Charny smiled bitterly.
“I understand that smile and that you say, inwardly, the Queen was unjust at Versailles and is capricious here.”
“Injustice or caprice, a woman is allowed anything,” returned Charny: “a queen more than all.”
“Whatever the caprice, my friend,” said Marie with all the witchingness she could put in a voice or smile, “the Queen cannot do without you as adviser or the woman without you as loved friend.”
She held out her hand, a little thinned but still worthy of a lovely statue. He kissed it respectfully and was about to let it fall when he felt her retain his.
“I ought to have wept with you over the loss of your brother, slain for my sake: well, I have been weeping these ten days since I have not seen you: they are falling yet.”
Ah, if Charny could have surmised what a quantity of tears would follow those, no doubt the immense grief would have made him fall at her feet, and ask pardon for any grievances she had against him.
But the future is enveloped in mystery which no human hand can unveil before the hour and the black garb which Marie Antoinette was to wear to the scaffold, was too thickly embroidered with gold for one to spy the gloom of it.
“Believe, my lady,” he said, “that I am truly grateful for your remembrance of me and sorrow for my brother? unfortunately I must be brief as the King has entrusted me with a mission so that I leave in an hour.”
“What, do you abandon us like the others?”