The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty

CHARNY left the King with his heart full of opposing feelings.

The primary one, mounting to the surface over the tumultuous waves of turbulent thoughts, was deep gratitude for the boundless confidence testified to him.

This imposed duties the more holy from his conscience not being dumb. He remembered his wrongs towards this worthy monarch who laid his hand on his shoulder as on a true friend at the time of danger.

The more Charny felt guilty towards his master, the more ready he was to devote himself to him.

The more this respectful allegiance grew the lesser became the less pure emotion which he had cherished for the Queen during years.

This is the reason why he—having lost the vague hope which led him towards Andrea for the test, as if she was one of those flowering shrubs on the precipice edge by which a falling man can save himself—grasped with eagerness this mission diverging him from the court. Here he felt the double torment of being still loved by the woman whom he was ceasing to love and of not being loved by her whom he was beginning to adore.

Profiting by the coldness lately introduced into his relations with the Queen, he went to her rooms with the intention of leaving a note to tell of his departure when he found Weber awaiting him.

The Queen wished to see him forthwith, and there is no eluding the wishes of crowned heads in their palace.

But had she any right to expect aught else than devotion of Charny?

She admitted that she was stern and unfair towards him, when the door opened and the gentleman appeared in the irreproachable costume of the military officer on duty.

But there was in his deeply respectful bearing something chilly which repelled the magnetic flow from the Queen’s heart, to go and seek in his the tender, sweet and sad memories collected during four years.

The Queen looked round her as though to try to ascertain why he remained on the sill, and when assured it was a matter of his will, she said:

“Come, my lord: we are alone.”

“I see that, but I do not see what in that fact should alter the bearing of a subject to his sovereign.”

“When I sent Weber for you I thought that fond friends were going to speak with one another.”

Charny smiled bitterly.

“I understand that smile and that you say, inwardly, the Queen was unjust at Versailles and is capricious here.”

“Injustice or caprice, a woman is allowed anything,” returned Charny: “a queen more than all.”

“Whatever the caprice, my friend,” said Marie with all the witchingness she could put in a voice or smile, “the Queen cannot do without you as adviser or the woman without you as loved friend.”

She held out her hand, a little thinned but still worthy of a lovely statue. He kissed it respectfully and was about to let it fall when he felt her retain his.

“I ought to have wept with you over the loss of your brother, slain for my sake: well, I have been weeping these ten days since I have not seen you: they are falling yet.”

But the future is enveloped in mystery which no human hand can unveil before the hour and the black garb which Marie Antoinette was to wear to the scaffold, was too thickly embroidered with gold for one to spy the gloom of it.

“Believe, my lady,” he said, “that I am truly grateful for your remembrance of me and sorrow for my brother? unfortunately I must be brief as the King has entrusted me with a mission so that I leave in an hour.”

“What, do you abandon us like the others?”

“I repeat it is a mission.”

“But you refused the like a week ago!”

“In a week much happens in a man’s existence to alter his determination.”

“Do you depart alone?” she asked, making an effort.

She breathed again when he answered: “Alone.”

“Where do you go?” she asked, recovering from her weakness.

“It is the King’s secret, but he has none from you.”

“My lord, the secret is ours alike,” said Marie Antoinette haughtily. “But is it abroad or in the kingdom?”

“The King alone can give your Majesty the desired information.”

“So you go away,” said she, with profound sorrow overcoming the irritation from Charny’s reserve, “to run into dangers afar, and I am not to know what they are!”

“Wheresoever I go, you will have a devoted heart daring all for you: and the dangers will be light since I expose my life in the service of the two sovereigns whom I most venerate on earth.”

The Queen uttered a sob which seemed to tear out her heart; and she said with a hand on her throat as if to keep down her gorge.

“It is well—go! for you love me no longer.”

Charny felt a thrill run through him; it was the first time this haughty woman and ruler had bowed unto him.

“My lady,” he said, “I should be a scoundrel if, after all the tokens of kindness and confidence the King has showered on me, I were to assure your Majesty of anything but my respect and devotion.”

“It is very well,” said she; “you are free to go.”

But when he departed without looking behind him, she waited till she heard him, not returning, but continuing his departure, in the carriage which rolled out of the courtyard.

She rang for her foster-brother.

“Weber,” she ordered, “go to the Countess of Charny’s residence and say I must speak with her this evening. I had an appointment with Dr. Gilbert, but I postpone that till the morning.”

She dismissed him with a wave of the hand.

“Yes, politics to-morrow,” she mused: “besides my conversation with Andrea may influence me on the course I take.”

THE Queen was wrong for Charny did not go to his wife’s house. He went to the Royal Post to have horses put to his own carriage. But while waiting, he wrote a farewell to Andrea which the servant who took his horses home, carried to her.

She was still dwelling over it, having kissed it with profound feeling, when Weber arrived. Her answer to him was simply that she would conform to her Majesty’s orders. And she proceeded to the palace without dread as without impatience.

But it was not so with the Queen. Feverish, she had welcomed Count Provence coming to see how Favras had been received, and she committed the King more deeply than he had pledged himself.

If the forced departure of the King failed, he would take to flight with what was left of the loan, and join his brothers in Italy.

On his leaving, the Queen went to Princess Lamballe, on whom she made it a habit to pour her woes or her joys in the absence of her other favorites, Andrea or the Polignacs.

Poor martyr! who dares grope in the darkness of alcoves to learn if this friendship were pure or criminal, when inexorable History was coming with feet red-shod in blood, to tell the price you paid for it?

Then she went to dinner for an hour, where both chief guests were absent in thought, the King thinking of Charny’s quest, the Queen of the Favras enterprise.

While the former preferred anything to being helped by the foreigners, the Queen set them first: for of course they were her people. The King was connected with the Germans, but then the Austrians are not German to the Germans.

In the flight she was arranging she saw no such crimes as she was afterwards taxed with: she felt justified in calling in the mailed hand to avenge her for the slights and insults with which she was deluged.

The King, as we have shown him, distrusted kings and princes. He relied on the priests. He approved of all the decrees against nobles and classes but not of the decree against the priests, which he vetoed. For them he risked his greatest dangers. Hence the Pope, unable to make a saint of him, made him a martyr.

Contrary to her habit, the Queen gave little time to her children this day; untrue to her husband in heart, she had no claim on their endearments. Such odd contradictions are known only to woman’s heart.

The Queen retired early to her own rooms, where she shut herself up with Weber as door-ward. She alleged that she had letters to write.

The Assembly had changed the old form in public documents of “King of France and Navarre” to “King of the French”: and it was debating on the Rights of Man, when it had better be seeing to the Bread Question, more pressing than ever. The arrival of the “Baker” and his family from Versailles had not fed the famished people and the bakeries had strings of customers at their doors.

But the Assemblymen did not have to dance attendance for a loaf, and they had a special baker, one François in Marchepalu Street, who set aside rolls for them out of every baking.

The head of the police was discussing the bread riots with the ruler when Weber ushered Andrea into his mistress’s presence.

Though she expected her, Marie Antoinette started when her visitor was announced.

When they were girls together, at Taverney, they had made a kind of agreement of love and duties exchanged in which the higher personage had always had the advantage.

Nothing annoys rulers so much as senses of obligation, particularly in matters of affection.

While thinking she had reproaches to cast on her friend, the Queen felt under a debt to her.

Andrea was always the same: pure and cool as the diamond but cutting and invulnerable like it, too.

“Be welcome, Andrea, as ever,” said the Queen to this cold, walking ghost.

The countess shivered for she recognized some of the tone the Queen used to speak with when the Dauphiness.

“Needs must I tell your Majesty that she should not have had to send for me without the royal residence, if I had always been spoken to, in that tone?” said the countess.

Nothing could better help the Queen than this opening: she greeted it as facilitating her course.

“Alas, you ought to know that all womankind have not your immutable serenity,” she said; “I, above all, who had to ask your aid so generously accorded——“

“The reply is stern,” said the other: “you might naturally hold me as ungrateful: but what you took for ingratitude was but impotence.”

“I should have the right to accuse you, if ever I had asked you for anything and my wish were opposed,” said the countess, “but how can your Majesty expect me to complain when I have sought nothing?”

“Shall I tell you that it is just this indifference which shocks me; yes, you seem a supernatural being brought from another sphere in some whirlwind, and thrown among us like the crystal aerolites. One is daunted by her weakness beside the never-weakening; but in the end assurance returns, for supreme indulgence must be in perfection: it is the purest source in which to lave the soul, and in profound grief, one sends for the superhuman being for consolation, though her blame is dreaded.”

“Alas, if your Majesty sends for me for this, I fear the expectation will be disappointed.”

“Andrea, you forget in what awful plight you upheld me and comforted me,” said the Queen.

Her hearer turned visibly paler. Seeing her totter and close her eyes from losing strength, the Queen moved to support her but she resisted and stood steady.

“If your Majesty had pity on your faithful servant, you would spare her memories which she had almost banished from her: she is a poor comforter who seeks comfort from nobody, not even heaven, from doubt that even heaven hath power to console certain sorrows.”

“Then you have others to tell of than what you have entrusted to me? the time has come for you to explain, and that is why I sent for you. You love Count Charny?”

“I do,” replied Andrea.

“Oh!” groaned the Queen like a wounded lioness. “I thought as much. How long since?”

“Since I first laid eyes on him.”

Marie Antoinette recoiled from this statue which confessed it was animated by a spirit.

“And yet you said nothing?”

“No; but you mean that you loved him more than I, because you perceived my love. If I see it now, it is because he loves me no longer say?” and she clutched her arm.

Andrea replied not by word, or sign.

“This is enough to drive one mad,” cried the royal lady. “Why not kill me outright by telling me that he loves me not.”

“Count Charny’s love or indifference to other women than his wife are secrets of Count Charny. They are not for me to reveal,” observed Andrea.

“His secrets? I dare say he has made you his bosom friend, indeed,” sneered the Queen with bitterness.

“The count has never spoken to me of his love or indifference towards your Majesty.”

“Not even this morning?” She fixed a soul penetrative glance upon her.

“Not even this morning. He announced his departure to me by letter.”

“Ah, he wrote to you?” exclaimed the Queen in a burst which, like King Richard’s cry: “My kingdom for a horse!” implied that she would give her crown for that letter.

Andrea comprehended her absorbing desire but she wished to enjoy her anxiety for a space, like a woman. At last, drawing the letter from her corsage, warm and perfumed, she held it out to her royal mistress. The temptation was too strong, and the latter opened it and read:

The Queen had learnt what she wanted to know, and was about to return the writing, but Andrea bade her read to the end as if she had a claim to command.

The reader returned the letter to Andrea, and let her hand fall inert by her side, with a sigh.

“Have I betrayed you,” murmured the countess: “have I failed in the faith you put me in, for I made no promises?”

“Forgive me, for I have suffered so much,” faltered Marie.

“She was to be a wife without a husband, a mere veil thrown between the crowd and another’s happiness, like the shroud between the corpse and the common eye: overruled by the compulsory duty, not by mercy, for jealous love knows no pity—you sacrificed me—you accepted my immense devotion. You did not have to hear the priest ask if you took for helpmate the man who was not to be your husband: you did not feel him pass the ring over your finger as the pledge of eternal love, while it was a vain and meaningless symbol; you did not see your husband quit you at the church door within an hour of the wedding, to be the gallant of your rival! oh, madam, these three years has been of torture!”

The Queen lifted her failing hand to seek the speaker’s but it was shunned.

“I promised nothing, but see what I have done,” said she. “But you promised two things—not to see Count Charny, the more sacred as I had not asked it; and, by writing, to treat me as a sister, also the more sacred as I never solicited it.

“Must I recall the terms of that pledge? I burnt the paper but I remember the words; and thus you wrote:

“Forgive me, Andrea, I thought that he loved you.”

“Did you believe it the law of the affections that when one loves a woman less he loves another woman more?”

She had undergone so much that she became cruel in her turn.

“So you too perceive his love falling off?” questioned the Queen dolefully.

Without replying Andrea watched the despairing sovereign and something like a smile was defined on her lips.

“Oh heaven, what must I do to retain this fleeting love? my life that ebbs? Oh, if you know the way, Andrea, my friend and sister, tell me, I supplicate you!” She held out both hands from which the other receded one step.

“How am I to know, who have never loved?”

“Yes, but he may love you. Some day he will come to your arms for forgiveness and to make amends for the past, asking your pardon for all he has made you suffer: suffering is quickly forgotten, God be thanked! in loving arms, pardon is soon granted to the beloved who gave pain.”

“This misfortune coming—and it would be that for both of us, madam, do you forget the secret which I confided in you, how—before I became the wife of Count Charny—I was mother of a son?”

The Queen took breath.

“You mean you will do nothing to bring Charny back to you?” she asked.

“Nothing; no more in the future than in the past.”

“You will not tell him—will not let him suspect that you love him?”

“No, unless he comes to tell me that he loves me.”

“But, if he should——“

“Oh, madam,” interrupted Andrea.

“Yes, you are right, Andrea, my sister and friend; and I am unjust, exacting and cruel. But when all falls away from me, friends, power and fame, I may wish that at least this passion to which I have sacrificed friendship, power and reputation, should be left to me.”

“No, nothing, I thank you. I wished to restore you my friendship but you will not accept it. Farewell; at least take my gratitude with you.”

Andrea waved away this second feeling as she had the former, and making a cold and deep reverence, stole forth silently and slowly as a ghost.

“Oh, body of ice, heart of diamond and soul of fire, you are right not to wish either my friendship or my gratitude; for I feel—though the Lord forgive me! that I hate you as I never hated any one—for if he does not love you now, I foresee that he will love you some day.”

She called Weber to ask if Dr. Gilbert was coming next day.

“At ten in the morning.”

Pleading that she was ailing and wearied, she forbade her ladies to disturb her before ten, the only person she intended to see being Gilbert.

WHEN Gilbert appeared before the Queen, she uttered a scream, for his ruffles and part of his coat were torn and drops of blood stained his shirt.

“I ask pardon for presenting myself to your Majesty in this attire,” he said, “but your trusty servant who came to learn why I was late to the appointment, will tell you that he found me in the midst of a mob, trying to save a baker who was done to death for withholding bread. They cut the poor fellow to pieces: and to make matters worse, in parading his head on a pike it was shown to his wife who fell down and alas! has been prematurely confined.”

“Ah, madam,” exclaimed Gilbert, “why cannot all France see these tears in your eyes and hear these words from your lips!”

But almost instantly the monarch returned to master the woman. She said with a change of tone:

“And are these, sir, the fruits of your revolution? after slaying the great lords, the officials and the soldiery, the people are killing one another; is there no means of dealing out justice to these cutthroats?”

“We will try to do so; but it would be better to prevent the murders than wait and punish the murderers.”

“How? the King and I ask nothing more fervently.”

“All these woes come from the people having lost confidence in those set above them. Nothing of the kind would occur if they were ruled by men with the public confidence.”

“You allude to this Mirabeau and Lafayette?”

“I hoped that your Majesty had sent to tell me that the King was no longer hostile to the Cabinet I proposed.”

“In the first place, doctor,” replied the royal lady, “you fall into a grave error shared with many more, I admit: you think that I have influence over the King. You believe that he follows my inspirations? You mistake: if any body has a sway over him, it is Lady Elizabeth; the proof is that she yesterday sent one of my servitors, Count Charny, on an errand without my knowing whither he goes or what is its aim.”

“Still, if your Majesty will surmount her repugnance to Mirabeau, I can answer for bringing the King round to my views.”

“Is not such repugnance based on a motive, tell me?” counterqueried the lady.

“In politics, there should be neither sympathy nor antipathy; only the meetings of principles and combinations of gains, and I ought to say that gains are surer than principles.”

“Do you believe that this man who has publicly insulted me, would consent to join us?”

“But he is for the Duke of Orleans?”

“So far from him is he, that on hearing of the duke going over to England when Lafayette threatened him, he said: ‘They say I am in his pay! I would not have him for my lackey.'”

“That reconciles him some with me,” said the lady, trying to smile: “if I could believe he might be relied on——“

“Well?”

“Perhaps I should be nearer him than the King.”

“Madam, I saw him at Versailles when the mob stormed the palace: then he thought the Royal Family ought to flee but I have had a note from him this day.”

He took out a slip of rough paper.

“Excuse the writing—it is on paper found in a wine saloon and written on the counter.”

“Never mind that: it is in keeping with the present style of politics.”

Taking the paper, the Queen read:

“It is not signed,” objected the Queen.

“He handed it to me himself. My advice is that he is perfectly right and that this alliance alone can save France.”

“Be it so, let the gentleman put the project on paper and I will lay it before the King, as well as support it.”

“Then I will go to the Assembly and see him. In two hours I shall return.”

The Queen waited in impatience, always fond of plotting and agitation as she was. His answer was that Mirabeau had become the spokesman of the court.

In fact, after a hot discussion, martial law was voted by the Assembly. The crime of treason was to be tried at the Chatelet Royal Court, which meant that royalty still held three fourths of the active power.

The triumph was great to have them tried under the Royal party’s thumb. The first trial was of three men who had killed the baker of the Assemblymen, François; two of whom were hanged on the mere accusation and public notoriety; the third was tried and sent to the gallows likewise.

Two other cases were on the docket.

Both the accused prisoners were on the court side, the contractor Augeard and Inspector General Pierre Victor Benzenval, of the Swiss Guards.

Augeard was suspected of supplying the funds for the Queen’s camerailla to pay the troops gathered in July to fight the Parisians: the contractor was not much known and the people bore him no grudge so that he was acquitted without protest.

It was not so with Benzenval, who was notorious. He had commanded the Swiss regiments during the riots and the week of the attack on the Bastile. It was remembered that he had charged the crowds, who wanted to pay him out.

But the most precious orders had been sent out by the King and the court; under no pretext must Benzenval be punished. It took at least this two-fold protection to save him. He had acknowledged himself guilty by taking to flight after the Bastile fell: caught half way to the frontier, he had been brought back to the capital.

Nevertheless he was acquitted.

Amid the hooting, angry crowd, leaving the court, was a man, dressed like a plain storekeeper who familiarly laid his hand on the shoulder of a gentleman dressed better than he, and said:

“Well, what does Dr. Gilbert think of these acquittals?”

The other started, but recognized the speaker by sight as well as by the voice, and replied:

“The Master!—you ought to be asked that, not me, for you know all, present, past and future!”

“Well, I should say: The third prisoner will catch it severely, even though he be innocent.”

“Why should the innocent, if coming next, be wrongfully punished?” inquired the doctor.

“Good-bye, Master,” said Gilbert, offering his hand; “for I have business.”

“With whom? Mirabeau, Lafayette or the Queen?”

Gilbert stopped and eyed Cagliostro uneasily.

“Let me tell you that you ofttimes frighten me,” he said.

“On the contrary, I want to encourage you,” said the magician. “Am I not your friend? You may be sure of that: I will afford you a proof if you will come with me home. I will give you such hidden particulars of this negociation which you believe secret, that you who fancy you are managing it, will confess ignorance of it.”

“Listen,” said Gilbert; “perhaps you are jesting with me by one of those marvellous funds of information familiar to you; but no matter! circumstances amid which we are treading are so grave that I would accept enlightenment though from Old Harry himself. I am following you therefore whithersoever you lead me.”

“Be easy, it will not be far and to a place not unknown to you; only let me hail this passing hack; the dress I came out in did not allow me to use my carriage and horses.”

They got into the hackneycoach which came on at a sign.

“Where am I to drive you, master?” inquired the Jehu, to Cagliostro as though, somehow, he saw that he was the leader of the pair, though the more plainly dressed.

“Where you know,” answered the Chief, making a masonic sign, “The Temple.”

The driver looked at the Grand Copt with amazement.

“Excuse me, Thou Supreme, I did not know you,” he said, replying with another sign.

“It is not thus with me,” replied Cagliostro, with a firm and lofty voice, “innumerable as are those whom the uninitiated eyes see not, I know all from the topmost to the lowest of those who bring the bricks and hew the stones.”

Cagliostro motioned for Gilbert to alight first and as he descended, he said to the jarvey:

“Any news?”

“Yes, Master,” said the knight of the whip, “and I should have made my report this evening if I had not the luck to meet you.”

“Speak.”

“My news is not for outsiders.”

“Oh, the bystander is not an outsider,” returned Cagliostro, smiling.

But Gilbert moved off a little, though he could not help glancing and listening partially. He saw a smile on the hearers’s face as the man told his story. He caught the name of Favras and Count Provence, before the report was over, when the magician took out a goldpiece and offered it.

“The Master knows that it is forbidden to receive pay for giving information,” he objected.

“I am not paying for your report, it is plain, but for your bringing us,” said the conspirator.

“That I can accept. Thank you,” he said, taking the coin, “I need not work any more to-day.”

He drove away, leaving Gilbert amazed at what he had witnessed, and he crossed the threshold reeling like a tipsy man.

He knew this house from having traversed it years ago under impressive circumstances; little was changed in it, even to the same servant Fritz, only he had aged sixteen years.

Ushered into a sitting room, the count bade his guest take a seat.

“I am entirely yours, doctor,” said he.

The younger man forgot his present curiosity in the memories evoked by this room. Cagliostro looked at him like Mephistopheles regarding Faust in his brown studies.

“This room seems to set you thinking, doctor,” he said audibly.

“It does, of the obligations I am under to you.”

“Pooh, bubbles!”

“This am I for the world, Gilbert: but not for you. I have never tried to dazzle you with jugglery. You know I have always let you see the bottom of the well and if you have seen Truth come up not so scantily clothed as the painters represent her, it is because I am a Sicilian and cannot help decorating my lady-love.”

“It was here, count, that you gave me a large sum of money that I might be rich in offering my hand to Andrea de Taverney, with the same ease as I might give a penny to a beggar.”

“You forget the most extraordinary part of it: the beggar brought back the sum, except for a couple of coins which he spent for clothes.”

“He was honest but you were generous.”

“Who tells you that it was not more easy for him who handled millions to give a hundred thousand crowns than for him who was penniless to bring back so large a sum as that was to him? Besides, all depends on the man’s state of mind. I was under the blow of the loss of the only woman I ever loved—my darling wife was murdered, and I believe you might have had my life for the asking.”

“Do you feel grief, and experience it like other men,” inquired Gilbert, eyeing him with marked astonishment.

“You speak of memories this room gives you,” sighed the other. “Were I to tell you—your hair would whiten—but let it pass; leave those events in their grave. Let us speak of time present, and of that to-come if you like.”

“Count, you returned to realism just now; again you turn to pretence, for you speak of the future with the voice of a conjurer asserting the power to read indecipherable hieroglyphics.”

“You forget that having more means at my beck and call than other men, I see more clearly and farther than they. You shall see that the pretence is but a veil—solid are the facts beneath. Come, doctor, how is your Fusion Cabinet getting on? the Mirabeau-Lafayette Ministry?”

“I see that you are doubt incarnate, or wish not to see what you do not doubt. After telling you of things you do know I must tell of those beyond your ken. Well, you have recommended Mirabeau to the King as the only man who can save the monarchy. He will fail—all will fail, for the monarchy is doomed. You know that I will not have it saved. You have achieved your end; the two rulers will welcome your advocate: and you flatter yourself that the royal conversion is due to your irrefutable logic and irresistible arguments.”

Gilbert could not help biting his lip on hearing this ironical tone.

“Have you invented a stethoscope by which you can read the heart of kings? pass the wonderful instrument on to me, count: only an enemy of mankind would want to keep it to himself alone.”

“I told you I keep nothing back from you, dear doctor. You shall have my telescope and may look as you please through the small end which diminishes or the other which magnifies. The Queen gave way for two reasons: first, she met a great sorrow the night before and she must have some mental distraction; next, she is a woman and having heard Mirabeau spoken of as a tiger, she wants to see him and try to tame him. She thinks: ‘It will be fine revenge to bring him to lick my feet: if some good follows for France and the crown, so much the better.’ But you understand, this idea is quite secondary.”

“You are building on hypothesis and I want facts.”

“I see you refuse my glass and I must come back to material things: such as can be seen with the naked eye, Mirabeau’s debts, for instance.”

“What a chance you have to exhibit your generosity, by paying his debts as you once did Cardinal Rohan’s.”

“Poor Mirabeau, how all these fools and conceited dunces make your genius pay for the follies of your youth! Yet all this is providential and heaven is obliged to proceed by human methods. All these politicians and wirepullers blame him for some virtue which is not theirs, and yet, if he dies to-morrow, the masses will award him an apotheosis, and all these pigmies, over whom he stands head and shoulders, will follow as mourners and howl: ‘Woe to France which has lost her greatest orator—woe to royalty which has lost its supporter!'”

“Are you going to foretell the death of Mirabeau?” cried Gilbert, almost frightened.

“Frankly, doctor, do you see any length of life for a man whose blood stews him, whose heart swells to suffocate him and whose genius eats him up? do you believe that even such powers will not be worn out in stemming the tide of mediocrity? his enterprise is the rock of Sisyphus. For two years they have been holding him down with the cry of Immorality. As if God moulded all men in the same form, and as if the circle enlarged for a great mind should not enclose greater vices. Mirabeau will not be Premier because he owes a hundred thousand francs debt, which would be settled were he a rich contractor’s son, and because he is condemned to death for having run away with an old imbecile’s wife—who smothered herself in charcoal fumes for the love of a strapping military captain! What a farce the tragedy of human life is! How I should weep over it if I had not made up my mind to laugh!”

“But your prediction?” cried Gilbert.

“I tell you,” said the diviner, in the prophet’s tone which was his alone, and allowed no reply, “Mirabeau will wear out his life without becoming Prime Minister. So great a bar is mediocrity. Go to the Assembly to-morrow and see. Meanwhile, come with me to the Jacobins Club, for these night-birds will hold their session in an hour. Do you belong?”

“No: Danton and Desmoulins entered me at the Cordeliers. We will go after dinner.”

“Will you come into the nave or sit in the gallery?” asked the magician.

“I thought the nave was kept for the members?” said the other.

“Just so, but am I not a member of all societies?” returned the Arch-master laughing. “Besides, this club is but the seat of the Invisibles, and you can enter as one of the Rosicrucians. We are sixty thousand strong in France alone in three months since foundation as Jacobins, and will be four hundred thousand in a year.”

“Though I am a Rose-Croix, I prefer to be in the gallery where I can see over the crowd and you can better tell me of the persons whom I descry.”

The seats were roughly knocked up in tiers and a wooden staircase led up them. Cagliostro made a sign and spoke a word to two who were sitting in the already filled seats and they got up to give them their places as if they had been sent before to keep them.

The place was ill lighted in the growing gloom but it was clear that these were the best sort of the revolutionists, while the uniforms of officers of the army and navy abounded. For the common brothers held their meetings in the crypt. Here the literati and artists were in the majority.

Casting a long look around, Gilbert was encouraged by seeing that most were not so very hostile to the royal cause.

“Whom do you see here hostile to royalty?” he inquired of his guide.

“In my eyes there are but two.”

“Oh, that is not many among four hundred men.”

“It is quite enough when one will be the slayer of Louis XVI. and the other his successor.”

“A future Brutus and a future Caesar here?” exclaimed the doctor starting.

“By the overthrower; I respect chronology: let us have Brutus first.”

“You know that men do not use the same means to accomplish a like work,” said Cagliostro, animated as by inspiration. “Therefore our Brutus will not resemble the antique one.”

“That makes me the more eager to see ours.”

“There he is.”

He pointed to a man leaning against the rostrum in such a position that his head alone was in the light. Pale and livid, this head seemed dissevered from the trunk. The eyes seemed to shine with a viper’s expression, with almost scornful hatred, knowing his venom was deadly. Gilbert felt a creeping of the flesh.

“You were right to warn me,” he said; “this is neither Brutus nor Cromwell.”

“No, it is rather Cassius the pale-faced and leaned man whom the Emperor dreaded most. Do you not know him?”

“No; or rather I have seen him in the Assembly. He is one of the longest-winded speechifyers of the Left, to whom nobody listens. A pettifogger from Arras——“

“The very man.”

“His name is Maximilian Robespierre.”

“Just so. Look at him. You are a pupil of Lavater the physiognomist.”

“I see the spite of mediocrity for genius as he watches Barnave.”

“In other words you judge like the world. I grant that he cannot expect to make a hit among all these proven orators; but at least you cannot accuse him of immorality; he is the Honest Man: he never steps outside of the law, or only to act within a new law which he legally makes.”

“But what is this Robespierre?” asked the other.

“You ask that as Strafford did of the future Lord Protector: ‘What is this Cromwell? a brewer!’ But he cut off his head, mark, you aristocrat of the Seventeenth Century!”

“Who can tell?” replied the diviner.

“The more reason for me to inquire about him.”

“Who is Robespierre? he was born in Arras, of Irish extraction, in 1758. He was the best pupil in the Jesuits’ College and won a purse on which he came to study at Paris. It was at the same college where your young Sebastian had an experience. Other boys went out sometimes from those sombre aisles which bleach the pallid, and had holidays with their families and friends; young Robespierre was cooped up and breathed the bad air of loneliness, sadness and tedium; three bad things which rob the mind of its bloom and blight the heart with envy and hatred. The boy became a wilted young man. His benefactor had him appointed judge, but his tender heart would not let him dispose of the life of a man; he resigned and became a lawyer. He took up the case of peasants disputing with the Bishop of Arras and won their just claim; the grateful boors sent him up to the Assembly. There he stood between the clergy’s profound hatred for the lawyer who had dared speak against their bishop and the scorn of the nobles for the scholar reared by charity.”

“What is he doing?”

“Nothing for others but much for the Revolution. If it did not enter into my views that he should be kept poor, I would give him a million francs to-morrow. Not that I should buy him, for he is joked with as the Incorruptible! Our noble debaters have settled that he shall be the butt of the House, for all assemblies must have one. Only one of his colleagues understands and values him—it is Mirabeau. He told me the other day, ‘that man will go far for he believes what he says!'”

“This grows serious,” muttered Gilbert.

“He comes here for he gets an audience. The Jacobin is a young minotaur: suckling a calf, he will devour a nation in a while. I promised to show you an instrument for lopping off heads, did I not? Well, Robespierre will give it more work than all those here.”

“You see my future Emperor yonder, talking with the tragic actor Talma, and with another whom he does not know but who will have a great influence over him. Keep this befriender’s name in mind—Barras, and recall it one of these days.”

“I do not know how right you are, but you choose your typical characters well,” said Gilbert; “this Caesar of yours has the brow to wear a crown and his eyes—but I cannot catch the expression——“

“Because his sight is diverted inwards—such eyes study the future, doctor.”

“What is he saying to Barras?”

“That he would have held the Bastile if he were defending it.”

“He is not a patriot, then?”

“Such as he are nothing before they are all in all.”

“You seem to stick to your idea about this petty officer?”

“Gilbert,” said the soothsayer, extending his hand towards Robespierre, “as truly as that man will re-erect the scaffold of Charles Stuart, so truly will ‘this one'”—he indicated the lieutenant of the line regiment—“will re-erect the throne of Charlemagne.”

“Then our struggle for liberty is useless,” said Gilbert discouraged.

“Who tells you that he may not do as much for us on his throne as the other on his scaffold?”

“Will he be the Titus, or Marcus Aurelius, the god of peace consoling us for the age of bronze?”

“He will be Alexander and Hannibal in one. Born amid war, he will thrive in war-fare and go down in warring. I defy you to calculate how much blood the clergy and nobles have made Robespierre lose by his fits of spite against them; take all that these nobles and priests will lose, multiply upon multiplications, and you will not attain the sea of blood this man will shed, with his armies of five hundred thousand men and his three days’ battles in which hundreds of cannon-shots will be fired.”

“The outcome of all genesis, Gilbert. We are charged to bury this Old World. Our children will spring up in a new one. This man is but the giant who guards the door. Like Louis XIV., Leo X. and Agustus, he will give his name to the era unfolding.”

“What is his name?” inquired Gilbert, subjugated by Cagliostro’s convinced manner.

“His name is Buonaparte; but he will be hailed in History as Napoleon. Others will follow of his name, but they will be shadows—the dynasty of the first Charlemagne lasted two hundred years; of this second one, a tithe: did I not tell you that in a hundred years the Republic will have the empire of France?”

Gilbert bowed his head. He did not notice that the debates were opened. An hour passed when he felt a powerful hand grip his shoulder.

He turned: Cagliostro had disappeared and Mirabeau stood in his place—after the eagle, the lion.

Mirabeau’s face was convulsed with rage as he roared in a dull voice:

“We are flouted, deceived, betrayed! the court will not have me and you have been taken for a dupe as I for a fool. On my moving in the House that the Cabinet Ministers should be invited to be present at the Assembly sessions, three friends of the King proposed that no member of the House should be a minister. This laboriously managed combination dissolves at a breath from the King; But,” concluded Mirabeau, like Ajax, shaking his mighty fist at the sky, “by my name, I will pay them for this, and if their breath can shake a minister, mine shall overthrow the throne. I shall go to the Assembly and fight to the uttermost; I am one of those who blow up the fort and perish under the ruins.”

He rushed away, more terrible and handsomer for the divine streak which lightning had impressed on his brow.

AS Cagliostro had said and Mirabeau surmised, the King had upset the scheme.

Without much regret the Queen saw the constitutional platform fall which had wounded her pride. The King’s policy was to gain time and profit by circumstances; besides he had two chances of getting away into some stronghold, which was his favorite plan. These two plans, we know, were his brother Provence’s, managed by Favras; the other his own, managed by Charny.

The latter reached Metz in a couple of days where the faithful royalist Bouille did not doubt him, but resolved to send his son Louis to Paris to be more exactly informed on the matter. Charny remained as a kind of hostage.

Count Louis Bouille arrived about the middle of November. At this period the King was guarded closely by Lafayette whose cousin the young count was.

To keep him in ignorance of Charny’s negociations, the latter worked to be presented to the King by his kinsman.

Providence answered the envoy’s prayer for Lafayette, who had been informed of his coming but swallowed his excuse that it was on a visit to a sweetheart in Paris, offered to take him with him on his morning call on the monarch.

All the palace doors opened to the general. The sentinels presented arms and the footmen bowed, so that Count Louis could see that his relative was the real King of Paris.

The King was in his forge so that the visitors had to see the Queen first.

She remembered him at a glance and with the same was sure this was a friendly face. Without busying about General Lafayette she gave her hand for the young man to kiss, which was a fault such as she plentifully committed; without this favor she had won Louis Bouille, and by doing him it before the general she slighted the latter who had never been so gratified; she wounded the very man she most wanted as a friend.

Hence with a faltering in the voice but with the courtesy never leaving him, Lafayette said:

“Faith, my dear cousin, you want me to present you to the Queen: but it seems to me that you were better fitted to present me.”

The Queen was so enraptured at meeting a friend on whom she could rely, and as a woman so proud of the effect produced on the young nobleman, that she turned round on the general with one of the beams of youth which she had feared forever extinct.

“General,” she said with one of the smiles of her sunnier days, “Count Bouille is not a severe republican like you: he comes from Metz, not from America; he does not come to bother about Constitutions but to present his homage. Do not be astonished at the favor shown him by a nearly dethroned Queen, which this country squire may esteem a boon——“

She completed her sentence by a playful smile as much as to say: “You are a Scipio and think nothing of such nonsense.”

“It is a pity for me, and a great misfortune for your Majesty,” returned Lafayette, “that I pass without my respect and devotion being noticed.”

The Queen looked at him with her clear, searching eye. This was not the first time that he had spoken in this strain and set her thinking: but unfortunately, as he had said, she entertained an instinctive repugnance for him.

The marquis touched the hand coldly.

“I regret that you do not bear in mind that I am French. The night of the attack on the Royal Family at Versailles ought to remind you.”

“You are right, general,” responded the lady, making an effort and shaking his hand. “I am ungrateful. Any news?”

Lafayette had a little revenge to take.

“No; merely an incident in the House. An old man of one hundred and twenty was brought to the bar by five generations of descendants to thank the Representatives for having made him free. Think of one who was born a serf under Louis XIV. and eighty years after.”

“Very touching,” retorted the Queen; “but I could not well be there as I was succoring the widow and child of the baker murdered for supplying bread to the Assembly.”

“Madam, we could not foresee that atrocity but we have punished the offenders.”

“That will do her no good, as she is maddened and may give birth to a still-born babe; if it should live, do you see any inconvenience to standing godmother to it at the Cathedral of Notre Dame?”

“None: and I take this opportunity of meeting your allusion, before my kinsman, to your pretended captivity. Nothing prevents your going to church or elsewhere, and the King may go hunting and out riding, as much as he likes.”

The Queen smiled, for this permission might be useful as far as it went.

“Good-bye, count,” she said to Bouille; “the Princess of Lamballe receives for me and you will be welcome any evening with your illustrious kinsman.”

“I shall profit by the invitation,” said Lafayette, “sure that I should be oftener seen there and elsewhere by your Majesty if the request had not been heretofore omitted.”