"And why not, Monsieur? We are both of the same world, we have both been brought up after the same fashion, we are probably much alike. Ah, Monsieur," she went on, defiantly, "is it the Quaker in you—Monsieur Jefferson has told me that your mother was a Quakeress—that makes you hate the world, the flesh, and the devil so? Is Paris, then, so much more wicked than your Virginia? Are we so different from the women of your world?" She went up to him and put her beautiful face close to his disturbed one. "Are you so different from the men of our world, Monsieur, or is it only those grand yeux of yours, with their serious expression, that make you seem different—and better?" and her eyes smiled mockingly into his. "Pshaw, sir, you make me feel like a naughty school-girl when you reprove me so. Upon my word, I don't know why I submit to it! Though I am younger than you, sir, I feel a hundred years older in experience—and yet—and yet—there is something about you—" She broke off and again tapped the gravel impatiently with her foot.
"I have said nothing, Madame." Calvert was quiet and unsmiling.
"No, Monsieur, 'tis that I most object to—you keep silence, but your eyes reprove me. Oh, I have seen you looking at me with that reproving glance many times when you did not know I saw it! Am I to blame, sir, for being of the great world of which you do not approve? Am I to be rebuked—even silently—for coming here with Monsieur de St. Aulaire, by you, Monsieur?" Suddenly she dropped her defiant tone and, leaning against the edge of the marble basin, looked intently and silently at the splashing water gleaming white in the moonlight.
"Can you not see?—Do you not understand, Monsieur?" she said at length, hurriedly, and in a low voice. "Do not misjudge me. I have been brought up in this court life, which is the life of intrigue and dissimulation and wickedness—yes, wickedness! We know nothing else. There is no one in our world so pure as to be above suspicion. The walls of this great palace, thick and massive as they are, cannot keep out the whispers of calumny against the Queen herself. Is it so different in your country? Sometimes I abhor this life and would hear of another. Sometimes I hate all this," she went on, speaking as if more to herself than to Calvert. "As for Monsieur de St. Aulaire, I loathe him! I thank you, Monsieur, for ridding me of his presence. If I seemed ungrateful, believe me, I was not! 'Tis but my pride which stands no rebuke. But it is late! Will you do me the favor, Monsieur, of taking me back to the Galérie des Glaces?" She turned her eyes away from the fountain, at which she had gazed steadily while speaking, and looked at Calvert. He saw that they were full of tears. The mask was down again. There was an humbled, shamed expression on that lovely face usually so imperious. The look of appeal and distress went to his heart like a knife. She made him think of some brilliant bird cruelly wounded.
For an instant she looked at him so, and then resuming her imperious air with a palpable effort and forcing a smile to her lips, she gathered up her trailing gown and passed slowly beneath the colonnade, Calvert following at her side. As she turned away, he stooped quickly and picked up the white rose she had worn where it had fallen on the path.
CHAPTER XII
THE FOURTH AND THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY
For the next few weeks Mr. Calvert had little time—and, indeed, little inclination—to see Adrienne. The discovery that he loved her had brought pain, not happiness with it. He felt the gulf too wide between them, both in circumstance and character, to be bridged. How could he, an untitled American, an unknown young gentleman of small fortune, pretend to the hand of one of the most beautiful, most aristocratic, and most capricious women in Paris? He smiled to himself as he mentally compared Adrienne with the simple young beauties of Virginia he had known—with Miss Molly Crenshawe and Miss Peggy Gary—and he wondered a little bitterly why he could not have fallen happily in love with some one of his own countrywomen, whose heart he could have won and kept, instead of falling a victim to the charms of a dazzling creature quite beyond his reach. With that clear good sense which was ever one of his most distinguishing traits, he fully comprehended the difficulties, the impossibility of a happy ending of his passion, and, having no desire to play the rôle of the disconsolate lover, he again determined to see as little of Adrienne as possible.
For a while circumstances favored this decision. The French government, being entirely absorbed in domestic affairs, Mr. Jefferson found himself with more leisure than he had known for some time, and, being enormously interested in the organization of the States-General, and realizing that their proceedings were of the first order of importance, he drove almost daily from Paris to Versailles to assist at their stormy deliberations. Mr. Calvert attended him thither at his express wish, for he had the young man's diplomatic education greatly at heart, and desired him to profit by the debates in the Salle des Menus. In this way the young gentleman found his days completely filled, while the evenings were frequently as busily occupied in the preparation of letters for the American packet, dictated by Mr. Jefferson and narrating the day's events. Of things to be written there was no lack. Day after day, through the hot months of May and June, events succeeded one another rapidly. Tempestuous debates among the noblesse, the clergy, and the tiers état, upon the question of the verification of their powers, separately and together, were followed by proposition and counter-proposition, by commissions of conciliation which did not conciliate, by royal letters commanding a fusion of the three orders, by secessions from the nobility and clergy to the grimly determined and united tiers, by courtly intrigues at Marly for the King's favor in behalf of the nobles, by royal séances and ruses which, instead of postponing, only hastened the evil hour, by the famous oath of the Tennis Court, and by the triumph of the third estate. And in this distracting clash of opposing political forces, amid this first crash and downfall of the ancient order of things, there passed, almost unnoticed, save by the weeping Queen and harassed King, who hung over his pillow, the last sigh, the last childish words of the Dauphin. The tired little royal head, which had been greeted eight years before with such acclamations of enthusiastic delight, dropped wearily and all unnoticed for the last time, happily ignorant of the martyr's crown it had escaped. Calvert had the news from Madame de Montmorin when he went to pay his respects to her on the evening of the 3d of June, and in imagination he saw, over and over again, the lovely face of the Queen distorted with unavailing grief.
All these public occurrences which filled the hurrying days were reported in Mr. Jefferson's long letters to General Washington, to the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Jay, to Mr. Madison, Mr. Carmichael, and other friends in America, whom he knew to be deeply interested in the trend of French affairs. Indeed, he knew fully whereof he wrote, for, although in that summer of '89 the position of the United States in relation to Europe was anything but enviable, though we were deeply in debt and our credit almost gone, though England and Spain turned us the cold shoulder, though our enemies were diligently circulating damaging stories of the disunion, the bankruptcy, the agitation in American affairs, yet so friendly was the French government to us, so deep the personal respect and admiration for Mr. Jefferson as the representative of the infant republic, that he was consulted by the leaders of all parties and received the confidences of the most influential men of the day. So close, indeed, was his connection with the ministers in power that, during the early days of June and in pursuance of an idea which had occurred to him during a conversation with Lafayette, Mr. Short, and Monsieur de St. Étienne, he drew up a paper for the consideration of the King, which, if it had received the royal sanction, might have produced the best results. It was a charter of those rights which the King was willing, nay, glad, to grant, but it was Mr. Jefferson's earnest conviction that Louis should come forward with this charter of his own free will and offer it to his people, to be signed by himself and every member of the National Assembly. But the King's timidity and the machinations of Monsieur and the Comte d'Artois prevented this plan from coming to anything. Mr. Jefferson, thinking, perhaps, that his zeal had over-stepped his discretion, refused again to take an active part in the politics of the day, and declined the invitation of the Archbishop of Bordeaux to attend the deliberations of the committee for the "first drafting" of a constitution.