The work of the National Assembly, which had gotten underway some eighteen months before in a burst of revolutionary excitement, had settled into the long, slow pace of constructing. For nearly two years, under Louis's peaceful and oft-invisible hand, they had debated, written, and rewritten. They had abolished the Ancien Régime article by article, eliminating feudalism, reforming the system of justice, constructing a new, rational administrative map of France, chopped up into départements. And now, at long, long last, their titanic effort was complete. The Constitution of 1791, the first written document of constitutional government of the thousand-year history of the French people, was finished.
It had been a document of magnificent pretension, a tribute to the intellectual fervors of the time, but it had also been a document of practical accommodation, indelibly stamped as it was with Louis's realistic, modern character. It gave one, for instance, powerful Legislative Assembly, elected by the paying taxpayers of France. It assured the independence of the judiciary. It abolished all titles of nobility, all guilds, all privileges, and it instituted the principle of equality before the law for all citizens.
And at the head of that new, constitutional state was the King. He no longer reigned as absolute monarch on divine right. He was the "King of the French," his power residing in the law and the will of the people. But he was no empty figurehead either. The constitution, as Louis's behind-the-scenes negotiation shaped it, invested him with real executive power. He was at the head of thecivil administration, he commanded the armed services, he possessed that priceless power of the suspensive veto. It was the consummation of all that Louis had struggled for: a strong, effective, efficient constitutional monarchy which he hoped would bring France into a new golden age.
The final, spectacular ceremony to install the new régime had been planned on the Champ de Mars in Paris. The spacious, treeless ground had been particularly prepared for the occasion. Central to it, an enormous, multi-level structure called the l'autel de la patrie, the Altar of the Fatherland, had been erected, a civic altar for a new religion of the nation.
The day of ceremony was a public holiday. Half a million Parisians, a mighty, optimistic tide of human faces, flooded the field. Deputations of the newly formed National Guard, in clean, blue, and white uniforms, stood at stiff attention in rigid ranks. Members of the National Assembly, whose great work was done, held a position of dignity.
Louis did not ride into town inside a gilded royal coach, but riding a horse, and the people cheered their approval of what he had on. He wasn't dressed in the silks and ermine of a monarch, but he had on the humble, handsome blue of a Major General of the National Guard, the tricolor cockade pinned to his hat. He deliberately, powerfully, was presenting himself as not a monarch divorced from his people, but as the first citizen-soldier of the new France.
The ceremonies had been a pageant of civic ritual, orchestrated by Beaumarchais. There had been troops of martial bands, boy choirs singing patriotic hymns, and a pompous parade of the National Guard, led by a beaming Lafayette. The climax of the day came when Louis, his small form set but resolved among the grandeur of the altar, dismounted from horseback and proceeded up the steps.
He was greeted at the summit by the President of the Assembly, who handed him the final, beautifully calligraphed version of the new constitution, bound in deep blue leather. Louis accepted the book. He stood before the massive, silent crowd, and placing, in a clear, firm voice that carried over the field, his right hand on the constitution.
"I, Louis, King of the French," he said, his voice echoing with a grave authority, "solemnly swear to the Nation that I shall be faithful to the law, that I shall hold the constitution proclaimed by the National Assembly, and that I shall use all the power conferred upon me to enforce said laws."
As he said them, a roar of approval, a flood of sound from a hundred thousand throats, engulfed him. But he still had one final thing to do. He gestured Marie Antoinette to his side on the altar. She came towards it, carrying the young Dauphin, Louis-Joseph, in her arms. She, too, placed her hand on the constitution.
"And I," declared she, her voice ringing out clear, "solemnly vow to rear my son in religious reverence for such laws, and to teach him that his first allegiance lies towards the freedom and happiness of the French people."
It was a beautiful, indelible image of a new kind of royal family, one that served but didn't ruled the country. The people went wild, their applause echoing off the streets of Paris. The revolution, it seemed, was over. It hadn't ended in fear and bloodshed, but in a triumphant, secure, almost universally beloved constitutional monarchy.
Later that evening, back at the Tuileries Palace, a profound sense of peace and success had settled upon Louis. He stood over the final copy of the constitution in his study, studying it. He had done it. He had stared into the depths of national bankruptcy, internal warfare, and his own execution, and he had waded through it to the other side. He had rebuilt a country, balanced the country's books, appeased the country's enemies, and secured the future of his family upon a sounder, new throne. He looked at the HUD, and for the first time since he arrived, it was a sea of calm, stable, positive green numbers.
STABILITY OF THE REALM: 95% (STABLE).
REVOLUTIONARY PHASE: CONCLUDED.
GEOPOLITICAL THREAT LEVEL: LOW.
PERSONAL SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 99%.
He allowed himself to believe, for the first time, that he had finally triumphed. It had ended: the nightmare.
There was a gentle, tentative knock on the study door. It was the King's personal physician, Dr. Lassonne, the very same man whose medieval conception of medicine he had set decisively aside when he had rescued the Queen from death. The doctor's usually mask-like face was pale, and set deep upon it a sorrowful concern.
"Your Majesty," declared the doctor, his voice deep and imbued with a gravity that instantly sucked the warmth from the room. "Forgive me for intruding on you on such an historic evening."
"What is it, Doctor?" Louis asked, a cold familiar knot beginning to form in his stomach.
"I must ask you to see the nursery of the Dauphin," said the doctor, his eyes avoiding that of the King. "It is the young prince. He has had, for some days now, a persistent low fever. I had thought it some trifling childhood illness. But tonight... there is swelling. In the joints. At the hip, at the knee." He breathed unevenly. "I am... most concerned."
Louis tensed, the leather-bound document too heavy all at once to hold in his hand. The historical facts he had rigidly compartmentalized, the biographical facts of the real Louis XVI's life that he had found he couldn't forget, slammed into his skull as if by physical blow. He knew, by a sudden, macabre certitude, what this was. He remembered a lone, anguished sentence from some long-gone history book. The first Dauphin, Louis-Joseph, had died at seven, of a long, tormenting illness. Tuberculosis of the bone.
He looked at the worried visage of the physician. He looked at the HUD, still displaying its triumphant, stable readings for the nation. He had changed history for twenty-five million people. He had deflected war, redrawn the compact of society. But the cold, dreadful question now entered his mind: might he change one, little boy's fate? Was he powerless before the laws of biology, simple, brutal, as well as history, which wasn't quite defeated?
His greatest, most public success would soon give way to his severest, most private trial. He had saved the kingdom. But would he save his son?
NEW CRISIS DETECTED: Royal Succession - CRITICAL.
Dauphin's Health Status: (DETERIORATING).
HISTORICAL INEVITABILITY PROBABILITY: RISING…