Slowly and heavily the hours of the next day rolled on. Where was Toulan? Why did he not come? The queen waited for him the whole of that long, dreadful day in feverish expectation. She listened to every sound, to every approaching step, to every voice that echoed in the corridor. At noon Toulan had purposed to come to take his post as guard. At six, when the time of lighting the lamps should arrive, the disguises were to be put on. At seven the carefully and skilfully-planned flight was to be made.
The clock in the tower of the Temple had already struck four. Toulan had not yet come, and the guards of the day had not yet been relieved. They had had a little leisure at noon for dinner, and during the interim Simon and Tison were on guard, and had kept the queen on the rack with their mockery and their abusive words. In order to avoid the language and the looks of these men, she had fled into the children's room, to whom the princess, in her trustful calmness and unshaken equanimity, was assigning them lessons. Marie Antoinette wanted to find protection here from the dreadful anxiety that tortured her, as well as from the ribald jests and scurrility of her keepers. But Mistress Tison was there, standing near the glass window, gazing in with a malicious grin, and working in her wonted, quick way upon the long stocking, and knitting, knitting, so that you could hear the needles click together.
The queen could not give way to a word or a look. That would have created suspicion, and would, perhaps, have caused an examination to be made. She had to bear all in silence, she had to appear indifferent and calm; she had to give pleasant answers to the dauphin's innocent questions, and even compel a smile to her lips when the child, reading in her looks, by the instinct of love, her great excitement, tried to cheer her up with pleasant words.
It struck five, and still Toulan did not come. A chill crept over her heart, and in the horror which filled her she first became conscious how much love of life still survived in her, and how intensely she had hoped to find a possibility of escape.
Only one last hour of hope left! If it should strike six, and he should not come, all would be lost! The doors of her prison would be closed forever--never opening again excepting to allow Marie Antoinette to pass to the guillotine.
Mistress Tison had gone, and her cold, mocking face was no longer visible behind the glass door. The guards in the anteroom had also gone, and had closed the doors behind them. The queen was, therefore, safe from being watched at least! She could fall upon her knees, she could raise her hands to God and wrestle with Him in speechless prayer for pity and deliverance. She could call her children to herself, and press them to her heart, and whisper to them that they must be composed if they should see something strange, and not wonder if they should have to put on clothing that they were not accustomed to.
"Mamma," asked the dauphin, in a whisper, "are we going to Varennes again?"
The queen shuddered in her inmost soul at this question, and hid her quivering face on the faithful breast of the princess.
"Oh, sister, I am suffocating with anxiety," she said. "I feel that this hour is to decide the lives of us all, and it seems to me as if Death were already stretching out his cold hand toward me. We are lost, and my son, my unhappy son, will never wear any other than the martyr's crown, and--"
The queen was silent, for just then the tower-clock began to strike, slowly, peacefully, the hour of six! The critical moment! The lamplight must come now! If it were Toulan, they might be saved.
Some unforeseen occurrence might have prevented his coming before; he might have borrowed the suit of the bribed lamplighter in order to come to them. There was hope still--one last, pale ray of hope!
Steps upon the corridor! Voices that are audible!
The queen, breathless, with both hands laid upon her heart, which was one instant still, and then beat with redoubled rapidity, listened with strained attention to the opening of the door of the anteroom. Princess Elizabeth approached her, and laid her hand on the queen's shoulder. The two children, terrified by some cause which they could not comprehend, clung to the hand and the body of their mother, and gazed anxiously at the door.
The steps came nearer, the voices became louder. The door of the anteroom is opened--and there is the lamp-lighter. But it is not Toulan--no, not Toulan! It is the man who comes every day, and the two children, are with him as usual.
A heavy sigh escaped from the lips of the queen, and, throwing her arms around the dauphin with a convulsive motion, she murmured:
"My son, oh, my dear son! May God take my life if He will but spare thine!"
Where was Toulan? Where had he been all this dreadful day? "Where was Fidele the brave, the indefatigable?
On the morning of the day appointed for the flight, he left his house, taking a solemn leave of his Marguerite. At this parting hour he told her for the first time that he was going to enter upon the great and exalted undertaking of freeing the queen and her children, or of dying for them. His true, brave young wife had suppressed her tears and her sighs to give him her blessing, and to tell him that she would pray for him, and that if he should perish in the service of the queen, she would die too, in order to be united with him above.
Toulan kissed the beaming eyes of his Marguerite with deep fooling, thanked her for her true-hearted resignation, and told her that he had never loved her so much as in this hour when he was leaving her to meet his death, it might be, in the service of another lady.
"At this hour of parting," he said, "I will give you the dearest and most sacred thing that I possess. Take this little gold smelling-bottle. The queen gave it to me, and upon the bit of paper that lies within it Marie Antoinette wrote with her own hand, 'Remembrancer for Fidele.'
