第5章 A HAPPY QUEEN.(5)

[Footnote: "De par la reine" was the expression which was then in the mouth of all France and stirred everybody's rage.] It is not enough for us that a king sits upon our neck, and imposes his commands upon us and binds us. We have now another ruler in France, prescribing laws and writing herself sovereign. We have a new police regulation in the name of the queen, a state within the state. Oh, the spider is making a jolly mesh of it! In the Trianon she made the beginning. There the police regulations have always been in the name of the queen; and because the policy was successful there, it extends its long finger still further, issues a new proclamation against the people, appropriates to itself new domain, and proposes to gradually encompass all France with its cords."

"That is rascally, that is wrong," cried the cobbler, raising his clinched fists in the air.

"But that is not all, brother. The queen goes still further. Down to the present time we have been accustomed to see the men who stoop to be the mean servants of tyrants array themselves in the monkey-jackets of the king's livery; but in St. Cloud, the Swiss guards at the gates, the palace servants, in one word, the entire menial corps, array themselves in the queen's livery; and if you are walking in the park of St. Cloud, you are no longer in France and on French soil, but in an Austrian province, where a foreigner can establish her harem and make her laws, and yet a virtuous and noble people does not rise in opposition to it."

"It does not know anything about it, brother Marat," said Simon, eagerly. "It knows very little about the vices and follies of the queen."

"Well, tell the people, then; report to them what I have told yon, and make it your duty that it be talked over among other friends, and made generally known."

"Oh! that shall be, that shall certainly be," said Simon, cheerily," but you have not given me the name of that third lover yet."

"Oh! the third-that is Lord Besenval, the inspector general of the Swiss guard, the chief general of the army, and the commander of the Order of Louis. You see it is a great advantage for a man to be a lover of the queen, for in that way he comes to a high position.

While King Louis the Fifteenth, that monster of vice, was living, Besenval was only colonel of the Swiss guard, and all he could do was once in a while to take part in the orgies at the Eoil de Boeuf.

But now the queen has raised him to a very high place. All St. Cloud and Trianon form the Eoil de Boeuf, where Marie Antoinette celebrates her orgies, and General Besenval is made one of the first directors of the sports. Now you know every thing, do you not?"

"Yes, Doctor Marat, now I have a general run of every thing, and I thank you; but I hope that you will tell me more this evening, for your stories are vastly entertaining."

"Yes, indeed, I shall tell you plenty more of the same sort, for the queen takes good care that we shall always have material for such stories. Yet, unfortunately, I have no time now, for--"

"I know, I know, you have got to visit your sick people," said Simon, nodding confidentially to him. "I will not detain you any longer. Good-by, my dear Doctor Marat. We shall meet this evening."

He sprang quickly away, and soon disappeared round the next corner.

Marat looked after him with a wicked, triumphant expression in his features.

"So far good, so far good," muttered he, shaking his head with choler. " In this way I have got to win over the soldiers and the people to freedom. The cobbler will make an able and practicable soldier, and with his nice little stories, he will win over a whole company. Triumph on, you proud Bourbons; go on dreaming in your gilded palaces, surrounded by your Swiss guards. Keep on believing that you have the power in your hands, and that no one can take it from you. The time will come when the people will disturb your fine dream, and when the little, despised, ugly Marat, whom no one now knows, and who creeps around in your stables like a poisonous rat, shall confront you as a power before which you shall shrink away and throw yourselves trembling into the dust. There shall go by no day in which I and my friends shall not win soldiers for our side, and the silly, simple fool, Marie Antoinette, makes it an easy thing for us. Go on committing your childish pranks, which, when the time shall threaten a little, will justify the most villanous deeds and the most shameless acts, and I will keep the run of all the turns of the times, and this fine young queen cannot desire that we should look at the world with such simple eyes as she does. Yes, fair Queen Marie Antoinette, thou hast thy Swiss guards, who fight for thee, and thou must pay them; but I have only one soldier who takes ground for me against thee, and whom I do not have to pay at all. My soldier's name is Calumny. I tell thee, fair queen, with this ally I can overcome all thy Swiss guards, and the whole horde of thy armies. For, on the earth there is no army corps that is so strong as Calumny. Hurrah! long life to thee, my sworn ally, Calumny!"