CHAPTER XXIX.
THE QUEEN AND HER LADIES
A more beautiful woman than Marie Antoinette was not to be found in all Paris. Above the medium height, splendidly proportioned, and graceful in all her movements, she possessed a presence that was more than queenly. In her first youth she had been gentle, caressing, and so “pure womanly.” Then her simplicity had been a cause of complaint with the royal family. But time, and the cares of her regal station, had deepened these qualities into the elegant repose of assured power; added to that, anxious lines had begun to reveal themselves faintly on her beautiful forehead, and around a mouth that had at one time known nothing but smiles.
On the day we present her again to the reader she was at her toilet, surrounded by the ladies of her household, beautiful, stately, and given up to the strict etiquette of the court, as if they had never seen a Swiss cottage, or dreamed that butter could be made with human hands.
“This young person has seen us at our play, where she, in reality, had no right to know the persons she met. She must be made to feel that the dairy-maid, whose life she saved, is a creature to be forgotten, or we shall have those vile prints in Paris touching up the scene with malice for their Paris readers.”
“Ah! it was, perhaps, imprudent to admit her,” said the Duchess de Polignac. “Just now your highness cannot be too careful. This demoiselle, modest as she seems, may be nothing but a spy of the people.”
“She is not that,” answered the queen, with generous warmth. “No one can look upon her face and believe ill of her. She is a brave, noble young creature, to whom we owe a debt of gratitude that shall be right generously paid.”
“As all your majesty’s debts are,” murmured the grateful little Madame Campan, who loved the queen with all her heart.
The queen turned a bright look on the fair, plump face turned upon her, and replied with a beaming smile,
“Your flattery always comes from the heart, my Campan, and we find it pleasant.”
All this time the queen was standing among her ladies half-dressed; garment after garment had been handed to her by the lady in waiting of highest rank; and now she stood with her neck and shoulders exposed, her white arms folded over her bosom, ready for the robe which was to complete her toilet, and a little impatient of the etiquette which prolonged her hour of dressing. Directly the robe of crimson velvet was looped back from her white brocade underskirt, and with exquisite yellow lace falling from her elbows and around her bosom, she walked out of her dressing-room a queen in every look and movement.
In the audience-chamber, attached to her own apartments, she found the king, who had been aroused to keener admiration and deeper tenderness by her late danger. He approached her with smiles of welcome, and pressed his lips upon her hand as if she had been a goddess, and he her slave; happiness gave grace and quick intelligence to his face; for when Louis the Sixteenth thought from his heart, the result was always correct and full of tenderness.
“We have been waiting your presence, almost with impatience,” he said. “My heart will never rest till it has done something to reward the man who saved me and France from a great calamity. This person is now in the outer room.”
“But there is another, sire; a young girl, fair as a lily, and as modest. She must not be forgotten.”
“We forget nothing which relates to our wife and queen. No one ever gives her help or pleasure unthought of. The demoiselle is also in attendance—shall they come in at once?”
The ladies of the household had ranged themselves behind her majesty with more than usual regard to appearances. Some of the king’s gentlemen were present; in fact, it might have been some foreign ambassador that their majesties were about to receive, rather than a poor girl and a working man from the city.
The queen gave a smiling glance at her mistress of ceremonies. Directly the door opened, and Marguerite was led into the room by the young Duke de Richelieu, who seemed as proud of his charge as if she had been one of the highest born ladies in the land. Behind him Monsieur Jacques walked alone, his head just visible over the broad shoulders of Dame Tillery, who spread her enormous fan as she crossed the threshold, and performed a courtesy so low and profound that she came near falling headlong at the queen’s feet, in a bungling effort to recover herself.
The mistress of ceremonies, terribly shocked, made a dignified motion that Dame Tillery should draw back; but the good woman placed herself at Marguerite’s side, shook out her skirts, and settled into position, smiling broadly upon the mistress of ceremonies as if a mutual understanding on all subjects of court etiquette had existed between themselves from the cradle up.
The queen, who sometimes enjoyed the discomfiture of her own hard task-mistress, where etiquette was concerned, cast a quick, mischievous glance on her ladies, and allowed a faint smile to quiver on her lips. But for that smile, Marguerite would have been completely bewildered. She saw the same faces that had met her the day before, but so changed in expression, so rigidly proud, that their very identity seemed doubtful. The long, trailing robes, the elaborate head-dresses, the floating masses of yellow lace were so unlike the short, rustic dresses in which she had seen the same persons only a few hours before, that she could not realize her position.
The queen saw her embarrassment, and hastened to relieve it. With a gentle smile, she extended her hand.
Marguerite fell upon one knee, and touched the hand reverently with her lips, then, with a gesture of exquisite humility, looked up to the beautiful face bent over her, and clasping her hands, broke forth in a voice so sweet and pathetic, that it thrilled every heart within hearing.
“Oh! sweet lady! you promised to pardon my father. He has been in the Bastille since I was a little child. Only as a beautiful shadow can I remember him—but you will set him free. I shall look in the eyes which they tell me were always soft with infinite tenderness. I shall come here some day when you show yourself to the people in your carriage, or on the balcony, and together we will look upon the benefactress who has brought him back to life. Then his grateful heart will give you blessings, while I, oh, lady! I will work for you, pray for you, die for you! Indeed, indeed I will!”
“My good little girl, you were very near doing that yesterday,” said the queen, taking those two quivering hands in her own, and pressing them, while her fine eyes filled with tears; “but it is the king who grants pardons. We shall soon learn if he can withhold anything from the person who was so ready to come in between his wife and a great peril.”
As she spoke, Marie Antoinette gently raised the girl from her kneeling position, and led her to the king. The poor girl would have knelt at his feet also, for no homage seemed sufficient for the great boon she was asking; but Louis received her hand from that of the queen with such kindness, that the impulse of humiliation was lost.
“Tell us,” he said, “all that relates to the father you would have us pardon. This is the first time that we ever heard his name, or knew of his incarceration.”
Marguerite gave her father’s name, and told so much of his history as was known to herself. She spoke low and rapidly; her eyes were suffused, her voice was full of tears. The name uttered more than once, reached the queen. She was seized with a nervous dread; she seated herself; the whiteness of her face alarmed the persons who surrounded her, but before any one of her ladies could approach, Dame Tillery swept forward, opened her fan, and planting herself directly in front of the queen, commenced fanning her with both hands so vigorously that all the lace and ribbons on the royal dress fluttered as if a high wind were passing over them.
The queen looked up. The consternation of her ladies at the ponderous attentions of the dame, struck her with a sense of the ridiculous so exquisite, that all the superstition which had shaken her nerves fled at once; she leaned back in her chair and laughed outright.