The queen allowed the bitterness of her ill-restrained resentment to display itself. She wished to force on M. de La Fayette the keys of her caskets, which were in the carriages: he refused. She insisted; and when he was firm in his refusal, she placed them in his hat with her own hands. "Your majesty will have the goodness to take them back," said M. de La Fayette, "for I shall not touch them." "Well, then," answered the queen, "I shall find persons less delicate than you." The king entered his closet, wrote several letters, and gave them to a footman, who presented them to La Fayette for inspection. The general appeared indignant that he should be deemed capable of such an unworthy office as acting the spy over the king's acts; he was desirous that the thraldom of the monarch should at least preserve the outward appearance of liberty.
The service of the chateau went on as usual; but La Fayette gave the pass-word without first receiving it from the king. The iron gates of the courts and gardens were locked. The royal family submitted to La Fayette the list of persons whom they desired to receive. Sentinels were placed at every door, in every passage, in the corridors between the chambers of the king and queen. The doors of these chambers were constantly kept open—even the queen's bed was inspected. Every place, the most sacred, was suspected; female modesty was in no wise respected. The gestures, looks, and words of the king and queen all were watched, spied, and noted. They were obliged to manage by stealth some secret interviews. An officer of the guard passed twenty-four hours at a time at the end of a dark corridor, which was placed behind the apartment of the queen's,—a single lamp lighted it, like the vault of a dungeon. This post, detested by the officers on service, was sought after by the devotion of some of them; they affected zeal, in order to cloak their respect. Saint Prix, a celebrated actor of the Théâtre Français, frequently accepted this post,—he favoured the hasty interviews of the king, his wife, and sister.
In the evening one of the queen's women moved her bed between that of her mistress and the open door of the apartment, that she might thus conceal her from the eyes of the sentinels. One night the commandant of the guard, who watched between the two doors, seeing that this woman was asleep, and the queen was awake, ventured to approach the couch of his royal mistress, and gave her in a low tone some information and advice as to her situation. This conversation aroused the sleeping attendant, who, alarmed at seeing a man in uniform close to the royal bed, was about to call aloud, when the queen desired her to be silent, saying, "Do not alarm yourself; this is a good Frenchman, who is mistaken as to the intentions of the king and myself, but whose conversation betokens a sincere attachment to his masters."
Providence thus made some of their persecutors to convey some consolation to the victims. The king, so resigned, so unmoved, was bowed for a moment beneath the weight of so many troubles—so much humiliation. Such was his mental occupation, that he remained for ten days without exchanging a word with one of his family. His last struggle with misfortune seemed to have exhausted his strength. He felt himself vanquished, and desired, it would almost seem, to die by anticipation. The queen, throwing herself at his feet, and presenting to him his children, forced him to break this mournful silence. "Let us," she exclaimed, "preserve all our fortitude, in order to sustain this long struggle with fortune. If our destruction be inevitable, there is still left to us the choice of how we will perish; let us perish as sovereigns, and do not let us wait without resistance, and without vengeance, until they come and strangle us on the very floor of our own apartments!" The queen had the heart of a hero; Louis XVI. had the soul of a sage; but the genius which combines wisdom with valour was wanting to both: the one knew how to struggle—the other knew how to submit—neither knew how to reign.
XXVIII.
The effect of this flight, had it succeeded, would have wholly changed the aspect of the Revolution. Instead of having in the king, captive in Paris, an instrument and a victim, the Revolution would have had in an emancipated king, an enemy or a mediator; instead of being an anarchy, she would have had a civil war; instead of having massacres, she would have gained victories; she would have triumphed by arms, and not by executions.
Never did the fate of so many men and so many ideas depend so plainly on a chance! And yet this was not a chance. Drouet was the means of the king's destruction: if he had not recognised the monarch from his resemblance with his portrait on the assignats—if he had not rode with all speed, and reached Varennes before the carriages, in two hours more the king and his family must have been saved. Drouet, this obscure son of a post-master, sauntering and idle that evening before the door of a cottage, decided the fate of a monarchy. He took the advice of no one but himself—he set off, saying, "I will arrest the king." But Drouet would not have had this decisive impulse if, at this moment, as it were, he had not personified in himself all the agitation and all the suspicions of the people. It was the fanaticism of his country which impelled him, unknown to himself, to Varennes, and which urged him to sacrifice a whole family of fugitives to what he believed to be the safety of the nation.
He had not received instructions from anyone; he took upon himself alone the arrest and the death that ensued. His devotion to his country was cruel: his silence and commiseration would have drawn down minor calamities.
As to the king himself, this flight was in him a fault if not a crime: it was too soon or too late. Too late—for the king had already too far sanctioned the Revolution, to turn suddenly against it without appearing to betray his people and give himself the lie; too soon—for the constitution which the National Assembly was drawing up was not yet completed, the government was not yet pronounced powerless; and the foes of the king and his family were not yet so decidedly menaced that the care of his safety as a man should surpass his duties as a king. In case of success, Louis XVI. had none but foreign forces to recover his kingdom; in case of arrest, he found only a prison in his palace. On which side soever we view it, flight was fatal—it was the road to shame or to the scaffold. There is but one route by which to flee a throne and not to die—abdication. On his return from Varennes, the king should have abdicated. The Revolution would have adopted his son, and have educated it in its own image. He did not abdicate—he consented to accept the pardon of his people; he swore to execute a constitution from which he had fled. He was a king in a state of amnesty. Europe beheld in him but a fugitive from his throne led back to his punishment, the nation but a traitor, and the Revolution but a plaything.