“Sire, it was my right as head of my family, as you are chief of the realm, to die for you.”
“That made me think, that if ever I had a secret errand, difficult and dangerous, I could rely on your loyalty as a Frenchman, and on your heart as a friend’s.”
“Oh, Sire, however the King may raise me, I have no pretension to believe that I shall be more than a faithful and thankful subject.”
“My lord, you are a grave man though but thirty-six; you have not passed through recent events without drawing some conclusion from them. What do you think of the situation and what would be your means to relieve me, if you were my Premier?”
“Sire, I am a soldier and a seaman,” returned Charny, with more hesitation than embarrassment, “these high social questions fly over my head.”
“Nay, you are a man,” said the sovereign with a dignity in holding out his hand which sprang from the quandary; “another man, who believes you to be his friend, asks you, purely and simply, what you, with your upright heart and healthy mind, would do in his place.”
“Sire, in a no less serious position, the Queen asked my opinion: the day after the Taking of the Bastile, when she wanted to fling the foreign legions upon the mobs. My reply would have embroiled me with her Majesty had I been less known to her and my respect and devotion less plain. I said that your Majesty must not enter these walls as a conqueror if he could not as a father of his people.”
“Well, my lord, is not that the counsel I followed? The question is was I right? am I here as a King or a captive?”
“Speaking in full frankness, I disapproved of the banquet at Versailles, supplicating the Queen not to go there; I was in despair when she threw down the tricolor and set up the black cockade of Austria.”
“Do you believe that led really to the attack on the palace?”