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CHAPTER II.
GILBERT'S CANDIDATE

Dr. Gilbert had not seen the queen for six months, since he had let her know that he was informed by Cagliostro that she was deceiving him.

He was therefore astonished to see the king's valet enter his room one morning. He thought the king was sick and had sent for him, but the messenger reassured him. He was wanted in the palace, whither he hastened to go.

He was profoundly attached to the king; he pitied Marie Antoinette more as a woman than a queen. It was profound pity, for she inspired neither love nor devotion.

The lady waiting to greet Gilbert was the Princess Elizabeth. Neither king nor queen, after his showing them he saw they were playing him false, had dared to send directly to him; they put Lady Elizabeth forward.

Her first words proved to the doctor that he was not mistaken in his surmise.

"Doctor Gilbert," said she, "I do not know whether others have forgotten the tokens of interest you showed my brother on our return from Versailles, and those you showed my sister on our return from Varennes, but I remember."

"Madame," returned Gilbert, bowing, "God, in His wisdom, hath decided that you should have all the merits, memory included – a scarce virtue in our days, and particularly so among royal personages."

"I hope you are not referring to my brother, who often speaks of you, and praises your experience."

"As a medical adviser," remarked Gilbert, smiling.

"Yes; but he thinks you can be a physician to the realm as well as to the ruler."

"Very kind of the king. For which case is he calling me in at present?"

"It is not the king who calls you, sir, but I," responded the lady, blushing; for her chaste heart knew not how to lie.

"You? Your health worries me the least; your pallor arises from fatigue and disquiet, not from bad health."

"You are right; I am not trembling for myself, but my brother, who makes me fret."

"So he does me, madame."

"Oh, our uneasiness does not probably spring from the same cause, as I am concerned about his health. I do not mean that he is unwell, but he is downcast and disheartened. Some ten days ago – I am counting the days now – he ceased speaking, except to me, and in his favorite pastime of backgammon he only utters the necessary terms of the game."

"It is eleven days since he went to the House to present his veto. Why was he not mute that day instead of the next?"

"Is it your opinion that he should have sanctioned that impious decree?" demanded the princess, quickly.

"My opinion is, that to put the king in front of the priests in the coming tide, the rising storm, is to have priests and king broken by the same wave."

"What would you do in my poor brother's place, doctor?"

"A party is growing, like those genii of the Arabian Nights, which becomes a hundred cubits high an hour after release from the imprisoning bottle."

"You allude to the Jacobins?"

Gilbert shook his head.

"No; I mean the Girondists, who wish for war, a national desire."

"But war with whom? With the emperor, our brother? The King of Spain, our nephew? Our enemies, Doctor Gilbert, are at home, and not outside of France, in proof of which – " She hesitated, but he besought her to speak.

"I really do not know that I can tell you, though it is the reason of my asking you here."

"You may speak freely to one who is devoted and ready to give his life to the king."

"Do you believe there is any counterbane?" she inquired.

"Universal?" queried Gilbert, smiling. "No, madame; each venomous substance has its antidote, though they are of little avail generally."

"What a pity!"

"There are two kinds of poisons, mineral and vegetable – of what sort would you speak?"

"Doctor, I am going to tell you a great secret. One of our cooks, who left the royal kitchen to set up a bakery of his own, has returned to our service, with the intention of murdering the king. This red-hot Jacobin has been heard crying that France would be relieved if the king were put out of the way."

"In general, men fit for such a crime do not go about bragging beforehand. But I suppose you take precautions?"

"Yes; it is settled that the king shall live on roast meat, with a trusty hand to supply the bread and wine. As the king is fond of pastry, Madame Campan orders what he likes, as though for herself. We are warned especially against powdered sugar."

"In which arsenic might be mixed unnoticed?"

"Exactly. It was the queen's habit to use it for her lemonade, but we have entirely given up the use of it. The king, the queen, and I take meals together, ringing for what we want. Madame Campan brings us what we like, secretly, and hides it under the table; we pretend to eat the usual things while the servants are in the room. This is how we live, sir; and yet the queen and I tremble every instant lest the king should turn pale and cry out he was in pain."

"Let me say at once, madame," returned the doctor, "that I do not believe in these threats of poisoning; but in any event, I am under his majesty's orders. What does the king desire? That I should have lodgings in the palace? I will stay here in such a way as to be at hand until the fears are over."

"Oh, my brother is not afraid!" the princess hastened to say.

"I did not mean that. Until your fears are over. I have some practice in poisonings and their remedies. I am ready to baffle them in whatever shape they are presented; but allow me to say, madame, that all fears for the king might be removed if he were willing."

"Oh, what must be done for that?" intervened a voice, not the Lady Elizabeth's, and which, by its emphatic and ringing tone, made Gilbert turn.

It was the queen, and he bowed.

"Has the queen doubted the sincerity of my offers?"

"Oh, sir, so many heads and hearts have turned in this tempestuous wind, that one knows not whom to trust."

"Which is why your majesty receives from the Feuillants Club a Premier shaped by the Baroness de Stael?"

"You know that?" cried the royal lady, starting.

"I know your majesty is pledged to take Count Louis de Narbonne."

"And, of course, you blame me?"

"No; it is a trial like others. When the king shall have tried all, he may finish by the one with whom he should have commenced."

"You know Madame de Stael? What do you think of her?"

"Physically, she is not altogether attractive."

The queen smiled; as a woman, she was not sorry to hear another woman decried who just then was widely talked about.

"But her talent, her parts, her merits?"

"She is good and generous, madame; none of her enemies would remain so after a quarter of an hour's conversation."

"I speak of her genius, sir; politics are not managed by the heart."

"Madame, the heart spoils nothing, not even in politics; but let us not use the word genius rashly. Madame de Stael has great and immense talent, but it does not rise to genius; she is as iron to the steel of her master, Rousseau. As a politician, she is given more heed than she deserves. Her drawing-room is the meeting-place of the English party. Coming of the middle class as she does, and that the money-worshiping middle class, she has the weakness of loving a lord; she admires the English from thinking that they are an aristocratic people. Being ignorant of the history of England, and the mechanism of its government, she takes for the descendants of the Norman Conquerors the baronets created yesterday. With old material, other people make a new stock; with the new, England often makes the old."

"Do you see in this why Baroness de Stael proposes De Narbonne to us?"

"Hem! This time, madame, two likings are combined: that for the aristocracy and the aristocrat."

"Do you imagine that she loves Louis de Narbonne on account of his descent?"

(Louis de Narbonne was supposed to be an incestuous son of King Louis XV.)

"It is not on account of any ability, I reckon?"

"But nobody is less well-born than Louis de Narbonne; his father is not even known."

"Only because one dares not look at the sun."

"So you do not believe that De Narbonne is the outcome of the Swedish Embassy, as the Jacobins assert, with Robespierre at the head?"

"Yes; only he comes from the wife's boudoir, not the lord's study. To suppose Lord de Stael has a hand in it, is to suppose he is master in his own house. Goodness, no; this is not an embassador's treachery, but a loving woman's weakness. Nothing but Love, the great, eternal magician, could impel a woman to put the gigantic sword of the revolution in that frivolous rake's hands."

"Do you allude to the demagogue Isnard kissed at the Jacobin Club?"

"Alas, madame, I speak of the one suspended over your head."

"Therefore, it is your opinion that we are wrong to accept De Narbonne as Minister of War?"

"You would do better to take at once his successor, Dumouriez."

"A soldier of fortune?"

"Ha! the worst word is spoken; and it is unfair any way."

"Was not Dumouriez a private soldier?"

"I am well aware that Dumouriez is not of that court nobility to which everything is sacrificed. Of the rustic nobility, unable to obtain a rank, he enlisted as a common soldier. At twenty years he fought five or six troopers, though hacked badly, and despite this proof of courage, he languished in the ranks."

"He sharpened his wits by serving Louis XV. as spy."

"Why do you call that spying in him which you rate diplomacy in others? I know that he carried on correspondence with the king without the knowledge of the ministers; but what noble of the court does not do the same?"

"But, doctor, this man whom you recommend is essentially a most immoral one," exclaimed the queen, betraying her deep knowledge of politics by the details into which she went. "He has no principles – no idea of honor. The Duke of Choiseul told me that he laid before him two plans about Corsica – one to set her free, the other to subdue her."

"Quite true; but Choiseul failed to say that the former was preferred, and that Dumouriez fought bravely for its success."

"The day when we accept him for minister it will be equivalent to a declaration of war to all Europe."

"Why, madame, this declaration is already made in all hearts," retorted Gilbert. "Do you know how many names are down in this district as volunteers to start for the campaign? Six hundred thousand. In the Jura, the women have proposed all the men shall march, as they, with pikes, will guard their homes."

"You have spoken a word which makes me shudder – pikes! Oh, the pikes of '89! I can ever see the heads of my Life Guardsmen carried on the pikes' point."

"Nevertheless, it was a woman, a mother, who suggested a national subscription to manufacture pikes."

"Was it also a woman who suggested your Jacobins adopting the red cap of liberty, the color of blood?"

"Your majesty is in error on that point," said Gilbert, although he did not care to enlighten the queen wholly on the ancient head-gear. "A symbol was wanted of equality, and as all Frenchmen could not well dress alike, a part of a dress was alone adopted: the cap such as the poor peasant wears. The red color was preferred, not as it happens to be that of blood, but because gay, bright, and a favorite with the masses."

"All very fine, doctor," sneered the queen. "I do not despair of seeing such a partisan of novelties coming some day to feel the king's pulse, with the red cap on your head and a pike in your hand."

Seeing that she could not win with such a man, the queen retired, half jesting, half bitter.

Princess Elizabeth was about to do the same, when Gilbert appealed to her:

"You love your brother, do you not?"

"Love? The feeling is of adoration."

"Then you are ready to transmit good advice to him, coming from a friend?"

"Then, speak, speak!"

"When his Feuillant Ministry falls, which will not take long, let him take a ministry with all the members wearing this red cap, though it so alarms the queen." And profoundly bowing, he went out.

CHAPTER III.
POWERFUL, PERHAPS; HAPPY, NEVER

The Narbonne Ministry lasted three months. A speech of Vergniaud blasted it. On the news that the Empress of Russia had made a treaty with Turkey, and Austria and Prussia had signed an alliance, offensive and defensive, he sprung into the rostrum and cried:

"I see the palace from here where this counter-revolution is scheming those plots which aim to deliver us to Austria. The day has come when you must put an end to so much audacity, and confound the plotters. Out of that palace have issued panic and terror in olden times, in the name of despotism – let them now rush into it in the name of the law!"

Dread and terror did indeed enter the Tuileries, whence De Narbonne, wafted thither by a breath of love, was expelled by a gust of storm. This downfall occurred at the beginning of March, 1792.

Scarce three months after the interview of Gilbert and the queen, a small, active, nervy little man, with flaming eyes blazing in a bright face, was ushered into King Louis' presence. He was aged fifty-six, but appeared ten years younger, though his cheek was brown with camp-fire smoke; he wore the uniform of a camp-marshal.

The king cast a dull and heavy glance on the little man, whom he had never met; but it was not without observation. The other fixed on him a scrutinizing eye full of fire and distrust.

"You are General Dumouriez? Count de Narbonne, I believe, called you to Paris?"

"To announce that he gave me a division in the army in Alsace."

"But you did not join, it appears?"

"Sire, I accepted; but I felt that I ought to point out that as war impended" – Louis started visibly – "and threatened to become general," went on the soldier, without appearing to remark the emotion, "I deemed it good to occupy the south, where an attack might come unawares; consequently, it seemed urgent to me that a plan for movements there should be drawn up, and a general and army sent thither."

"Yes; and you gave this plan to Count de Narbonne, after showing it to members of the Gironde?"

"They are friends of mine, as I believe they are of your majesty."

"Then I am dealing with a Girondist?" queried the monarch, smiling.

"With a patriot, and faithful subject of his king."

Louis bit his thick lips.

"Was it to serve the king and the country the more efficaciously that you refused to be foreign minister for a time?"

"Sire, I replied that I preferred, to being any kind of minister, the command promised me. I am a soldier, not a statesman."

"I have been assured, on the contrary, that you are both," observed the sovereign.

"I am praised too highly, sire."

"It was on that assurance that I insisted."

"Yes, sire; but in spite of my great regret, I was obliged to persist in refusing."

"Why refuse?"

"Because it is a crisis. It has upset De Narbonne and compromises Lessart. Any man has the right to keep out of employment or be employed, according to what he thinks he is fitted for. Now, my liege, I am good for something or for nothing. If the latter, leave me in my obscurity. Who knows for what fate you draw me forth? If I am good for something, do not give me power for an instant, the premier of a day, but place some solid footing under me that I may be your support at another day. Our affairs – your majesty will pardon me already regarding his business as mine – our affairs are in too great disfavor abroad for courts to deal with an ad interim ministry; this interregnum – you will excuse the frankness of an old soldier" – no one was less frank than Dumouriez, but he wanted to appear so at times – "this interval will be a blunder against which the House will revolt, and it will make me disliked there; more, I must say that it will injure the king, who will seem still to cling to his former Cabinet, and only be waiting for a chance to bring it back."

"Were that my intention, do you not believe it possible, sir?"

"I believe, sire, that it is full time to drop the past."

"And make myself a Jacobin, as you have said to my valet, Laporte?"

"Forsooth, did your majesty this, it would perplex all the parties, and the Jacobins most of all."

"Why not straightway advise me to don the red cap?"

"I wish I saw you in it," said Dumouriez.

For an instant the king eyed with distrust the man who had thus replied to him; and then he resumed:

"So you want a permanent office?"

"I am wishing nothing at all, only ready to receive the king's orders; still, I should prefer them to send me to the frontier to retaining me in town."

"But if I give you the order to stay, and the foreign office portfolio in permanency, what will you say?"

"That your majesty has dispelled your prejudices against me," returned the general, with a smile.

"Well, yes, entirely, general; you are my premier."

"Sire, I am devoted to your service; but – "

"Restrictions?"

"Explanations, sire. The first minister's place is not what it was. Without ceasing to be your majesty's faithful servant on entering the post, I become the man of the nation. From this day, do not expect the language my predecessors used; I must speak according to the Constitution and liberty. Confined to my duties, I shall not play the courtier; I shall not have the time, and I drop all etiquette so as to better serve the king. I shall only work with you in private or at the council – and I warn you that it will be hard work."

"Hard work – why?"

"Why, it is plain; almost all your diplomatic corps are anti-revolutionists. I must urge you to change them, cross your tastes on the new choice, propose officials of whom your majesty never so much as heard the names, and others who will displease."

"In which case?" quickly interrupted Louis.

"Then I shall obey when your majesty's repugnance is too strong and well-founded, as you are the master; but if your choice is suggested by your surroundings, and is clearly made to get me into trouble, I shall entreat your majesty to find a successor for me. Sire, think of the dreadful dangers besieging your throne, and that one must have the public confidence in support; sire, this depends on you."

"Let me stay you a moment; I have long pondered over these dangers." He stretched out his hand to the portrait of Charles I. of England, by Vandyke, and continued, while wiping his forehead with his handkerchief: "This would remind me, if I were to forget them. It is the same situation, with similar dangers; perhaps the scaffold of Whitehall is erecting on City Hall Place."

"You are looking too far ahead, my lord."

"Only to the horizon. In this event, I shall march to the scaffold as Charles I. did, not perhaps as knightly, but at least as like a Christian. Proceed, general."

Dumouriez was checked by this firmness, which he had not expected.

"Sire, allow me to change the subject."

"As you like; I only wish to show that I am not daunted by the prospect they try to frighten me with, but that I am prepared for even this emergency."

"If I am still regarded as your Minister of Foreign Affairs, I will bring four dispatches to the first consul. I notify your majesty that they will not resemble those of previous issue in style or principles; they will suit the circumstances. If this first piece of work suits your majesty, I will continue; if not, my carriage will be waiting to carry me to serve king and country on the border; and, whatever may be said about my diplomatic ability," added Dumouriez, "war is my true element, and the object of my labors these thirty-six years."

"Wait," said the other, as he bowed before going out; "we agree on one point, but there are six more to settle."

"My colleagues?"

"Yes; I do not want you to say that you are hampered by such a one. Choose your Cabinet, sir."

"Sire, you are fixing grave responsibility on me."

"I believe I am meeting your wishes by putting it on you."

"Sire, I know nobody at Paris save one, Lacoste, whom I propose for the navy office."

"Lacoste? A clerk in the naval stores, I believe?" questioned the king.

"Who resigned rather than connive at some foul play."

"That's a good recommendation. What about the others?'"

"I must consult Petion, Brissot, Condorcet – "

"The Girondists, in short?"

"Yes, sire."

"Let the Gironde pass; we shall see if they will get us out of the ditch better than the other parties."

"We have still to learn if the four dispatches will suit."

"We might learn that this evening; we can hold an extraordinary council, composed of yourself, Grave, and Gerville – Duport has resigned. But do not go yet; I want to commit you."

He had hardly spoken before the queen and Princess Elizabeth stood in the room, holding prayer-books.

"Ladies," said the king, "this is General Dumouriez, who promises to serve us well, and will arrange a new Cabinet with us this evening."

Dumouriez bowed, while the queen looked hard at the little man who was to exercise so much influence over the affairs of France.

"Do you know Doctor Gilbert?" she asked. "If not, make his acquaintance as an excellent prophet. Three months ago he foretold that you would be Count de Narbonne's successor."

The main doors opened, for the king was going to mass. Behind him Dumouriez went out; but the courtiers shunned him as though he had the leprosy.

"I told you I should get you committed," whispered the monarch.

"Committed to you, but not to the aristocracy," returned the warrior; "it is a fresh favor the king grants me." Whereupon he retired.

At the appointed hour he returned with the four dispatches promised – for Spain, Prussia, England, and Austria. He read them to the king and Messieurs Grave and Gerville, but he guessed that he had another auditor behind the tapestry by its shaking.

The new ruler spoke in the king's name, but in the sense of the Constitution, without threats, but also without weakness. He discussed the true interests of each power relatively to the French Revolution. As each had complained of the Jacobin pamphlets, he ascribed the despicable insults to the freedom of the press, a sun which made weeds to grow as well as good grain to flourish. Lastly, he demanded peace in the name of a free nation, of which the king was the hereditary representative.

The listening king lent fresh interest to each paper.

"I never heard the like, general," he said, when the reading was over.

"That is how ministers should speak and write in the name of rulers," observed Gerville.

"Well, give me the papers; they shall go off to-morrow," the king said.

"Sire, the messengers are waiting in the palace yard," said Dumouriez.

"I wanted to have a duplicate made to show the queen," objected the king, with marked hesitation.

"I foresaw the wish, and have copies here," replied Dumouriez.

"Send off the dispatches," rejoined the king.

The general took them to the door, behind which an aid was waiting. Immediately the gallop of several horses was heard leaving the Tuileries together.

"Be it so," said the king, replying to his mind, as the meaning sounds died away. "Now, about your Cabinet?"

"Monsieur Gerville pleads that his health will not allow him to remain, and Monsieur Grave, stung by a criticism of Madame Roland, wishes to hold office until his successor is found. I therefore pray your majesty to receive Colonel Servan, an honest man in the full acceptation of the words, of a solid material, pure manners, philosophical austerity, and a heart like a woman's, withal an enlightened patriot, a courageous soldier, and a vigilant statesman."

"Colonel Servan is taken. So we have three ministers: Dumouriez for the Foreign Office, Servan for War, and Lacoste for the Navy. Who shall be in the Treasury?"

"Clavieres, if you will. He is a man with great financial friends and supreme skill in handling money."

"Be it so. As for the Law lord?"

"A lawyer of Bordeaux has been recommended to me – Duranthon."

"Belonging to the Gironde party, of course?"

"Yes, sire, but enlightened, upright, a very good citizen, though slow and feeble; we will infuse fire into him and be strong enough for all of us."

"The Home Department remains."

"The general opinion is that this will be fitted to Roland."

"You mean Madame Roland?"

"To the Roland couple. I do not know them, but I am assured that the one resembles a character of Plutarch and the other a woman from Livy."

"Do you know that your Cabinet is already called the Breechless Ministry?"

"I accept the nickname, with the hope that it will be found without breaches."

"We will hold the council with them the day after to-morrow."

General Dumouriez was going away with his colleagues, when a valet called him aside and said that the king had something more to say to him.

"The king or the queen?" he questioned.

"It is the queen, sir; but she thought there was no need for those gentlemen to know that."

And Weber – for this was the Austrian foster-brother of Marie Antoinette – conducted the general to the queen's apartments, where he introduced him as the person sent for.

Dumouriez entered, with his heart beating more violently than when he led a charge or mounted the deadly breach. He fully understood that he had never stood in worse danger. The road he traveled was strewn with corpses, and he might stumble over the dead reputations of premiers, from Calonne to Lafayette.

The queen was walking up and down, with a very red face. She advanced with a majestic and irritated air as he stopped on the sill where the door had been closed behind him.

"Sir, you are all-powerful at this juncture," she said, breaking the ice with her customary vivacity. "But it is by favor of the populace, who soon shatter their idols. You are said to have much talent. Have the wit, to begin with, to understand that the king and I will not suffer novelties. Your constitution is a pneumatic machine; royalty stifles in it for want of air. So I have sent for you to learn, before you go further, whether you side with us or with the Jacobins."

"Madame," responded Dumouriez, "I am pained by this confidence, although I expected it, from the impression that your majesty was behind the tapestry."

"Which means that you have your reply ready?"

"It is that I stand between king and country, but before all I belong to the country."

"The country?" sneered the queen. "Is the king no longer anything, that everybody belongs to the country and none to him?"

"Excuse me, lady; the king is always the king, but he has taken oath to the Constitution, and from that day he should be one of the first slaves of the Constitution."

"A compulsory oath, and in no way binding, sir!"

Dumouriez held his tongue for a space, and, being a consummate actor, he regarded the speaker with deep pity.

"Madame," he said, at length, "allow me to say that your safety, the king's, your children's, all, are attached to this Constitution which you deride, and which will save you, if you consent to be saved by it. I should serve you badly, as well as the king, if I spoke otherwise to you."

The queen interrupted him with an imperious gesture.

"Oh, sir, sir, I assure you that you are on the wrong path!" she said; adding, with an indescribable accent of threat: "Take heed for yourself!"

"Madame," replied Dumouriez, in a perfectly calm tone, "I am over fifty years of age; my life has been traversed with perils, and on taking the ministry I said to myself that ministerial responsibility was not the slightest danger I ever ran."

"Fy, sir!" returned the queen, slapping her hands together; "you have nothing more to do than to slander me?"

"Slander you, madame?"

"Yes; do you want me to explain the meaning of the words I used? It is that I am capable of having you assassinated. For shame, sir!"

Tears escaped from her eyes. Dumouriez had gone as far as she wanted; he knew that some sensitive fiber remained in that indurated heart.

"Lord forbid I should so insult my queen!" he cried. "The nature of your majesty is too grand and noble for the worst of her enemies to be inspired with such an idea, she has given heroic proofs which I have admired, and which attached me to her."

"Then excuse me, and lend me your arm. I am so weak that I often fear I shall fall in a swoon."

Turning pale, she indeed drooped her head backward. Was it reality, or only one of the wiles in which this fearful Medea was so skilled? Keen though the general was, he was deceived; or else, more cunning than the enchantress, he feigned to be caught.

"Believe me, madame," he said, "that I have no interest in cheating you. I abhor anarchy and crime as much as yourself. Believe, too, that I have experience, and am better placed than your majesty to see events. What is transpiring is not an intrigue of the Duke of Orleans, as you are led to think; not the effect of Pitt's hatred, as you have supposed; not even the outcome of popular impulse, but the almost unanimous insurrection of a great nation against inveterate abuses. I grant that there is in all this great hates which fan the flames. Leave the lunatics and the villains on one side; let us see nothing in this revolution in progress but the king and the nation, all tending to separate them brings about their mutual ruin. I come, my lady, to work my utmost to reunite them; aid me, instead of thwarting me. You mistrust me? Am I an obstacle to your anti-revolutionary projects? Tell me so, madame, I will forthwith hand my resignation to the king, and go and wail the fate of my country and its ruler in some nook."

"No, no," said the queen; "remain, and excuse me."

"Do you ask me to excuse you? Oh, madame, I entreat you not to humble yourself thus."

"Why should I not be humble? Am I still a queen? am I yet treated like a woman?"

Going to the window, she opened it in spite of the evening coolness; the moon silvered the leafless trees of the palace gardens.

"Are not the air and the sunshine free to all? Well, these are refused to me; I dare not put my head out of window, either on the street or the gardens. Yesterday I did look out on the yard, when a Guards gunner hailed me with an insulting nickname, and said: 'How I should like to carry your head on a bayonet-point.' This morning, I opened the garden window. A man standing on a chair was reading infamous stuff against me; a priest was dragged to a fountain to be ducked; and meanwhile, as though such scenes were matters of course, children were sailing their balloons and couples were strolling tranquilly. What times we are living in – what a place to live in – what a people! And would you have me still believe myself a queen, and even feel like a woman?"