capital and captivity.  Through letters to my wife” (Calvert hesitated slightly—­’twas the first time he had so used the word) “your Majesties will know exactly the situation of affairs outside of Paris, and through her replies we must know what takes place in the palace.  Kept informed of each other’s movements, ’twill be easy to fix upon the best day for striking the blow we have in contemplation, and, if you will but do your part, it must needs be successful.”  As he concluded his urgent appeal he rose from his knees and stood before the King and Queen, glancing anxiously from one to the other.  His face expressed so much earnestness and enthusiasm that their Majesties could not help but be impressed.

“And our engagements with our cousin of Austria?” said the Queen, after an instant’s silence, “for I will not conceal from you, Monsieur, that since Varennes I have no hope save in our allies.”

“Were it not better that you should depend for your safety on your own subjects, Madame?” asked Calvert.

The King agreed with him and said so at once, but it was with reluctance that the Queen gave her consent to the enterprise.

“It is a noble plan and a hazardous one, and we thank you, Monsieur, and those other gentlemen who are imperilling their lives to insure our safety, but I confess to you,” said her Majesty, sadly, “that I sanction the undertaking and enter into it, not in the hope that the first part of it will succeed—­alas!  I distrust our generals and troops too deeply for that—­but in the belief that once out of Paris we may ultimately be able to take refuge with our friends beyond the frontier.”

As she spoke, there came a hurried tapping at the door, and, almost before permission to enter had been given, Beaufort appeared.  He signed hastily to Calvert to depart, and on a silent gesture of dismissal from the King and Queen, he followed the young nobleman from the room through a door opposite to the one by which he had been admitted.  Hurrying past endless antechambers, down marble stairways, and through long corridors, Calvert at length found himself at a little gate which gave upon the Carrousel.  This Beaufort unlocked and, giving the password to the Swiss sentry who stood without, the two young men at length found themselves on the Quai des Tuileries.  There, after a moment’s hurried conversation, during which Calvert told Beaufort of the result of the momentous interview with the King and Queen, the two parted, the young Frenchman returning to the palace and Calvert making his way as quickly as possible back to the Legation, where Mr. Morris anxiously awaited him.

CHAPTER XXII

MR. CALVERT STARTS ON A JOURNEY