CAGLIOSTRO'S COUNSEL.
Paris had heard the fusillade and quivered, feeling that she had been wounded and the blood was flowing.
The Queen had sent her confidential valet Weber to the spot to get the latest news. To be just to her and comprehend the hatred she felt for the French, she had not only so suffered during the flight to Varennes, that her hair had turned white, but also after her return.
It was a popular idea, shared in by her own retinue, that she was a witch. A Medea able to go out of window in a flying car.
But if she kept her jailers on the alert, they also frightened her. She had a dream of scenes of violence, for they had always turned against her.
She waited with anxiety for her envoy's return, for the mobs might have overturned this old, decrepit, trimming Assembly of which Barnave had promised the help, and which might now want help itself.
The door opened: she turned her eyes swiftly thither, but instead of her foster-brother, it was Dr. Gilbert, with his stern face.
She did not like this royalist whose constitutional ideas made him a republican almost; but she felt respect for him; she would not have sent him in any strait, but she submitted to his influence when by.
"You, doctor?" she said with a shiver.
"It is I, madam. I bring you more precise news than those you expect by Weber. He was on the side of the Seine where no blood was spilt, while I was where the slaughter was committed. A great misfortune has taken place—the court party has triumphed."
"Oh, you would call this a misfortune, doctor!"
"Because the triumph is one of those which exhaust the victor and lay him beside the dead. Lafayette and Bailly have shot down the people, so that they will never be able to serve you again; they have lost their popularity."
"What were the people doing when shot down?"
"Signing a petition demanding the removal of the King."
"And you think they were wrong to fire on men doing that?" returned the sovereign, with kindling eye.
"I believe it better to argue with them than shoot them."
"Argue about what?"
"The King's sincerity."
"But the King is sincere!"
"Excuse me, madam: three days ago, I spent the evening trying to convince the King that his worst enemies were his brothers and the fugitive nobles abroad. On my knees I entreated him to break off dealings with them and frankly adopt the Constitution, with revision of the impracticable articles. I thought the King persuaded, for he kindly promised that all was ended between him and the nobles who fled: but behind my back he signed, and induced you to sign, a letter which charged his brother to get the aid of Prussia and Austria."
The Queen blushed like a schoolboy caught in fault; but such a one would have hung his head—she only held hers the stiffer and higher.
"Have our enemies spied in our private rooms?" she asked.
"Yes, madam," tranquilly replied the doctor, "which is what makes such double-dealing on the King's part so dangerous."
"But, sir, this letter was written wholly by the royal hand, after I signed it, too, the King sealed it up and handed it to the messenger."
"It has been read none the less."
"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.