"Never, never!" exclaimed the Queen, with increasing firmness.
"But think of the danger of remaining in Paris!" urged Beaufort. "We know not at what moment this insurrection prepared by the Jacobins may burst out, we know not at what moment this palace and the sacred persons of your Majesties may be at the mercy of an infuriated, insensate mob."
"Let them come—these dangers—these horrors," says the Queen, intrepidly; "they will bring Brunswick and the allies that much sooner to this Paris which I will not leave until they enter it." She stamped her foot upon the velvet carpet and clinched her white hands at her sides.
"Then your Majesty is resolved to give up the enterprise she has promised to support, to abandon those loyal servants who have depended upon her and his Majesty the King?" asks Adrienne, looking at the Queen, her face pale as marble and her eyes burning with indignation.
"Does Madame Calvert permit herself to question our actions?" says the Queen, turning imperiously upon her. Suddenly her beautiful eyes filled with tears. "Forgive me—you are right," she says. "'Tis our fate—our wretched fate—to seem to abandon and injure all who are brought near us, all who attempt to serve us. We cannot help ourselves—even now we must break our faith with these loyal friends, for now I see that after the refusal of the Assembly to allow us to leave Paris, 'twere madness to attempt to go. We would but increase the danger, the humiliation we already have to endure. The only wise course is to await Brunswick and the allies. I see now the folly of this plan of escape—indeed, I was never fully persuaded of its wisdom. The confidence I felt in this young American—his devotion to us and that of those other friends—blinded me to the dangers and difficulties of the undertaking."
"And the King?" asks Adrienne, turning from the Queen to his Majesty, who sat by, indecision and weariness and timidity written on all his heavy features.
"We dare not," he says, at length, apathetically. "The Queen is right—after the refusal by the Assembly to allow us to depart, after this new humiliation, it were worse than folly to think of escaping. We are surrounded by spies—treachery is within these very walls—how can we hope to get away? It is best to await our doom quietly here. What think you, Beaufort?" he asks.
"I implore your Majesty to make the effort," says Beaufort. "Once outside Paris, the Swiss Guards await you, Lafayette with his loyal regiments is even now at Compiègne——"
"Lafayette at Compiègne?—who knows?" says the Queen, gloomily, interrupting Beaufort again. "Monsieur de Lafayette hath betrayed us before and may do so again. I trust him not! To know that he has a share in this enterprise is to make me fear to pursue it! No, no," she goes on, shuddering and turning away. "St. Cloud and the 5th of October are too well remembered. I should have thought of all this before," she says, striking her hands together in an agony of doubt and despair. "It is too late now."
"And who will tell these gentlemen waiting at Courbevoie, and the regiments advancing from Compiègne at the risk of their lives, of this sudden change in your Majesties' plans? Should Monsieur d'Angrémont be induced to divulge their names they will inevitably be lost—their only hope is in immediate flight," says Adrienne, looking from the King, sunk in resigned silence, to the frantic, hapless Queen, and back again.