That day, the 14th of July, 1790, was appointed to be a high festival throughout the kingdom: Charles passed it in the Champ de Mars; Marguerite by the dying bed of her father; the children, under the guardianship of their uncle Antoine, among the rejoicing peasantry; and Steele, who had returned to Bordeaux when Charles settled himself again in Paris, took the opportunity of visiting La Haute Favorite for the first time after so many vicissitudes.
It seemed to them all a strange,—to the superstitious among them, an ominous circumstance that they should be thus separated on the occasion when all were called upon to recognize the social agreement under which they and their successors were to live.
A gleam of the afternoon sun shone in upon the face of Marguerite’s father as he dozed, and made him turn restlessly on his couch. His daughter hastened to shut it out, and the movement awoke him.
“One is fit only for the grave,” he said, “when the light which shines on all above it becomes painful.”
“Father! you are better,” said Marguerite, turning round astonished.
“No,” said he, faintly, “not better. I cannot bear this light,—or this heat,—or—but no matter; it will presently be over. But where is Charles?”
“He will be here very soon; but it is only two days since you became worse; and there has been no time for him to come yet. To-day he is waiting upon the king, and next he will wait on you.”
“On the king!” and the old man was roused at once. “And all the people? I fancied they had left off their duty. Who waits upon the king?”
“The whole nation,” Marguerite replied, sighing to herself, however, over her own view of the matter—that the king was, in fact, waiting upon the nation. She proceeded to tell what was doing in Paris, and remarked that she hoped they had finer weather there than here, where it had been a day of continued rain, till the gleam came which had wakened her father.
M. Raucourt was too ignorant of the events of the last two years to be able to comprehend the present proceeding. He could not see what the people had to do with the constitution; but laid the blame on his own weak brain, when assured that the loyal men of France were all consenting to the measure. Other tokens of ignorance were much more affecting to his daughter. He wished to be raised in bed, so that he might see his olive woods in the evening glow. They were no longer there, and his attention must be diverted to something else. He wished to behold the marquis de Thou passing the house for his daily ride.—The bones of him he asked for were mouldering under the ruins of his own abode.—“At least,” said M. Raucourt, “let me be carried to the window, that I may see the chateau. It looks so finely on the terrace! and it is so long since I saw it!”—Grass was growing on its hearths, and the peasants’ children were playing hide and seek among its roofless halls.