"It is so very easy to gain your people's love!"
"Why, madam, they are more your people than mine, and the proof is that they worshiped you when you first came here."
"Oh, sir, dwell not on that flimsy thing, popularity."
"Madam," returned Barnave, "if I, springing from my obscure sphere, won this popularity, how much easier for you to keep it than I to conquer it? But no," continued he, warming with the theme, "to whom have you confided this holy cause of monarchy, the loftiest and most splendorous? What voices and what arms do you choose to defend it? Never was seen such ignorance of the times and such forgetfulness of the characteristics of France! Why, you have only to look at me for one instance—who solicited the mission of coming to you with the single end of offering myself, devoting myself——"
"Hush, some one is coming," interrupted the Queen; "we must refer to this, M. Barnave, for I am ready to listen to your counsel and heed you."
It was a servant announcing that dinner was waiting.
The two Lifeguards waited at table, but Charny stood in a window recess. Though under the roof of one of the first bishops, the meal was nothing to brag of: but the King ate heartily.
The Dauphin had been asking for strawberries but was told along the road that there were none, though he had seen the country lads devouring them by the handsful. So the poor little fellow had envied the rustic urchins who could seek the fruit in the dewy grass like the birds that revel at nature's bounteous board.
This desire had saddened the Queen, who called Charny in a voice hoarse with emotion. At the third call he heard her and came, but the door opened and Barnave appeared on the sill; in his hand was a platter of the fruit.
"I hope the King and the Queen will excuse my intruding," he said, "but I heard the prince ask for strawberries several times during the day, so that, finding this dish on the bishop's table, I made so bold as to take and bring it."