"Doubtless the circumstances were intensely interesting. What were they? You pique my curiosity."
"Sire, the circumstances are sinister. It would be painful to me to give you cause to draw the sad comparison between your present position and that of the princes, your predecessors."
"Tell me that part of your legends, Monsieur Lebrenn. My curiosity is highly excited, and my confidence in a brighter future will not be dimmed by your recital."
"To obey you, Sire, I shall. It was in the year 738 that one of my ancestors, named Amael, a soldier of fortune and companion to Charles Martel, found himself in Anjou, at the Convent of St. Saturnine. My ancestor was commissioned by Charles Martel to keep prisoner in the convent a poor boy of nine, the only son of Thierry IV, the do-nothing King, named Childeric. The child soon died, thus extinguishing, in the last scion of the Merovingians, the stock of Clovis who had covered Gaul with ruins.[11] Two centuries and a half later, in 987, at the palace of Compiegne, another of my ancestors, the son of a forester of the royal domain, found himself alone in the chamber of Louis the Do-nothing with that prince; he saw him of a sudden faint, become deadly pale, and writhe in agony. He apostrophized the dying King thus: 'Louis, last year Hugh the Capet, Count of Paris, had your father Lothaire poisoned by the Queen his wife, a concubine of the Bishop of Laon. Louis, you are about to die of poison which your wife, Queen Blanche, has just given you. She has promised Hugh the Capet, her accomplice, to wed him during the coming year.' And so it was; the last of the Carlovingians dead, Hugh the Capet espoused his widow and had himself enthroned King of France.[12] There, Sire, that is how royal dynasties are founded and ended."
"These are strange chances, Monsieur Lebrenn," replied Louis XVI. "One of your ancestors charged to watch the last prince of the dynasty of Clovis; another ancestor sees perish the last scion of the monarchy of Charlemagne; and this night you are to watch over me, whom you probably consider as the last King of the dynasty of Hugh Capet. You will soon perceive your error."
"Sire," returned John Lebrenn, "you insisted on knowing the occurrences of which I just spoke, in connection with a question you put to me—"
"Aye, Monsieur Lebrenn; and in spite of the strangeness of the circumstances with which you have just made me acquainted, I repeat my question. What harm have royalty, nobility and clergy ever done to you and yours, that you should hate them so?"
"To begin with, Sire, we know upon what crimes hang the rise and fall of dynasties; consequently we are unable to love and respect a royalty imposed upon us by conquest. All monarchies have had a similar origin. The Count of Boulainvilliers, in this very century, established and demonstrated that the land of the Gauls belonged of fact and of right to the King and the nobility, by the grace of God and the right of their good swords: the Gauls were a vanquished race."
For several seconds Louis did not speak. Then he began brusquely, "Triumph in your hate, monsieur; you are here as the jailer of the descendant of those Kings whom you and your fellows have abhorred for ages."
"The circumstance which has placed me near you, Sire, is of too high an order of morality to evoke in me a sentiment so miserable as that of sated hatred."