Romoeuf was twenty-six, Louis de Bouille twenty-two. They could not therefore talk politics long.

  Count Louis, too, did not wish even to be suspected to have any serious idea.

  As a great secret, he told Romoeuf that, on a simple leave, he had come to Paris to see a woman he adored.

  While he thus confided in the aide-decamp, Lafayette appeared at the threshold of the door, which had remained open; though he perfectly saw the new-comer in the glass placed before him, M. de Bouille went on with his story; only, that in spite of the signs of Romoeuf, which he pretended not to understand, he raised his voice, so that the general did not lose a word of what was said.

  The general heard all, precisely as young Bouille had intended he should.

  He continued to advance behind the narrator, and put his hand on his shoulder. “Ah, ha! M. de Libertin. This is the reason why you hide yourself from your relations.”

  The young general of thirty-two was not a very rigid monitor, for at that time he was much sought after by the women of fashion. Louis was not much afraid of the blowing-up he was to get.

  “I did not conceal myself, my dear cousin, for on this very day I intended to have the honour to present myself to the most illustrious of them, and would have done so, had I not been anticipated by this message.”

  He showed the letter he had just received.

  “Well, then, do you country gentlemen say that the Parisian police is badly organized?” said the general, with an air of satisfaction, proving that on that head his self-esteem was interested.

  “We know, general, that we can hide nothing from him who watches over the people’s liberty and the king’s life.”

  Lafayette looked aside at his cousin, with an expression at once kind, spiritual, and mixed something with raillery, which we ourselves have seen him use. He knew that the safety of the king was a great matter of interest to this branch of the family, though popular liberty was of little importance in its eyes. Hence he only answered a portion of the last speech.

  “And has the Marquis de Bouille, my cousin,” said he, emphatically, using a title he had renounced after the night of the 4th of August, “given his son no commission to his king relating to this safety and protection?”

  “He bade me place at his feet the greatest protestations of respect,” said the young man, “if General Lafayette does not think me unworthy of being presented to my king.”

  “Present you? and when?”

  “As soon as possible, general.”

  “Be it so.”

  “I believe I have had the honour of telling you or Romoeuf that I am here without a leave.”

  “You told Romoeuf; but, as I heard it, it is all the same. Well, good actions should not be retarded. It is eleven; I see the king every day at noon, and the queen also. Eat with me, if you have not breakfasted, and I will take you to the Tuileries.”

  “But,” said the young man, looking at his uniform, “am I in costume?”

  “In the first place, my child, I will tell you that the great question of etiquette, your nurse, is very sick, if not dead, since you left. When I look, though, your coat is irreproachable and your boots clean. What costume so becomes a gentleman ready to die for his king as his uniform? Come, Romoeuf, see if breakfast is ready. I will immediately after take M. de Bouille to the Tuileries.”

  The proposition was too much in accordance with the young man’s wishes for him to make any real objection, so he bowed an assent at once, and thanked his kinsman.

  Half an hour afterwards, the sentinels at the gates presented arms to General Lafayette and the young Count de Bouille, without suspecting that they were at once paying military compliments to both revolution and counter revolution.

  Every door was opened to Monsieur de Lafayette. The sentinels saluted, the footmen bowed; the king of the king, the maise of the palace, was easily recognised, as Marat said.

  Lafayette was first introduced into the rooms of the queen; the king was at his forge.

  Three years had passed since M. Louis de Bouille had seen Marie Antoinette.

  The queen had reached the age of thirty-four, as Michelet says, a touching age, which Vandyck so loved to paint; the age of a wife, the age of a mother, and, in the case of Marie Antoinette especially, the age of a queen.

  During these three years, the queen had suffered much both in body and mind, and also in self-respect. Thirty-four years seemed, therefore, to be written on the cheeks of the poor woman, by those slight, changeable violet lines which speak of eyes full of tears and sleepless nights, which betray some deep sorrow in a woman’s heart, whether she be either woman or queen — sorrow incurable until it be extinguished.

  This was the age of Marie Stuart when she was in prison. It was the age of her deepest passion, when Douglas, Mortimer, Norfolk, and Babington became enamoured of her, devoted themselves to, and died for her.

  The sight of this royal prisoner, hated, calumniated, maligned — the 5th of October had proved those ligns not vain — made a deep impression on the chivalric heart of young Louis de Bouille.

  Women are never mistaken in the influence they produce. It is a portion of the education of kings and queens to remember faces they have seen, and as soon as Marie Antoinette saw M. de Bouille, she recognised him; as soon as she saw him, she knew she saw a friend.

  The result was, that even before the count was presented, before he was at the foot of the divan on which the queen lay, and as one speaks to an old friend who has long been absent and who is welcomed back, or to a servant on whose fidelity we may rely, she exclaimed at once, “Ah! M. de Bouille.”

  Without paying any attention to Lafayette, she offered her hand to the young man.

  This was one of the queen’s mistakes, and she committed many such. M. de Bouille was hers without this favour, and by this favour, granted in the presence of Lafayette, who had never been similarly honoured, she established a sign of demarcation which wounded the man of whom she had most need as a friend. Therefore, with a politeness which he never laid aside, but with some emotion in his voice:

  “On my honour, dear cousin,” said Lafayette, “I offered to present you to her majesty, but it seems it had been better if you had presented me.”

  The queen was so happy to meet a person in whom she could confide; the woman so proud of the effect she seemed to have produced on the count, that, feeling in her heart one of those rays of youth she had fancied extinguished, and around her those breezes of spring and youth she thought gone for ever, turned towards Lafayette, and, with one of those smiles of Trianon and Versailles, said:

  “General, Count Louis is not a severe republican, as you are. He has come from Metz, and not from America; he has not come to Paris to establish a constitution, but to do homage. Do not, therefore, be surprised if I grant him, though a poor and half-dethroned queen, a favour which, to a country gentleman like him, deserves to be called so, while to you — ”

  And the queen flirted almost as much as a young girl would, anxious to say, “While to you, Sir Scipio, while to you, Sir Cincinnatus, such things would be ridiculous.”

  “Madame,” said Lafayette, “I have ever been kind and respectful to the queen, though she never understood my respect or appreciated my devotion; this is, to me, a great misfortune, but, perhaps, is a greater one for her.” He bowed.

  The queen looked at him with her clear blue eye; more than once Lafayette had spoken to her thus, and more than once had she reflected on his words. It was, however, her misfortune to entertain a repulsive and intense dislike to the man. “Come, general,” said she, “be generous; excuse me, pardon me.”

  “I pardon you, madame! for what?”

  “My enthusiasm for these good De Bouilles, who love me with all their heart, and of whom this young man is an almost electric chain; I saw his father, his uncles, when he appeared and kissed my hand.”

  Lafayette bowed again.

  “Now,” said the queen, “having pardoned me, let there be peace. Let us shake hands, general, as Englishmen and Americans do.”

  She gave him her hand; it was open, with the palm upwards, en carte. Lafayette touched, with a slow and cold hand, that of the queen, and said, “I regret that you will never remember, madame, that I am a Frenchman. The 6th of October, and 16th of November, however, are not very distant.”

  “You are right, general,” said the queen, clasping his hand, “it is I who am ungrateful.” She sank back on the sofa, as if she were overcome by emotion.

  “This should not surprise you,” she said; “you know the reproach is often made me.” Then, lifting up her head, she said, ‘‘Well, general, what news from Paris?”

  Lafayette had a petty vengeance to appease, and took the present opportunity to do so.

  “Ah, madame,” said he, “how sorry I am that you were not yesterday at the Assembly; you would have witnessed a touching scene, which certainly would have moved your heart: an old man came to thank the Assembly and the king, for the Assembly, you know, is powerless without the king, for the happiness he owed to it.”

  “An old man!” said the queen.

  “Yes, madame; and what an old man! He is one of the deans of humanity, an old peasant, subject to the capital jurisdiction of his lord — a hundred and twenty years old. He was brought from the Jura to the bar of the Assembly by five generations of descendants, to thank them for the decree of August the 4th. Can you fancy how a man looked, who was for fifty years a serf under Louis XIV., and for seventy years since?”

  “And what did the Assembly do for this man?”

  “It rose with one accord, and made him sit down and cover himself.”

  “Ah!” said the queen, with the tone peculiar to herself, “it must have been very touching; I am sorry I was not there; you, however, better than any one else, know that we cannot always be where we wish to be.”

  The general, by his motions, signified that he had nothing to say. The queen continued, though without the interruption of a moment:

  “No, I was here, and received the wife of Francois, whom the National Assembly suffered to be killed at its very door. What was the Assembly doing then, M. de Lafayette?”

  “Madame, you speak of one of the misfortunes which are most distressing to the representatives of France. They could not prevent the murder, but, at least, they punished the murderers.”

  “Yes; but that is a small consolation to the poor woman; she is almost crazy, and it is thought that she will give birth to a stillborn child. If the child live, I have promised to be its godmother, that the people may know that at least I am not insensible to its sorrows. I ask you, dear general, would it be inconvenient to christen the child at Notre Dame?”

  “Madame, this is the second time you have alluded to the captivity in which it is pretended to your faithful servants I keep you.’ Madame, I say before my cousin, before Paris, before Europe, before the world, I wrote yesterday to M. Monnier, who laments over your captivity in Dauphiny, that you are free. Madame, I have but one request to make, that the king resume his hunting parties, and his excursions, and that you, madame, accompany him.”

  The queen smiled, like a person unconvinced.

  “As for becoming godmother to the poor orphan about to be born in mourning, in promising to do so, the queen has obeyed only the dictates of that excellent heart which makes all who approach love her; when the day appointed for the ceremony shall have come, the queen can select any church she pleases; she has but to order, and she will be obeyed. Now,” said the general, “I await her majesty’s orders for to-day.”

  “To-day, my dear general,” said the queen, “I have no prayer to address you, but that you invite your cousin, if he remain long in Paris, to one of the circles of the Princess de Lamballe; you know she receives both for herself and me.”

  “I, madame,” said Lafayette, “will take advantage of the invitation, both for him and myself. If your majesty has not seen me there before, I beg you believe it was because you had ceased to manifest any wish to do so.”

  The queen replied by a bow and a smile. This was a dismissal. Each one understood his own part of the scene. Lafayette took the dismissal to himself — Count Louis took the smile as his.

  They both retired backwards, the one having acquired, from this scene, far more bitterness, and the other inspired with far more devotion.

  At the door of the queen’s room the two visitors found the valet de chambre of the king, Huet.

  The king wished him to say to M. de Lafayette, that having begun a curious piece of locksmithing, he wished him to come to the forge.

  A forge was the first thing Louis XVI. asked after, on his arrival at the Tuileries; and when he learned that this necessity had been forgotten by Catherine de Medici and Philibert de Lorraine, he selected, on the second story, just above his bedroom, a great garret with two stairways, one in his room and the other in the corridor, as his locksmith shop.

  Amid all the troubles that had assailed him, during the five weeks he had been at the Tuileries, Louis XVI. had not forgotten his forge. His forge had been his fixed idea, and he had himself taken charge of the arrangement, prescribing a place for the bellows, the hearth, the anvil, the bench, and the vice. The forge being fixed sound, bastards, hooks, pincers of every variety, were soon in their places, and every other imaginable thing which locksmiths use was in reach. Louis XVI. had not been able to resist any longer, and, ever since morning, had been busy at that trade which distracted his attention so completely, and in which, if we believe Master Gamain, he would have been a proficient, had not certain idlers, like Turgot de Calonne and M. Necker, diverted him from his business by talking of the affairs of France, which Gamain might have submitted to, but also of the affairs of Brabant, Austria, England, America and Spain. This is the reason why, being busy with his work, Louis XVI., instead of coming to see Lafayette, had asked the general to come to him.

  Perhaps, too, having shown the commandant of the National Guard his weakness as a king, he was not unwilling to exhibit himself in his majesty as a locksmith.

  At the door of the forge, the valet bowed and said, as he was ignorant of De Bouille’s name, “Whom shall I announce?”

  “The General-in-Chief of the National Guard. I will present this gentleman to his majesty.”

  “The Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard,” said the valet.

  The king turned round.

  “Ah, ah, is it you, M. de Lafayette? I beg you excuse me for making you come hither, but the locksmith assures you that you are welcome to his forge. A charcoal-burner told Henri IV., my grandfather, that every charcoal-burner is lord of his kiln. I tell you, general, that you are master both of the smith and of the king.” Louis XVI., it will be seen, began the conversation in almost the same manner that Marie Antoinette had.

  “Sire,” said Lafayette, “under whatever circumstances I may have the honour to present myself to you, in whatever story, or in whatever costume I find you, to me the king is ever the king, and I who now offer you my homage will ever be your true and devoted servant.”

  “I do not doubt it, marquis. Have you, though, changed your aide-de-camp? — for I see that you are not alone. Does this young officer occupy the place of either M. Gouvion or of M. Romoeuf?”

  “This young officer, sire, and I ask permission to present him to you, is my cousin, Count Louis de Bouille, captain of Monsieur’s regiment of dragoons.”

  “Ah, ah!” said the king, exhibiting a slight emotion; “yes. Count Louis de Bouille, son of the Marquis de Bouille; excuse me for not having recognised you, but I am very shortsighted. Have you been long from Metz?”

  “About five days, sire; I am in Paris without any official leave, but by permission of my father, and I came to ask General Lafayette, my kinsman, the honour of being presented to your majesty.”

  “M. de la Fayette! you did well. No one was better calculated to present you at any time, and presentation by no one would be more agreeable to me.”

  “Your majesty,” said Lafayette, not a little puzzled how to approach a king who had received him with his sleeves turned up, with a file in his hand, and wearing a leathern apron, “has undertaken an important work?”

  “Yes, general, I have undertaken the great masterpiece of a locksmith, an entire lock. I tell you what I do, so that if Marat knew I had gone to work and should say that I forged chains for France, you might tell him you know better. You, M. de Bouille, are neither locksmith nor journeyman.”

  “No, sire, hut I am an apprentice, and if I could in any way he useful to your majesty —

  “Ah! true, my dear cousin, was not the husband of your nurse a locksmith? Your father used to say, that although no admirer of the advice of the author of ‘Emile,’ if he had to follow it with regard to you, he would make you a locksmith.”

  “Exactly, sir; and that is why I had the honour to tell his majesty that if he needed an apprentice —

  “An apprentice would not be without his use to me, sir,” said the king; “what I want, though, is a master.”

  “What kind of a lock is your majesty making, though?” asked young De Bouille. “Spring, double bolt, catch lock, or what?”

  “Cousin,” said Lafayette, “I do not know you to be a practical man, but as a man of theory, you seem to me quite en courant du jour — I will not say of the trade, for the king has ennobled it, but of the art.”

  Louis heard the young gentleman mention the different kind of locks with visible pleasure, and said:

  “No, it is simply a secret lock, known as the Benarde lock, with bolts on both sides. I feel, though, that I have over-estimated my power. Ah! had I but Gamain; he used to call himself master over master, master over all.”