"The king is no son of Freedom!" exclaimed the stranger, with an angry gesture. "The king is a son of Tyranny, and therefore he wants to make his enemies, the sons of Freedom, to be his servants, his slaves, and to bind our arms with fetters. But shall we always bear this? Shall we not rise at last out of the dust into which we have been trodden?"
"Yes, certainly, if we can, then we will," said Simon, with his gruff laugh. "But here is the hitch, sir, we cannot do it. The king has the power to hold us in his fetters; and this fine lady, Madame Freedom, of whom you say that she is our mother, lets it come to pass, notwithstanding that her sons are bound down in servitude and abasement."
"It must be for a season yet," answered the other, with loud, rasping voice; "but the day of a rising is at hand, and shows with a laughing face how those whom she will destroy are rushing swiftly upon their own doom."
"What nonsense is that you are talking?" asked the cobbler. "Those who are going to be destroyed by Madame Liberty are working out their own ruin?"
"And yet they are doing it, Master Simon; they are digging their own graves, only they do not see it, and do not know it; for the divinity which means to destroy them has smitten them with blindness. There is this queen, this Austrian woman. Do you not see with your wise eyes how like a busy spider she is weaving her own shroud?"
"Now, that is certainly an error," said Simon; "the queen does not work at all. She lets the people work for her."
"I tell you, man, she does work, she is working at her own shroud, and I think she has got a good bit of it ready. She has nice friends, too, to help her in it, and to draw up the threads for this royal spider, and so get ready what is needed for this shroud.
There, for example, is that fine Duke de Coigny. Do you know who that Duke de Coigny is?"
"No, indeed, I know nothing about it; I have nothing to do with the court, and know nothing about the court rabble."
"There you are right, they are a rabble," cried the other, laughing in return. "I know it, for I am so unfortunate as not to be able to say with you that I have nothing to do with the court. I have gone into palaces, and I shall come out again, but I promise you that my exit shall make more stir than my entrance. Now, I will tell you who the Duke de Coigny is. He is one of the three chief paramours of the queen, one of the great favorites of the Austrian sultana."
"Well, now, that is jolly," cried the cobbler; "you are a comical rogue, sir. So the queen has her paramours?"
"Yes. You know that the Duke de Besenval, at the time that the Austrian came as dauphiness to France, said to her: 'These hundred thousand Parisians, madame, who have come out to meet you, are all your lovers.' Now she takes this expression of Besenval in earnest, and wants to make every Parisian a lover of hers. Only wait, only wait, it will be your turn by and by. You will be able to press the hand of this beautiful Austrian tenderly to your lips."
"Well, I will let you know in advance, then," said Simon, savagely, "that I will press it in such right good earnest, that it shall always bear the marks of it. You were speaking just now of the three chief paramours--what are the names of the other two?"
"The second is your fine Lord de Adhemar; a fool, a rattle-head, a booby; but he is handsome, and a jolly lover. Our queen likes handsome men, and everybody knows that she is one of the laughing kind, a merry fly, particularly since the carousals on the palace terrace."
"Carousals! What was that?"
"Why, you poor innocent child, that is the name they give to those nightly promenades that our handsome queen took a year ago in the moonlight on the terrace at Versailles. Oh, that was a merry time!
The iron fences of the park were not closed, and the dear people had a right to enter, and could walk near the queen in the moonlight, and hear the fine music which was concealed behind the hedges. You just ask the good-looking officer of the lancers, who sat one evening on a bench between two handsome women, dressed in white, and joked and laughed with them. He can tell you how Marie Antoinette can laugh, and what fine nonsense her majesty could afford to indulge in." [Footnote: See Madame de Campane. "Memoires," vol. i.]
"I wish I knew him, and he would tell me about it," cried cobbler Simon, striking his fists together. "I always like to hear something bad about this Austrian woman, for I hate her and the whole court crowd besides. What right have they to strut and swell, and put on airs, while we have to work and suffer from morning till night? Why is their life nothing but jollity, and ours nothing but misery? I think I am of just as much consequence as the king, and my woman would look just as nice as the queen, if she would put on fine clothes and ride round in a gilded carriage. What puts them up and puts us down?"
"I tell you why. It is because we are ninnies and fools, and allow them to laugh in their sleeves at us, and make divinities out of themselves, before whom the people, or, as they call them, the rabble, are to fall upon their knees. But patience, patience! There will come a time when they will not laugh, nor compel the people to fall upon their knees and beg for favor. But no favor shall be granted to them. They shall meet their doom."
"Ha! I wish the time were here," shouted the cobbler, laughing; "and I hope I may be there when they meet their punishment."
"Well, my friend, that only depends upon yourself," said the stranger. "The time will come, and if you wish you can contribute your share, that it may approach with more rapid steps."
"What can I do? Tell me, for I am ready for every thing?"
"You can help whet the knife, that it may cut the better," said the stranger, with a horrible grimace. "Come, come, do not look at me so astonished, brother. There are already a good number of knife-sharpeners in the good city of Paris, and if you want to join their company, come this evening to me, and I will make you acquainted with some, and introduce you to our guild."