“General post,” she snapped. “What do you know of your own city, or of the anarchy that reigns in it? It only needed this spark to the mine. All is lost, I tell you. They are clamouring for a republic. We shall be sacrificed like the King of France and my sister to the fury of the Jacobins—I feel the knife at my neck—O! O!”
She rose in a frenzy of horror, shuffling her billets like cards to find a trump. “Gennaro, Valentino, Jeromio?” she whispered tearfully, and ended by making a sippet of the hermit. He was old and a misogynist. It was evident for some moments that he disagreed with her.
“Nothing remains to us,” she said at last, with a wry gulp, “but flight. We have foreseen it for days. For days, while you have been playing with tin trumpets, we have been transferring our royal effects to the ships: pictures, plate, jewels; the specie from the banks; the last soldi from the treasury. We have seen to everything, I and my sweet darling Emma, my only, truest, and best of friends. Nelson but awaits our signal to take us on board. You must give it him, at once, for this night, do you hear?”
“I will send a message by Ferreri,” said the king, rising, with a face as scared now as her own. “I will send Ferreri at once,” and he skipped to leave the room.
“Stay!” she cried, in agitation. “Be sure to bind him to the last privacy.”
“O, poor me!” said the king, with a spasm of a smile. “Must I then cheat my excise by smuggling my own orders through?”
“It is no time for fooling,” cried his angry spouse. “My God! do you not understand? Whether our plan should be suspected by Lazzari or Jacobins, the result would be the same. To the one it would mean desertion; to the other escape. They would combine at least to frustrate it.”
He stared, nodded sagely, and this time stole away on tiptoe, so that the Lazzari in the square should not hear him, I suppose. I was following, when the queen stopped me. Her expression in the act had fallen a little piteous, like that of a smiling saint sitting on spikes.
“Has Circe, then, no ministrations for the anguished of her own sex?” she asked.
I hurried to her. “O, madam!” I cried, “if I might serve you alone!”