"But who knows what will happen meanwhile?" expostulated the King in despair. "Marie, you seem doomed to ruin me. The Assembly will send me some addresses which will rob me of all the merit in taking the first step."
Gilbert nodded.
"Better so," said the Queen with sullen fury, "refuse and preserve your regal dignity: go not to Paris but wage war from here; and if we must die here, let us fall like rulers, like masters, like Christians, who cling to their God as to their crown."
The King saw from her excitement that he must give way.
"But what do you expect between whiles?" he inquired: "A reinforcement from Germany? or news from town?"
It was a coat of mail which the King refused to wear, but her misapprehension of the monarch who knew he was not of the times when kings wore armor, cost a precious time.
Without other safeguard than Gilbert's breast, as the latter rode in the coach beside the monarch, the visit to Paris was made.
In the Queen's drive, in the Champs Elysées, Mayor Bailly offered him the city keys, saying:
"Sire, I bring your Majesty the keys of the good city. They are the same offered to Henry Fourth. He won his people, but the people have now won their King."
On the return, all having passed smoothly, crossing Louis XV. Place, a shot was fired from across the river and Gilbert felt a stroke. The bullet had hit one of his steel vest buttons and glanced off into the crowd and killed an unfortunate woman.