“You are such a big man I should think you could do almost anything!”
Robespierre was pawing at the pock-marked one’s coat, and finally succeeded in yanking him around. The broad back of the giant being turned to her, our little sparrow of a Henriette noiselessly departed––to the evident disappointment of the big man who looked yet again and found her place empty!
The big man had run across Chevalier de Vaudrey also, and the two had struck up a friendship. Moved by the pitiful sight of a starveling crowd gazing into a bakery, Maurice had rushed in and bought an armful of loaves which he distributed, adding gold louis for the wretched mothers of families. The pock-marked one had been a spectator. He stopped the Chevalier, shook his hand warmly, and remarked: “If more of the aristocrats were like you, things would be different!”
From these scenes of low life, let the reader pass for a few moments to the Salon de la Paix at Versailles, where King Louis XVI received petitioners.
We in America who have no awe of royalty perceive that the luckless King was simply a square peg in a round hole. He loved locksmithy, hunting, and home; would have been a successful inventor, pioneer, or bourgeois parent. In the chair of State, on this day of petitions, his head and hand busied themselves with a wonderful new doorlock he had devised.
“Sire,” said the suppliant de Linieres, “in the matter of the grand alliance betwixt my 45 nephew Chevalier de Vaudrey and your ward Princesse de Acquitaine––”
The monarch nodded absentmindedly.
“Oh, yes, yes! Of course. As you say––” With a courtly wave of the hand, the monarch indicated the waiting heiress on his right. She curtsied low in acceptance of the royal command.