Dumouriez found in him at this moment, and during the three months of his ministry, an upright mind, a heart open to every benevolent sentiment, unvarying politeness, endurance and patience which defied the calamities of his situation. Extreme timidity, the result of the long seclusion in which his youth had been passed, repressed the feelings of his heart, and gave to his language and his intercourse with men a stiffness and embarrassment which destroyed his better qualities of decided and calm courage; he frequently spoke to Dumouriez of his death as an event probable and doomed, the prospect of which did not affect his serenity nor preclude him from doing his duty to the last as a father and a king.
"Sire," said Dumouriez to him, with the chivalric sympathy which compassion adds to respect, and with that aspect in which the heart says more than language; "you have overcome your prejudices against myself; you have commanded me by M. de Laporte to accept the post he had refused." "Yes," replied the king. "Well, I come now to devote myself wholly to your service, to your protection. But the part of a minister is no longer what it was in former days: without ceasing to be the servant of the king, I am the man of the nation. I will speak to you always in the language of liberty and the constitution. Allow me then, in order to serve you better, that in public and in the council I appear in my character as a constitutionalist, and that I avoid every thing that may at all reveal my personal attachment towards you. In this respect I must break through all etiquette, and avoid attending the court. In the council, I shall oppose your views, and shall propose as our representatives in foreign courts men devoted to the nation. When your repugnance to my choice shall be invincible and on good grounds, I shall comply; if this repugnance shall tend to compromise the safety of the country and yourself, I shall beg you to allow me to resign, and nominate my successor. Think of the terrible dangers which beset your throne—it must be consolidated by the confidence of the nation in your sincere attachment to the Revolution. It is a conquest which it depends on you to make. I have prepared four despatches to ambassadors in this sense. In these I have used language to which they are unused from courts, the language of an offended and resolute nation. I shall read them this morning before the council: if you approve my labour, I shall continue to speak thus, and act in accordance with my language; if not, my carriage is ready, and, unable to serve you in the council, I shall depart whither my tastes and studies for thirty years call me, to serve my country in the field."
The king, astonished and much moved, said to him, "I like your frankness; I know you are attached to me, and I anticipate all from your services. They had created many prejudices against you, but this moment effaces them all. Go and do as your heart directs you, and according to the best interests of the nation, which are also mine." Dumouriez retired; but he knew that the queen, adored by her husband, clung to the policy of her husband with all the passion and excitement of her soul. He desired and feared at the same time an interview with this princess: one word from her would accomplish or destroy the bold enterprise he had dared to meditate, of reconciling the king with the people.
XIII.
The queen sent for the general into her most private apartments. Dumouriez found her alone, her cheeks flushed by the emotion of an internal struggle, and walking rapidly up and down the room, like a person whose agitated thoughts require corresponding activity of body. Dumouriez placed himself in silence near the fireplace, in the attitude of respect and sorrow, inspired by the presence of so august, so beautiful, and so miserable a princess. She advanced towards him with a mingled air of majesty and anger.
"Monsieur," said she, with that accent that reveals at once resentment against fortune, and contempt for fate; "you are all-powerful at this moment; but it is through popular favour, and that soon destroys its idols." She did not await his reply, but continued, "Your existence depends upon your conduct; it is said that you possess great talents, and you must imagine that neither the king nor myself can suffer all these innovations of the constitution. I tell you thus much frankly, so make your decision." "Madame," returned Dumouriez, "I am confounded by the dangerous disclosure your Majesty has thought fit to make me; I will not betray your confidence, but I am placed between the king and the nation, and I belong to my country. Permit me," continued Dumouriez, with respectful earnestness, "to represent to you that the safety of the king—your own—and that of your children, and the very re-establishment of the royal authority—is bound up with the constitution. You are surrounded by enemies, who sacrifice you to their own interests. The constitution alone can, by strengthening itself, protect you and assure the happiness and glory of the king." "It cannot last long, beware of yourself," returned the queen, with a look of anger and menace. Dumouriez imagined that he saw in this look and speech an allusion to personal danger and an insinuation of alarm. "I am more than fifty years old, madame," replied he, in a low tone, in which the firmness of the soldier was mingled with the pity of the man; "I have braved many perils in my life; and when I accepted the ministry, I well knew that my responsibility was not the greatest of my dangers." "Ah," cried the queen, with a gesture of horror, "this calumny and disgrace was alone wanting! You appear to believe me capable of causing you to be assassinated." Tears of indignation checked her utterance. Dumouriez, equally moved with herself, disclaimed the injurious interpretation given to his reply. "Far be it from me, madame, to offer you so cruel an insult; your soul is great and noble, and the heroism you have displayed in so many circumstances, has for ever attached me to you." She was appeased in a moment, and laid her hand on Dumouriez's arm, in token of reconciliation.
The minister profited by this return to serenity and confidence to give Marie Antoinette advice, of which the emotion of his features and voice sufficiently attested the sincerity. "Trust me, madame, I have no motive for deceiving you; I abhor anarchy and its crimes equally with yourself. But I have experience; I live in the centre of the different parties, and I take part in opinion. I am connected with the people, and I am better placed than your majesty for judging the extent and the direction of events. This is not, as you deem it, a popular movement; but the almost unanimous insurrection of a great nation against an old and decaying order of things. Mighty factions feed the flame, and in every one of them are scoundrels or madmen. I alone see in the Revolution the king and the nation, and that which tends to separate them, ruins them both. I seek to unite them, and it is for you to aid me. If I am an obstacle to your designs, and if you persist in them, tell me instantly, and I will retire, and mourn in obscurity the fate of my country and your own." The queen was touched and convinced; the frankness of Dumouriez at once pleased and won her. The heart of the soldier was a guarantee to her of the conduct of the statesman. Firm, brave, and heroic, she preferred to have the weight of his sword in the councils of his king, rather than those politicians, and specious orators, who, nevertheless, bent before every blast of opinion or sedition; and an intimate understanding soon existed between the queen and the general.
The queen was for some time faithful to her promises, but the repeated outrages of the people again moved her, in spite of herself, to anger and conspiracy. "See," said she to the king before Dumouriez, one day, pointing to the tops of the trees in the Tuileries; "a prisoner in this palace, I do not venture to show myself at the windows that look on to the garden. The crowd collected there, and who watch even my tears, hoot me. Yesterday, to breathe the air, I showed myself at a window that looks at the court; an artillery-man on guard addressed the most revolting language to me. 'How I should like,' added he, 'to see your head on the point of my bayonet!' In this frightful garden I see on one side a man mounted on a chair, and vociferating the most odious insults against us, whilst he threatens, by his gestures, the inhabitants of the palace; on the other, the populace is dragging to the basin some priest or soldier, whom they overwhelm with blows and outrages, whilst, at the same time, and close to these terrible scenes, persons are playing at ball or walking about in the allées. What a residence—what a life—what a people!" Dumouriez could but lament with the royal family, and exhort them to be patient. But the endurance of the victims is exhausted sooner than the cruelty of the executioner. How could it be expected that a courageous and proud princess, who had been constantly surrounded by the adulation of the court, could love the Revolution that was the instrument of her humiliation and her torture? or see in this indifferent and cruel nation a people worthy of empire and of liberty?
XIV.
When all his measures with the court were concerted, Dumouriez no longer hesitated to leap over the space that divided the king and the extreme party, and to give the government the form of pure patriotism. He made overtures to the Jacobins, and boldly presented himself at their sitting the next day. The chamber was thronged, and the apparition of Dumouriez struck the tribunes with mute astonishment. His martial figure and the impetuosity of his conduct won for him at once the favour of the Assembly; for no one suspected that so much audacity concealed so much stratagem, and they saw in him only the minister who threw himself into the arms of the people, and every one hastened to receive him.