The Hero of the People
Copyright© 2024 by Alexandre Dumas
Chapter 23: The Royal Locksmith.
AS the King had undertaken a very important piece of locksmith work, he sent his valet Hue to beg General Lafayette to come into his smithy.
It was on the second floor above his bedroom, with inner and outer stairs.
Since morning he had been hammering away at the work for which Master Gamain gave him praise and so much regret that the politicians should take him away from it to trouble about foreign countries.
Perhaps he wanted to show the Commander of the National Guard that however weak as a monarch, he was mighty as a Tubal Cain.
On the road Count Louis had time to meditate; and he concluded that the Queen knew nothing of his errand. He would have to study the King’s reception and see if he did not give some sign of better understanding what brought him to Paris than his cousin the marquis.
The valet did not know Bouille so that he only announced the general.
“Ah, it is you, marquis,” said the King, turning. “I must ask pardon for calling you up here, but the smith assures you that you are welcome in his forge. A charcoal-burner once said to my ancestor Henry IV.: ‘Jack is king in his own castle.’ But you are master in the smithy as in the palace.”
Louis spoke much in the same way as Marie Antoinette.
“Sire, under whatever circumstances I present myself to your Majesty,” said Lafayette, “and whatever costume your Majesty is in, the King will be ever the sovereign and I the faithful subject and devoted servant.”
“I do not doubt that, my lord; but you are not alone. Have you changed your aid-de-camp?”
“This young officer, Sire, whom I ask leave to introduce, is my cousin, Count Louis Bouille, captain in the Provence Dragoons.”
“Oh, son of Marquis Bouille, commander of Metz?” said the King, with a slight start not escaping the young man.
“The same, Sire,” he spoke up quickly.
“Excuse me not knowing you, but I have short sight. Have you been long in town?”
“I left Metz five days ago; and being here without official furlough but under special permission from my father, I solicited my kinsman the marquis for the honor of presentation to your Majesty.”
“You were very right, my lord, for nobody could so well present you at any hour, and from no one could the introduction come more agreeably.”
The words “at any hour” meant that Lafayette had the public and private entry to the King. The few words from the sovereign put the young count on his guard. The question about his coming signified that he wanted to know if Charny had seen his father.
Meanwhile Lafayette was looking round curiously where few penetrated; he admired the regularity with which the tools were laid out. He blew the bellows as the apprentice.
“So your Majesty has undertaken an important work, eh?” queried Lafayette, embarrassed how to talk to a King who was in a smutty apron, with tucked up sleeves and had a file in his hand.
“Yes, general, I have set to making our magnus opus a lock. I tell you just what I am doing or we shall have Surgeon Marat saying that I am forging the fetters of France. Tell him it is not so, if you lay hold of him. I suppose you are not a smith, Bouille?”
“At least I was bound apprentice, and to a locksmith, too.”
“I remember, your nurse’s husband was a smith and your father, although not much of a student of Rousseau acted on his advice in ‘Emile’ that everybody should learn a craft, and bound you to the workbench.”
“Exactly; so that if your Majesty wanted a boy——”
“An apprentice would not be so useful to me as a master,” returned the King. “I am afraid I have ventured on too hard a job. Oh, that I had my teacher Gamain, who used to say he was a crafts-master above the masters.”
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