"Would you prepare to meet a shameful, terrible and untimely death if he foreshowed it?"
"After having tried to escape it by all manner of means," rejoined Gilbert, looking steadily at her.
"Escape? No, doctor, no! I see that I am doomed," said the Queen. "This revolution is a gulf in which will be swallowed up the throne: this people is a lion to devour me."
"Yet it depends on you to have it couch at your feet like a lamb."
"Doctor, all is broken between the people and me; I am hated and scorned."
"Because you do not really know each other. Cease to be a queen and become a mother to them; forget you are daughter of Maria Theresa, our ancient enemy, the sister of Joseph our false friend. Be French, and you will hear the voices rise to bless you, and see arms held out to fondle you."
"I know all this," she replied contemptuously; "fawning one day, they tear the next."
"Because aware of resistance to their will, and hatred opposed to their love."
"Does this destructive element know whether it loves or hates? it destroys like the wind, the sea and fire, and has womanly caprices."
"Because you see it from on high, like the man in the lighthouse views the ocean. Did you go down in the depths you would see how steady it is. What more obedient than the vast mass to the movement of the tides. You are Queen over the French, madam, and yet you know not what passes in France. Raise your veil instead of keeping it down, and you will admire instead of dreading."
"The New World blooming over the wreck of the Old; the cradle of Free France floating on a sea wider than the Mediterranean--than the ocean. O God protect you, little bark--O God shield you, babe of promise, France!"
Little of an enthusiast as Gilbert was he raised his eyes and hands heavenward.
The Queen eyed him with astonishment for she did not understand.
"Fine words," she sneered. "I thought you philosophers had run them down to dust."
"No, great deeds have killed them," returned Gilbert. "Whither tends old France? to the unity of the country. There are no longer provinces, but all French."
"What are you driving at? that your united thirty millions of rebels should form a universal federation against their King and Queen?"
"Do not deceive yourself: it is not the people who are rebels but the rulers who have rebelled against them. If you go to one of the feasts which the people hold, you will see that they hail a little child on an altar--emblem of the new birth of liberty. Italy, Spain, Ireland, Poland, all the down-trodden look towards this child and hold out their enchained hands, saying: 'France, we shall be free because of you.' Madam, if it be still time, take this child and make yourself its mother."