The feeling between the pair was strange. The Queen seemed to have affection for her attendant and the latter respect for her mistress, but they were like enemies at times.
"You know, dear countess, that etiquette is not made for you. But you have nothing to say to me about this Dr. Gilbert, whose sight made so profound an impression on you?"
The woman had reflected in an instant. Whatever the relation between the Queen, who was suspected of having paramours, and the King, perhaps not so gullible as he looked, Marie Antoinette might draw from her royal consort the particulars of the mesmeric trance in which Gilbert had thrown the Lady of Charny. Better her relation than the King's.
With the energy of lunacy, she ran from one door to another, fastened them all, and when assured that nobody could hear or see, she flung herself on her knees before her mistress.
"Save me, in heaven's name, save me!" she wailed: "and I will tell you everything!"
Andrea's confession was a long one for it was not until eleven at night that the royal boudoir door opened, and on the sill was seen the Countess of Charny, kissing her mistress's hand.
She went away with weeping eyes but the Queen's were scorching, as she paced her room.
She gave order that she was to be disturbed on no account unless for news from Paris.
At the supposition that Charny had at last perceived that his wife was still young and fair, the Queen found that misfortune is nothing to a heart-chagrin.
But in the midst of her feverish torment came the cruel consolation. According to Andrea's confession she had been wronged in a mesmeric trance and Gilbert had humbled her pride forever. Somewhere was the visible token of her defeat--like a trophy of his shameful triumph, the young man had borne away in the wintry night the offspring of the occult love of the gardener's boy for his suzerain's daughter!
She could not but be wonderstricken at the magical combination of wayward fortune, by which a peasant lad had been made to love the fine lady who was to be the favorite of the Queen of France.
"So the grain of dust has been lifted up to glitter like the diamond in the lustre of the skies," she mused.
Was not this lowborn lover the living symbol of what was happening at the time, a man of the people swaying the politics of a great empire, one who personified, by privilege of the evil spirit who soared over France, the insult to its nobility and the attack on royalty by the plebeians?