His Majesty was alone and seated beside a small table, on which were a lamp and some writing materials.  As Mr. Morris and Calvert advanced into the room he rose and graciously extended a hand to each of the gentlemen.

“Vous etes le bien venu,” he says to Mr. Morris, and then, looking at Calvert with a half-smile.  “I remember you very well, now,” he adds, rapidly, in French to the younger man.  While the King was speaking, Calvert noticed with a glance the heavy, harassed expression of Louis’s face.  The eyes, which had once been benign and rather stupid, had now a haunted, suspicious look in them.  While he was yet bowing, and before he could form a reply to the King’s remarks, the Queen entered rapidly from an adjoining apartment.  Calvert felt a shock, a thrill of pity, as he looked at her Majesty.  A dozen fateful years seemed to have rolled over that countenance, so lovely when last he had seen it.  Though she still held herself proudly, the animation and beauty of face and figure had vanished.  The large blue eyes were tired and red with weeping, the complexion had lost its brilliancy, and the fair hair was tinged with gray.  History hath made it out that the Queen’s hair whitened in a single night of her captivity, but it had already begun to lose its golden color before the days of the Temple, and the lock which she shortly after this sent to Calvert, in token of her appreciation of his services, was thickly streaked with white.

She came forward and stood beside the King, inclining her head graciously to Mr. Morris, who made their Majesties a profound obeisance.

“I am come to again present my friend, Mr. Calvert of Virginia, to your Majesties,” he says, indicating Calvert, who bowed again, and at whom the Queen looked with a keen, suspicious glance that almost instantly kindled into one of kindness and trust.  “He is to be my representative in that affair in which it will be my undying regret not to have been able to participate,” continued Mr. Morris, “and I beg of your Majesties to give him your utmost confidence and trust, for I assure your Majesties that he is entirely worthy of both.  He will acquaint you with the details of that plan, the existence of which Monsieur de Monciel intimated to your Majesties yesterday, and, should that plan meet with your royal approval, Mr. Calvert is ready to stake his life and his honor in the execution of it.  Your Majesties understand how impossible it is for me to say more, and I can only ask permission to withdraw.”

’Twas the Queen who answered—­the King seemed unable to find a word.

“We thank you with all our hearts,” she says, in a low, mournful tone, looking at Mr. Morris, “and we understand.”  At her gesture of recognition and dismissal Mr. Morris executed another low obeisance and withdrew.

Left alone with the King and Queen, and being seated, at their Majesties’ invitation, Calvert unfolded to them in detail the plan agreed upon by the King’s friends, leaving out as much as possible Lafayette’s part in it (’twas his own wish, conveyed through Mr. Morris) lest the Queen should take fright and refuse her sanction to the enterprise.  Indeed, so deep was her distrust of him, that to Mr. Calvert it seemed that she only gave her consent because of the share Mr. Morris and himself had in it.