The flatterers and courtiers, the court ladies and cavaliers, are no longer in the music-room; the enraptured praises no longer accompany the songs of the queen; but, out of the easy-chair, in which the Duchess de Polignac had sat so often, now looks the beautiful blond face of her son, and his beaming countenance speaks more eloquently to her than the flatteries of friends. On the tabouret, now occupied by her sister-in-law, Madame Elizabeth, De Dillon has often sat--the handsome Dillon, and his glowing, admiring looks have often, perhaps, in spite of his own will, said more to the queen than she allowed herself to understand, as her heart thrilled in sweet pain and secret raptures under those glances! How pure and innocent is the face which now looks out from this chair--the face of an angel who bears God in his heart and on his countenance.
"Pray for me; pray that God may let me drink of Lethe, that I may forget all that has ever been! Pray that I may be satisfied with what remains, and that my heart may how in humility and patience!"
Thus thought the queen as she began to sing, not one of her great arias which she had studied with Garat, and which the court used to applaud, but one of those lovely little songs, full of feeling and melody, which did not carry one away in admiration, but which filled the heart with joy and deep emotion.
With suspended breath, and great eyes directed fixedly to Marie Antoinette, the dauphin listened, but gradually his eyes fell, and motionless and with grave face the child sat in his arm-chair.
Marie Antoinette saw it, and began to sing one of those cradle-songs of the "Children's Friend," which Berquin had written, and Gretry had set to music so charmingly.
How still was it in the music-room, how full and touching was the voice of the queen as she began the last verse:
"Oh, sleep, my child, now so to sleep. Thy crying grieves my heart;
Thy mother, child, has cause to weep, But sleep and feel no smart."
[Footnote: "Dors, mon enfant, clos ta paupiere, Tes cris me dechirent la coeur; Dors, mon enfant, ta pauvre more A bien assez de sa douleur."]
All was still in the music-room when the last words were sung; motionless, with downcast eyes, sat the dauphin long after the sad voice of the queen had ceased.
"Ah, see," cried Madame Elizabeth, with a smile, "I believe now our Louis has fallen asleep."
But the child quickly raised his head and looked at the smiling young princess with a reproachful glance.
"Ah, my dear aunt," cried he, reprovingly, "how could any one sleep when mamma sings?" [Footnote: The dauphin's own words.--See Beauchesne, vol. i., p. 27.]
Marie Antoinette drew the child within her arms, and her countenance beamed with delight. Never had the queen received so grateful a compliment from the most flattering courtier as these words of her fair-haired boy conveyed, who threw his arms around her neck and nestled up to her.
The Queen of France is still a rich, enviable woman, for she has children who love her; the Queen of France ought not to look without courage into the future, for the future belongs to her son. The throne which now is so tottering and insecure, shall one day belong to him, the darling of her heart, and therefore must his mother struggle with all her power, and with all the means at her command contend for the throne for the Dauphin of France, that he may receive the inheritance of his father intact, and that his throne may not in the future plunge down into the abyss which the revolution has opened.
No, the dauphin, Louis Charles, shall not then think reproachfully of his parents; he shall not have cause to complain that through want of spirit and energy they have imperilled or lost the sacred heritage of his fathers.
No, Queen Marie Antoinette may not halt and lose courage,--not even when her husband has done so, and when he is prepared to humbly bow his sacred head beneath that yoke of revolution, which the heroes and orators selected by the nation have wished to put upon his neck in the name of France.
This makes hers a double duty, to be active, to plan, and work; to keep her head erect, and look with searching eye in all directions to see whence help and deliverance are to come.
Not from without can they come, not from foreign monarchs, nor from the exiled princes. Foreign armies which might march into the country would place the king, who had summoned them to fight with his own people, in the light of a traitor; and the moment that they should pass the frontiers of France, the wrath of the nation would annihilate the royal couple.
Only from those who had called down the danger could help come. The chiefs of the revolution, the men who had raised their threatening voices against the royal couple, must be won over to become the advocates of royalty. And who was more powerful, who more conspicuous among all these chiefs of the revolution, and all the orators of the National Assembly, than Count Mirabeau!
When he ascended the Speaker's tribune of the National Assembly all were silent, and even his opponents listened with respectful attention to his words, which found an echo through all France; when he spoke, when from his lips the thunder of his speeches resounded, the lightning flashed in his eyes, and his head was like the head of a lion, who, with the shaking of his mane and the power of his anger, destroyed every thing which dared to put itself in his way.
And the French nation loved this lion, and listened in reverential silence to the thunder of his speech, and the throne shook before him. And the excitable populace shouted with admiration whenever they saw the lion, and deified that Count Mirabeau, who, with his powerul, lace-cuffed hand, had thrust these words into the face of his own caste: "They have done nothing more than to give themselves the trouble to be born."
The people loved this aristocrat, who was abhorred by his family and the men of his own rank; this count whom, the nobility hated because the Third Estate loved him.
