Count Louis Bouille arrived about the middle of November. At this period the King was guarded closely by Lafayette whose cousin the young count was.
To keep him in ignorance of Charny’s negociations, the latter worked to be presented to the King by his kinsman.
Providence answered the envoy’s prayer for Lafayette, who had been informed of his coming but swallowed his excuse that it was on a visit to a sweetheart in Paris, offered to take him with him on his morning call on the monarch.
All the palace doors opened to the general. The sentinels presented arms and the footmen bowed, so that Count Louis could see that his relative was the real King of Paris.
The King was in his forge so that the visitors had to see the Queen first.
Bouille had not seen her for three years. The sight of her at thirty-four, a prisoner, slandered, threatened, and hated, made a deep impression on the chivalric heart of the young noble.
She remembered him at a glance and with the same was sure this was a friendly face. Without busying about General Lafayette she gave her hand for the young man to kiss, which was a fault such as she plentifully committed; without this favor she had won Louis Bouille, and by doing him it before the general she slighted the latter who had never been so gratified; she wounded the very man she most wanted as a friend.
Hence with a faltering in the voice but with the courtesy never leaving him, Lafayette said:
“Faith, my dear cousin, you want me to present you to the Queen: but it seems to me that you were better fitted to present me.”
The Queen was so enraptured at meeting a friend on whom she could rely, and as a woman so proud of the effect produced on the young nobleman, that she turned round on the general with one of the beams of youth which she had feared forever extinct.