Calvert of Strathore by Carter Goodloe

Author:Carter Goodloe
Format: epub
Publisher: ManyBooks.net

CHAPTER XII

THE FOURTH AND THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY

For the next few weeks Mr. Calvert had little time--and, indeed, little inclination--to see Adrienne. The discovery that he loved her had brought pain, not happiness with it. He felt the gulf too wide between them, both in circumstance and character, to be bridged. How could he, an untitled American, an unknown young gentleman of small fortune, pretend to the hand of one of the most beautiful, most aristocratic, and most capricious women in Paris? He smiled to himself as he mentally compared Adrienne with the simple young beauties of Virginia he had known--with Miss Molly Crenshawe and Miss Peggy Gary--and he wondered a little bitterly why he could not have fallen happily in love with some one of his own countrywomen, whose heart he could have won and kept, instead of falling a victim to the charms of a dazzling creature quite beyond his reach. With that clear good sense which was ever one of his most distinguishing traits, he fully comprehended the difficulties, the impossibility of a happy ending of his passion, and, having no desire to play the rôle of the disconsolate lover, he again determined to see as little of Adrienne as possible.

For a while circumstances favored this decision. The French government, being entirely absorbed in domestic affairs, Mr. Jefferson found himself with more leisure than he had known for some time, and, being enormously interested in the organization of the States-General, and realizing that their proceedings were of the first order of importance, he drove almost daily from Paris to Versailles to assist at their stormy deliberations. Mr. Calvert attended him thither at his express wish, for he had the young man's diplomatic education greatly at heart, and desired him to profit by the debates in the Salle des Menus. In this way the young gentleman found his days completely filled, while the evenings were frequently as busily occupied in the preparation of letters for the American packet, dictated by Mr. Jefferson and narrating the day's events. Of things to be written there was no lack. Day after day, through the hot months of May and June, events succeeded one another rapidly. Tempestuous debates among the noblesse, the clergy, and the tiers état, upon the question of the verification of their powers, separately and together, were followed by proposition and counter-proposition, by commissions of conciliation which did not conciliate, by royal letters commanding a fusion of the three orders, by secessions from the nobility and clergy to the grimly determined and united tiers, by courtly intrigues at Marly for the King's favor in behalf of the nobles, by royal séances and ruses which, instead of postponing, only hastened the evil hour, by the famous oath of the Tennis Court, and by the triumph of the third estate. And in this distracting clash of opposing political forces, amid this first crash and downfall of the ancient order of things, there passed, almost unnoticed, save by the weeping Queen and harassed King, who hung over his pillow, the last sigh, the last childish words of the Dauphin.

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