Ah, King, King! it is with greater heart and better faith that your people have sworn.
The Queen did not swear; she sat in a reserved seat, with the Dauphin and the princesses. On hearing the King’s voice trembling and hesitating she smiled, a singular light gleaming in her eyes the while.
M. Drouet, as well as myself, remarked that smile, and he frowned.
“Ah, M. Drouet,” said I, “I like not that smile! And I never could have believed that that beautiful Queen could have smiled in such a fashion.”
“The Queen’s smile matters little,” replied M. Drouet. “The King has sworn—that is the great point. The oath is registered at this moment in the hearts of twenty-five millions of Frenchmen. It will be worse for him if the oath be not kept.”
Every time that I have been to Paris since that day, I have paid a visit to the Champ de Mars, the only monument left of the Revolution.
The last time I made the pilgrimage was in 1853. I had come to buy the History of the French Revolution, by Michelet.
I seated myself on a hillock, and much in the same way as M. Chateaubriand on the ruins of Sparta, cried out in a loud voice, three times, “Leonidas! Leonidas! Leonidas!” I read aloud the following lines of the eloquent historian, which chimed in so well with my own thoughts:—