What was to be done? Full as he had been, a moment earlier, of courage and confidence, he now felt, all at once, confused and disappointed. The mere thought, “The King is here!” alone gave him more alarm than those few words, on the night before: “The King is about to pass!” For then he was but facing the unknown, and now he knew that icy stare, that implacable, impassible majesty.
“Ah! Bon Dieu! What a figure I should cut if I were to be so mad as to try and penetrate this garden, and find myself face to face with this superb monarch, sipping his coffee beside a rivulet.”
At once the sinister shadow of the Bastille seemed to fall before the poor lover; instead of the charming image that he had retained of the marquise and her smile, he saw dungeons, cells, black bread, questionable water; he knew the story of Latude, thirty years an inmate of the Bastille. Little by little his hope seemed to be taking to itself wings.
“And yet,” he again said to himself, “I am doing no harm, nor the King either. I protest against an injustice; but I never wrote or sang scurrilous songs. I was so well received at Versailles yesterday, and the lackeys were so polite! What am I afraid of? Of committing a blunder? I shall make many more which will repair this one.”
He approached the gate and touched it with his finger. It was not quite closed. He opened it, and resolutely entered.
The gatekeeper turned round with a look of annoyance.
“What are you looking for? Where are you going?”
“I am going to Madame de Pompadour.”
“Have you an audience?”
“Yes.”