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,"
