But we had scarcely sat down to the supper which Mordecai's hospitality and his daughter's taste had provided for us—and a most costly display of plate and pine-apples it was—when our entertainer was called out of the room by a new arrival. After some delay, he returned, bringing in with him a middle-aged officer, a fine soldierly-looking figure, in the uniform of the royal guard. He had just arrived from France with letters for some of the party, and with an introduction to the Jew, whom I now began to regard as an agent of the French princes. The officer was known to the whole table; and the enquiries for the fate of their friends and France were incessant and innumerable. He evidently suppressed much, to avoid "a scene;" yet what he had to tell was sufficiently alarming. The ominous shake of the Jew's head, and the changes of his sagacious visage, showed me that he at least thought the evil day on the point of completion.
"Living," said he, "at this distance from the place of events which succeed each other with such strange rapidity, we can scarcely judge of any thing. But, if the king would rely more on his peasantry and less on his populace, and more on his army than either, he might be king of France still."
"True!—true!" was the general acclamation.
"He should have clung to his noblesse, like Henri Quatre," said a duke.
"He should have made common cause with his clergy," said a prelate, with the physiognomy of one of Titian's cardinals.
"Any thing but the Tiers Etat," was uttered by all, with a general voice of horror.
"My letters of this evening," said Mordecai, "tell me that the fête at Versailles has had dangerous consequences."
"Ciel!" exclaimed a remarkably handsome woman of middle age, with the "air noble" in every feature. "Pardon me, it must be an error. I was present. It was the most brilliant of all possible réunions. It was a pledge to the salvation of France. I hear the sound of 'Richard, O mon Roi!' in my ear at this moment. When, oh when, shall I hear it again!" She burst into a passion of tears.
The name was electric. All began that very charming air at the moment. Sobs and sighs stole in between the pauses of the harmony. Their rich and practised voices gave it the sweetness and solemnity of a hymn. Fine eyes were lifted to heaven; fine faces were buried in their clasped hands; and the whole finished like the subsidence of a prayer.
But madame la duchesse was full of her subject, and we were full of curiosity. We implored her to give us some idea of a scene, of which all Europe was thinking and talking. She required no importunity, but told her tale with the majesty of a Clairon. It was at first all exclamation. "O my king!—O my unhappy but noble queen!—O my beloved but noble France! O Richard! O mon Roi!—Le monde vous abandonné!" She again wept, and we again sympathized.
"For weeks," said she, "we had been tortured at Versailles with reports from the capital. We lived in a perpetual fever. The fury of the populace was terrible. The wretches who inflamed it constantly threatened to lead the armed multitude to the palace. We were almost without defence. The ministers could not be prevailed on to order the advance of the troops, and we felt our lives from hour to hour dependent on chance."
"It was my month of waiting as lady of honour. I found the queen always firm; or, if she ever trembled, it was at the want of firmness in others. She had made up her mind for the worst long before. She often said to me, in those revolutionary nights when we sat listening for the sound of the cannon or the tocsin from Paris—'France is an abyss, in which the throne must sink. But sovereigns may be undone—they must not be disgraced.' The world never possessed a more royal mind.
"At length an opportunity seemed to offer of showing the true feeling of the court to the army. The regiment of Flanders had come to take its tour of service at the palace, and the garde du corps had sent them an invitation to a grand military banquet. There was nothing new, and could have been nothing suspicious, in the invitation; for it was the custom of the garde, on the arrival of any regiment at Versailles, as a commencement of mutual civility. The regiment of Flanders was a distinguished corps—but the whole army had been tampered with; and the experiment was for the first time a doubtful one. As if to make it still more doubtful, the invitation was extended to the national guard of Versailles."
Every eye was now fixed on the narrator, as she went on with increasing animation.
"Never was there a day of greater anxiety. We were sure of the garde du corps; but treachery was roving through France, and the banquet might only produce a collision. The entertainment, by being in the opera salon, was actually within the palace, and all the royal suite remained in the royal apartments, in fear and trembling, during the entire day.
"But as the night advanced, the intelligence, which was brought to us every five minutes from the salon, became more tranquillizing. The coldness which had existed in the beginning between the garde and the troops of the line had vanished, and loyal healths, gay speeches, and charming songs succeeded. At length a gallant young lieutenant of the garde, in a fit of noble enthusiasm, cried—'We all are the soldiers of France—we all are loyal, all are happy—Why shall not our king witness our loyalty and our happiness?' The tidings were instantly conveyed to the royal apartments. The king rose—the court followed. We entered the salon. Oh, that sight!—so new, so touching, so indescribable!"
Her voice sank for a moment. She recovered herself, and proceeded—
"The queen leaned on the arm of the king, the dauphin and dauphiness followed; Madame Elizabeth, that saint on earth if ever there was one, headed the ladies of the court. All rose at our entrance; we were received with one acclamation. The sight is still before me. I had seen all that was brilliant in the courts of Europe. But this moment effaced them all. The most splendid salle on earth, crowded with uniforms, all swords drawn and waving in the light, all countenances turned on the king, all one shout of triumph, loyalty, and joy! Alas! alas! was it to be the last beat of the national heart? Alas! alas! was it to be the last flash of the splendour of France; the dazzling illumination of the catafalque of the Bourbons; the bright burst of flame from the funeral pile of the monarchy?"
Her voice sank into silence; for the first time unbroken throughout the room.
At length, to relieve the pause, Mordecai expressed something of a hope that the royal family slept in peace, for that one night at least.
"I really cannot tell," briskly said the fair narrator. "But I know that the ladies of the court did not. As the king retired, and we remained in the opera boxes to amuse ourselves a little with the display, we heard, to our astonishment, a proposal that the tables should be cleared away, and the ladies invited to a dance upon the spot. The proposal was instantly followed by the officers climbing into the boxes, and by our tearing up our pocket-handkerchiefs to make them cockades. We descended, and danced loyally till daybreak."
"With nothing less than field-officers, I hope?" said a superb cavalier, with a superb smile.
"I hope so too," laughed the lady; "though really I can answer for nothing but that the cotillon was excessively gay—that our partners, if not the best dancers upon earth—I always honour the garde du corps,"—and she bowed to the captain; "were the most obliged persons possible."
"Ah, but roturiers, madame!" said a stiff old duke, with a scorn worthy of ten generations of ribands of St Louis.
"True; it was most melancholy, when one comes to reflect upon it," said the lady, with an elevation of her alabaster shoulders to the very tips of her ears. "But on that evening roturiers were in demand—popularity was every thing; the bourgeoisie of Versailles were polished by their friction against the garde du corps. And I am sure, that if the same experiment, distressing as it might be, were tried in every opera salon in the provinces, and we had longer dances and shorter harangues, more fiddles and fewer patriots, all would be well again in our 'belle France.'"
"But—your news, monsieur le capitaine," was the demand all round the table.
"I almost dread to allude to it," said the captain, "as it may seem to contradict the