The Royal Life Guard; or, the flight of the royal family.. Dumas Alexandre
remembrance of the rich Civil List and the dower I obtained for her. This Queen must be ignorant that I was compelled to regain the popularity I lost for her sake; but she no more remembers it than my proposing the adjournment of the annexation of Avignon to France in order to please the King's religious scruples. But these and other faults of mine I have dearly paid for," continued Mirabeau. "Not that these faults will ruin them, but there are times when ruin must come, whether faults help them forward or not. The Queen does not wish to be saved but to be revenged; hence she relishes no reasonable ideas.
"I have tried to save liberty and royalty at the same time; but I am not fighting against men, or tigers, but an element – it is submerging me like the sea: yesterday up to the knee, today up to the waist, to-morrow I shall be struggling with it up to my neck. I must be open with you, doctor; I felt chagrin first, then disgust. I dreamt of being the arbiter between the Revolution and monarchy. I believed I should have an ascendancy over the Queen as a man, and some day when she was going under the flood, I meant to leap in and rescue her. But, no! they would not honestly take me; they try to destroy my popularity, ruin me, annihilate me, and make me powerless to do either good or evil. So, now that I have done my best, I tell you, doctor, that the best thing I can do is die in the nick of time; fall artistically like the Dying Gladiator, and offer my throat to be cut with gracefulness; yield up the ghost with decency."
He sank back on the reclining chair and bit the pillow savagely. Gilbert knew what he sought, on what Mirabeau's life depended.
"What will you say if the King or the Queen should send to inquire after your health?" he asked.
"The Queen will not do it – she will not stoop so low."
"I do not believe, but I suppose, I presume – "
"I will wait till to-morrow night."
"And then?"
"If she sends a confidential man I will say you are right and I wrong. But if on the contrary none come, then it will be the other way."
"Keep tranquil till then. But this scarf?"
"I shall not see her, on my honor," he said, smiling.
"Good, try to get a good quiet night, and I will answer for you," said Gilbert, going out.
"Your master is better, my honest Deutsch," said he to the attendant at the door.
The old valet shook his head sadly.
"Do you doubt my word?"
"I doubt everything since his bad angel will be beside him."
He sighed as he left the doctor on the gloomy stairs. At the landing corner Gilbert saw a veiled shadow which seemed waiting: on perceiving him, it uttered a low scream and disappeared so quickly by a partly opened door that it resembled a flight.
"Who is that woman?" questioned the doctor.
"The one who looks like the Queen," responded Deutsch.
For the second time Gilbert was struck by the same idea on hearing this phrase: he took a couple of steps as though to chase the phantom, but he checked himself, saying,
"It cannot be."
He continued his way, leaving the old domestic in despair that this learned man could not conjure away the demon whom he believed the agent of the Inferno.
Next day all Paris called to inquire after the invalid orator. The crowd in the street would not believe Deutsch's encouraging report but forced all vehicles to turn into the side streets so that their idol should not be disturbed by their noise.
Mirabeau got up and went to the window to wave a greeting to these worshipers, who shouted their wishes for his long life.
But he was thinking of the haughty woman who did not trouble her head about him, and his eyes wandered over the mob to see if any servants in the royal blue livery were not trying to make their way through the mass. By evening his impatience changed into gloomy bitterness.
Still he waited for the almost promised token of interest, and still it did not come.
At eleven, Gilbert came; he had written his best wishes during the day: he came in smiling, but he was daunted by the expression on Mirabeau's face, faithful mirror of his soul's perturbations.
"Nobody has come," said he. "Will you tell me what you have done this day?"
"Why, the same as usual – "
"No, doctor and I saw what happened and will tell you the same as though present. You called on the Queen and told her how ill I was: she said she would send to ask the latest news, and you went away, happy and satisfied, relying on the royal word. She was left laughing, bitter and haughty, ignorant that a royal word must not be broken – mocking at your credulity."
"Truly, had you been there, you could not have seen and heard more clearly," said Gilbert.
"What numbskulls they are," exclaimed Mirabeau. "I told you they never did a thing at the right time. Men in the royal livery coming to my door would have wrung shouts of 'Long live the King!' from the multitude and given them popularity for a year."
He shook his head with grief.
"What is the matter, count?" asked Gilbert.
"Nothing."
"Have you had anything to eat?"
"Not since two o'clock."
"Then take a bath and have a meal."
"A capital idea!"
Mirabeau listened in the bath until he heard the street door close after the doctor.
Then he rang for his servant, not Deutsch but another, to have the table in his room decked with flowers, and "Madam Oliva" invited to sup with him.
He closed all the doors of the supper-room except that to the rooms of the strange woman whom the old German called his bad angel.
At about four in the morning, Deutsch who sat up, heard a violent ring of the room bell. He and another servant rushed to the supper-room, but all the doors were fastened so that they had to go round by the strange lady's rooms. There they found her in the arms of their master, who had tried to prevent her giving the alarm. She had rung the table-bell from inability to get at the bell pull.
She was screaming as much for her own relief as her lover's, as he was suffocating her in his convulsive embrace.
It seemed to be Death trying to drag her into the grave.
Jean ran to rouse Dr. Gilbert while Deutsch got his master to a couch. In ten minutes the doctor drove up.
"What is it now?" he asked of Deutsch, in the hall.
"That woman again and the cursed flowers! Come and see."
At this moment something like a sob was heard; Gilbert, ran up the stairs at the top step of which a door opened, and a woman in a white wrapper ran out suddenly and fell at the doctor's feet.
"Oh, Gilbert," she screamed, "save him!"
"Nicole Legay," cried the doctor; "was it you, wretch, who have killed him?" A dreadful thought overwhelmed him. "I saw her bully Beausire selling broadsides against Mirabeau, and she became his mistress. He is undoubtedly lost, for Cagliostro set himself against him."
He turned back into his patient's room, fully aware that no time was to be lost. Indeed, he was too versed in secrets of his craft still to hope, far less to preserve any doubt. In the body before his eyes, it was impossible to see the living Mirabeau. From that time, his face assumed the solemn cast of great men dying.
Meanwhile the news had spread that there was a relapse and that the doom impended. Then could it be judged what a gigantic place one man may fill among his fellows. The entire city was stirred as on great calamities. The door was besieged by persons of all opinions as though everybody knew they had something to lose by his loss.
He caused the window to be opened that he might be soothed by the hum of the multitude beneath.
"Oh, good people," he murmured: "slandered, despised and insulted like me, it is right that those Royals should forget me and the Plebes bear me in mind."
Night