CHAPTER XVII.
THE KING AND THE WORKMAN.
The king drew back as if a viper had sprung out from the iron he was filing, when the workman who had entered his presence so strangely made this direct appeal. Anger, astonishment, and something like consternation, rose to his face. Perhaps a King of France had never been addressed in such language before by a man of the people. The fact seemed incredible, even to the kindest and least exacting monarch of his race.
“Who is it that dares use words like these to the king?” he said, at length, drawing his heavy figure up with dignity.
“One who loves his king better than anything on earth, save France,” was the reply given firmly, but with profound respect.
“Our grandfather used to say that the king _was_ France,” answered Louis, so impressed by the earnestness of the man that he forgot, for the moment, his low origin.
“A good king, who loves his people as fathers love their children, might say this, and ask God’s blessing upon it. Ah, sire! it is in this spirit the people would recognize their sovereign: let him represent France in his own person; let him open his heart to their love, his mind to their great needs, his hand to help them; and no monarch ever lived who would be worshiped like Louis the Sixteenth. Oh! think of this when the proud men who surround you seek to crowd back the people from your presence.”
The locksmith fell upon his knees as he spoke, and clasping his hard hands, held them up, quivering with emotion; for, brave as he was, this interview with the king, face to face, shook his stout frame from head to foot.
Louis stood up proudly above him—for that moment the man was striving nobly against all the traditions and prejudices of the monarch. He was angry that any human being should dare to address him with the manner and words used by this workman, whom he now thought had gained access to his presence by a strategem. But the humble position and absolute bravery of the man awoke more generous feelings in the really good heart of the monarch. After the first rush of angry surprise, he rested one hand on the work-bench, and said almost smiling,
“Stand upon your feet, my good friend, and for once let me hear from my people directly through one of their number. If you are, indeed, what your appearance indicates, a worker in iron, and nothing more, even though your craft has been used as a device, I will forgive it. Speak the truth, and that fearlessly, as if this were your work-shop, and not mine.”
This speech, so different to what the man expected, took all his presence of mind away. Anger he could have borne; danger he was prepared for; but this generous composure took him unawares. He began to tremble with a rush of strong emotions; once or twice the rough hand was drawn across his eyes. When he did speak, his voice was low and broken.
“My king, I thank you.”
Louis smiled. He liked the generous homage betrayed in this rude emotion, better than the position this man had just left at his feet.
“Speak frankly. We will leave our work for awhile, and learn if you are as well skilled in state craft as in this other, of which you, indeed, seem to be master. Half an hour ago this lock was chaotic fragments of iron, which puzzled my poor brain sadly. Now it is almost compact, its bolts slide with a touch of the key—all its parts are in harmony. Tell, if you have the knowledge, can my kingdom be so arranged?”
“Not with its present workmen,” answered the smith, resuming all his powers of mind; “never while the nobility hedge their king in from the common people as with a wall of granite. Sire, sire, old traditions are melting away, the people are losing their reverence for the greatness which has for generations set its heel upon them. They begin to understand that labor has its privileges, and should not forever be taxed that arrogance and idleness may become more powerful, and only use that power for oppression. They want the King of France to be the monarch of all the people of France, not of a privileged class.”
“That is, they desire the king to commence a revolution, and begin it by despoiling himself of power, and his court of rights hereditary since the foundations of the monarchy. By what excuse can he wrest privileges from one class and distribute them to another?”
“By the right of humanity he should do it, and human progress will give him the power. Those vast privileges were secured to the nobility in the ignorance of the many and grasping ambition of the few. Then physical might ruled supreme, and the people were in fact serfs; now mind, thought, energy, are at work through the masses. They begin to feel the great strength that lies in numbers; they clamor for a share of God’s blessings. Yes, sire, a spirit of revolution is abroad among the people who love their king, and ask him to be at the head of a grand reform.”
Louis listened gravely, while troubled shadows settled upon his face. He felt dimly all the truth that lay in his strange visitor’s words, but still more clearly the formidable powers opposed against them. Nobility clinging to the rights which, in fact, upheld his throne; the clergy, which in no country ever loosened its grasp on wealth or power without a death-struggle—all were to be braved and despoiled in behalf of a people of whom he, personally, knew nothing, and for whom his sympathies had never been thoroughly enlisted. The people, had, in fact, never approached their king, save in clamorous multitudes, or in committees, that sometimes appealed to his reason, seldom to his sympathies.
The most difficult man to deal with in the world is one of just mind and kind heart, who, holding power, has not the mental force and stern will necessary to its vigorous execution. To such men half-measures are sure to present themselves, and as certain to prove inadequate to the occasion when great difficulties are to be overcome. Indeed, it is seldom that they thoroughly understand the danger until it is upon them.
This was true with regard to Louis the Sixteenth. It required a gigantic mind even to comprehend the dangers that had each year crowded closer and closer to his throne; and he had no ministers capable of giving him thorough enlightenment, because they did not themselves understand these terrible signs of the future.
Was it strange, then, that he received the suggestions of this singular man with astonishment; that his kind heart swelled to his rude eloquence, and he felt, for the time, ready to lead his people on to the broader liberty they asked for?
Was it strange, either, that while the man was talking, the influences which had surrounded the king for life came back and stifled the generous impulse? He knew that in order to benefit a class of which he knew little, he must first enter into bitter contest with those who had been the friends and supporters of his house since it was royally planted on the throne!
“These are vast questions, and involve much which my people do not understand,” said Louis, a little impatiently; for if his reason had not been convinced, it certainly was disturbed. “I am not sorry, even in this way, to meet one of the people who dares to speak the truth. Had it been a courtier, now, or even a minister, who ventured so far, I am not sure that he would have been a stranger to our prison of the Bastille to-morrow morning.”
The locksmith shuddered.
“Ah! that fearful prison, sire, planted in the very heart of Paris, it has become so hateful to the people, that they mutter curses on it in passing.”
“That bespeaks them unreasoning and factious. Nations that build up thrones, at the same time lay the foundation of prisons; crime must be punished that the people may live. The palace in which I stand is not more an appendage of royalty than the prison of the Bastille.”
Louis spoke the truth; despotism had no monument more closely allied to itself than the Bastille. It had so long been an appendage to royalty, that no king, not even the kind-hearted Louis, ever thought of its horrors, save as necessary to the punishment of those who were considered as his enemies.
“Sire,” answered the locksmith, turning pale under the memories that crowded upon him, “I have been in the Bastille, and know all the horrors of its dungeons. Has any man ever told your highness of the deep, fetid caves and cells that are dug to a level with the common-sewers of the city, where men born, perhaps, to luxury, have to struggle with toads, rats, and every species of foul vermin, for the privilege of breathing the pestilential air? Have they told you of strong men chained by the waist to walls reeking with slime, till they become little better than skeletons; when the rusty girdles were unclasped, and they were carried, in the dead of night, to the cemetery of St. Paul, and buried without name and without record, save some rude inscription scratched upon the walls of a dungeon by the rusted nail, which some poor wretch had hoarded as a treasure?”
The king turned white as the man who addressed him with such passion and power, that the picture of the Bastille seemed to loom up, and cast its gaunt shadows over them both.
“Have they told you of this cruel man, Latude, crawling back and forth, like some wild animal, on those ponderous rope ladders, by which he descends the grim towers, and swings himself to the earth? Do the dainty commissioners, who go once each year to examine this place of horrors, tell the king of these things, and can he still say that this monster pile is an appendage of the throne?”
The king made a gesture with his hands, and turned away, as if this description revolted him. But the locksmith had plunged into the subject with all the fierce energy of a man so completely in earnest, that he lost all sense of the rank and power of his auditor.
“And if these enormities exist now under a monarch that all men know to be good and merciful, what must it have been when men less gracious held sway over the palaces and prisons of France? How many generations of Frenchmen have moaned, and suffered, and perished, under those black towers? How many innocent hearts have broken in despair? What oceans of rageful tears have been spent in vain! How many heads have been dashed against those pitiless stones? It stands there yet! Ay, king, it stands there yet! Innocent men are even now buried within its walls, sent there in the wantonness or cruelty of your grandfather—not many, not many. They do not live so long in the Bastille; but that old man——”
“Silence, I command you!” broke forth the king, pale with agitation, trembling with anger.
The locksmith dropped his uplifted arm, the word upon his lip broke in an angry sob.
“Sire, forgive me! I was standing in that awful prison. I heard the moans of agonized men coming up from under my feet; I heard the clank of chains, and saw such sights. Sire, forgive, or punish me; I, who have no self-command, and should claim little mercy.”
The king sat down and wiped away the beaded drops from his forehead; his breath came unevenly, his white hands shook.
“Tell me, in one word—is what you have said the truth?”
The locksmith fell upon his knees, and again held up his clasped hands.
“As heaven sees me, sire, every word I have uttered is a terrible truth.”
“And for this I am responsible!” said the king, as if speaking to himself. “It shall be remedied! It shall be remedied! Good man, I thank you! It is seldom that a monarch hears the truth, when it cuts him to the heart like this. I can listen to no more,” he added, lifting his hand as the locksmith opened his lips to speak. “Some other time you shall come to me again, but not here. I had hoped in this place to escape from all cares of state; but I do not complain. You have performed the duty of a good citizen, and have the king’s gratitude. Mark me, when the people say that Louis is inaccessible to his subjects, tell them that he not only sees them, but listens to painful truths without anger, when they are honestly told. Some day hereafter I may need you as a medium between me and the people, for whom you plead so boldly.”
The locksmith bent his head in deeper reverence than he had yet given to the monarch.
“When I entered the gates of Versailles, sire, my heart went out first to the people of France, then to the king. I go away with them united so firmly in my love, that death itself shall not tear them apart.”
The locksmith laid one hand on his breast as he said this, bent low, and turned to quit the room. Louis recalled him.
“Your name, citizen?”
“They know me as ‘Monsieur Jacques’ in the city.”
“Leave that and your address with the guard as you go out. You may be wanted.”
“At the gate!” These words seemed to arrest the man, and he turned suddenly. But the king had arisen, and was leaving the room by another door. Whatever Monsieur Jacques wished to say was thus rendered impossible; and he left the work-room with a baffled and dejected look. This was the second time he had represented De Witt, the locksmith, very successfully; but he could hardly hope to gain access to the king in that way again; and in the excitement of his patriotism, he had utterly forgotten the most immediate object of his visit until it was too late.
“Heaven forgive me! It will break her heart! And he would have done it—I am sure he would have done it!” exclaimed the noble-hearted man who had forgotten everything in his love of France.