"No, Sire, since I hasten towards the danger."
"You come fresh from Necker and you naturally speak like him. Where is he?"
"All for the best, for I shall require him," returned Louis with a sigh. "In politics, nobody should sulk. A plan may be good and fail from accidents."
"Sire, your Majesty reasons admirably," said Gilbert, coming to his aid; "but the main thing now is to see into the future clearly; as a physician, I speak bluntly at crises."
"Do you attach much importance to the riot of yesterday?"
"And would you have me treat with rebels and murderers? Their taking the Bastile by force was an act of rebellion; their slaying of Launay, Losme and Flesselles, murder."
"They should be held apart; those who stormed the Bastile were heroes; those who murdered those gentlemen, butchers."
"You are right, sir," said the King, his lips blanching after a transient blush and perspiration appearing on his brow. "You are indeed a physician, or rather a surgeon for you cut into the tender flesh. But let us return to the subject. You are Dr. Gilbert, who wrote those articles?"
"Sire, I consider it is a great happiness that my name is retained in your memory. It must not have sounded new when spoken a week ago in your hearing. I mean that when I was arrested and put in the Bastile. I always understood that no arrest is made of any importance without the King being advised."
"You in the Bastile?" cried the astonished King.
"Here is the order to lock me up. Put in prison six days ago by the royal order, I was released by the grace of the people at three o'clock this day. Did not your Majesty hear the cannon? they broke the doors down to let me out."
"Ah, I should be glad if I might say the cannon was not fired on royalty at the same time as the Bastile." Thus the King muttered.
"Oh, Sire, do not take a prison as the emblem of the monarchy. Say on the contrary that you are glad the Bastile is taken; for, I trust, no such injustice as I was the victim of will be henceforth committed in the name of the ruler who is kept ignorant of it."
"But there must be some cause for your arrest."
"None that I am aware of, Sire; I was arrested as soon as I landed and imprisoned--that is all there is in it."