The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Hero of The People, by Alexandre Dumas.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE FRIEND OF THE FALLEN.

AT eight that same evening, a workingman, holding his hand to his waistcoat pocket as though it contained money in larger quantity than usual, staggered out of the Tuileries Palace and meandered along the road to the Soapworks Wharfside. It was there a strolling ground with drinking resorts along the line. On Sundays and holidays, it was thronged; on other days lonesome.

This man passed the wine-stores with much difficulty but for a period temperance triumphed; but when it came to the twentieth saloon on the route, it was too much, and he entered the next one for—only one glass.

The demon of drink, against whom he had valiantly struggled, seemed embodied in a stranger who followed him closely and even went into the saloon with him, sitting opposite and apparently watching him succumb with glee.

Five seconds after the workman had resumed his road, this watcher was on his track.

But how can the drinkingman stop going downhill when he has taken a whet, and perceives with the amazement of the toper that nothing makes one so thirsty as taking a drink? Scarcely had he tottered a hundred paces before his thirst was so sharp that he had to slack it once more.

The result of these lapses from the path he had previously trod was that he reached deviously the highway beyond the Passy bars, where he felicitated himself on the road being tolerably free from temples of the God of Wine.

In his gladness he set up singing. Unfortunately the delight was ephemeral and the song of short duration.

He fell to muttering and then talking to himself, and the soliloquy was in the form of imprecations on unknown persecutors of whom the unsteady sot complained.

“Oh, the scoundrel! to give an old friend, a master, doctored wine—ugh! So, just let him send again for me to fix his locks, let him send his traitor of a workmate who gives me the go-by and I will tell him: ‘It won’t work this trip! let your Majesty fix up your own locks.’ We shall see then if a lock is to be turned out as sleek as a decree. Oh, I’ll give you all you want of locks, with three wards, confound the villain! the wine was salted, peppered—by heaven, it was poisoned! Hope I may be saved, but the wine was poisoned!”

So howling, overcome by the force of the poison, of course, the unfortunate victim laid himself at full length, not for the first time, on the road, mercifully carpetted thickly with mud.

On other occasions the drunkard had scrambled up alone; difficult to do but he had got through the difficulty with honor; but this third time, after desperate efforts, he had to confess that the task was beyond him. With a sigh, much resembling a groan, he seemed decided to sleep for this night on the bosom of our common Mother Earth.

No doubt the follower had waited for this period of doubt, disheartenment and weakness, for he approached him warily, went all round fallen greatness, and calling a hack, said to the driver:

“Old man, here’s my friend who has shipped too heavy a cargo. Take this piece for yourself, help me to put the poor fellow in the straw of your coach where he will not soil the elegant cushions, and take him to your wine saloon at Sevres Bridge. I will get up beside you.”

There was nothing surprising that the customer should sit up with the driver, as he appeared to be one of his sort. So, with the touching confidence men of the lower classes have for one another, the jarvey said:

“All right, but let us have a look at the silver, see!”

“Here you are, old brother,” ventured the man without being in the least offended and handing over a six-livre crownpiece.

“But will there be a little bit beyond the fare for myself, my master?” inquired the coachman, mollified by the money.

“That depends how we get along. Let us get the poor chap in; shut the blinds, try to keep your pair of skeletons on their hoofs, and we will see when we get to Sevres, how you conducted us!”

“Now, I call this speaking to the purpose,” returned the knight of the whip. “Take it easy, master! A nod is as good as a wink. Get upon the box and keep my Arabian steeds from bolting up the road; no jokes, they feel the want of a supper and are chafing to race home to the stables. I will manage the rest.”

The generous stranger did as he was bid; the driver, with all the delicacy of which he was susceptible, dragged the sot up by the arms, jabbed him down between the seats, slammed the door, drew down the blinds, mounted the box again, and whipped up the barbs. With the funeral gait of night hack-horses they stumbled through the village of Point-du-Jour and reached the Sevres Saloon in an hour.

The house was shut up for the night, but the new-comer jumped down and applied such blows of the fist to the door that the inhabitants, however fond of slumber, could not enjoy it long under so much racket. The host, who was alone, finally got up in his night dress, to see the rioter and promised to pack him off smartly if the game were not worth the candle.

Apparently though the value of the game was clear, for, at the first whisper by the irreverent arouser to the landlord, he plucked off his cotton nightcap and made bows which his scanty costume rendered singularly grotesque. He hastened to pilot the coachman, lugging Gamain, into the little taproom where he had once filled himself with his favorite burgundy.

As the driver and his steeds had done their best, the stranger gave the former a piece of money as extra.

Then seeing that Master Gamain was stuck up in a chair, with his head on the table before him, he hastened to have the host bring him two bottles of wine and a decanter of water, and opened the windows and blinds to change the mephitic air which the common people like to breathe in such resorts.

After bringing the wine, with alacrity, and the water, with reluctance, the host respectfully retired and left the stranger with the drunkard.

Having renewed the air, as stated, the former clapped smelling salts to Gamain’s nose which ceased to snore and gave a sneeze. This awakened him a little from that disgusting sleep of drunkards the sight of which would cure them—if by a miracle, they could see what they look like at such periods.

Gamain opened his eyes widely, and muttered some words, unintelligible for anybody but the philologist who distinguished by his profound attention these words:

“The scoundrel—he—poisoned—poisoned wine——“

The good Samaritan seemed to see with satisfaction that his ward was under the same impression: he gave him another sniff of the hartstorn which permitted the son of Noah to complete the sense of his phrase in an accusation pointing to an abuse of trust and wanton heartlessness.

“To poison a friend—an old friend!”

“That’s so—it is horrible,” observed the other.

“Infamous,” faltered Gamain.

“What a good thing I was handy to give you an antidote,” suggested the hearer.

“It was lucky,” said the locksmith.

“But as one dose is not enough, have another,” said the stranger, putting a few drops from the smelling bottle in a glass of water; it was ammonia and the man had hardly swallowed the compound than he opened his eyes immeasurably and gurgled between two sneezes:

“Ah, monster, what are you giving us there? augh, augh!”

“My dear fellow, I am giving you stuff that will save your life,” returned the kind friend.

“If it is physic, that is all right,” said Gamain: “but it is a beastly failure if you call it a drink.”

The stranger profited by his sneezing again and twitching his features, shut the blinds though not the windows.

Looking round him the master locksmith recognized with the profound gratitude of drinking men for old haunts, the saloon where he had feasted before. In his frequent trip to town from Versailles, he had not seldom halted here. It might be thought necessary, as the house was halfway.

This gratitude produced its effect: it gave him a great confidence to find himself on friendly ground.

“Hurrah, it looks as though I were halfway home anyway,” he exclaimed.

“Yes, thanks to me,” said the stranger.

“Thanks to you? why, who are you?” stammered Gamain, looking from still life to animated things.

“My dear Gamain, your question shows that you have a poor memory.”

“Hold on,” said the smith, giving him more attention: “it strikes me that I have seen you before.”

“You don’t say so? that is a blessed thing.”

“Ay, but where—that is the rub.”

“Look around you, then; something may remind you; or had you better have some more of the counterbane to refresh you?”

“No, thank ’ee, I have had enough of that remedy,” said Gamain, stretching his arms out. “I am so nearly brought round that I will do without it. Where did I see you? why, in this very spot, of course. And when? the day I was coming back from doing a special job at Paris—I seem to be in for this sort of thing,” added he, chuckling.

“Very well: but who am I?”

“A jolly honest mate who paid for the liquor. Shake hands!”

“Good, good, you remember now.”

“With all the more pleasure as it is but a step from Master locksmith to master gunsmith,” said the other.

“Ah, good, good, I remember now. Yes, it was the sixth of October, when the King went to Paris: we talked about him.”

“And I found your conversation interesting, Master Gamain; so that, as your memory comes home and I want to enjoy it again, I should like to know, if I am not too inquisitive, what the deuse you were doing across the road where a vehicle might have cut you in two? Have you sorrows, old blade, and had you screwed up your mind to suicide?”

“Faith, no! What was I doing flat across the road, eh? Was I in the road?”

“Look at your clothes.”

“Whew!” whistled Gamain after the inspection. “Mother Gamain will kick up a hullabaloo for she said yesterday: ‘Don’t put on your new coat; any old thing will do for the Tuileries.'”

“Hello? been to the Tuileries? were you coming from the Tuileries when I picked you up?” asked the kind soul.

“Why, yes, that’s about the size of it,” responded Gamain, scratching his head and trying to collect his entangled ideas; “certainly I was coming home from the Tuileries. Why not? It is no mystery that I am master locksmith to Master Veto.”

“Who is he?”

“Why, have you come from China? not to know old Veto?”

“What do you want? I am obliged to stick to my trade, and that is not politics.”

“You are blamed lucky! I have to mix up with these high folk—more’s the pity! or rather, they force me to mix with them. It will be my ruin.” He sighed as he looked up to heaven.

“Pshaw! were you called to Paris again to do another piece of work in the style of that other one?” asked the friend.

“But this time I was not blindfolded but taken with my eyes open.”

“So that you knew it was the Tuileries this time?”

“The Tuileries? who said anything about the Tuileries?”

“Why, you, of course, just now. How would I know where you had been carousing had you not told me?”

“That is true,” muttered Gamain to himself; “how should he, unless I told him? Perhaps,” he said aloud, “I was wrong to let you know; but you are not like the rest. Besides I am not going to deny that I was at the Tuileries.”

“And you did some work for the King, for which he gave you twenty five louis,” went on the other.

“Indeed, I had twenty-five shiners in my pouch,” said Gamain.

“Then, you have got them now, my friend.”

The smith quickly plunged his hand into his pocket and pulled it out full of gold mixed with small change in silver and bronze.

“To think that I had forgot it! twenty-five is a good bit, too—and it is right to the ‘broken’ louis—one does not pick up such a lot under the horse’s foot. Thank God the account is correct.” And he breathed more freely.

“My dear Master Gamain, I told you I found you on the King’s highway, not twenty paces from a heavy wagon which would have cut you in twain. I shouted for the carrier to pull up; I called a passing cab; I unhooked one of the lamps and as I looked at you by its light, I caught sight of a gold piece on the ground; as they were near your pocket, I judged that you had dropped them. I put my finger in the pocket and as there were a score of their brothers in bed there I guessed that these were of the same brood. Thereupon the hack driver shook his head. ‘I ain’t going to take this fare,’ said he: ‘he is too rich for his dress. Twenty louis in gold in a cotton waistcoat suggests that the gallows will be his end.’ ‘What,’ says I, ‘do you take him for a thief?’ The word struck you, for you says. ‘Thief? you are another!’ says you. ‘So you must be a prig,’ returned the coachman, ‘or how would the likes of you have a pocket gold-lined, say?’

“'I have money because my pupil the King of France gave it me,’ said you. By these words I thought I recognized you, and clasping the lamp to your nose, I cried: ‘Bless us and save us: all is clear; this is Master Gamain, master locksmith at Versailles. He has been working in the royal forge and the King has given him twenty-five mint-drops for his trouble. All right: I will answer for him.’ From the moment that I answered for you, the driver raised no objections. I replaced the coins in your pocket; we laid you snugly in the hack; and we set you down in this retreat so that you have nothing to complain of except that your ‘prentice left you in the lurch.”

“Did I speak of my ’prentice? that he left me in the lurch?” questioned Gamain, more and more astonished.

“Why, hang it all, are you going back on what you said? Did you not growl that it was all the fault of—of—dash me if I can remember the name you used.”

“Louis Lecomte?”

“I guess that was it. Did you not say: ‘Louis Lecomte is in fault! for he promised to see me safe home and at the last moment he dropped me like a hot roll?'”

“I daresay I did so, for it is the blessed truth.”

“Then, why do you deny the truth? let me tell you, that with another than me, such chatter would be dangerous?”

“But with you, one is safe, eh? with a regular friend,” said the smith, coaxingly.

“Lord, you have lots of trust in your friend. You say yes and you say no; you wiggle and waver so that none knows how to have you. It is like your fable t’other day about the secret door that a nobleman had you fit on the strict quiet.”

“Then you will not believe this tale either, for it also hangs upon a door.”

“In the palace?”

“In the King’s palace. Only instead of its being a clothes-press door, or rather that of a safe in the wall, it is a cupboard door this time.”

“Are you gaming me that the King, while he certainly dabbles in locksmithery, sent for you to do up a door?”

“He did, though. Poor fellow, he thought he was smart enough to get on without me, and began to make a lock. ‘What good is Gamain anyhow?’ but he got mixed up with the works in the lock and had to fall back on Gamain after all.”

“So you were hunted up by one of his trusty flunkeys, Hue, or Durey or Weber, eh?”

“That is just where you make a mistake. He has taken a green hand on to help him, who is as much of an amateur as himself; a young sprig who popped in upon me one morning at Versailles, and says he: ‘Look here, Daddy Gamain, the King and me tried to make a lock, and by Jove we have made a muddle of it. The old thing won’t work! ‘What have I to do with it?’ I wanted to know. ‘You are wanted to set it right,’ says he, and as I said that it was a plant and he did not come from the King, he slaps some gold on the bench and says: ‘Is not this earnest enough? here are twenty-five louis which the King sends you to remove any doubts.’ He gave me them, too.”

“So these are what you are sporting round with you?”

“No: these are another lot. These were for traveling expenses and a sort of a payment on account!”

“Fifty louis for filing up an old lock? there is a snake in the grass, Friend Gamain.”

“Just what I said to myself: particularly as the ’prentice does not seem a regular craftsman but dodged my question about work and where you stop when you are on tramp in France, as well as who is Mother Marianne.”

“But you are not the man to be taken in when you see a boy at work.”

“I do not say so much as that. The lad plied the file and the chisel handily. I have seen him cut a rod of iron through velean at a blow, and put a hole in a band with a rattail file as if using a gimlet on a lath. But there is more theory than practice about his style: he no sooner finishes the job than he washed his hands, and what hands? so white that never did a locksmith boast the like. You don’t see me scrubbing my hands till they are white!”

With pride he showed his grubby, black and callous hands which indeed seemed to defy all the cosmetics and skin-bleaches in the world.

“But in short what did you do when you got to the King’s?” asked the other, bringing the man to the point most interesting to him.

“It looked as though we were expected: in the forge the King showed me a lock commenced not badly, but he had got in a corner. It was one with three wards, d’ye see, which few locksmiths can grapple with and royal ones least of all. I looked at it and saw where the key caught. ‘All right,’ I says; ‘let me alone with it for an hour and it will work as if greased,’ ‘Go ahead,’ said the King, ‘consider yourself at home; call for anything you like while we get the cupboard ready on which the lock goes.’ On which he went out with the imp of a ’prentice.”

“By the main stairs?” queried the gunsmith carelessly.

“No: by a secret one leading to his study. When I got through, I had done something, too; I said to myself: ‘It is all bosh about this here cupboard; they are laying their heads together for some mischief.’ So I crept down softly and opening the study door, I got a glimpse of what they were up to.”

“And what were they up to?” inquired the gunsmith.

“Well, I did not catch them in the act, for they must have heard me coming, for I have not the light step of a dancer. They pretended to be up and coming to me, and the King said, ‘Oh this is you, and you have finished? Come along for I have something else for you to do.’ So he hurried me through the study, but not so fast that I did not spy spread out on a table a big map which I believe to be France on account of a lily-flower printed in one corner. From the midst three rows of pins ran out to the edges like files of soldiers, for they were stuck in at regular spaces.”

“Really, you are wonderfully sharp,” said the stranger in affected admiration: “So you believe that instead of bothering about their cupboard, they were busy with this map?”

“I am sure of it: the pins had wax heads of different colors, black, blue and red; and the King was using a red one to pick his teeth with, without thinking what he was about.”

“Gamain, if I discovered some new kind of gun, hang me if I would let you come into my workshop, even to pass through it, or I would bandage your eyes as on the day you were taken to the great nobleman’s house though you did perceive that the house had ten steps to the stoop and that it fronted on the main avenue.”

“Wait a bit,” said the smith, enchanted at the eulogies; “you have not heard all—there is really a safe in the wall.”

“What wall?”

“Of the inner corridor running from the royal alcove to the young prince’s room.”

“What you say is very queer. And was this safe open?”

“Is it likely? I squinted round in all ways but it was no use my asking myself: ‘Where on earth is this secret press?’ Then the King gave me a look and says he: ‘Gamain, I have always had trust in you. So I would not let anybody but you know the secret.’ While speaking, the King lifted a panel, while the boy held a light, for the corridor has no windows, and showed me a two foot round hole. Seeing my astonishment, he winked to our companion and said: ‘Do you see that hole, my friend; I made it to keep money in; this young fellow helped me during the four or five days he has been staying in the palace. Now we want the lock put on the panel so that it will be hidden and not interfere with its sliding. Do you want an aid, in which case this young man will help you? or can you do without? if so I will set him to work elsewhere. ‘Tut,’ I said, ‘you know that I like to go alone when I am the job. It is four hour’s work for a good hand but I am a master and will be through in three. Go and attend to your work, young fellow; and your Majesty may stick to his. And in three hours fetch along anything you want kept in this meat-safe.’

“We may believe the young chap had other fish to fry, for I saw nothing more of him: but when the time was up, the King came back. ‘U. P., it is all UP!’ said I, and I made him see that the door slid without the lock being in the way as neat as the Automatons of Vaucanson. ‘Good,’ said he; ‘just help me count the cash I am going to bestow here.’ A valet brought four fine bags of coin and we reckoned a million a-piece; there were twenty-and-five over. ‘There you are, Gamain,’ said the King, ‘Take them for your trouble!’ as though it was not disgraceful to give an old mate a beggarly twenty-five—a man with five children, and he has been handling two millions! What do you think of that?”

“The truth is that this is mean,” said the other, shrugging his shoulders.

“Wait, this is not all. I put the coin in my pocket and said. ‘I thank your Majesty: but Lord love you, I have not had sup or bite since morning and I am ready to burst!’ I had barely finished before the Queen walked in by a secret door, so that she was on the top of us without saying Lookout! She had a platter in her hand with a cake and a glass on it.

“'My dear Gamain, as you are hungry and thirsty, try our wine and cake!’ ‘Sorry to trouble you, Royal Madam,’ I said, but just think of a drop like that and a mouthful of wine like that fancy cake for a man. What do you expect sensible in that line from a Queen, though? it is plain that such folks are never really hungry and athirst. A glass of wine—oh, dear!”

“So you refused it?”

“It would have been better if I had; but I drank. As for the cake I rolled it up in my handkerchief, saying ‘What is no good for the father will do for the children.’ Then I thanked his Majesty, as though it were worth thanks, and I started off, saying that they will not catch me in their old palace in a hurry again.”

“And why do you say you had better have refused the drink?”

“Because they had put poison in it! Hardly had I got over the bridge before I was seized by thirst, such a raging thirst that between the liquor saloons and the river, I balanced myself. I could tell it was queer stuff they gave me for the more I took the thirstier I was. This kept on with my trying to correct that dose till I lost my senses. They may be easy on this score: if ever they come to me for a good character, I will say they gave me twenty-five louis for four hours’ work and counting a million, and for fear I should tell where they keep their treasure, they poisoned me like a dog!”

“And I, my dear Gamain,” said the hearer, rising as though he had all the information he wanted: “I will support your evidence by swearing that I saved you with the antidote.”

“That is why we are sworn comrades till death do us part,” exclaimed the smith, grasping the speaker’s hands.

Refusing with Spartan sobriety the wine which his friend offered him for the third or fourth time—for the amoniacal dose had sobered him as well as disgusted him with drink for a time, Gamain took the road for Versailles where he arrived safely at two in the morning with the King’s coin in his pocket and the Queen’s cake in another.

Left behind in the saloon, the pretended gunsmith drew out a set of tablets mounted in diamonds and gold, and wrote with fluid-ink pencil these two notes:

“An iron safe behind the King’s alcove, in the unlighted passage leading to the prince’s rooms. Make sure whether Louis Lecomte, locksmith’s boy, is not really Count Louis, son of Marquis Bouille, arrived eleven days ago from Metz.”

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE FIRST GUILLOTINE.

ON Christmas Eve, a party was given at the Princess Lamballe’s, which the Queen’s presiding over made it really her own reception.

Isidore Charny had returned from Italy that morning and he had found King and Queen very kind to him. Two reasons influenced the latter: one his being the brother of Count Charny, which was a charm in his absence, and his bringing back news from the fugitive princes which suited her wishes.

They backed the Favras scheme and urged her to flee for Turin.

He left her only to go and acquaint Favras with the encouragement. The Queen had said nothing positive about the flight: but he took enough to the conspirator to fill him with joy. For the rest, the cash was in hand, the men notified to stand ready, and the King would only have to nod to have the whole plot set in motion.

The silence of the royal couple was the only thing which worried him. The Queen broke this by sending Isidore, and vague as were the words he repeated, they acquired weight from coming out of a royal mouth.

At nine the young viscount went to Lady Lamballe’s.

Count Provence was uneasy; Count Louis Narbonne walked about with the ease of a man quite at home among princes. Isidore was not known to any of the circle of the princes’ bosom friends, but his well-known name and the partiality accorded him by the princess led to all hands being held out to him.

Besides, he brought news from the foreign refuge where so many had relatives.

When he had delivered his budget, the conversation returned to its former channel; the young men were laughing about a machine for executing criminals which Dr. Guillotin had shown in a full size working model and had proposed to the National Assembly.

When an usher announced the King, and another the Queen, of course all the merriment and chatter ceased.

The more the revolutionary spirit stripped majesty of its eternals the more the true royalists vied with each other to pour evidences of respect upon the august chiefs. 1789 saw great ingratitude, but 1793 great devotion.

To talk over the Favras scheme in secret a whist party was made up of the two rulers, Provence and Charny for the fourth hand. Respect isolated the table.

“Brother,” said the Queen, “Lord Charny, who comes from Turin, says that our kinsfolk there are begging us to join them.”

The King gave a stamp with impatience.

“I entreat you to listen,” whispered Lady Elizabeth, who sat on a stool.

“Listen to what?”

“That Lord Charny has also seen the Marquis Favras since he came home, a gentleman whose lealty we know, and he says that the King has but to say a word,” went on the Queen, “or make a sign, and this very night, you will be at Peronne.”

The King kept still. His brother twisted a jack of hearts all to rags.

“Repeat this as the marquis put it,” said he to Isidore.

“Your Majesty, thanks to measures taken by Marquis Favras, he declares that the King has but the cue to give to be in safety in Peronne this blessed night.”

Turning sharply on his brother, the King said as he fixed his eyes on him:

“Are you coming if I go?”

“I” said the other, turning pale and trembling. “I have not been notified, and I have made no preparations.”

“You know nothing about it, and yet you found the money for Favras?” exclaimed the monarch. “You not notified, and the moves in the game have been reported to you hour by hour?”

“The game?” faltered the prince.

“The plot; for it is one of those plots for which, if discovered, Favras will be tried and doomed to death—unless by money and other means we save him as we did Bezenval.”

“Then you will save Favras.”

“No; for I might not be able to do as much for him. Besides, Bezenval was my liege as Favras is yours. Let each save his own man, and both of us shall have done our duty.”

He rose, but the Queen retained him by the skirt of the coat.

“Sire, whether you accept or refuse, you owe the marquis an answer. What is Viscount Charny to answer for the King?”

“That the King does not allow himself to be spirited away like a slave for the Louisiana plantations.” He disengaged his coat.

“This means,” said Provence, “that the King will not allow of the abduction but if it be executed in spite of his permission, it will be welcome. In politics success condones the crime and blunderers deserve double punishment.”

“Viscount,” said the Queen, “tell the marquis what you heard and let him act as he thinks it points. Go.”

The King had gone over to where the younger men were so hilariously chatting; but the deepest silence fell at his approach.

“Is the King so unhappy that he casts melancholy around him?” he demanded.

“Sire!” muttered the gentlemen.

“You were very merry when the Queen and I came in. It is a bad thing for kings when no one dares laugh before them. I may say the converse: ‘Happy are the kings before whom laughter resounds.'”

“Sire,” returned one, “the subject is not one for a comic opera.”

“Of what were you talking?”

“Sire, I yield the guilty one to your Majesty,” said another, stepping forward.

“Oh, it is you, Editor Suleau,” said the King. “I have read the last number of your journal the Acts of the Apostles. Take care that you do not offend Master Populus.”

“I only said that our Revolution is going so slowly that it has to help on that in Brabant. We are lamenting the dulness of the session of the Assembly where they had to take up the motion of Dr. Guillotin upon—of all things—a new machine for public executions.”

“Are you making fun of Dr. Guillotin—a philanthropist? remember that I am one myself.”

“There are various kinds; the sort I approve of has a representative at the head of the French Nation—the one who abolished torture before trial: we venerate, nay, we love him.”

The hearers bowed with the same impulse.

“But,” proceeded Suleau, “there are others who try to find means to kill the hale while they had a thousand to send the ailing out of this life. I beg your Majesty to let me deal with them?”

“What would you do? decapitate them painlessly, or at least merely give a slight coolness round the neck?” inquired the King, quoting Dr. Guillotin’s recommendation of his invention.

“Sire, I should like all of these inventors to have the first experiment tried on themselves. I do not complain that Marigny was hanged on the Gibbet of Montfaucon which he built. I am not asking, I am not even a judge; the probability is that I shall have to take my revenge on Dr. Guillotin in the columns of my paper. I will give him a whole number and propose that the machine shall bear his name for eternity, the Guillotine!”

“Ha, ha, the Guillotine!” exclaimed the men, without waiting for express permission to laugh.

“I shall assert, also, that life is divided not extinguished by this process,” continued Suleau; “why may not the sufferer feel pain in the head and the trunk after being cut in two?”

“This is a question for medical men. Did none of us here witness the experiment this very morning at Bicetre madhouse?” asked the King.

“No, no, no!” cried many voices.

“Sire, I was there,” said one grave voice.

“Oh; it is you? Dr. Gilbert,” said the sovereign, turning.

“Yes, Sire.”

“And how did the experiment succeed?”

“Perfectly in two instances; but at the third the instrument, though it severed the spine, did not detach the head. They had to finish with a knife.”

The young gentlemen listened with frightened eyes and parted lips.

“Three executions this morning?” exclaimed Charles Lameth, who with his brother had not yet turned against the Queen.

“Yes, gentlemen,” said the King; “but they were three corpses furnished by the hospitals. What is your opinion of the instrument?”

“An improvement on such machines; but the accident at the third experiment proves that it stands in need of improvement still.”

“What is it like?” asked the royal locksmith who had a bias for machines.

Gilbert helped his explanation out by drawing a sketch on a sheet of paper at a table. The King saw how curious the bystanders were and allowed them to come near.

“Who knows,” said Suleau obeying, “but that one of us may make the acquaintance of Lady Guillotine?”

Laughing, they pressed round the board where the King, taking the pen from Dr. Gilbert, said:

“No wonder the experience failed, particularly after awhile. The cutting blade is crescent-shaped whereas it ought to be triangular to sever a resisting substance. See here: shape your knife thus, and I wager that you would cut me off twenty-four heads one after another without the edge turning up.”

He had scarcely finished the words before a heart-rending scream was heard. The Queen had been attracted to the group of which the King and his corrected sketch were the centre. She beheld the same instrument which had been presented her in its likeness in a glass of water by Balsamo the Magician twenty years before!

At the view she had no strength to do more than scream, and life abandoning her as though she were under the blade, she swooned in the arms of Dr. Gilbert.

It is easily understood that this incident broke up the party.

Gilbert attended to the royal patient who was given the bed of the princess. When the crisis was over, which he rightly attributed to a mental cause, he was going out but she bade him stay.

“Therese,” she added to Lady Lamballe, “tell the King that I have come to: and do not let us be interrupted: I must speak with the doctor. Doctor,” she pursued when they were alone, “are you not astonished that chance seems to place us face to face in all the crises moral or physical of my life?”

“As I do not know whether to be sorry or to be glad for it, since I read in your mind that the contact is not through your wish or your will.”

“That is why I said chance. I like to be frank. But the last time we were in contiguity, you showed true devotion and I thank you and shall never forget it.”

He bowed.

“I am also a physiognomist. Do you know that you have said without speaking: ‘That is over; let us change the subject.'”

“At least I felt the desire to be put to the test.”

“Doctor, what do you think of the recent event?” inquired Marie Antoinette as though this was interlinked with what she had spoken.

“Madam, the daughter of Maria Theresa is not one of the women who faint at trifles.”

“Do you believe in forewarnings?”

“Science repels all phenomena tending to upset the prevailing order of things; still, facts offtimes give the lie to science.”

“I ought to have said; do you believe in predictions?”

“I believe that the Supreme Being has benevolently covered the future with an impenetrable veil. Still,” he went on as if making an effort over himself to meet questions which he wished relegated into doubt, “I know a man who sometimes confounds all the arguments of my intelligence by irrefutable facts. I dare not name him before your Majesty.”

“It is your master, the immortal, the all-powerful, the divine Cagliostro, is it not, Dr. Gilbert?”

“Madam, my only master is Nature. Cagliostro is but my saver. Pierced by a bullet in the chest, losing all my blood by a wound which I, a physician, after twenty years study, must pronounce incurable, he cured me in a few days by a salve of which I know not the composition: hence my gratitude to him, I will almost say my admiration.”

“And this man makes predictions which are accomplished?”

“Strange and incredible ones; he moves in the present with a certainty which makes one believe in his knowledge of the future.”

“So that you would believe if he forecast to you?”

“I should at least act as though it might happen.”

“Would you prepare to meet a shameful, terrible and untimely death if he foreshowed it?”

“After having tried to escape it by all manner of means,” rejoined Gilbert, looking steadily at her.

“Escape? No, doctor, no! I see that I am doomed,” said the Queen. “This revolution is a gulf in which will be swallowed up the throne: this people is a lion to devour me.”

“Yet it depends on you to have it couch at your feet like a lamb.”

“Doctor, all is broken between the people and me; I am hated and scorned.”

“Because you do not really know each other. Cease to be a queen and become a mother to them; forget you are daughter of Maria Theresa, our ancient enemy, the sister of Joseph our false friend. Be French, and you will hear the voices rise to bless you, and see arms held out to fondle you.”

“I know all this,” she replied contemptuously; “fawning one day, they tear the next.”

“Because aware of resistance to their will, and hatred opposed to their love.”

“Does this destructive element know whether it loves or hates? it destroys like the wind, the sea and fire, and has womanly caprices.”

“Because you see it from on high, like the man in the lighthouse views the ocean. Did you go down in the depths you would see how steady it is. What more obedient than the vast mass to the movement of the tides. You are Queen over the French, madam, and yet you know not what passes in France. Raise your veil instead of keeping it down, and you will admire instead of dreading.”

“What would I see so very splendid?”

“The New World blooming over the wreck of the Old; the cradle of Free France floating on a sea wider than the Mediterranean—than the ocean. O God protect you, little bark—O God shield you, babe of promise, France!”

Little of an enthusiast as Gilbert was he raised his eyes and hands heavenward.

The Queen eyed him with astonishment for she did not understand.

“Fine words,” she sneered. “I thought you philosophers had run them down to dust.”

“No, great deeds have killed them,” returned Gilbert. “Whither tends old France? to the unity of the country. There are no longer provinces, but all French.”

“What are you driving at? that your united thirty millions of rebels should form a universal federation against their King and Queen?”

“Do not deceive yourself: it is not the people who are rebels but the rulers who have rebelled against them. If you go to one of the feasts which the people hold, you will see that they hail a little child on an altar—emblem of the new birth of liberty. Italy, Spain, Ireland, Poland, all the down-trodden look towards this child and hold out their enchained hands, saying: ‘France, we shall be free because of you.’ Madam, if it be still time, take this child and make yourself its mother.”

“You forget that I am the mother of others, and I ought not do as you suggest—disinherit them in favor of a stranger.”

“If thus it be,” replied Gilbert with profound sorrow, “wrap your children up in your royal robe, in the war-cloak of Maria Theresa, and carry them with you far from France; for you spoke the truth in saying that the people will devour you and your offspring with you. But there is no time to lose—make haste!”

“You will not oppose?”

“I will further you in the departure.”

“Nothing could fall more timely,” said the Queen, “for we have a nobleman ready to act in this escape——“

“Do you mean Marquis Favras?” demanded Gilbert, with apprehension.

“Who breathed you his name—who communicated to you his project?”

“Oh, have a care, for a bloody prediction pursued him also.”

“Of the same Prophet? what fate awaits him?”

“Untimely, terrible and infamous like that you mentioned.”

“Then you speak truly—no time must be lost in giving the lie to this prophet of evil.”

“You were going to tell Favras that you accepted his aid?”

“He was advised and I am awaiting his reply.”

She had not long to wait, for Isidore Charny was ushered in by the Princess Lamballe.

“I am told that I may speak before Dr. Gilbert,” said he. “Then, know that Marquis Favras was arrested an hour ago and imprisoned in the Chatelet.”

Bright but despairing and full of ire, the Queen’s glance crossed that of the doctor. All her wrath seemed spent in that flash.

“Madam,” said Gilbert with deep pity, “if I can be useful in any way, make use of me. I lay at your feet my mind, my life, my devotion.”

“Dr. Gilbert,” she said in a slow and resigned voice, “is it your opinion that the death given by this dread engine is as sweet as the inventor asserts?”

He sighed and hid his face in his hands.

As the news of Favras’ arrest had circulated over the palace in a few seconds, Count Provence went to his brother. His advice was that Favras should be repudiated and the King take the oath to the Constitution.

“But how can I swear fidelity to an incomplete Constitution?”

“The more easily,” replied the schemer, with his false squint which came from the darkest sinuosities of his soul.

“I will,” said the King: “this does not prevent my writing to Marquis Bouille that our plan is postponed. This will give Charny time to regulate the route.”

For his part, Provence acted on part of his own suggestion: he repudiated Favras and received the thanks of the Assembly.

Favras was left alone save for Cagliostro who perhaps felt a little remorse that he had let the bravest in the conspiracy go so far in a mission which he had foredoomed to failure. But Favras would not accept rescue and met his death by hanging with unblemished courage and honor.

The King took the oath, as he had promised his brother, to the Constitution, yet in embryo. If he loved it so dearly already, what would he do when it was in shape?

The ten days following were days of rejoicing; joy in the Assembly; calm in Paris; altars built all over the town for passers to take oath after the royal precedent.

The Assembly commanded a Te Deum to be chanted in the Cathedral, where all gathered to renew the oath in solemnity.

“Why did you not go to the church?” sneered the Queen to her husband.

“Because I do not object to lying for a purpose, but I do not mean to perjure myself,” said Louis XVI.

The Queen breathed again for until then she had believed in the monarch’s honesty. She felt empowered by this perfidy to take the same path and it was after giving her hand for Mirabeau to kiss that this new leader for the court party vowed that the monarchy was saved.

Her forehead was swathed in a wet bandage, her eyes were wandering and her face flushed with fever. Amongst the incoherent words, the farmer thought he could distinguish the name of Isidore.

“I see that it is good time that I came home,” he muttered.

He went forth, and was followed by Pitou, but Dr. Raynal detained the latter.

“I want you my lad,” he said, “to help Mother Clement hold the patient while I bleed her for the third time.”

“The third time?” cried Mrs. Billet, awaking from her dulness. “Do you hear that, my man, they bleed her for the third time.”

“Woman, this would not have happened had you looked after your daughter closer,” said the farmer in a stern voice.

He went to his room, from which he had been absent three months while Pitou entered the sick room.

Pitou was astonished but he would have felt more so if he had guessed that the doctor called him in as a moral remedy.

The doctor had noticed two names as used by the girl in her frenzy, Ange Pitou and Isidore Charny, and he soon distinguished that one was a friend’s and the other a dearer one. He concluded that Pitou was the lovers’ confidant and that there would be no inconvenience in the gallant’s friend being there to speak with the patient on the mutual acquaintance.

Everybody knew down here that Valence Charny had been killed at Versailles and that his eldest brother had called away Isidore on the next evening.

That night Pitou found Catherine fainted on the high road. When she revived on the farm, it was to be in a fever, and she raved of some one riding away whom the doctor judged to be Isidore Charny.

The greatest need to a brain-stricken invalid is calm. To learn about her lover would best calm Catherine, and she would ask the news of their friend, Pitou.

On seeing the good effect of the bleeding, the doctor stationed Mother Clement by her side, with the strange recommendation for her to get some sleep, and beckoned Pitou to follow him into the kitchen.