The Hero of the People 16 – Williams · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
The Hero of the People 16The Portrait of Charles First
18
Literature · Romance
The Hero of the People 16
The Portrait of Charles First
WilliamsEnglish
A week has passed since the events related. Everybody was saying: The Revolution is finished; the King is delivered from Versailles, and his courtiers and evil counsellors. The King is placed in life and actuality. He had heretofore the license to work wrong; now he has full liberty to do good.
The dread from the riots had brought the conservatives over to the royalty. The Assembly had been frightened, too, and saw that it depended on the King. A hundred and fifty of its members took to flight.
The two most popular men, Lafayette and Mirabeau, became royalists. The latter wanted the other to unite with him to save the crown, but while honorable Lafayette had a limited brain, he did not see the orator’s genius.
Mirabeau was all for the Duke of Orleans, whom Lafayette advised, nay, ordered to quit the kingdom.
“But suppose I come back without your permission?” said the prince.
“Then, I hope you will do me the honor to cross swords with me at the first battle,” replied the marquis.
He was the veritable ruler and the duke had to depart; he did not return until called to be King of the French.
Lafayette had saved the Queen and protected the King; he was perfectly a royalist.
But still, like Gilbert, he was not so much the friend of the King as of the crown.
The monarch had too just a mind not to see this clearly.
Although he had not seen the doctor lately he remembered that this was his day of duty and he called him.
The King was pacing the bedroom, but stopping now and then to look at the Vandyke picture of Charles First, now in the Louvre.
The sovereign of England is painted as a Cavalier, with his horse, as ready for flight as for battle.
This picture seemed fatally the goal of the King’s wanderings.
At the step, Louis turned round.
“Oh, is it you, doctor?” he said. “Come in, I am glad to see you.” Leading him up to the painting he said: “Do you know this? where did you see it?”
“In Lady Dubarry’s house, when I was a boy, but it deeply struck me.”
“Yes, she pretended to be descended from the page who holds the horse. Jeanne Dubarry was the woman chosen by Marshal Richelieu to be the sole feminine ruler over the worn-out monarch Louis XV. and to induce him to shut up the infamous Deerpark, which was the harem ruining the old man. She was an adroit actress and played her part marvellously. She entertained while making sport of him, and he became manly because she persuaded him he was so.”
He stopped as if blaming himself for his imprudence in speaking of his grandfather thus openly before a stranger; but one glance at Gilbert’s frank face encouraged him, for he saw that he could speak all to a man who understood every thing.
“This melancholy, lofty face,” went on the King, referring to the portrait, “was placed in the strange Egeria’s boudoir, where it heard her impudent laughs and saw her lascivious gambols. Merrily she would take Louis by the arm and show him Charles, saying: ‘Old gossip, this King had his neck cut through because he was too weak towards his Parliament. Take warning about your own!’ Hence Louis broke up his Parliament and died peacefully on his throne. Thereupon we exiled the poor woman, for whom we ought to have been most indulgent. The picture was packed away in the lumber room of Versailles and I never thought about it. Now, how comes it here, in my bedroom? why does it haunt me?” He shook his head. “There is some fate in this.”
“Fatality, if the portrait reads no lesson, Sire; Providence if it does. What does it say to your Majesty?”
“That Charles lost his throne from having made war on his subjects, and James the Second for having tired his own.”
“Like me, then, it speaks the truth.”
“Well?” inquired the sovereign, questioning the doctor with his glance.
“Well, I beg to ask for your answer to the portrait.”
“Friend Gilbert, I have resolved on nothing: I will take the cue from circumstances.”
“The people fear that your Majesty purposes war upon them.”
“No, sir,” he rejoined, “I cannot make war on them without foreign support and I know the state of Europe too well to rely on that. The King of Prussia offers to enter France at the head of a hundred thousand men; but I too well know his ambitious and intriguing spirit--a petty monarchy which wishes to become a great one, thriving on turmoil and hoping to catch some fish like another Silesia. On her part, Austria places a hundred thousand men at my call; but I do not like my brother-in-law Leopold, a two-faced Janus, whose mother, Marie Theresa, had my father poisoned.
“My brother Artois proposes the support of Sardinia and Spain, but I do not trust those powers, led by Artois. Beside him is Calonne, in other words, the Queen’s worst enemy, the one who annotated with his own hand the pamphlet of the Countess Lamotte Valois anent the conspiracy of the Queen’s Necklace, for which she was branded. I know all that is going on yonder. In their last council a debate ensued about deposing me and appointing a regent who would be probably my dear, very dear brother Count Provence. Prince Conde suggested marching with an enemy upon Lyons, ‘whatever happened me at Paris!’
“It is another thing with the Great Empress Catherine; she confines herself to advice, bless her! you can understand that when you reflect that she is at table digesting Poland and cannot rise until she has finished her feast. She gives me advice which aims to be sublime but is only ridiculous, considering what has lately occurred. She says: ‘Monarchs ought to proceed on their course like the moon in her orbit, without being disturbed by the baying of curs!’--that is, the protests of the common people. It appears that the Russian curs merely bark; ours do some biting, as you may learn of my poor Lifeguardsmen, torn to pieces by them.”
“The people thought that your Majesty was going to quit the country.”
“Doctor,” said the King after hesitating, and he laid his hand on the other’s shoulder, “I have promised you the truth and you shall have it thoroughly. Such a matter has been broached; it is the opinion of many faithful servitors surrounding me that I ought to flee. But on the sixth of October night, when weeping in my arms, the Queen besought me never to flee without her, and that we should all depart together, to be saved or die in company. I shall keep my word; and as I do not think that we could flee in such a number without being stopped, a dozen times before we got to the frontier, I conclude that we shall never get away.”
“Well, Sire, there is indeed no need of the foreigners. What would be the use until you shall exhaust your own resources? My advice is that we are only beginning the fight and that the Taking of the Bastile and the attack on the Palace at Versailles are only the two first acts in the tragedy to be played by France under the eyes of Europe.”
“I hope you are mistaken, sir,” replied Louis, slightly turning pale: “My police tell me nothing like this.”
“I have no police or information to check them; but in my position I am the natural conductor between the heavens and what is still concealed in the bowels of the earth. Sire, what we have experienced is merely the rumble that runs before the earthquake; we have yet to meet the lava, the fire and the smoke. I fear that the Revolutionary torrent will run ahead of us. There are only two methods to save yourself. One is to place yourself on the foremost breaker and be carried on with it.”
“I do not wish to go where it would carry me.”
“The second is to place a barrier across the tide. It is Genius and Popularity in one dam: and it is named Mirabeau.”
“The King looked Gilbert in the face as though he had misunderstood him; then turning to the portrait, he said:
“What would you have replied, Charles Stuart, if when you felt the ground quake beneath your feet, some one had suggested your leaning on Cromwell?”
“He would have refused, and rightly; for there is no likeness between Cromwell and Mirabeau.” Such was Gilbert’s answer.
“They were both traitors.”
“Sire,” replied the other with profound respect but invincible firmness; “neither were traitors: Cromwell was a rebellious subject, and Mirabeau is a discontented nobleman.”
“What is he discontented with?”
“With his father, who locked him up in prison; the courts which condemned him to death; with the King who miscomprehended and still miscomprehends his genius.”
“The spirit of a public man is honesty,” said the King quickly.
“The reply is fine, worthy of Titus, Trajan or Marcus Aurelius, unluckily many examples arise to the contrary.”
“How can you ask me to confide in a man who has a price?”
“Because he is a man of his price. If he will sell himself for a million, it is a bargain. Do you think he is worth twice a Polignac?”
“You are pleading for a friend.”
“I have not that honor: but he has a friend who is of the Queen’s party, too.”
“Count Lamarck? We cast it up to him every day.”
“On the contrary, your Majesty ought to dissuade him breaking the friendship with him, under pain of death. Mirabeau is a noble, an aristocrat, a King’s-man above all. He was elected by the people because the nobles scorned him and he had sublime disdain of the means to attain an end which genius thirsted for. You may say that he will never quit the party of his constituents to join the court party? Why is there not union of the court and plebeians? Mirabeau could make them one. Take him, my lord! To-morrow, rebuffed by your despisal, he may turn against you, and then you will say, as the portrait of your Martyr King will say: All is lost!”
“I will talk this over with the Queen, sir,” said the monarch, having turned pale and hesitatingly glanced at the royal portrait. “She may decide on speaking with Mirabeau: but I will not. I like to be able to shake hands with those I confer with, and I could never take the hand of a Mirabeau, though my life, my liberty, and my throne were at stake--After she shall have seen him, we will see----“
“I pray God that it will not be too late.”
“Do you believe the peril so imminent?”
“Sire, do not let the portrait of Charles First be removed from your room,” said Gilbert; “it is a good adviser.”
Bowing, he went forth as another visitor appeared on the sill. He could not restrain from a cry of surprise. This gentleman was Marquis Favras, whom he had met at Cagliostro’s a week or so before and to whom the magician had predicted a near and shameful death.
