Chapter 16: The Portrait of Charles First.

A WEEK has passed since the events related. Everybody was saying: The Revolution is finished; the King is delivered from Versailles, and his courtiers and evil counsellors. The King is placed in life and actuality. He had heretofore the license to work wrong; now he has full liberty to do good.

The dread from the riots had brought the conservatives over to the royalty. The Assembly had been frightened, too, and saw that it depended on the King. A hundred and fifty of its members took to flight.

The two most popular men, Lafayette and Mirabeau, became royalists. The latter wanted the other to unite with him to save the crown, but while honorable Lafayette had a limited brain, he did not see the orator’s genius.

Mirabeau was all for the Duke of Orleans, whom Lafayette advised, nay, ordered to quit the kingdom.

“But suppose I come back without your permission?” said the prince.

“Then, I hope you will do me the honor to cross swords with me at the first battle,” replied the marquis.

He was the veritable ruler and the duke had to depart; he did not return until called to be King of the French.

Lafayette had saved the Queen and protected the King; he was perfectly a royalist.

But still, like Gilbert, he was not so much the friend of the King as of the crown.

The monarch had too just a mind not to see this clearly.

Although he had not seen the doctor lately he remembered that this was his day of duty and he called him.

The King was pacing the bedroom, but stopping now and then to look at the Vandyke picture of Charles First, now in the Louvre.

The sovereign of England is painted as a Cavalier, with his horse, as ready for flight as for battle.

This picture seemed fatally the goal of the King’s wanderings.

At the step, Louis turned round.

“Oh, is it you, doctor?” he said. “Come in, I am glad to see you.” Leading him up to the painting he said: “Do you know this? where did you see it?”

“In Lady Dubarry’s house, when I was a boy, but it deeply struck me.”

“Yes, she pretended to be descended from the page who holds the horse. Jeanne Dubarry was the woman chosen by Marshal Richelieu to be the sole feminine ruler over the worn-out monarch Louis XV. and to induce him to shut up the infamous Deerpark, which was the harem ruining the old man. She was an adroit actress and played her part marvellously. She entertained while making sport of him, and he became manly because she persuaded him he was so.”

He stopped as if blaming himself for his imprudence in speaking of his grandfather thus openly before a stranger; but one glance at Gilbert’s frank face encouraged him, for he saw that he could speak all to a man who understood every thing.

“This melancholy, lofty face,” went on the King, referring to the portrait, “was placed in the strange Egeria’s boudoir, where it heard her impudent laughs and saw her lascivious gambols. Merrily she would take Louis by the arm and show him Charles, saying: ‘Old gossip, this King had his neck cut through because he was too weak towards his Parliament. Take warning about your own!’ Hence Louis broke up his Parliament and died peacefully on his throne. Thereupon we exiled the poor woman, for whom we ought to have been most indulgent. The picture was packed away in the lumber room of Versailles and I never thought about it. Now, how comes it here, in my bedroom? why does it haunt me?” He shook his head. “There is some fate in this.”