The Countess De Charny - Volume II - Plot & Excerpts
CHAPTER I. REACTION. The dispersal of the crowd was as quiet and gradual as the invasion had been boisterous and alarming. Astonished at the meagre results of their day’s work, the rioters began to say to one another : ” We accomplished nothing. We shall have to go back again.” Those who had fancied they could foresee what would happen, had judged the king by his reputation. They remembered how this monarch had appeared at Varennes clad like an upper servant, and prophesied that at the first intimation of danger Louis would hide under a table or in some closet or behind a curtain, and that somebody would stab him as if by accident, and then get off by saying, “How now! A rat? “as Hamlet says in the play when he slays Polonius behind the arras, thinking it is the tyrant of Denmark. The result, as far as Louis was concerned, had been quite the opposite. Never had the king appeared so calm, or, rather, so truly great. The insult had been colossal, but it had not exceeded his resignation or powers of endurance.
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