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

"Do not believe them. The only cry is, 'The Nation Forever!'"

The Queen had been applauded at the Opera where the "house was packed," but the same precaution could not be adopted at the Italians, where the pit was taken in advance. When the hirelings in the gallery hailed the Queen, they were hushed by the pit.

Looking into the pit to see who these were who so detested her, the Queen saw that the leader was the Arch-Revolutionist, Cagliostro, the man who had pursued from her youth. Once her eyes were fastened on his, she could not turn hers aloof, for he exercised the fascination of the serpent on the bird.

The play commenced and she managed to tear her gaze aloof for a time, but ever and anon it had to go back again, from the potent magnetism. It was fatal possession, as by a nightmare.

Besides, the house was full of electricity; two clouds surcharged were floating about, restless to thunder at each other: a spark would send forth the double flame.

Madam Dugazon had a song to sing with the tenor in this opera of Gretry, "Unforeseen Events." She had the line to sing:

"Oh, how I love my mistress!"

The Queen divined that the storm was to burst, and involuntarily she glanced towards the man controlling her. It seemed to her that he gave a signal to the audience, and from all sides was hurled the cry:

"No more mistresses – no more masters! away with kings and queens!"

She screamed and hid her eyes, unable to look longer on this demon of destruction who ruled the disorder. Pursued by the roar: "No more masters, no more kings and queens!" she was borne fainting to her carriage.

She received the orator standing, though she knew the respect he cherished for her and saw that he was paler and sadder than ever.

"Well," she said, "I suppose you are satisfied, since the King has followed your advice and sworn to the Constitution?"

"You are very kind to say my advice has been followed," returned Barnave, bowing, "but if it had not been the same as that from Emperor Leopold and Prince von Kaunitz, perhaps his Majesty would have put greater hesitation in doing the act, though the only one to save the King if the King – "

"Can be saved, do you imply?" questioned she, taking the dilemma by the horns with the courage, or rashness peculiar to her.

"Lord preserve me from being the prophet of such miseries! And yet I do not want to dispirit your Majesty too much or leave too many deceptions as I depart from Paris to dwell afar from the throne."

"Going away from town and me?"

"The work of the Assembly of which I am a member has terminated, and I have no motive to stay here."

"Not even to be useful to us?"

"Not even that." He smiled sadly. "For indeed I cannot be useful to you in any way now. My strength lay in my influence over the House and at the Jacobin club, in my painfully acquired popularity, in short; but the House is dissolved, the Jacobins are broke up, and my popularity is lost."

He smiled more mournfully than before.

She looked at him with a strange glare which resembled the glow of triumph.

"You see, sir, that popularity may be lost," she said.

By his sigh, she felt that she had perpetrated one of those pieces of petty cruelty which were habitual to her.

Indeed, if he had lost it in a month, was it not for her, the angel of death, like Mary Stuart, to those who tried to serve her?

"But you will not go?" she said.

"If ordered to remain by the Queen, I will stay, like a soldier who has his furlough but remains for the battle; but if I do so, I become more than weak, a traitor."

"Explain: I do not understand," she said, slightly hurt.

"Perhaps the Queen takes the dissolved Assembly as her enemy?"

"Let us define matters; in that body were friends of mine. You will not deny that the majority were hostile."

"It never passed but one bill really an act of hostility to your Majesty and the King; that was the decree that none of its members could belong to the Legislative. That snatched the buckler from your friends' arms."

"But also the sword from our foemen's hand, methinks."

"Alas, you are wrong. The blow comes from Robespierre and is dreadful like all from that man. As things were we knew whom we had to meet; with all uncertainty we strike in the fog. Robespierre wishes to force France to take the rulers from the class above us or beneath. Above us there is nothing, the aristocracy having fled; but anyway the electors would not seek representatives among the noble. The people will choose deputies from below us and the next House will be democratic, with slight variations."

The Queen began to be alarmed from following this statement.

"I have studied the new-comers: particularly those from the South," went on Barnave; "they are nameless men eager to acquire fame, the more as they are all young. They are to be feared as their orders are to make war on the priests and nobles; nothing is said as to the King, but if he will be merely the executive, he may be forgiven the past."

"How? they will forgive him? I thought it lay in the King to pardon?" exclaimed insulted majesty.

"There it is – we shall never agree. These new-comers, as you will unhappily have the proof, will not handle the matter in gloves. For them the King is an enemy, the nucleus, willingly or otherwise, of all the external and internal foes. They think they have made a discovery though, alas! they are only saying aloud what your ardent adversaries have whispered all the time."

"But, the King the enemy of the people?" repeated the lady.

"Oh, M. Barnave, this is something you will never induce me to admit, for I cannot understand it."

"Still it is the fact. Did not the King accept the Constitution the other day? well, he flew into a passion when he returned within the palace and wrote that night to the Emperor."

"How can you expect us to bear such humiliations?"

"Ah, you see, madam! he is the born enemy and so by his character. He was brought up by the chief of the Jesuits, and his heart is always in the hands of the priests, those opponents of free government, involuntarily but inevitably counter to Revolution. Without his quitting Paris he is with the princes at Coblentz, with the clergy in Lavendee, with his allies in Vienna and Prussia. I admit that the King does nothing, but his name cloaks the plots; in the cabin, the pulpit and the castle, the poor, good, saintly King is prated about, so that the revolution of pity is opposed to that of Freedom."

"Is it really you who cast this up, M. Barnave, when you were the first to be sorry for us."

"I am sorry for you still, lady; but there is this difference, that I was sorry in order to save you while these others want to ruin you."

"But, in short, have these new-comers, who have vowed a war of extermination on us, any settled plan?"

"No, madam, I can only catch a few vague ideas: to suppress the title of Majesty in the opening address, and set a plain arm-chair beside the Speaker's instead of throne-chair. The dreadful thing is that Bailly and Lafayette will be done away with."

"I shall not regret that," quickly said the Queen.

"You are wrong, madam, for they are your friends – "

She smiled bitterly.

"Your last friends, perhaps. Cherish them, and use what power they have: their popularity will fly, like mine."

"This amounts to your leading me to the brink of the crater and making me measure the depth without telling me I may avoid the eruption."