“But, your Majesty—­” says Beaufort, beginning to speak, but the Queen interrupted him.

“I know what you would tell me, Beaufort,” she stopped and spoke imperiously—­“that this scheme is the best possible one, the only one, perhaps; that in this enterprise lies our only safety, but I cannot believe it!  A thousand times would I rather trust myself to the allies!” she said, beginning to pace the floor again.

“I think ’tis not that alone which Monsieur de Beaufort would tell your Majesty,” said Adrienne, rising from beside the chair where the Queen had been sitting.  She stood straight and tall before the desperate Queen and spoke rapidly.  “He would say, also, that there is a handful of brave gentlemen who have risked their lives to serve your Majesties, who are waiting now but a few miles away and the further opportunity of serving you.  Every moment adds to their peril.  Should your Majesties fail them, what will become of them?” She threw out her hands with an appealing gesture.

“’Tis true,” murmured the King.  “It must not be said that we sacrificed the last of our friends,” he said, smiling a little bitterly and looking at the Queen, who continued to pace the little room in the cruellest agitation.

“I pray your Majesties not to think of us,” said Beaufort.  “Your devoted friends and servants think only of what is best for your Majesties.  ’Tis their opinion, as well as my own, that there is nothing left but flight.”

“Never, never!” exclaimed the Queen, with increasing firmness.

“But think of the danger of remaining in Paris!” urged Beaufort.  “We know not at what moment this insurrection prepared by the Jacobins may burst out, we know not at what moment this palace and the sacred persons of your Majesties may be at the mercy of an infuriated, insensate mob.”

“Let them come—­these dangers—­these horrors,” says the Queen, intrepidly; “they will bring Brunswick and the allies that much sooner to this Paris which I will not leave until they enter it.”  She stamped her foot upon the velvet carpet and clinched her white hands at her sides.

“Then your Majesty is resolved to give up the enterprise she has promised to support, to abandon those loyal servants who have depended upon her and his Majesty the King?” asks Adrienne, looking at the Queen, her face pale as marble and her eyes burning with indignation.

“Does Madame Calvert permit herself to question our actions?” says the Queen, turning imperiously upon her.  Suddenly her beautiful eyes filled with tears.  “Forgive me—­you are right,” she says. “’Tis our fate—­our wretched fate—­to seem to abandon and injure all who are brought near us, all who attempt to serve us.  We cannot help ourselves—­even now we must break our faith with these loyal friends, for now I see that after the refusal of the Assembly to allow us to leave Paris, ’twere madness to attempt to go.  We would but increase the danger, the humiliation we already have to endure.  The only wise course is to await Brunswick and the allies.  I see now the folly of this plan of escape—­indeed, I was never fully persuaded of its wisdom.  The confidence I felt in this young American—­his devotion to us and that of those other friends—­blinded me to the dangers and difficulties of the undertaking.”