in a shipwreck so that he may swim to shore with the rest, you will go down with all. No, cut loose of all burdens and swim towards the future."

"To throw the past into a gulf is to break with all the crowned heads of Europe."

"Yes, but it is to join hands with the French people."

"Our enemies," returned Marie Antoinette.

"Because you taught them to doubt you."

"They cannot struggle against an European Coalition."

"Suppose a Constitutional King at their head and they will make the conquest of Europe."

"They would need a million of armed men for that."

"Millions do not conquer Europe – an idea will. Europe will be conquered when over the Alps and across the Rhine advance the flags bearing the mottoes: 'Death to tyranny!' and 'Freedom to all!'"

"Really, sir, there are times when I am inclined to think the wise are madmen."

"Ah, you know not that France is the Madonna of Liberty, for whose coming the peoples await around her borders. She is not merely a nation, as she advances with her hands full of freedom – but immutable Justice and eternal Reason. But if you do not profit by all not yet committed to violence, if you dally too long, these hands will be turned to rend herself.

"Besides, none of these kings whose help you seek is able to make war. Two empires, or rather an empress and a minister, deeply hate us but they are powerless! Catherine of Russia and William Pitt. Your envoy to Pitt, the Princess Lamballe, can get him to do much to prevent France becoming a republic, but he hates the monarch and will not promise to save him. Is not Louis the Constitutional King, the crowned philosopher, who disputed the East Indies with him and helped America to wrest herself from the Briton's grasp? He desires only that the French will have a pendant to his Charles the Beheaded."

"Oh, who can reveal such things to you?" gasped the Queen.

"The same who tell me what is in the letters you secretly write."

"Have we not even a thought that is our own?"

"I tell you that the Kings of Europe are enmeshed in an unseen net where they write in vain. Do not you resist, madam: but put yourself at the head of ideas which will otherwise spurn you if you take the lead, and this net will be your defense when you are outside of it and the daggers threatening you will be turned towards the other monarchs."

"But you forgot that the kings are our brothers, not enemies, as you style them."

"But, Madam, if the French are called your sons you will see how little are your brothers according to politics and diplomacy. Besides, do you not perceive that all these monarchs are tottering towards the gulf, to suicide, while you, if you liked, might be marching towards the universal monarchy, the empire of the world!"

"Why do you not talk thus to the King?" said the Queen, shaken.

"I have, but like yourself, he has evil geniuses who undo what I have done. You have ruined Mirabeau and Barnave, and will treat me the same – whereupon the last word will be spoken."

"Dr. Gilbert, await me here!" said she: "I will see the King for a while and will return."

He had been waiting a quarter of an hour when another door opened than that she had left by, and a servant in the royal livery entered. He looked around warily, approached Gilbert, making a masonic sign of caution, handed him a letter and glided away.

Opening the letter, Gilbert read:

"Gilbert: You waste your time. At this moment, the King and the Queen are listening to Lord Breteuil fresh from Vienna, who brings this plan of policy: 'Treat Barnave as you did Mirabeau; gain time, swear to the Constitution and execute it to the letter to prove that it is unworkable. France will cool and be bored, as the French have a fanciful head and will want novelty, so that the mania for liberty will pass. If it do not, we shall gain a year and by that time we shall be ready for war.'

"Leave these two condemned beings, still called King and Queen in mockery, and hasten to the Groscaillou Hospital, where an injured man is in a dying state, but not so hopeless as they: he may be saved, while they are not only lost but will drag you down to perdition with them!"

The note had no signature, but the reader knew the hand of Cagliostro.

Madam Campan entered from the Queen's apartments; she brought a note to the effect that the King would be glad to have Dr. Gilbert's proposition in writing, while the Queen could not return from being called away on important business.

"Lunatics," he said after musing. "Here, take them this as my answer."

And he gave the lady Cagliostro's warning, as he went out.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE SQUEEZED LEMON

On the day after the Constituent Assembly dissolved, that is, the second of October, at Barnave's usual hour for seeing the Queen, he was ushered into the Grand Study.

On the day of the King taking the oath to the Constitution, Lafayette's aids and soldiers had been withdrawn from the palace and the King had become less hampered if not more powerful.

It was slender satisfaction for the humiliations they had lately undergone. In the street, when out for carriage exercise, as some voices shouted "Long live the King!" a roughly dressed man, walking beside the coach and laying his unwashed hand on the window ledge, kept repeating in a loud voice: