'Be an independent, free man,' said he to me. 'Learn to
depend on your own strength and your own will alone. Use the powers
of your mind, become a soldier of labor, and so serve your country.
I know, indeed, that if the hour of danger ever comes, you will be a
true, bold soldier for your queen, and fight for her till your last
breath.' I had to promise him on his death-bed that I would so do.
Even then he saw the dark and dangerous days approach, which have
now broken upon the realm--even then he heard the muttering of the
tempest which now so inevitably is approaching; and often when I
went home to his silent chamber I found him reading, with tears in
his eyes, the pamphlets and journals which had come from Paris to us
at Rouen, and which seemed to us like the storm-birds announcing the
tempest. 'The queen is so good, so innocent,' he would sigh, 'and
they make her goodness a crime and her innocence they make guilt!
She is like a lamb, surrounded by tigers, that plays thoughtlessly
with the flowers, and does not know the poison that lurks beneath
them. Swear to me, Louis, that you will seek, if God gives you the
power, to free the lamb from the bloodthirsty tigers. Swear to me
that your whole life shall be devoted to her service.' And I did
swear it, Margaret, not merely to my dear father, but to myself as
well.
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