She knew that Charny, whom she vainly looked for, would not be attracted by the power or by gold.
She looked for his younger brother, Isidore, wondering why all the Queen's defenders seemed absent from their post.
Nobody knew where he was. At this hour he was conducting his sweetheart, Catherine, daughter of the gloomy farmer Billet, to a house in Bellevue, Paris, for refuge from the contumely of her sisters in the village and the wrath of her father.
Who knows, though, but that the heiress to the throne of the Caesars would have consented to be an obscure peasant girl to be loved by George again as Isidore loved the farmer's daughter.
She was no doubt revolving such ideas when Mirabeau, who saw her with glances, half thunderous weather, half sunshine, and could not help exclaiming:
"Of what is the royal enchantress thinking?"
She was brooding over the absence of Charny and his love died out.
The mass was said by Talleyrand, the French "Vicar of Bray," who swore allegiance to all manner of Constitutions himself. It must have been of evil augury. The storm redoubled as though protesting against the false priest who burlesqued the service.
Here followed the ceremony of taking the oath. Lafayette was the first, binding the National Guards. The Assembly Speaker swore for France; and the King in his own name.