LA CONTAT. I won't cry anything. [To DESMOULINS.] Help me to get up here. [She stands on a table.] If you bully me any more I'll cry Down with Necker! [Cries from the Crowd.] I'm not afraid of you. Do you think you can frighten me because you're a mob, and your hundred mouths are yapping at me? I have only one, but I can make myself heard. I'm used to talking to the people. I face you every night: I am Mademoiselle Contat.
THE CROWD. Contat of the Théâtre-Français!—The Théâtre-Français!—Oh, let's see her!—Silence!
LA CONTAT. So you don't like the Queen? Do you want her sent away? Would you like to exile every pretty woman from France? You have only to say the word: we'll pack up and go. See what will happen without us. You really make me laugh, calling me an aristocrat! I'm the daughter of a herring-dealer, who kept shop just under the Châtelet. I work like the rest of you. I am for Necker just as you are. I'm for the Assembly, but I don't like to be bullied, and I really think if you took it into your heads to try to make me cry Long live Comedy, I would cry Down with Moliere! You may think whatever you like: there's no law against stupidity, but then there's no law against those who still have a little common sense. I like the Queen, and I am not afraid to say so.
A STUDENT. Of course: they both have the Comte d'Artois for a lover!
TWO WORKINGMEN. What a lie!—She can certainly talk!
DESMOULINS. Citizens, we cannot ask a queen to speak against royalty. Here is the true queen! The others are make-believe royalty, whose only function is to bear dauphins. Once the little one is born, they have nothing else to do. They live at our expense, and they are costly luxuries. It would be best to send this Austrian fowl back to her coop, from which she was brought at great cost—as if we lacked women in France to bear children! But the queens of the theater! Ah, they are intended to give happiness to the people. Every hour of their life is devoted to our service. Every bit of them is devoted to our pleasure; they belong to us, they are our national property. By Venus of the Beautiful Cheeks, let us defend her, and all shout: Long live the Queen, the true Queen, La Contat! [Laughter and applause.]
THE CROWD. Long live Queen Contat!
LA CONTAT. Thank you. [To DESMOULINS.] Give me your arm; you're nicer than the others.—Have you feasted your eyes enough? Very well, then let me by. If you want to see me again, you know the way to the Theater.—What is your name?
DESMOULINS. Camille Desmoulins.—How imprudent of you! I told you—weren't you afraid?
LA CONTAT. Of what?