"Ah, see," cried Madame Elizabeth, with a smile, "I believe now our
Louis has fallen asleep."
But the child quickly raised his head and looked at the smiling young princess with a reproachful glance.
"Ah, my dear aunt," cried he, reprovingly, "how could any one sleep when mamma sings?" [Footnote: The dauphin's own words.—See Beauchesne, vol. i., p. 27.]
Marie Antoinette drew the child within her arms, and her countenance beamed with delight. Never had the queen received so grateful a compliment from the most flattering courtier as these words of her fair-haired boy conveyed, who threw his arms around her neck and nestled up to her.
The Queen of France is still a rich, enviable woman, for she has children who love her; the Queen of France ought not to look without courage into the future, for the future belongs to her son. The throne which now is so tottering and insecure, shall one day belong to him, the darling of her heart, and therefore must his mother struggle with all her power, and with all the means at her command contend for the throne for the Dauphin of France, that he may receive the inheritance of his father intact, and that his throne may not in the future plunge down into the abyss which the revolution has opened.
No, the dauphin, Louis Charles, shall not then think reproachfully of his parents; he shall not have cause to complain that through want of spirit and energy they have imperilled or lost the sacred heritage of his fathers.
No, Queen Marie Antoinette may not halt and lose courage,—not even when her husband has done so, and when he is prepared to humbly bow his sacred head beneath that yoke of revolution, which the heroes and orators selected by the nation have wished to put upon his neck in the name of France.
This makes hers a double duty, to be active, to plan, and work; to keep her head erect, and look with searching eye in all directions to see whence help and deliverance are to come.
Not from without can they come, not from foreign monarchs, nor from the exiled princes. Foreign armies which might march into the country would place the king, who had summoned them to fight with his own people, in the light of a traitor; and the moment that they should pass the frontiers of France, the wrath of the nation would annihilate the royal couple.
Only from those who had called down the danger could help come. The chiefs of the revolution, the men who had raised their threatening voices against the royal couple, must be won over to become the advocates of royalty. And who was more powerful, who more conspicuous among all these chiefs of the revolution, and all the orators of the National Assembly, than Count Mirabeau!