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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Maria Antoinette, by John S. C. (John Stevens
+Cabot) Abbott
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Maria Antoinette
+       Makers of History
+
+
+Author: John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 6, 2010  [eBook #30875]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARIA ANTOINETTE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by D Alexander and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
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+      See 30875-h.htm or 30875-h.zip:
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+
+
+
+
+
+Makers of History
+
+MARIA ANTOINETTE
+
+by
+
+JOHN S. C. ABBOTT
+
+With Engravings
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York and London
+Harper & Brothers Publishers
+1901
+
+Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand
+eight hundred and forty-nine, by
+Harper & Brothers.
+in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District
+of New York.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES MAURICE DE TALLEYRAND.]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF PARIS.]
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+In this history of Maria Antoinette it has been my endeavor to give a
+faithful narrative of facts, and, so far as possible, to exhibit the
+soul of history. A more mournful tragedy earth has seldom witnessed. And
+yet the lesson is full of instruction to all future ages. Intelligence
+and moral worth combined can be the only basis of national prosperity or
+domestic happiness. But the simple story itself carries with it its own
+moral, and the _reflections_ of the writer would encumber rather than
+enforce its teachings.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+ Chapter                                                    Page
+
+    I. PARENTAGE AND CHILDHOOD                               13
+
+   II. BRIDAL DAYS                                           37
+
+  III. MARIA ANTOINETTE ENTHRONED                            78
+
+   IV. THE DIAMOND NECKLACE                                 105
+
+    V. THE MOB AT VERSAILLES                                131
+
+   VI. THE PALACE A PRISON                                  164
+
+  VII. THE FLIGHT                                           189
+
+ VIII. THE RETURN TO PARIS                                  214
+
+   IX. IMPRISONMENT IN THE TEMPLE                           239
+
+    X. EXECUTION OF THE KING                                272
+
+   XI. TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF MARIA ANTOINETTE              290
+
+  XII. THE PRINCESS ELIZABETH, THE DAUPHIN, AND
+       THE PRINCESS ROYAL                                   304
+
+
+
+
+ENGRAVINGS.
+
+
+                                                            Page
+
+ VIEW OF PARIS                                   _Frontispiece._
+
+ BRIDAL TOUR                                                 48
+
+ VERSAILLES--FRONT VIEW}
+                       }                                     65
+ VERSAILLES--COURT-YARD}
+
+ FOUNTAINS AT VERSAILLES}
+                        }                                    69
+ FOUNTAIN OF THE STAR   }
+
+ LITTLE TRIANON                                              74
+
+ GARDENS OF MARLY                                            93
+
+ VIEW OF THE BASTILE                                        134
+
+ GARDENS AT VERSAILLES                                      144
+
+ MOB AT VERSAILLES                                          151
+
+ GRAND AVENUE OF THE TUILERIES                              156
+
+ PALACE OF ST. CLOUD                                        184
+
+ CAPTURE AT VARENNES                                        208
+
+ THE TUILERIES                                              221
+
+ THE TOWER OF THE TEMPLE                                    257
+
+ THE ROYAL FAMILY IN THE TEMPLE                             262
+
+ MARIA ANTOINETTE IN THE CONCIERGERIE                       296
+
+
+
+
+MARIA ANTOINETTE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+PARENTAGE AND CHILDHOOD.
+
+1740-1770
+
+Maria Theresa.--She succeeds to the throne.--Success of Maria Theresa's
+enemies.--Her flight to Hungary.--The queen's firmness.--The Hungarian
+barons.--The queen's appeal.--Enthusiasm of her subjects.--The queen
+heads her army.--She overthrows her enemies.--Character of Maria
+Theresa.--Character of her husband.--Crowning of Francis.--Maria
+Theresa's renown.--Maria Theresa's sternness.--Anecdote.--Fatal
+result.--Death of Francis.--Plan of the counselors.--Birth of Maria
+Antoinette.--Maria Antoinette's character.--Affecting scene.--Maria
+Antoinette's grief.--Maria Theresa as a mother.--Mode of
+education.--Petty artifices.--Maria's proficiency in French.--She
+forgets her native tongue.--Maria's taste for music.--Her ignorance
+of general literature, etc.--The French teachers.--Their character.--The
+Abbe de Vermond.--He shamefully abuses his trust.--Etiquette of the
+French court.--Etiquette of the Austrian court.--Precepts of the
+teacher.--Character of Maria Antoinette.--Maria a noble girl.--Her
+virtues and her faults.--Palace of Schoenbrun.--The scenes of
+Maria's childhood.--Personal appearance of Maria.--Description of
+Lamartine.--Maria's betrothal.--Its motives.--Maria's feelings on
+leaving Schoenbrun.--Her love for her home.
+
+
+In the year 1740, Charles VI., emperor of Austria, died. He left a
+daughter twenty-three years of age, Maria Theresa, to inherit the crown
+of that powerful empire. She had been married about four years to
+Francis, duke of Lorraine. The day after the death of Charles, Maria
+Theresa ascended the throne. The treasury of Austria was empty. A
+general feeling of discontent pervaded the kingdom. Several claimants
+to the throne rose to dispute the succession with Maria; and France,
+Spain, Prussia, and Bavaria took advantage of the new reign, and of the
+embarrassments which surrounded the youthful queen, to enlarge their own
+borders by wresting territory from Austria.
+
+The young queen, harassed by dissensions at home and by the combined
+armies of her powerful foes, beheld, with anguish which her proud and
+imperious spirit could hardly endure, her troops defeated and scattered
+in every direction, and the victorious armies of her enemies marching
+almost unimpeded toward her capital. The exulting invaders, intoxicated
+with unanticipated success, now contemplated the entire division of the
+spoil. They decided to blot Austria from the map of Europe, and to
+partition out the conglomerated nations composing the empire among the
+conquerors.
+
+Maria Theresa retired from her capital as the bayonets of France and
+Bavaria gleamed from the hill-sides which environed the city. Her
+retreat with a few disheartened followers, in the gloom of night, was
+illumined by the flames of the bivouacs of hostile armies, with which
+the horizon seemed to be girdled. The invaders had possession of every
+strong post in the empire. The beleaguered city was summoned to
+surrender. Resistance was unavailing. All Europe felt that Austria was
+hopelessly undone. Maria fled from the dangers of captivity into the
+wilds of Hungary. But in this dark hour, when the clouds of adversity
+seemed to be settling in blackest masses over her whole realm, when hope
+had abandoned every bosom but her own, the spirit of Maria remained as
+firm and inflexible as if victory were perched upon her standards, and
+her enemies were flying in dismay before her. She would not listen to
+one word of compromise. She would not admit the thought of surrendering
+one acre of the dominions she had inherited from her fathers. Calm,
+unagitated, and determined, she summoned around her, from their feudal
+castles, the wild and warlike barons of Hungary. With neighing steeds,
+and flaunting banners, and steel-clad retainers, and all the
+paraphernalia of barbaric pomp, these chieftains, delighting in the
+excitements of war, gathered around the heroic queen. The spirit of
+ancient chivalry still glowed in these fierce hearts, and they gazed
+with a species of religious homage upon the young queen, who, in
+distress, had fled to their wilds to invoke the aid of their strong
+arms.
+
+Maria met them in council. They assembled around her by thousands in all
+the imposing splendor of the garniture of war. Maria appeared before
+these stern chieftains dressed in the garb of the deepest mourning, with
+the crown of her ancestors upon her brow, her right hand resting upon
+the hilt of the sword of the Austrian kings, and leading by her left
+hand her little daughter Maria Antoinette. The pale and pensive
+features of the queen attested the resolute soul which no disasters
+could subdue. Her imperial spirit entranced and overawed the bold
+knights, who had ever lived in the realms of romance. Maria addressed
+the Hungarian barons in an impressive speech in Latin, the language then
+in use in the diets of Hungary, faithfully describing the desperate
+state of her affairs. She committed herself and her children to their
+protection, and urged them to drive the invaders from the land or to
+perish in the attempt. It was just the appeal to rouse such hearts to a
+phrensy of enthusiasm. The youth, the beauty, the calamities of the
+queen roused to the utmost intensity the chivalric devotion of these
+warlike magnates, and grasping their swords and waving them above their
+heads, they shouted simultaneously, "Moriamur pro rege nostro, Maria
+Theresa"--"_Let us die for our king, Maria Theresa._"
+
+Until now, the queen had preserved a demeanor perfectly tranquil and
+majestic. But this affectionate enthusiasm of her subjects entirely
+overcame her imperious spirit, and she burst into a flood of tears. But,
+apparently ashamed of this exhibition of womanly feeling she almost
+immediately regained her composure, and resumed the air of the
+indomitable sovereign. The war cry immediately resounded throughout
+Hungary. Chieftains and vassals rallied around the banner of Maria. In
+person she inspected and headed the gathering army, and her spirit
+inspired them. With the ferocity of despair, these new recruits hurled
+themselves upon the invaders. A few battles, desperate and sanguinary,
+were fought, and the army of Maria was victorious. England and Holland,
+apprehensive that the destruction of the Austrian empire would destroy
+the balance of power in Europe, and encouraged by the successful
+resistance which the Austrians were now making, came to the rescue of
+the heroic queen. The tide of battle was turned. The armies of France,
+Germany, and Spain were driven from the territory which they had
+overrun. Maria, with untiring energy, followed up her successes. She
+pursued her retreating foes into their own country, and finally granted
+peace to her enemies only by wresting from them large portions of their
+territory. The renown of these exploits resounded through Europe. The
+name of Maria Theresa was embalmed throughout the civilized world. Under
+her vigorous sway Austria, from the very brink of ruin, was elevated to
+a degree of splendor and power it had never attained before. These
+conflicts and victories inspired Maria with a haughty and imperious
+spirit, and the loveliness of the female character was lost amid the
+pomp of martial achievements. The proud sovereign eclipsed the woman.
+
+It is not to be supposed that such a bosom could be the shrine of
+tenderness and affection. Maria's virtues were all of the masculine
+gender. She really loved, or, rather, _liked_ her husband; but it was
+with the same kind of emotion with which an energetic and ambitious man
+loves his wife. She cherished him, protected him, watched over him, and
+loaded him with honors. He was of a mild, gentle, confiding spirit,
+and would have made a lovely wife. She was ambitious, fearless, and
+commanding, and would have made a noble husband. In fact, this was
+essentially the relation which existed between them. Maria Theresa
+governed the empire, while Francis loved and caressed the children.
+
+The queen, by her armies and her political influence, had succeeded in
+having Francis crowned Emperor of Germany. She stood upon the balcony
+as the imposing ceremony was performed, and was the first to shout "Long
+live the Emperor Francis I." Like Napoleon, she had become the creator
+of kings. Austria was now in the greatest prosperity, and Maria Theresa
+the most illustrious queen in Europe. Her renown filled the civilized
+world. Through her whole reign, though she became the mother of sixteen
+children, she devoted herself with untiring energy to the aggrandizement
+of her empire. She united with Russia and Prussia in the infamous
+partition of Poland, and in the banditti division of the spoil she
+annexed to her own dominions twenty-seven thousand square miles and two
+millions five hundred thousand inhabitants.
+
+From this exhibition of the character of Maria Theresa, the mother of
+Maria Antoinette, the reader will not be surprised that she should have
+inspired her children with awe rather than with affection. In truth,
+their imperial mother was so devoted to the cares of the empire, that
+she was almost a stranger to her children, and could have known herself
+but few of the emotions of maternal love. Her children were placed under
+the care of nurses and governesses from their birth. Once in every eight
+or ten days the queen appropriated an hour for the inspection of the
+nursery and the apartments appropriated to the children; and she
+performed this duty with the same fidelity with which she examined the
+wards of the state hospitals and the military schools.
+
+The following anecdote strikingly illustrates the austere and inflexible
+character of the empress. The wife of her son Joseph died of the
+confluent small-pox, and her body had been consigned to the vaults of
+the royal tomb. Soon after this event, Josepha, one of the daughters of
+the empress, was to be married to the King of Naples. The arrangements
+had all been made for their approaching nuptials, and she was just on
+the point of leaving Vienna to ascend the Neapolitan throne, when she
+received an order from her mother that she must not depart from the
+empire until she had, in accordance with the established custom,
+descended into the tomb of her ancestors and offered her parting prayer.
+The young princess, in an agony of consternation, received the cruel
+requisition. Yet she dared not disobey her mother. She took her little
+sister, Maria Antoinette, whom she loved most tenderly, upon her knee,
+and, weeping bitterly, bade her farewell, saying that she was sure she
+should take the dreadful disease and die. Trembling in every fiber, the
+unhappy princess descended into the gloomy sepulcher, where the bodies
+of generations of kings were moldering. She hurried through her short
+prayer, and in the deepest agitation returned to the palace, and threw
+herself in despair upon her bed.
+
+Her worst apprehensions were realized. The fatal disease had penetrated
+her veins. Soon it manifested itself in its utmost virulence. After
+lingering a few days and nights in dreadful suffering, she breathed her
+last, and her own loathsome remains were consigned to the same silent
+chambers of the dead. Maria Theresa commanded her child to do no more
+than she would have insisted upon doing herself under similar
+circumstances. And when she followed her daughter to the tomb, she
+probably allowed herself to indulge in no regrets in view of the course
+she had pursued, but consoled herself with the reflection that she had
+done her duty.
+
+The Emperor Francis died, 1765, leaving Maria Theresa still in the
+vigor of life, and quite beautiful. Three of her counselors of state,
+ambitious of sharing the throne with the illustrious queen, entered into
+a compact, by which they were all to endeavor to obtain her hand in
+marriage, agreeing that the successful one should devote the power
+thus obtained to the aggrandizement of the other two. The empress was
+informed of this arrangement, and, at the close of a cabinet council,
+took occasion, with great dignity and composure, to inform them that she
+did not intend ever again to enter into the marriage state, but that,
+should she hereafter change her mind, it would only be in favor of one
+who had no ambitious desires, and who would have no inclination to
+intermeddle with the affairs of state; and that, should she ever marry
+one of her ministers, she should immediately remove him from all office.
+Her counselors, loving power more than all things else, immediately
+abandoned every thought of obtaining the hand of Maria at such a
+sacrifice.
+
+Maria Antoinette, the subject of this biography, was born on the 2d of
+November, 1755. Few of the inhabitants of this world have commenced
+life under circumstances of greater splendor, or with more brilliant
+prospects of a life replete with happiness. She was a child of great
+vivacity and beauty, full of light-heartedness, and ever prone to look
+upon the sunny side of every prospect. Her disposition was frank,
+cordial, and affectionate. Her mental endowments were by nature of a
+very superior order. Laughing at the restraints of royal etiquette, she,
+by her generous and confiding spirit, won the love of all hearts. Maria
+Antoinette was but slightly acquainted with her imperial mother, and
+could regard her with no other emotions than those of respect and awe;
+but the mild and gentle spirit of her father took in her heart a
+mother's place, and she clung to him with the most ardent affection.
+
+When she was but ten years of age, her father was one day going to
+Inspruck upon some business. The royal cavalcade was drawn up in the
+court-yard of the palace. The emperor had entered his carriage,
+surrounded by his retinue, and was just on the point of leaving, when he
+ordered the postillions to delay, and requested an attendant to bring to
+him his little daughter Maria Antoinette. The blooming child was brought
+from the nursery, with her flaxen hair in ringlets clustered around her
+shoulders, and presented to her father. As she entwined her arms around
+his neck and clung to his embrace, he pressed her most tenderly to his
+bosom, saying, "Adieu my dear little daughter. Father wished once more
+to press you to his heart." The emperor and his child never met again.
+At Inspruck Francis was taken suddenly ill, and, after a few days'
+sickness, died. The grief of Maria Antoinette knew no bounds. But the
+tears of childhood soon dried up. The parting scene, however, produced
+an impression upon Maria which was never effaced, and she ever spoke of
+her father in terms of the warmest affection.
+
+Maria Theresa, half conscious of the imperfect manner in which she
+performed her maternal duties, was very solicitous to have it understood
+that she did not neglect her children; that she was the best _mother_
+in the world as well as the most illustrious sovereign. When any
+distinguished stranger from the other courts of Europe visited Vienna,
+she arranged her sixteen children around the dinner-table, towering
+above them in queenly majesty, and endeavored to convey the impression
+that they were the especial objects of her motherly care. It was not,
+however, the generous warmth of love, but the cold sense of duty, which
+alone regulated her conduct in reference to them, and she had probably
+convinced herself that she discharged her maternal obligations with the
+most exemplary fidelity.
+
+The family physician every morning visited each one of the children, and
+then briefly reported to the empress the health of the archdukes and the
+archduchesses. This report fully satisfied all the yearnings of maternal
+love in the bosom of Maria Theresa; though she still, that she might not
+fail in the least degree in motherly affection, endeavored to see them
+with her own eyes, and to speak to them with her own lips, as often as
+once in a week or ten days. The preceptors and governesses of the royal
+household, being thus left very much to themselves, were far more
+anxious to gratify the immediate wishes of the children, and thus to
+secure their love, than to urge them to efforts for intellectual
+improvement. Maria Antoinette, in subsequent life, related many amusing
+anecdotes illustrative of the petty artifices by which the scrutiny of
+the empress was eluded. The copies which were presented to the queen in
+evidence of the progress the children were making in hand-writing were
+all traced first in pencil by the governess. The children then followed
+with the pen over the penciled lines. Drawings were exhibited,
+beautifully executed, to show the skill Maria Antoinette had attained in
+that delightful accomplishment, which drawings the pencil of Maria
+had not even touched. She was also taught to address strangers of
+distinction in short Latin phrases, when she did not understand the
+meaning of one single word of the language. Her teacher of Italian, the
+Abbe Metastasio, was the only one who was faithful in his duties, and
+Maria made very great proficiency in that language. French being the
+language of the nursery, Maria necessarily acquired the power of
+speaking it with great fluency, though she was quite unable to write it
+correctly. In the acquisition of French, her own mother tongue, the
+German, was so totally neglected, that, incredible as it may seem, she
+actually lost the power either of speaking or of understanding it. In
+after years, chagrined at such unutterable folly, she sat down with
+great resolution to the study of her own native tongue, and encountered
+all the difficulties which would tax the patience of any foreigner in
+the attempt. She persevered for about six weeks, and then relinquished
+the enterprise in despair. The young princess was extremely fond of
+music, and yet she was not taught to play well upon any instrument. This
+became subsequently a source of great mortification to her, for she was
+ashamed to confess her ignorance of an accomplishment deemed, in the
+courts of Europe, so essential to a polished education, and yet she
+dared not sit down to any instrument in the presence of others. When she
+first arrived at Versailles as the bride of the heir to the throne of
+France, she was so deeply mortified at this defect in her education,
+that she immediately employed a teacher to give her lessons secretly for
+three months. During this time she applied herself to her task with the
+utmost assiduity, and at the end of the time gave surprising proof of
+the skill she had so rapidly attained. Upon all the subjects of history,
+science, and general literature, the princess was left entirely
+uninformed. The activity and energy of her mind only led her the more
+poignantly to feel the mortification to which this ignorance often
+exposed her. When surrounded by the splendors of royalty, she frequently
+retired to weep over deficiencies which it was too late to repair. The
+wits of Paris seized upon these occasional developments of the want of
+mental culture as the indication of a weak mind, and the daughter of
+Maria Theresa, the descendant of the Caesars, was the butt, in saloon and
+cafe, of merriment and song. Maria was beautiful and graceful, and
+winning in all her ways. But this imperfect education, exposing her to
+contempt and ridicule in the society of intellectual men and women, was
+not among the unimportant elements which conducted to her own ruin, to
+the overthrow of the French throne, and to that deluge of blood which
+for many years rolled its billows incarnadine over Europe.
+
+Maria Theresa had sent to Paris for two teachers of French to instruct
+her daughter in the literature of that country over which she was
+destined to reign. From that pleasure-loving metropolis two play actors
+were sent to take charge of her education, one of whom was a man of
+notoriously dissolute character. As the connection between Maria
+Antoinette and Louis, the heir apparent to the throne of France, was
+already contemplated, some solicitude was felt by members of the court
+of Versailles in reference to the impropriety of this selection, and the
+French embassador at Vienna was requested to urge the empress to dismiss
+the obnoxious teachers, and make a different choice. She immediately
+complied with the request, and sent to the Duke de Choiseul, the
+minister of state of Louis XV., to send a preceptor such as would be
+acceptable to the court of Versailles. After no little difficulty in
+finding one in whom all parties could unite, the Abbe de Vermond was
+selected, a vain, ambitious, weak-minded man, who, by the most studied
+artifice, insinuated himself into the good graces of Maria Theresa, and
+gained a great but pernicious influence over the mind of his youthful
+pupil. The cabinets of France and Austria having decided the question
+that Maria Antoinette was to be the bride of Louis, who was soon to
+ascend the throne of France, the Abbe de Vermond, proud of his position
+as the intellectual and moral guide of the destined Queen of France,
+shamefully abused his trust, and sought only to obtain an abiding
+influence, which he might use for the promotion of his own ambition. He
+carefully kept her in ignorance, to render himself more necessary to
+her; and he was never unwilling to involve her in difficulties, that she
+might be under the necessity of appealing to him for extrication.
+
+Instead of endeavoring to prepare her for the situation she was destined
+to fill, it seemed to be his aim to train her to such habits of thought
+and feeling as would totally incapacitate her to be happy, or to acquire
+an influence over the gay but ceremony-loving assemblages of the
+Tuileries, Versailles, and St. Cloud. At this time, the fashion of the
+French court led to extreme attention to all the punctilios of
+etiquette. Every word, every gesture, was regulated by inflexible rule.
+Every garment worn, and every act of life, was regulated by the
+requisitions of the code ceremonial. Virtue was concealed and vice
+garnished by the inflexible observance of stately forms. An infringement
+of the laws of etiquette was deemed a far greater crime than the most
+serious violation of the laws of morality. In the court of Vienna, on
+the other hand, fashion ran to just the other extreme. It was
+fashionable to despise fashion. It was etiquette to pay no regard to
+etiquette. The haughty Austrian noble prided himself in dressing as he
+pleased, and looked with contempt upon the studied attitudes and foppish
+attire of the French. The Parisian courtier, on the other hand,
+rejoicing in his ruffles, and ribbons, and practiced movements, despised
+the boorish manners, as he deemed them, of the Austrian.
+
+The Abbe de Vermond, to ingratiate himself with the Austrian court, did
+all in his power to inspire Maria Antoinette with contempt of Parisian
+manners. He zealously conformed to the customs prevailing in Vienna,
+and, like all new converts, to prove the sincerity of his conversion,
+went far in advance of his sect in intemperate zeal. Maria Antoinette
+was but a child, mirthful, beautiful, open hearted, and, like all other
+children, loving freedom from restraint. Her preceptor ridiculed
+incessantly, mercilessly, the manners of the French court, where she was
+soon to reign as queen, and influenced her to despise that salutary
+regard to appearances so essential in all refined life. Under this
+tutelage, Maria became as natural, unguarded, and free as a mountain
+maid. She smiled or wept, as the mood was upon her. She was cordial
+toward those she loved, and distant and reserved toward those she
+despised. She cared not to repress her emotions of sadness or
+mirthfulness as occasions arose to excite them. She was conscientious,
+and unwilling to do that which she thought to be wrong, and still she
+was imprudent, and troubled not herself with the interpretation which
+others might put upon her conduct. She prided herself a little upon her
+independence and recklessness of the opinions of others, and thus she
+was ever incurring undeserved censure, and becoming involved in
+unmerited difficulties. She was, in heart, truly a noble girl. Her
+faults were the excesses of a generous and magnanimous spirit. Though
+she inherited much of the imperial energy of her mother, it was tempered
+and adorned with the mildness and affectionateness of her father. Her
+education had necessarily tended to induce her to look down with
+aristocratic pride upon those beneath her in rank in life, and to dream
+that the world and all it inherits was intended for the exclusive
+benefit of kings and queens. Still, the natural goodness of her heart
+ever led her to acts of kindness and generosity. She thus won the love,
+almost without seeking it, of all who knew her well. Her faults were the
+unavoidable effect of her birth, her education, and all those nameless
+but untoward influences which surrounded her from the cradle to the
+grave. Her virtues were all her own, the instinctive emotions of a
+frank, confiding, and magnanimous spirit.
+
+The childhood of Maria Antoinette was probably, on the whole, as happy
+as often falls to the lot of humanity. As she had never known a mother's
+love, she never felt its loss. There are few more enchanting abodes upon
+the surface of the globe than the pleasure palaces of the Austrian
+kings. Forest and grove, garden and wild, rivulet and lake, combine all
+their charms to lend fascination to those haunts of regal festivity. In
+the palace of Schoenbrun, and in the imbowered gardens which surround
+that world-renowned habitation of princely grandeur, Maria passed many
+of the years of her childhood. Now she trod the graveled walk, pursuing
+the butterfly, and gathering the flowers, with brothers and sisters
+joining in the recreation. Now the feet of her pony scattered the
+pebbles of the path, as the little troop of equestrians cantered beneath
+the shade of majestic elms. Now the prancing steeds draw them in the
+chariot, through the infinitely diversified drives, and the golden
+leaves of autumn float gracefully through the still air upon their
+heads. The boat, with damask cushions and silken awning, invites them
+upon the lake. The strong arms of the rowers bear them with fairy motion
+to sandy beach and jutting headland, to island, and rivulet, and bay,
+while swans and water-fowl, of every variety of plumage, sport before
+them and around them. Such were the scenes in which Maria Antoinette
+passed the first fourteen years of her life. Every want which wealth
+could supply was gratified. "What a destiny!" exclaimed a Frenchman, as
+he looked upon one similarly situated, "what a destiny! young, rich,
+beautiful, and an archduchess! Ma foi! quel destine!"
+
+The personal appearance of Maria Antoinette, as she bloomed into
+womanhood, is thus described by Lamartine. "Her beauty dazzled the whole
+kingdom. She was of a tall, graceful figure, a true daughter of the
+Tyrol. The natural majesty of her carriage destroyed none of the graces
+of her movements; her neck, rising elegantly and distinctly from her
+shoulders, gave expression to every attitude. The woman was perceptible
+beneath the queen, the tenderness of heart was not lost in the elevation
+of her destiny. Her light brown hair was long and silky; her forehead,
+high and rather projecting, was united to her temples by those fine
+curves which give so much delicacy and expression to that seat of
+thought, or the soul in woman; her eyes, of that clear blue which recall
+the skies of the north or the waters of the Danube; an aquiline nose,
+the nostrils open and slightly projecting, where emotions palpitate and
+courage is evidenced; a large mouth, Austrian lips, that is, projecting
+and well defined; an oval countenance, animated, varying, impassioned,
+and the _ensemble_ of these features, replete with that expression,
+impossible to describe, which emanates from the look, the shades, the
+reflections of the face, which encompasses it with an iris like that of
+the warm and tinted vapor, which bathes objects in full sunlight--the
+extreme loveliness which the ideal conveys, and which, by giving it
+life, increases its attraction. With all these charms, a soul yearning
+to attach itself, a heart easily moved, but yet earnest in desire to fix
+itself; a pensive and intelligent smile, with nothing of vacuity in it,
+because it felt itself worthy of friendships. Such was Maria Antoinette
+as a woman."
+
+When but fourteen years of age she was affianced as the bride of young
+Louis, the grandson of Louis XV., and heir apparent to the throne of
+France. Neither of the youthful couple had ever seen each other, and
+neither of them had any thing to do in forming the connection. It was
+deemed expedient by the cabinets of Versailles and Vienna that the two
+should be united, in order to promote friendly alliance between France
+and Austria. Maria Antoinette had never dreamed even of questioning any
+of her mother's arrangements, and consequently she had no temptation to
+consider whether she liked or disliked the plan. She had been trained to
+the most unhesitating submission to maternal authority. The childish
+heart of the mirth-loving princess was doubtless dazzled with the
+anticipations of the splendors which awaited her at Versailles and St.
+Cloud. But when she bade adieu to the gardens of Schoenbrun, and left
+the scenes of her childhood, she entered upon one of the wildest careers
+of terror and of suffering which mortal footsteps have ever trod. The
+parting from her mother gave her no especial pain, for she had ever
+looked up to her as to a superior being, to whom she was bound to render
+homage and obedience, rather than as to a mother around whom the
+affections of her heart were entwined. But she loved her brothers and
+sisters most tenderly. She was extremely attached to the happy home
+where her childish heart had basked in all childish pleasures, and many
+were the tears she shed when she looked back from the eminences which
+surround Vienna upon those haunts to which she was destined never again
+to return.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+BRIDAL DAYS.
+
+1770-1775
+
+Louis XV.--Prince Louis.--Madame du Barri.--Her dissolute
+character.--Children of Louis XV.--Anecdote of Madame du
+Barri.--Madame du Barri's beauty.--Her political influence.--Madame
+du Barri's pavilion.--The Duke de Brissac.--Madame du Barri's
+flight.--She is betrayed.--Condemnation of Madame du Barri.--Her
+anguish and despair.--Execution of Madame du Barri.--Letter from
+Maria Theresa.--Departure of Maria for Paris.--Emotions of the
+populace.--Magnificent pavilion.--Singular custom.--Grand
+procession.--The reception.--Young Louis's indifference.--The
+marriage.--Insensibility of young Louis.--Acclamations of the
+Parisians.--Maria shows herself to the populace.--She receives
+their homage.--The fire-works.--Awful conflagration.--Scene of
+horror.--Consternation of Maria.--Presents from Louis XV.--Malice
+of Madame du Barri.--Maria's difficulties.--The Countess de
+Noailles.--Laws of etiquette.--An illustration.--Countess de
+Noailles's ideas of etiquette.--An anecdote.--Maria's contempt
+for etiquette.--The Countess de Noailles nicknamed.--Ludicrous
+scene.--Rage of the old ladies.--Habits of Maria Theresa.--The
+dauphiness becomes unpopular.--Dining in public.--How it was
+done.--Versailles.--Magnificence of the palace.--Gallery of paintings,
+statuary, etc.--Gorgeous saloons.--Splendid gardens.--Other
+palaces.--The Great and the Little Trianon.--Gardens, cascades,
+etc.--Nature of Maria's mind.--Walks in the garden.--Maria's want
+of education.--She attempts to supply it.--Maria's enemies.--Their
+malignant slanders.--Visit of Maximilian.--A quarrel about
+forms.--Unexpected tenderness of Louis.
+
+
+When Maria Antoinette was fifteen years of age, a light-hearted,
+blooming, beautiful girl, hardly yet emerging from the period of
+childhood, all Austria, indeed all Europe, was interested in the
+preparations for her nuptials with the destined King of France. Louis
+XV. still sat upon the throne of Charlemagne. His eldest son had died
+about ten years before, leaving a little boy, some twelve years of age,
+to inherit the crown his father had lost by death. The young Louis,
+grandchild of the reigning king, was mild, inoffensive, and bashful,
+with but little energy of mind, with no ardor of feeling, and singularly
+destitute of all passions. He was perfectly exemplary in his conduct,
+perhaps not so much from inherent strength of principle as from
+possessing that peculiarity of temperament, cold and phlegmatic, which
+feels not the power of temptation. He submitted passively to the
+arrangements for his marriage, never manifesting the slightest emotion
+of pleasure or repugnance in view of his approaching alliance with one
+of the most beautiful and fascinating princesses of Europe. Louis was
+entirely insensible to all the charms of female beauty, and seemed
+incapable of feeling the emotion of love.
+
+Louis XV., a pleasure-loving, dissolute man, had surrounded his throne
+with all the attractions of fashionable indulgence and dissipation.
+There was one woman in his court, Madame du Barri, celebrated in the
+annals of profligacy, who had acquired an entire ascendency over the
+mind of the king. The disreputable connection existing between her and
+the monarch excluded her from respect, and yet the king loaded her with
+honors, received her at his table, and forced her society upon all the
+inmates of the palace. The court was full of jealousies and bickerings;
+and while one party were disposed to welcome Maria Antoinette, hoping
+that she would espouse and strengthen their cause, the other party
+looked upon her with suspicion and hostility, and prepared to meet her
+with all the weapons of annoyance.
+
+Neither morals nor religion were then of any repute in the court of
+France. Vice did not even affect concealment. The children of Louis XV.
+were educated, or rather not educated, in a nunnery. The Princess
+Louisa, when twelve years of age, knew not the letters of her alphabet.
+When the children did wrong, the sacred sisters sent them, for penance,
+into the dark, damp, and gloomy sepulcher of the convent, where the
+remains of the departed nuns were moldering to decay. Here the timid and
+superstitious girls, in an agony of terror, were sent alone, to make
+expiation for some childish offense. The little Princess Victoire, who
+was of a very nervous temperament, was thrown into convulsions by this
+harsh treatment, and the injury to her nervous system was so
+irreparable, that during her whole life she was exposed to periodical
+paroxysms of panic terror.
+
+One day the king, when sitting with Madame du Barri, received a package
+of letters. The petted favorite, suspecting that one of them was from an
+enemy of hers, snatched the packet from the king's hand. As he
+endeavored to regain it, she resisted, and ran two or three times around
+the table, which was in the center of the room, eagerly pursued by the
+irritated monarch. At length, in the excitement of this most strange
+conflict, she threw the letters into the glowing fire of the grate,
+where they were all consumed. The king, enraged beyond endurance,
+seized her by the shoulders, and thrust her violently out of the room.
+After a few hours, however, the weak-minded monarch called upon her. The
+countess, trembling in view of her dismissal, with its dreadful
+consequences of disgrace and beggary, threw herself at his feet, bathed
+in tears, and they were reconciled.
+
+The remaining history of this celebrated woman is so remarkable that we
+can not refrain from briefly recording it. Her marvelous beauty had
+inflamed the passions of the king, and she had obtained so entire an
+ascendency over his mind that she was literally the monarch of France.
+The treasures of the empire were emptied into her lap. Notwithstanding
+the stigma attached to her position, the nation, accustomed to this
+laxity of morals, submitted to the yoke. As the idol of the king, and
+the dispenser of honors and powers, the clergy, the nobility, the
+philosophers, all did her homage. She was still young, and in all the
+splendor of her ravishing beauty, when the king died. For the sake of
+appearances, she retired for a few months into a nunnery. Soon, however,
+she emerged again into the gay world. Her limitless power over the
+voluptuous old monarch had enabled her to amass an enormous fortune.
+With this she reared and embellished for herself a magnificent retreat,
+adorned with more than regal splendor, in the vicinity of Paris--the
+Pavillon de Luciennes, on the borders of the forest of St. Germain. The
+old Duke de Brissac, who had long been an admirer of her charms, here
+lived with her in unsanctified union. Almost universal corruption at
+that time pervaded the nobility of France--one of the exciting causes of
+the Revolution. Though excluded from appearing at the court of Louis
+XVI. and Maria Antoinette, her magnificent saloons were crowded by those
+ever ready to worship at the shrine of wealth, and rank, and power. But,
+as the stormy days of the Revolution shed their gloom over France, and
+an infuriated populace were wrecking their vengeance upon the throne and
+the nobles, Madame du Barri, terrified by the scenes of violence daily
+occurring, prepared to fly from France. She invested enormous funds in
+England, and one dark night went out with the Duke de Brissac alone,
+and, by the dim light of a lantern, they dug a hole under the foot of a
+tree in the park, and buried much of the treasure which she was unable
+to take away with her. In disguise, she reached the coast of France,
+and escaped across the Channel to England. Here she devoted her immense
+revenue to the relief of the emigrants who were every day flying in
+dismay from the horrors with which they were surrounded. The Duke de
+Brissac, who was commander of the constitutional guard of the king,
+appeared at Versailles in an hour of great excitement. The mob attacked
+him. He was instantly assassinated. His head, covered with the white
+locks of age, was cut off, and planted upon one of the palisades of the
+palace gates, a fearful warning to all who were suspected of advocating
+the cause of the king.
+
+And now no one knew of the buried treasure but Madame du Barri herself.
+She, anxious to regain them, ventured, in disguise, to return to France
+to disinter her diamonds, and take them with her to England. A young
+negro servant, whom she had pampered with every indulgence, and had
+caressed with the fondness with which a mother fondles her child, whom
+she had caused to be painted by her side in her portraits, saw his
+mistress and betrayed her. She was immediately seized by the mob, and
+dragged before the revolutionary tribunal of Luciennes. She was
+condemned as a Royalist, and was hurried along in the cart of the
+condemned, amid the execrations and jeers of the delirious mob, to the
+guillotine. Her long hair was shorn, that the action of the knife might
+be unimpeded; but the clustering ringlets, in beautiful profusion, fell
+over her brow and temples, and veiled her voluptuous features and bare
+bosom, from which the executioner had torn the veil. The yells of the
+infuriated and deriding populace filled the air, as they danced
+exultingly around the aristocratic courtesan. But the shrieks of the
+unhappy victim pierced shrilly through them all. She was frantic with
+terror. Her whole soul was unnerved, and not one emotion of fortitude
+remained to sustain the woman of pleasure through her dreadful doom.
+With floods of tears, and gestures of despair, and beseeching,
+heart-rending cries, she incessantly exclaimed, "Life--life--life! O
+save me! save me!" The mob jeered, and derided, and insulted her in
+every conceivable way. They made themselves merry with her anguish and
+terror. They shouted witticisms in her ear respecting the pillow of the
+guillotine upon which she was to repose her head. Struggling and
+shrieking, she was bound to the plank. Suddenly her voice was hushed.
+The dissevered head, dripping with blood, fell into the basket, and her
+soul was in eternity. Poor woman! It is easy to condemn. It is better
+for the heart to pity. Endowed with almost celestial beauty, living in a
+corrupt age, and lured, when a child, by a monarch's love, she fell. It
+is well to weep over her sad fate, and to remember the prayer, "Lead us
+not into temptation."
+
+Such were the characters and such the state of morals of the court into
+which this beautiful and artless princess, Maria Antoinette, but fifteen
+years of age, was to be introduced. As she left the palaces of Vienna to
+encounter the temptations of the Tuileries and Versailles, Maria Theresa
+wrote the following characteristic letter to the future husband of her
+daughter.
+
+     "Your bride, dear dauphin, is separated from me. As she has
+     ever been my delight, so will she be your happiness. For
+     this purpose have I educated her; for I have long been aware
+     that she was to be the companion of your life. I have
+     enjoined upon her, as among her highest duties, the most
+     tender attachment to your person, the greatest attention to
+     every thing that can please or make you happy. Above all, I
+     have recommended to her humility toward God, because I am
+     convinced that it is impossible for us to contribute to the
+     happiness of the subjects confided to us without love to Him
+     who breaks the scepters and crushes the thrones of kings
+     according to his will."
+
+The great mass of the Austrian population, hating the French, with whom
+they had long been at war, were exceedingly averse to this marriage. As
+the train of royal carriages was drawn up, on the morning of her
+departure, to convey the bride to Paris, an immense assemblage of the
+populace of Vienna, men, women, and children, surrounded the cortege
+with weeping and lamentation. Loyalty was then an emotion existing in
+the popular mind with an intensity which now can hardly be conceived. At
+length, in the excitement of their feelings, to save the beloved
+princess from a doom which they deemed dreadful, they made a rush toward
+the carriages to cut the traces and thus to prevent the departure. The
+guard was compelled to interfere, and repel, with violence, the
+affectionate mob. As the long and splendid train, preceded and followed
+by squadrons of horse, disappeared through the gate of the city, a
+universal feeling of sadness oppressed the capital. The people returned
+to their homes silent and dejected, as if they had been witnessing the
+obsequies rather than the nuptials of the beloved princess.
+
+The gorgeous cavalcade proceeded to Kell, on the frontiers of Austria
+and France. There a magnificent pavilion had been erected, consisting
+of a vast saloon, with an apartment at either end. One of these
+apartments was assigned to the lords and ladies of the court of
+Vienna; the other was appropriated to the brilliant train which
+had come from Paris to receive the bride. The two courts vied with
+each other in the exhibition of wealth and magnificence. It was
+an established law of French etiquette, always observed on such
+occasions, that the royal bride should receive her wedding dress from
+France, and should retain absolutely nothing belonging to a foreign
+court. The princess was, consequently, in the pavilion appropriated to
+the Austrian suite, unrobed of all her garments, excepting her body
+linen and stockings. The door was then thrown open, and in this plight
+the beautiful and blushing child advanced into the saloon. The French
+ladies rushed to meet her. Maria threw herself into the arms of the
+Countess de Noailles, and wept convulsively. The French were perfectly
+enchanted with her beauty; and the proud position of her head and
+shoulders betrayed to their eyes the daughter of the Caesars. She was
+immediately conducted to the apartment appropriated to the French
+court. Here the few remaining articles of clothing were removed from
+her person, and she was re-dressed in the most brilliant attire which
+the wealth of the French monarchy could furnish.
+
+[Illustration: BRIDAL TOUR.]
+
+And now, charioted in splendor, surrounded by the homage of lords and
+ladies, accompanied by all the pomp of civic and military parade, and
+enlivened by the most exultant strains of martial bands, Maria was
+conducted toward Paris, while her Austrian friends bade her adieu and
+returned to Vienna. The horizon, by night, was illumined by bonfires,
+flaming upon every hill; the church bells rang their merriest peals;
+cities blazed with illuminations and fire-works; and files of maidens
+lined her way, singing their songs of welcome, and carpeting her path
+with roses. It was a scene to dazzle the most firm and contemplative. No
+dream of romance could have been more bewildering to the ardent and
+romantic princess, just emerging from the cloistered seclusion of the
+palace nursery.
+
+Louis, then a young man about twenty years of age, came from Paris with
+his grandfather, King Louis XV., and a splendid retinue of courtiers, as
+far as Compiegne, to meet his bride. Uninfluenced by any emotions of
+tenderness, apparently entirely unconscious of all those mysterious
+emotions which bind loving hearts, he saluted the stranger with cold and
+distant respect. He thought not of wounding her feelings; he had no
+aversion to the connection, but he seemed not even to think of any more
+intimacy with Maria than with any other lady who adorned the court. The
+ardent and warm-hearted princess was deeply hurt at this indifference;
+but instinctive pride forbade its manifestation, except in bosom
+converse to a few confiding friends.
+
+The bride and her passive and unimpassioned bridegroom were conducted to
+Versailles. It was the 16th of May, 1770, when the marriage ceremony was
+performed, with all the splendor with which it could be invested. The
+gorgeous palaces of Versailles were thronged with the nobility of
+Europe, and filled with rejoicing. The old king was charmed with the
+beauty and affability of the young bride. All hearts were filled with
+happiness, except those of the newly-married couple. Louis was tranquil
+and contented. He was neither allured nor repelled by his bride He
+never sought her society alone, and ever approached her with the same
+distance and reserve with which he would approach any other young lady
+who was a visitor at the palace. He never intruded upon the privacy of
+her apartments, and she was his wife but in name. While all France was
+filled with the praises of her beauty, and all eyes were enchanted by
+her graceful demeanor, her husband alone was insensible to her charms.
+After a few days spent with the rejoicing court, amid the bowers and
+fountains of Versailles, the nuptial party departed for Paris, and
+entered the palace of the Tuileries, the scene of future sorrows such as
+few on earth have ever experienced.
+
+As Maria, in dazzling beauty, entered Paris, the whole city was in a
+delirium of pleasure. Triumphal arches greeted her progress. The
+acclamations of hundreds of thousands filled the air. The journals
+exhausted the French language in extolling her loveliness. Poets sang
+her charms, and painters vied with each other in transferring her
+features to canvas. As Maria sat in the dining saloon of the Tuileries
+at the marriage entertainment, the shouts of the immense assemblage
+thronging the gardens rendered it necessary for her to present herself
+to them upon the balcony. She stepped from the window, and looked out
+upon the vast sea of heads which filled the garden and the Place Louis
+XV. All eyes were riveted upon her as she stood before the throng upon
+the balcony in dazzling beauty, and the air resounded with applauses.
+She exclaimed, with astonishment, "What a concourse!" "Madame," said the
+governor of Paris, "I may tell you, without fear of offending the
+dauphin, that they are so many lovers." The heir apparent to the throne
+of France is called the dauphin; and, until the death of Louis XV.,
+Louis and Maria Antoinette were called the dauphin and dauphiness. Louis
+seemed neither pleased nor displeased with the acclamations and homage
+which his bride received. His singularly passionless nature led him to
+retirement and his books, and he hardly heard even the acclamations with
+which Paris was filled.
+
+Arrangements had been made for a very brilliant display of fire-works,
+in celebration of the marriage, at the Place Louis XV. The hundreds of
+thousands of that pleasure-loving metropolis thronged the Place and all
+its avenues. The dense mass was wedged as compactly as it was possible
+to crowd human beings together. Not a spot of ground was left vacant
+upon which a human foot could be planted. Every house top, every
+balcony, every embrasure of a window swarmed with the multitude. Long
+lines of omnibuses, coaches, and carriages of every description, filled
+with groups of young and old, were intermingled with the countless
+multitude--men and horses so crowded into contact that neither could
+move. It was an impervious ocean of throbbing life. In the center of
+this Place, the pride of Paris, the scene of its most triumphant
+festivities and its most unutterable woe, vast scaffolds had been
+reared, and they were burdened with fire-works, intended to surpass in
+brilliancy and sublimity any spectacle of the kind earth had ever before
+witnessed. Suddenly a bright flame was seen, a shriek was heard, and the
+whole scaffolding, by some accidental spark, was enveloped in a sheet of
+fire. Then ensued such a scene as no pen can describe and no imagination
+paint. The awful conflagration converted all the ministers of pleasure
+into messengers of death. Thousands of rockets filled the air, and, with
+almost the velocity of lightning, pierced their way through the
+shrieking, struggling, terror-stricken crowd. Fiery serpents, more
+terrible, more deadly than the fabled dragons of old, hissed through
+the air, clung to the dresses of the ladies, enveloping them in flames,
+and mercilessly burning the flesh to the bone. Mines exploded under the
+hoofs of the horses, scattering destruction and death on every side.
+Every species of fire was rained down, a horrible tempest, upon the
+immovable mass. Shrieks from the wounded and the dying filled the air;
+and the mighty multitude swayed to and fro, in Herculean, yet unavailing
+efforts to escape. The horses, maddened with terror, reared and plunged,
+crushing indiscriminately beneath their tread the limbs of the fallen.
+The young bride, in her carriage, with a brilliant retinue, and eager to
+witness the splendor of the anticipated fete, had just approached the
+Place, when she was struck with consternation at the shrieks of death
+which filled the air, and at the scene of tumult and terror which
+surrounded her. The horses were immediately turned, and driven back
+again with the utmost speed to the palace. But the awful cries of the
+dying followed her; and it was long ere she could efface from her
+distracted imagination the impression of that hour of horror.
+Fifty-three persons were killed outright by this sad casualty, and more
+than three hundred were dangerously wounded. The dauphin and dauphiness
+immediately sent their whole income for the year to the unfortunate
+relatives of those who had perished on that disastrous day.
+
+The old king was exceedingly pleased with the beauty and fascinating
+frankness and cordiality of Maria. He made her many magnificent
+presents, and, among others, with a magnificent collar of pearls, the
+smallest of which was nearly as large as a walnut, which had been
+brought into France by Anne of Austria. These praises and attentions on
+the part of the king excited the jealousy of the petted favorite, Madame
+du Barri. She consequently became, with the party under her influence,
+the relentless and unprincipled enemy of Maria. She lost no opportunity
+to traduce her character. She spread reports every where that Maria
+hated the French; that she was an Austrian in heart; that her frankness
+and freedom from the restraints of etiquette were the result of an
+immoral and depraved mind. She exaggerated her extravagance, and accused
+her, by whispers and insinuations spread far and near, of the most
+ignoble crimes of which woman can be guilty. The young and inexperienced
+dauphiness soon found herself involved in most embarrassing
+difficulties. She had no kind friend to council her. Louis still
+remained cold, distant, and reserved. Thus, week after week, month after
+month, year after year passed on, and for eight years Louis never
+approached his youthful spouse with any manifestation of confidence and
+affection but those with which he would regard a mother or a sister.
+Maria was a wife but in name. She did not share his apartment or his
+couch. Though deeply wounded by this inexplicable neglect, she seldom
+spoke of it even to her most intimate friends. The involuntary sigh, and
+the tear which often moistened her cheek, proclaimed her inward
+sufferings.
+
+When Maria first arrived in France, the Countess de Noailles was
+assigned to her as her lady of honor. She was somewhat advanced in life,
+haughty and ceremonious, a perfect mistress of that art of etiquette so
+rigidly observed in the French court. Upon her devolved the duty of
+instructing the dauphiness in all the punctilios of form, then deemed
+far more important than the requisitions of morality. The following
+anecdote, related by Madame Campan, illustrates the ridiculous excess to
+which these points of etiquette were carried. One winter's day, it
+happened that Maria Antoinette, who was entirely disrobed in her
+dressing-room, was just going to put on her body linen. Madame, the lady
+in attendance, held it ready unfolded for her. The dame d'honneur came
+in. As she was of superior rank, etiquette required that she should
+enjoy the privilege of presenting the robe. She hastily slipped off her
+gloves, took the garment, and at that moment a rustling was heard at the
+door. It was opened, and in came the Duchess d'Orleans. She now must be
+the bearer of the garment. But the laws of etiquette would not allow the
+dame d'honneur to hand the linen directly to the Duchess d'Orleans. It
+must pass down the various grades of rank to the lowest, and be
+presented by her to the highest. The linen was consequently passed back
+again from one to another, till it was placed in the hands of the
+duchess. She was just on the point of conveying it to its proper
+destination, when suddenly the door opened, and the Countess of Provence
+entered. Again the linen passed from hand to hand, till it reached the
+hands of the countess. She, perceiving the uncomfortable position of
+Maria, who sat shivering with cold, with her hands crossed upon her
+bosom, without stopping to remove her gloves, placed the linen upon the
+shoulders of the dauphiness. She, however, was quite unable to restrain
+her impatience, and exclaimed, "How disagreeable, how tiresome!"
+
+Another anecdote illustrates the character of Madame de Noailles, who
+exerted so powerful an influence upon the destiny of Maria Antoinette.
+She was a woman of severe manners, but etiquette was the very atmosphere
+she breathed; it was the soul of her existence. The slightest
+infringement of the rules of etiquette annoyed her almost beyond
+endurance. "One day," says Madame Campan, "I unintentionally threw the
+poor lady into a terrible agony. The queen was receiving, I know not
+whom--some persons just presented, I believe. The ladies of the
+bed-chamber were behind the queen. I was near the throne, with the two
+ladies on duty. All was right; at least I thought so. Suddenly I
+perceived the eyes of Madame de Noailles fixed on mine. She made a sign
+with her head, and then raised her eyebrows to the top of her forehead,
+lowered them, raised them again, and then began to make little signs
+with her hand. From all this pantomime, I could easily perceive that
+something was not as it should be; and as I looked about on all sides
+to find out what it was, the agitation of the countess kept increasing.
+Maria Antoinette, who perceived all this, looked at me with a smile. I
+found means to approach her, and she said to me, in a whisper, 'Let down
+your lappets, or the countess will expire.' All this bustle rose from
+two unlucky pins, which fastened up my lappets, while the etiquette of
+costume said _lappets hanging down_."
+
+One can easily imagine the contempt with which Maria, reared in the
+freedom of the Austrian court, would regard these punctilios. She did
+not refrain from treating them with good-natured but unsparing ridicule,
+and thus she often deeply offended those stiff elderly ladies, who
+regarded these trifles, which they had been studying all their lives,
+with almost religious awe. She gave Madame de Noailles the nickname of
+Madame Etiquette, to the great merriment of some of the courtiers and
+the great indignation of others. The more grave and stately matrons were
+greatly shocked by these indiscretions on the part of the mirth-loving
+queen.
+
+On one occasion, when a number of noble ladies were presented to Maria,
+the ludicrous appearance of the venerable dowagers, with their little
+black bonnets with great wings, and the entire of their grotesque dress
+and evolutions, appealed so impressively to Maria's sense of the
+ridiculous, that she, with the utmost difficulty, refrained from open
+laughter. But when a young marchioness, full of fun and frolic, whose
+office required that she should continue standing behind the queen,
+being tired of the ceremony, seated herself upon the floor, and,
+concealed behind the fence of the enormous hoops of the attendant
+ladies, began to play off all imaginable pranks with the ladies' hoops,
+and with the muscles of her own face, the contrast between these
+childish frolics and the stately dignity of the old dowagers so
+disconcerted the fun-loving Maria, that, notwithstanding all her efforts
+at self-control, she could not conceal an occasional smile. The old
+ladies were shocked and enraged. They declared that she had treated them
+with derision, that she had no sense of decorum, and that not one of
+them would ever attend her court again. The next morning a song
+appeared, full of bitterness which was spread through Paris. The
+following was the chorus:
+
+     "Little queen! you must not be
+     So saucy with your twenty years
+     Your ill-used courtiers soon will see
+     You pass once more the barriers."
+
+While Madame de Noailles was thus torturing Maria Antoinette with her
+exactions, the Abbe de Vermond, on the contrary, was exerting all the
+strong influence he had acquired over her mind to induce her to despise
+these requirements of etiquette, and to treat them with open contempt.
+Maria Theresa, in the spirit of independence which ever characterizes a
+strong mind, ordinarily lived like any other lady, attending
+energetically to her duties without any ostentation. She would ride
+through the streets of Vienna unaccompanied by any retinue; and the
+other members of the royal family, on all ordinary occasions, dispensed
+with the pomp and splendors of royalty. Maria Antoinette's education and
+natural disposition led her to adhere to the customs of the court of her
+ancestors. Thus was she incessantly annoyed by the diverse influences
+crowding upon her. Following, however, the bent of her own inclinations,
+she daily made herself more and more unpopular with the haughty dames
+who surrounded her.
+
+It was a very great annoyance to Maria that she was compelled to dine
+every day as a public spectacle. It must seem almost incredible to an
+American reader that such a custom could ever have existed in France.
+The arrangement was this. The different members of the royal family
+dined in different apartments: the king and queen, with such as were
+admitted to their table, in one room, the dauphin and dauphiness in
+another, and other members of the royal family in another. Portions of
+these rooms were railed off, as in court-houses, police rooms, and
+menageries, for spectators. The good, honest people from the country,
+after visiting the menageries to see the lions, tigers, and monkeys fed,
+hastened to the palace to see the king and queen take their soup. They
+were always especially delighted with the skill with which Louis XV.
+would strike off the top of his egg with one blow of his fork. This was
+the most valuable accomplishment the monarch over thirty millions of
+people possessed, and the one in which he chiefly gloried. The
+spectators entered at one door and passed out at another. No respectably
+dressed person was refused admission. The consequence was, that during
+the dining hour an interminable throng was pouring through the
+apartment; those in the advance crowded slowly along by those in the
+rear, and all eyes riveted upon the royal feeders. The members of the
+royal family of France, accustomed to this practice from infancy, did
+not regard it at all. To Maria Antoinette it was, however, excessively
+annoying, and though she submitted to it while she was dauphiness, as
+soon as she ascended the throne she discontinued the practice. The
+people felt that they were thus deprived of one of their inalienable
+privileges, and murmurs loud and angry rose against the innovating
+Austrian.
+
+Much of the time of Louis and his bride was passed at the palaces of
+Versailles. This renowned residence of the royal family of France is
+situated about ten miles from Paris, in the midst of an extensive plain.
+Until the middle of the seventeenth century it was only a small village.
+At this time Louis XIV. determined to erect upon this solitary spot a
+residence worthy of the grandeur of his throne. Seven years were
+employed in completing the palace, garden, and park. No expense was
+spared by him or his successors to render it the most magnificent
+residence in Europe. No regal mansion or city can boast a greater
+display of reservoirs, fountains, gardens, groves, cascades, and the
+various other embellishments and appliances of pleasure. The situation
+of the principal palace is on a gentle elevation. Its front and wings
+are of polished stone, ornamented with statues, and a colonnade of the
+Doric order is in the center. The grand hall is about two hundred and
+twenty feet in length, with costly decorations in marble, paintings, and
+gilding. The other apartments are of corresponding size and elegance.
+This beautiful structure is approached by three magnificent avenues,
+shaded by stately trees, leading respectively from Paris, St. Cloud, and
+Versailles.
+
+[Illustration: VERSAILLES--FRONT VIEW.]
+
+[Illustration: VERSAILLES--COURT-YARD.]
+
+This gorgeous mansion of the monarchs of France presents a front eight
+hundred feet in length, and has connected with it fifteen projecting
+buildings of spacious dimensions, decorated with Ionic columns and
+pilasters, constituting almost a city in itself. One great gallery,
+adorned with statuary, paintings, and architectural embellishments, is
+two hundred and thirty-two feet long, thirty broad, and thirty-seven
+high, and lighted by seventeen large windows. Many gorgeous saloons,
+furnished with the most costly splendor, a banqueting-room of the
+most spacious dimensions, where luxurious kings have long rioted in
+midnight revels, an opera house and a chapel, whose beautifully fluted
+pillars support a dome which is the admiration of all who look up
+upon its graceful beauty, combine to lend attractions to these royal
+abodes such as few other earthly mansions can rival, and none,
+perhaps, eclipse. The gardens, in the midst of which this voluptuous
+residence reposes, are equal in splendor to the palace they are
+intended to adorn. Here the kings of France had rioted in boundless
+profusion, and every conceivable appliance of pleasure was collected
+in these abodes, from which all thoughts of retribution were
+studiously excluded. The expense incurred in rearing and embellishing
+this princely structure has amounted to uncounted millions. But we
+must not forget that these millions were wrested from the toiling
+multitude, who dwelt in mud hovels, and ate the coarsest food, that
+their proud and licentious rulers might be "clothed in purple and fine
+linen, and fare sumptuously every day." Such was the home to which the
+beautiful Maria Antoinette, the bride of fifteen, was introduced; and
+in the midst of temptations to which such voluptuousness exposed her,
+she entered upon her dark and gloomy career. This, however, was but
+one of her abodes. It was but one even of her country seats. At
+Versailles there were other palaces, in the construction and the
+embellishment of which the revenues of the kingdom had been lavished
+and in whose luxurious chambers all the laws of God had been openly
+set at defiance by those earthly kings who ever forgot that there was
+one enthroned above them as the King of kings.
+
+[Illustration: FOUNTAINS AT VERSAILLES.]
+
+[Illustration: FOUNTAIN OF THE STAR.]
+
+Within the circuit of the park are two smaller palaces, called the
+Great and the Little Trianon. These may be called royal residences in
+miniature; seats to which the king and queen retired when desirous of
+laying aside their rank and state. The Little Trianon was a beautiful
+palace, about eighty feet square. It was built by Louis XV. for Madame
+du Barri. Its architectural style was that of a Roman pavilion, and it
+was surrounded with gardens ornamented in the highest attainments of
+French and English art, diversified with temples, cottages, and
+cascades. This was the favorite retreat of Maria Antoinette. This she
+regarded as peculiarly her home. Here she was for a time comparatively
+happy. Though living in the midst of all the jealousies, and
+intrigues, and bickerings of a court, and though in heart deeply
+pained by the strange indifference and neglect which her husband
+manifested toward her person, the buoyancy of her youthful spirit
+enabled her to triumph, in a manner, over those influences of
+depression, and she was the life and the ornament of every gay
+scene. As her mind had been but little cultivated, she had but few
+resources within herself to dispel that ennui which is the great foe
+of the votaries of fashion; and, unconscious of any other sources of
+enjoyment, she plunged with all the zest of novelty into an incessant
+round of balls, operas, theaters, and masquerades. Her mind, by
+nature, was one of the noblest texture, and by suitable culture might
+have exulted in the appreciation of all that is beautiful and sublime
+in the world of nature and in the realms of thought. She loved the
+retirement of the Little Trianon. She loved, in the comparative
+quietude of that miniature palace, of that royal home, to shake off
+all the restraints of regal state, and to live with a few choice
+friends in the freedom of a private lady. Unattended she rambled among
+the flowers of the garden; and in the bright moonlight, leaning upon
+the arm of a female friend, she forgot, as she gazed upon the moon,
+and the stars, and all the somber glories of the night, that she was a
+queen, and rejoiced in those emotions common to every ennobled spirit.
+Here she often lingered in the midst of congenial joys, till the
+murmurs of courtiers drew her away to the more exciting, but far less
+satisfying scenes of fashionable pleasure. She often lamented
+bitterly, and even with tears, her want of intellectual cultivation,
+and so painfully felt her inferiority when in the society of ladies of
+intelligence and highly-disciplined minds, that she sought to surround
+herself with those whose tastes were no more intellectual than her
+own. "What a resource," she once exclaimed, "amid the casualties of
+life, is a well-cultivated mind! One can then be one's own companion,
+and find society in one's own thoughts." Here, in her Little Trianon,
+she made several unavailing attempts to retrieve, by study, those
+hours of childhood which had been lost. But it was too late. For a few
+days, with great zeal and self-denial, she would persevere in
+secluding herself in the library with her books. But it was in vain
+for the Queen of France to strive again to become a school-girl. Those
+days had passed forever. The innumerable interruptions of her station
+frustrated all her endeavors, and she was compelled to abandon the
+attempt in sorrow and despair. We know not upon how trivial events the
+great destinies of the world are suspended; and had the Queen of
+France possessed a highly-disciplined mind--had she been familiar with
+the teachings of history, and been capable of inspiring respect by
+her intellectual attainments, it is far from impossible that she might
+have lived and died in peace. But almost the only hours of enjoyment
+which shone upon Maria while Queen of France, was when she forgot that
+she was a queen, and, like a village maiden, loitered through the
+gardens and the groves in the midst of which the Little Trianon was
+embowered.
+
+[Illustration: LITTLE TRIANON.]
+
+The enemies of Maria had sedulously endeavored to spread the report
+through France that she was still in heart an Austrian; that she loved
+only the country she had left, and that she had no affection for the
+country over which she was to reign as queen. They falsely and
+malignantly spread the report that she had changed the name of Little
+Trianon into Little Vienna. The rumor spread rapidly. It excited great
+displeasure. The indignant denials of Maria were disregarded. Thus the
+number of her enemies was steadily increasing.
+
+Another unfortunate occurrence took place, which rendered her still more
+unpopular at court. Her brother Maximilian, a vain and foolish young
+man, made a visit to his sister at the court of Versailles, not
+traveling in his own proper rank, but under an assumed name. It was
+quite common with princes of the blood-royal, for various reasons, thus
+to travel. The young Austrian prince insisted that the first visit was
+due to him from the princes of the royal family in France. They, on the
+contrary insisted that, as he was not traveling in his own name, and in
+the recognition of his own proper rank, it was their duty to regard him
+as of the character he had assumed, and as this was of a rank inferior
+to that of a royal prince, it could not be their duty to pay the first
+visit. The dispute ran high. Maria, seconded by the Abbe Vermond, took
+the part of her brother. This greatly offended many of the highest
+nobility of the realm. It became a family quarrel of great bitterness. A
+thousand tongues were busy whispering malicious accusations against
+Maria. Ribald songs to sully her name were hawked through the streets.
+Care began to press heavily upon the brow of the dauphiness, and sorrow
+to spread its pallor over her cheek. Her high spirit could not brook the
+humility of endeavoring the refutation of the calumnies urged against
+her. Still, she was too sensitive not to feel them often with the
+intensest anguish. Her husband was comparatively a stranger to her. He
+bowed to her with much civility when they met, but never addressed her
+with a word or gesture of tenderness, or manifested the least desire to
+see her alone. One evening, when walking in the garden of Little
+Trianon, he astonished the courtiers, and almost overpowered Maria with
+delightful emotions, by offering her his arm. This was the most
+affectionate act with which he had ever approached her. Such were the
+bridal days of Maria Antoinette.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+MARIA ANTOINETTE ENTHRONED.
+
+1774-1775
+
+Louis XV. seized with small-pox.--Flight of the courtiers.--The
+Marchioness du Pompadour.--Her dissolute character.--Debauchery
+of Louis XV.--He squanders the public revenue.--Remorse of the
+king.--The lamp at the window.--Death of Louis XV.--Indecent haste
+of the courtiers.--Emotions of the young king and queen.--Homage
+of the courtiers.--Burial of Louis XV.--The king and queen leave
+Versailles.--The coronation.--Enthusiasm of the people.--Maria's
+grief.--The king's estrangement.--The little peasant boy.--Becomes
+a monster of ingratitude.--The queen's traducers.--The Heron's
+Plume.--Vile slanders.--Profligate character of De Lauzun.--Execution
+of De Lauzun.--A life of pleasure.--Maria's imprudence.--Night
+adventure in a hackney-coach.--The gardens of Marly.--Their unrivaled
+splendor.--Maria's visits to Marly.--Heartless gayety.--Sunrise at
+Marly.--More food for slander.--Simple habits of the queen.--Horror
+of the courtiers and dowagers.--Sleigh riding.--Blind man's buff
+and other games.--Dramatic entertainments.--Increasing affection of
+the king.--Efforts to alienate the king's affections.--Agitation
+of the queen.--Maria's children.--Royal visitors.--Extravagant
+expenditures.--Rising discontents.--La Fayette and Franklin.--The
+people begin to count the costs.--Letter from the Empress
+Catharine.--The clouds thicken.
+
+
+In the year 1774, about four years after the marriage of Maria
+Antoinette and Louis, the dissolute old king, Louis XV., in his palace
+at Versailles, surrounded by his courtiers and his lawless pleasures,
+was taken sick. The disease soon developed itself as the small-pox in
+its most virulent form. The physicians, knowing the terror with which
+the conscience-smitten monarch regarded death, feared to inform him of
+the nature of his disease.
+
+"What are these pimples," inquired the king, "which are breaking out all
+over my body?"
+
+"They are little pustules," was the reply, "which require three days in
+forming, three in suppurating, and three in drying."
+
+The dreadful malady which had seized upon the king was soon, however,
+known throughout the court, and all fled from the infection. The
+miserable monarch, hated by his subjects, despised by his courtiers, and
+writhing under the scorpion lash of his own conscience, was left to
+groan and die alone. It was a horrible termination of a most loathsome
+life.
+
+The vices of Louis XV. sowed the seeds of the French Revolution. Two
+dissolute women, notorious on the page of history, each, in their turn,
+governed him and France. The Marchioness du Pompadour was his first
+favorite. Ambitious, shrewd, unprincipled, and avaricious, she held the
+weak-minded king entirely under her control, and spread throughout the
+court an influence so contaminating that the whole empire was infected
+with the demoralization. Upon this woman he squandered almost the
+revenues of the kingdom. The celebrated Parc au Cerf, the scene of
+almost unparalleled voluptuousness, was reared for her at an expense of
+twenty millions of dollars. After her charms had faded, she still
+contrived to retain her political influence over the pliant monarch,
+until she died, at the age of forty-four, universally detested.
+
+Madame du Barri, of whom we have before spoken, succeeded the
+Marchioness du Pompadour in this post of infamy. The king lavished upon
+her, in the short space of eight years, more than ten millions of
+dollars. For her he erected the Little Trianon, with its gardens, parks,
+and fountains, a temple of pleasure dedicated to lawless passion. The
+king had totally neglected the interests of his majestic empire,
+consecrating every moment of time to his own sensual gratification. The
+revenues of the realm were squandered in the profligacy and carousings
+of his court. The people were regarded merely as servants who were to
+toil to minister to the voluptuous indulgence of their masters. They
+lived in penury, that kings, and queens, and courtiers might revel in
+all imaginable magnificence and luxury. This was the ultimate cause of
+that terrible outbreak which eventually crushed Maria Antoinette beneath
+the ruins of the French monarchy. Louis XV., in his shameless
+debaucheries, not only expended every dollar upon which he could lay his
+hands, but at his death left the kingdom involved in a debt of four
+hundred millions of dollars, which was to be paid from the scanty
+earnings of peasants and artisans whose condition was hardly superior to
+that of the enslaved laborers on the plantations of Carolina and
+Louisiana. But I am wandering from my story.
+
+In a chamber of the palace of the Little Trianon we left the king dying
+of the confluent small-pox. The courtiers have fled in consternation.
+It is the hour of midnight, the 10th of May, 1774. The monarch of
+France is alone as he struggles with the king of terrors. No attendants
+linger around him. Two old women, in an adjoining apartment,
+occasionally look in upon the mass of corruption upon the royal couch,
+which had already lost every semblance of humanity. The eye is blinded.
+The swollen tongue can not articulate. What thought of remorse or terror
+may be rioting through the soul of the dying king, no one knows, and--no
+one cares. A lamp flickers at the window, which is a signal to those at
+a safe distance that the king still lives. Its feeble flame is to be
+extinguished the moment life departs. The courtiers, from the windows of
+the distant palace, watch with the most intense solicitude the
+glimmering of that midnight taper. Should the king recover, they dreaded
+the reproach of having deserted him in the hour of his extremity. They
+hope, so earnestly, that he may not live. Should he die, they are
+anxious to be the first in their congratulations to the new king and
+queen. The hours of the night linger wearily away as expectant courtiers
+gaze impatiently through the gloom upon that dim torch. The horses are
+harnessed in the carriages, and waiting at the doors, that the
+courtiers, without the loss of a moment, may rush to do homage to the
+new sovereign.
+
+The clock was tolling the hour of twelve at night when the lamp was
+extinguished. The miserable king had ceased to breathe. The ensuing
+scene no pen can delineate or pencil paint. The courtiers, totally
+forgetful of French etiquette, rushed down the stairs, crowded into
+their carriages, and the silence of night was disturbed by the
+clattering of the horses' hoofs, as they were urged, at their utmost
+speed, to the apartments of the dauphin.
+
+There Maria Antoinette and Louis, with a few family friends, were
+awaiting the anticipated intelligence of the death of their grandfather
+the king. Though neither of them could have cherished any feelings of
+affection for the dissolute old monarch, it was an hour to awaken in the
+soul emotions of the deepest melancholy. Death had approached, in the
+most frightful form, the spot on earth where, probably, of all others,
+he was most dreaded. Suddenly a noise was heard, as of thunder, in the
+ante-chamber of the dauphin. It was the rush of the courtiers from the
+dead monarch to bow at the shrine of the new dispensors of wealth and
+power. This extraordinary tumult, in the silence of midnight, conveyed
+to Maria and Louis the first intelligence that the crown of France had
+fallen upon their brows. Louis was then twenty-four years of age,
+modest, timid, and conscientious. Maria was twenty, mirthful,
+thoughtless, and shrinking from responsibility. They were both
+overwhelmed, and, falling upon their knees, exclaimed, with gushing
+tears, "O God! guide us, protect us; we are too young to govern."
+
+The Countess de Noailles was the first to salute Maria Antoinette as
+Queen of France. She entered the private saloon in which they were
+sitting, and requested their majesties to enter the grand audience hall,
+where the princes and all the great officers of state were anxious to do
+homage to their new sovereigns. Maria Antoinette, leaning upon her
+husband's arm, and with her handkerchief held to her eyes, which were
+bathed in tears, received these first expressions of loyalty. There was,
+however, not an individual found to mourn for the departed king. No one
+was willing to endanger his safety by any act of respect toward his
+remains. The laws of France required that the chief surgeon should open
+the body of the departed monarch and embalm it, and that the first
+gentleman of the bed-chamber should hold the head while the operation
+was performed.
+
+"You will see the body properly embalmed?" said the gentleman of the
+bed-chamber to the surgeon.
+
+"Certainly," was the reply; "and you will hold the head?"
+
+Each bowed politely to the other, without the exchange of another word.
+The body, unopened and unembalmed, was placed by a few under servants in
+a coffin, which was filled with the spirits of wine, and hurried,
+without an attendant mourner, to the tomb. Such was the earthly end of
+Louis XV. In an hour he was forgotten, or remembered but to be despised.
+
+At four o'clock of that same morning, the young king and queen, with the
+whole court in retinue, left Versailles, in their carriages, for Choisy.
+The morning was cold, dark, and cheerless. The awful death of the king,
+and the succeeding excitements, had impressed the company with gloom.
+Maria Antoinette rode in the carriage with her husband, and with one or
+two other members of the royal family. For some time they rode in
+silence, Maria, a child of impulse, weeping profusely from the emotions
+which moved her soul. But, ere long, the morning dawned. The sun rose
+bright and clear over the hills of France, and the whole beautiful
+landscape glittered in the light of the most lovely of spring mornings.
+Insensibly the gloom of the mind departed with the gloom of night.
+Conversation commenced. The mournful past was forgotten in anticipation
+of the bright future. Some jocular remark of the young king's sister
+elicited a general burst of laughter, when, by common consent, they
+wiped away their tears, banished all funereal looks, and, a merry party,
+rode merrily along, over hill and dale, to a crown and a throne. Little
+did they dream that these sunny hours and this flowery path but
+conducted them to a dungeon and the guillotine.
+
+The coronation soon took place at Rheims, with the greatest display of
+festive magnificence. The novelty of a new reign, with a youthful king
+and queen, elated the versatile French, and loud and enthusiastic were
+the acclamations with which Louis and Maria Antoinette were greeted
+whenever they appeared. They were both, for a time, very popular with
+the nation at large, though there was in the court a party hostile to
+the queen, who took advantage of every act of indiscretion to traduce
+her character and to expose her to ignominy. In these efforts they
+succeeded so effectually as to overwhelm themselves in the same ruin
+which they had brought upon their victim. A deep-seated but secret grief
+still preyed upon the heart of Maria. Though four years since her
+marriage had now passed away, she was still comparatively a stranger to
+her husband. He treated her with respect, with politeness, but with cold
+reserve, never approaching her as his wife. The queen, possessing
+naturally a very affectionate disposition, was extremely fond of
+children. Despairing of ever becoming a mother herself, she thought of
+adopting some pleasant child to be her playmate and friend. One day, as
+she was riding in her carriage, a beautiful little peasant boy, about
+five years of age, with large blue eyes and flaxen hair, got under the
+feet of the horses, though he was extricated without having received any
+injury. As the grandmother rushed from the cottage door to take the
+child, the queen, standing up in her carriage, extended her arms to the
+old woman, and said,
+
+"The child is mine. God has given it to me to rear and to cherish. Is
+his mother alive?"
+
+"No, madame!" was the reply of the old woman. "My daughter died last
+winter, and left five small children upon my hands."
+
+"I will take this one," said the queen, "and will also provide for all
+the rest. Will you consent?"
+
+"Indeed, madame," exclaimed the cottager, "they are too fortunate. But I
+fear Jemmie will not stay with you. He is very wayward."
+
+The postillion handed Jemmie to the queen in the carriage, and she,
+taking him upon her knee, ordered the coachman to drive immediately to
+the palace. The ride, however, was any thing but a pleasant one, for the
+ungoverned boy screamed and kicked with the utmost violence during the
+whole of the way. The queen was quite elated with her treasure; for the
+boy was extremely beautiful, and he was soon seen frolicking around her
+in a white frock trimmed with lace, a rose-colored sash, with silver
+fringe, and a hat decorated with feathers. I may here mention that the
+petted favorite grew up into a monster of ingratitude, and became one of
+the most sanguinary actors in the scenes of terror which subsequently
+ensued.
+
+One would think that the enemies of Maria Antoinette could hardly take
+advantage of this circumstance to her injury; but they atrociously
+affirmed that this child was her own unacknowledged offspring, whose
+ignominious birth she had concealed. They represented the whole
+adventure but a piece of trickery on her part, to obtain, without
+suspicion, possession of her own child. Such accusations were borne upon
+the wings of every wind throughout Europe, and the deeply-injured queen
+could only submit in silence.
+
+Another little incident, equally trivial, was magnified into the
+grossest of crimes. The Duke de Lauzun appeared one evening at an
+entertainment with a very magnificent plume of white heron's feathers.
+The queen casually expressed her admiration of its beauty. A lady
+immediately reported to the duke the remarks of the queen, and assured
+him that it would be a great gratification to her majesty to receive a
+present of the plume. He, the next morning, sent the plume to the queen.
+She was quite embarrassed, being unwilling to accept the plume, and yet
+fearing to wound the feelings of the duke by refusing the present. She,
+on the whole, however, concluded to retain it, and wore it _once_, that
+she might not seem to scorn the present, and then laid it aside. It
+is difficult to conceive how the queen could have conducted more
+discreetly in the affair. Such was the story of "The Heron's Plume." It
+was, however, maliciously reported through Paris that the queen was
+indecently receiving presents from gentlemen as her lovers. "The Heron's
+Plume" figured conspicuously in many a satire in prose and verse. These
+shafts, thrown from a thousand unseen hands, pierced Maria Antoinette
+to the heart. This same Duke de Lauzun, a man of noted profligacy,
+subsequently became one of the most unrelenting foes of the queen. He
+followed La Fayette to America, and then returned to Paris, to plunge,
+with the most reckless gayety, into the whirlpool of human passions
+boiling and whirling there. In the conflict of parties he became a
+victim. Condemned to death, he was imprisoned in the Conciergerie.
+Imbruted by atheism, he entered his cell with a merry song and a joke.
+He furnished a sumptuous repast for the prisoners at the hour appointed
+for his execution, and invited the jailers for his guests. When the
+executioners arrived, he smilingly accosted them. "Gentlemen, I am very
+happy to see you; just allow me to finish these nice oysters." Then,
+very politely taking a decanter of wine, he said, "Your duties will be
+quite arduous to-day, gentlemen; allow me the pleasure of taking a
+glass of wine with you." Thus merrily he ascended the cart, and beguiled
+the ride from the prison to the guillotine with the most careless
+pleasantries. Gayly tripping up the steps, he placed himself in the
+fatal instrument, and a smile was upon his lips, and mirthful words were
+falling upon the ears of the executioners, when the slide fell, and he
+was silent in death. That soul must indeed be ignoble which can thus
+enter the dread unseen of futurity.
+
+There is no end to these acts of injustice inflicted upon the queen.
+The influences which had ever surrounded her had made her very fond of
+dress and gayety. She was devoted to a life of pleasure, and was hardly
+conscious that there was any thing else to live for. In fetes, balls,
+theaters, operas, and masquerades, she passed night after night. Such
+was the only occupation of her life. The king, on the contrary, had no
+taste for any of these amusements. Uncompanionable and retiring, he
+lived with his books, and in his workshop making trinkets for children.
+Always retiring to rest at the early hour of eleven o'clock precisely,
+he left the queen to pursue her pleasures until the dawn of the morning,
+unattended by him. It was very imprudent in Maria Antoinette thus to
+expose herself to the whispers of calumny. She was young, inexperienced,
+and had no judicious advisers.
+
+One evening, she had been out in her carriage, and was returning at
+rather a late hour, the lady of the palace being with her, when her
+carriage broke down at her entrance into Paris. The queen and the
+duchess were both masked and, stepping into an adjoining shop, as they
+were unknown, the queen ordered one of the footmen to call a common
+hackney-coach, and they, both entering, drove to the opera-house, with
+very much the same sense of the ludicrous in being found in so plebeian
+a vehicle, as a New York lady would feel on passing through Broadway
+in a hand-cart or on a wheel-barrow. The fun-loving queen was so
+entertained with the whimsical adventure, that she could not refrain
+from exclaiming, as soon as she entered the opera-house, to the intimate
+friends she met there, "Only think! I came to the opera in a
+hackney-coach! Was it not droll? was it not droll?" The news of the
+indiscretion spread. All Paris was full of the adventure. Rumor, with
+her thousand tongues, added innumerable embellishments. Neither the
+delicacy nor the dignity of the queen would allow her seriously to
+attempt the refutation of the calumny that, neglected by her husband,
+she had been out in disguise to meet a nobleman renowned for his
+gallantries.
+
+Nothing can be more irksome than the frivolities of fashionable life. To
+spend night after night, of months and years, in an incessant round of
+the same trivial gayeties, so exhausts all the susceptibilities of
+enjoyment that life itself becomes a burden. Louis XIV. had created for
+himself a sort of elysium of voluptuousness in the celebrated gardens of
+Marly. Spread out upon the gentle declivity of an extended hill were
+grounds embellished in the highest style of art, and intended to rival
+the garden of Eden itself in every conceivable attraction. Pavilions of
+gorgeous architecture crowned the summit of the hill. Flowers, groves,
+enchanting walks, and statues of most voluptuous beauty, fountains,
+lakes, cascades foaming over channels of whitest marble--all the
+attractions of nature and art were combined to realize the most fanciful
+dreams of splendor and luxury. Pleasure was the only god here adored;
+but, like all false gods, he but rewarded his votaries with satiety and
+disgust.
+
+[Illustration: GARDENS OF MARLY.]
+
+The queen, with her brilliant retinue, made a monthly visit to these
+palaces and pleasure-grounds, and with music, illumination, and dances,
+endeavored to beguile life of its cares. A noisy concourse, glittering
+with diamonds and all the embellishments of wealth, thronged the
+embowered avenues and the sumptuous halls. And while the young, in the
+mazes of the dance, and in the uneasy witchery of winning and losing
+hearts, were all engrossed, the old, in the still deeper but ignoble
+passion of desperate gaming, forgot gliding time and approaching
+eternity. But the spirit of Maria was soon weary of this heartless
+gayety. Each succeeding visit became more irksome, and at last,
+in inexpressible disgust with the weary monotony of fashionable
+dissipation, she declared that she would never enter the gardens of
+Marly again. But she must have some occupation. What shall she do to
+give wings to the lagging hours?
+
+"Has your majesty," timidly suggests a lady of the court, "ever seen the
+sun rise?"
+
+"The sun rise!" exclaimed the queen; "no, never! What a beautiful sight
+it must be! What a romantic adventure! we will go to-morrow morning."
+
+The plan was immediately arranged. The prosaic king would take no part
+in it. He preferred quietly to slumber upon his pillow. A few hours
+after midnight, the queen, with several gentlemen, and her attendant
+ladies, all in high glee, left the palace in their carriages to ascend
+the lofty eminence of the gardens of Marly to witness the sublime
+spectacle. Thousands of the humbler classes had already left their beds
+and commenced their daily toil, as the brilliant cavalcade swept by
+them on this novel excursion. It was, however, a freak so strange, so
+unaccountable, so contrary to any thing ever known before, that this
+nocturnal party became the theme of universal conversation. It was
+whispered that there must have been some mysterious wickedness connected
+with an adventure so marvelous. Groups upon the Boulevards inquired,
+"Why is the queen thus frolicking at midnight without her husband?" In
+a few days a ballad appeared, which was sung by the vilest lips in the
+warehouses of infamy, full of the most malignant charges against the
+queen. Maria Antoinette was imprudent, very imprudent, and that was her
+only crime.
+
+Still, the young queen must have amusements. She is weary of parade and
+splendor and seeks in simplicity the novelty of enjoyment. Dressed in
+white muslin, with a plain straw hat, and a little switch in her hand,
+she might often be seen walking on foot, followed by a single servant,
+through the embowered paths which surrounded the Petit Trianon. Through
+lanes and by-ways she would chase the butterfly, and pick flowers free
+as a peasant girl, and lean over the fences to chat with the country
+maids as they milked the cows. This entire freedom from restraint was
+etiquette in the court of Vienna; it was regarded as barbarism in the
+court of Versailles. The courtiers were amazed at conduct so unqueenly.
+The ceremony-stricken dowagers were shocked. Paris, France, Europe, were
+filled with stories of the waywardness, and eccentricities, and
+improprieties of the young queen. The loud complaints were poured so
+incessantly in the ear of Maria Theresa, that at last she sent a special
+embassador to Versailles, in disguise, as a spy upon her daughter. He
+reported, "The queen is imprudent, that is all."
+
+There happened, in a winter of unusual inclemency, a heavy fall of snow.
+It was a rare sight at Versailles. Maria Antoinette, reminded of the
+merry sleigh rides she had enjoyed in the more northern home of her
+childhood, was eager to renew the pleasure. Some antiquated sledges
+were found in the stables. New ones, gay and graceful, were constructed.
+The horses, with nodding plumes, and gorgeous caparisons, and tinkling
+bells, dazzled the eyes of the Parisians as they swept through the
+Champs Elysees, drawing their loads of lords and ladies enveloped in
+furs. It was a new amusement--an innovation. Envious and angry lips
+declared that "the Austrian, with an Austrian heart, was intruding the
+customs of Vienna upon Paris." These ungenerous complaints reached the
+ear of the queen, and she instantly relinquished the amusement.
+
+Still the queen is weary. Time hangs heavily upon her hands. All the
+pleasures of the court have palled upon her appetite, and she seeks
+novelty. She introduces into the retired apartments of the Little
+Trianon, "blind man's buff," "fox and geese," and other similar games,
+and joins heartily in the fun and the frolic. "A queen playing blind
+man's buff!" Simpletons--and the world is full of simpletons--raised
+their hands and eyes in affected horror. Private dramatic entertainments
+were got up to relieve the tedium of unemployed time. The queen learns
+her part, and appears in the character and costume of a peasant girl.
+Her genius excites much admiration, and, intoxicated with this new
+pleasure, she repeats the entertainment, and alike excels in all
+characters, whether comic or tragic. The number of spectators is
+gradually increased. Louis is not exactly pleased to see his queen
+transformed into an actress, even in the presence only of the most
+intimate friends of the court. Half jocosely, half seriously, amid the
+rounds of applause with which the royal actress is greeted, he hisses.
+It was deemed extremely derogatory to the dignity of the queen that she
+should indulge in such amusements, and every gossiping tongue in Paris
+was soon magnifying her indiscretions.
+
+Eight years had now passed away since the marriage of Maria Antoinette,
+and still she was in name only, the wife of Louis. She was still a young
+lady, for he had never yet approached her with any familiarity with
+which he would not approach any young lady of his court. But about this
+time the king gradually manifested more tenderness toward her. He began
+really and tenderly to love her. With tears of joy, she confided to her
+friends the great change which had taken place in his conduct. The
+various troubles and embarrassments which began now to lower about the
+throne and to darken their path, bound their sympathies more strongly
+together. Strenuous efforts were made to alienate the king from the
+queen by exciting his jealousy. Maria was accused of the grossest
+immoralities, and insinuations to her injury were ever whispered in to
+the ear of the king.
+
+One morning Madame Campan entered the queen's chamber when she was in
+bed. Several letters were lying upon the bed by her side, and she was
+weeping as though her heart would break. She immediately exclaimed,
+covering her swollen eyes with her hands, "Oh! I wish that I were dead!
+I wish that I were dead! The wretches! the monsters! what have I done
+that they should treat me thus! it would be better to kill me at once."
+Then, throwing her arms around the neck of Madame Campan, she burst more
+passionately into tears. All attempts to console her were unavailing.
+Neither was she willing to confide the cause of her heart-rending grief.
+After some time she regained her usual serenity, and said, with an
+attempted smile, "I know that I have made you very uncomfortable this
+morning, and I must set your poor heart at ease. You must have seen, on
+some fine summer's day, a black cloud suddenly appear, and threaten to
+pour down upon the country and lay it in waste. The lightest wind drives
+it away, and the blue sky and serene weather are restored. This is just
+the image of what has happened to me this morning."
+
+Notwithstanding, however, these efforts of the malignant, the king
+became daily more and more strongly attached to the queen. In the
+embarrassments which were gathering around him, he felt the support
+of her energetic mind, and looked to her counsel with continually
+increasing confidence. It was about nine years after their marriage when
+their first child was born. Three others were subsequently added to
+their family. Two, however, of the children, a son and a daughter, died
+in early childhood, leaving two others, Maria Theresa and Louis Charles,
+to share and to magnify those woes which subsequently overwhelmed the
+whole royal family.
+
+During all these early years of their reign, Versailles was their
+favorite and almost constant abode. They were visited occasionally by
+monarchs from the other courts of Europe, whom they entertained with the
+utmost display of royal grandeur. Bonfires and illuminations turned
+night into day in the groves and gardens of those gorgeous palaces.
+Thousands were feasted in boundless profusion. Millions of money were
+expended in the costly amusements of kings, and queens, and haughty
+nobles. The people, by whose toil the revenues of the kingdom were
+furnished, looked from a humble distance upon the glittering throng,
+gliding through the avenues, charioted in splendor, and now and then
+a deep thinker, struggling against poverty and want, would thus
+soliloquize: "Why do we thus toil to minister to the useless luxury of
+these our imperious masters? Why must I eat black bread, and be clothed
+in the coarsest garments, that these lords and ladies may glitter in
+jewelry and revel in luxury? Why must my children toil like bond slaves
+through life, that the children of these nobles may be clothed in purple
+and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day?" The multitude were
+bewildered by the glare of royalty. But here and there a sullen
+fish-woman, leading her ragged, half-starved children, would mumble and
+mutter, and curse the "Austrian," as the beautiful queen swept by in
+her gorgeous equipage. These discontents and portentous murmurs were
+spreading rapidly, when neither king, queen, nor courtiers dreamed of
+their existence.
+
+A few had heard of America, its freedom, its equality, its fame even for
+the poorest, its competence. La Fayette had gone to help the Republicans
+crush the crown and the throne. Franklin was in Paris, the embassador
+from America, in garb and demeanor as simple and frugal as the humblest
+citizen, and all Paris gazed upon him with wonder and admiration. A few
+bold spirits began to whisper, "Let us also have no king." The fires of
+a volcano were kindling under the whole structure of French society. It
+was time that the mighty fabric of corruption should be tumbled into the
+dust. The splendor and the extravagance of these royal festivities added
+but fuel to the flame. The people began to compute the expense of
+bonfires, palaces, equipages, crown jewels, and courtiers. It is
+extremely impertinent, Maria thought and said, for the people to meddle
+in matters with which they have no concern. Slaves have no right to
+question the conduct of their masters. It was the misfortune of her
+education, and of the influences which ever surrounded her, that she
+never imagined that kings and queens were created for any other purpose
+than to live in luxury. The Empress Catharine II. of Russia, as these
+discontents were loud and threatening wrote to Maria Antoinette a
+letter, in which she says, "Kings and queens ought to proceed in their
+career undisturbed by the cries of the people, as the moon pursues her
+course unimpeded by the howling of dogs." This was then the spirit of
+the throne.
+
+And now the days of calamity began to grow darker. Intrigues were
+multiplied, involving Maria in interminable difficulties. There were
+instinctive presentiments of an approaching storm. Death came into the
+royal palace, and distorted the form of her eldest son, and by lingering
+tortures dragged him to the grave. And then her little daughter was
+taken from her. Maria watched at the couch of suffering and death with
+maternal anguish. The glowing heart of a mother throbbed within the
+bosom of Maria. The heartlessness and emptiness of all other pursuits
+had but given intensity to the fervor of a mother's love. Though but
+twenty-three years of age, she had drained every cup of pleasure to its
+dregs. And now she began to enter upon a path every year more dark,
+dreary, and desolate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE DIAMOND NECKLACE.
+
+1786
+
+Remark of Talleyrand.--The Cardinal de Rohan.--Rohan's smuggling
+operations.--He is disgraced.--The Countess Lamotte.--The queen's
+jewelry.--Boehmer, the crown jeweler.--The diamond ear-rings.--Change
+in the queen's life.--The diamond necklace.--The queen inspects the
+necklace.--Answer of their majesties.--Boehmer's embarrassment.--His
+interview with the queen.--The queen's remarks.--Boehmer's
+confusion.--Alleged disposal of the necklace.--Present to the king's
+son.--Boehmer's note to the queen.--The queen's perplexity.--Boehmer's
+interview with Madame Campan.--The necklace again.--The Cardinal de
+Rohan.--Indications of a plot.--Boehmer's perplexity.--The cardinal's
+embarrassment.--Boehmer's terror.--The queen's amazement.--The
+cardinal before the king and queen.--His agitation.--The queen's
+indignation.--The forged letter.--The cardinal's confused
+statements.--He is arrested.--Arrest of Madame Lamotte.--Great
+excitement.--The queen's anguish.--The cardinal's trial.--The cardinal's
+acquittal.--Chagrin of the king and queen.--Trial of the Countess
+Lamotte.--Her cool effrontery.--The countess found guilty.--Barbarous
+sentence.--Brutal punishment of the countess.--Her unhappy
+end.--Innocence of the queen.--Of de Rohan's criminality.--The three
+suppositions.--Influence of the first.--The third supposition.--Probably
+the true one.
+
+
+About this time there occurred an event which, though apparently
+trivial, involved consequences of the most momentous importance. It was
+merely the fraudulent purchase of a necklace, by a profligate woman, in
+the name of the queen. The circumstances were such as to throw all
+France into agitation, and Europe was full of the story. "Mind that
+miserable affair of the necklace," said Talleyrand; "I should be nowise
+surprised if it should overturn the French monarchy." To understand this
+mysterious occurrence, we must first allude to two very important
+characters implicated in the conspiracy.
+
+The Cardinal de Rohan, though one of the highest dignitaries of the
+Church, and of the most illustrious rank, was a young man of vain and
+shallow mind, of great profligacy of character, and perfectly prodigal
+in squandering, in ostentatious pomp, all the revenues within his reach.
+He had been sent an embassador to the court of Vienna. Surrounding
+himself with a retinue of spendthrift gentlemen, he endeavored to dazzle
+the Austrian capital with more than regal magnificence. Expending six or
+seven hundred thousand dollars in the course of a few months, he soon
+became involved in inextricable embarrassments. In the extremity of his
+distress, he took advantage of his official station, and engaged in
+smuggling with so much effrontery that he almost inundated the Austrian
+capital with French goods. Maria Theresa was extremely displeased, and,
+without reserve, expressed her strong disapproval of his conduct, both
+as a bishop and as an embassador. The cardinal was consequently
+recalled, and, disappointed and mortified, he hovered around the court
+of Versailles, where he was treated with the utmost coldness. He was
+extremely anxious again to bask in the beams of royal favor. But the
+queen indignantly repelled all his advances. His proud spirit was
+nettled to the quick by his disgrace, and he was ripe for any desperate
+adventure to retrieve his ruined fortunes.
+
+There was, at the same time, at Versailles a very beautiful woman, the
+Countess Lamotte. She traced her lineage to the kings of France, and, by
+her vices, struggled to sustain a style of ostentatious gentility. She
+was consumed by an insatiable thirst for recognized rank and wealth, and
+she had no conscience to interfere, in the slightest degree, with any
+means which might lead to those results. Though somewhat notorious, as
+a woman of pleasure, to the courtiers who flitted around the throne,
+the queen had never seen her face, and had seldom heard even her name.
+Versailles was too much thronged with such characters for any one to
+attract any special attention.
+
+Maria Antoinette, in her earlier days, had been extremely fond of dress,
+and particularly of rich jewelry. She brought with her from Vienna a
+large number of pearls and diamonds. Upon her accession to the throne,
+she received, of course, all the crown jewels. Louis XV. had also
+presented her with all the jewels belonging to his daughter, the
+dauphiness, who had recently died, and also with a very magnificent
+collar of pearls, of a single row, the smallest of which was as large
+as a filbert. The king, her husband, had, not long before, presented
+her with a set of rubies and diamonds of a fine water, and with a pair
+of bracelets which cost forty thousand dollars. Boehmer, the crown
+jeweler, had collected, at a great expense, six pear-formed diamonds,
+of prodigious size. They were perfectly matched, and of the finest
+water. They were arranged as ear-rings. He offered them to the queen for
+eighty thousand dollars. The young and royal bride could not resist the
+desire of adding them, costly as they were, to her casket of gems. She,
+however, economically removed two of the diamonds which formed the
+tops of the clusters, and replaced them by two of her own. The jeweler
+consented to this arrangement, and received the reduced price of
+seventy-two thousand dollars, to be paid in equal installments for five
+years, from the private purse of the queen. Still the queen felt rather
+uneasy in view of her unnecessary purchase. Murmurs of her extravagance
+began to reach her ears. Satiated with gayety and weary of jewels, as a
+child throws aside its play-things, Maria Antoinette lost all fondness
+for her costly treasures, and began to seek novelty in the utmost
+simplicity of attire, and in the most artless joys of rural life. Her
+gorgeous dresses hung neglected in their wardrobes. Her gems, "of purest
+ray serene," slept in the darkness of the unopened casket. The queen had
+become a mother, and all those warm and noble affections which had been
+diffused and wasted upon frivolities, were now concentrated with
+intensest ardor upon her children. A new era had dawned upon Maria
+Antoinette. Her soul, by nature exalted, was beginning to find objects
+worthy of its energies. Rapidly she was groping her way from the
+gloom of the most wretched of all lives--a life of pleasure and of
+self-indulgence--to the true and ennobling happiness of benevolence
+and self-sacrifice.
+
+Boehmer, the jeweler, unaware of the great change which had taken
+place in the character of the queen, resolved to form for her the most
+magnificent necklace which was ever seen in Europe. He busied himself
+for several years in collecting the most valuable diamonds circulating
+in commerce, and thus composed a necklace of several rows, whose
+attractions, he hoped, would be irresistible to the queen. In the
+purchase of these brilliant gems, the jeweler had expended far more than
+his own fortune. For many of them he owed large sums, and his only hope
+of paying these debts was in effecting a sale to the queen.
+
+Boehmer requested Madame Campan to inform the queen what a beautiful
+necklace he had arranged, hoping that she might express a desire to see
+it. This, however, Madame Campan declined doing, as she did not wish to
+tempt the queen to incur the expense of three hundred and twenty
+thousand dollars, the price of the glittering bawble. Boehmer, after
+endeavoring for some time in vain to get the gems exposed to the eye of
+the queen, induced a courtier high in rank to show the superb necklace
+to his majesty. The king, now loving the queen most tenderly, wished to
+see her adorned with this unparalleled ornament, and sent the case to
+the queen for her inspection. Maria Antoinette replied, that she had
+already as many beautiful diamonds as she desired; that jewels were now
+worn but seldom at court; that she could not think it right to encourage
+so great an expense for such ornaments; and that the money they would
+cost would be much better expended in building a man-of-war. The king
+concurred in this prudent decision, and the diamonds were returned to
+the jeweler from their majesties with this answer: "We have more need of
+ships than of diamonds."
+
+Boehmer was in great trouble, and knew not what to do. He spent a year
+in visiting the other courts of Europe, hoping to induce some of the
+sovereigns to purchase his necklace, but in vain. Almost in despair, he
+returned again to Versailles, and proposed the king should take it, and
+pay for it partly in instalments and partly in life annuities. The king
+mentioned it again to the queen. She replied, that if his majesty wished
+to purchase the necklace, and keep it for their daughter, he might do
+so. But she declared that she herself should never be willing to wear
+it, for she could not expose herself to those censures for extravagance
+which she knew would be lavished upon her.
+
+The jeweler complained loudly and bitterly of his misfortune. The
+necklace having been exhibited all over Europe, his troubles were a
+matter of general conversation. After several months of great perplexity
+and anxiety, Boehmer succeeded in gaining an audience of the queen.
+Passionately throwing himself upon his knees before her, clasping his
+hands and bursting into tears, he exclaimed,
+
+"Madame, I am disgraced and ruined if you do not purchase my necklace. I
+can not outlive my misfortunes. When I go hence I shall throw myself
+into the river."
+
+The queen, extremely displeased, said, "Rise, Boehmer! I do not like
+these rhapsodies; honest men have no occasion to fall upon their knees
+to make known their requests. If you were to destroy yourself, I should
+regret you as a madman in whom I had taken an interest, but I should not
+be responsible for that misfortune. I not only never ordered the article
+which causes your present despair, but, whenever you have talked to me
+about fine collections of jewels, I have told you that I should not add
+four diamonds to those I already possessed. I told you myself that I
+declined taking the necklace. The king wished to give it to me; I
+refused him in the same manner. Then never mention it to me again.
+Divide it, and endeavor to sell it piecemeal, and do not drown yourself.
+I am very angry with you for acting this scene of despair in my
+presence, and before this child. Let me never see you behave thus again.
+Go!"
+
+Boehmer, overwhelmed with confusion, retired, and the queen, oppressed
+with a multitude of gathering cares, for some months thought no more of
+him or of his jewels. One day the queen was reposing listlessly upon her
+couch, with Madame Campan and other ladies of honor about her, when,
+suddenly addressing Madame Campan, she inquired,
+
+"Have you ever heard what poor Boehmer did with his unfortunate
+necklace?"
+
+"I have heard nothing of it since he left you," was the reply, "though
+I often meet him."
+
+"I should really like to know how the unfortunate man got extricated
+from his embarrassments," rejoined the queen; "and, when you next see
+him, I wish you would inquire, as if from your own interest in the
+affair, without any allusion to me, how he disposed of the article."
+
+In a few days Madame Campan met Boehmer, and, in reply to her
+interrogatories, he informed her that the sultan at Constantinople had
+purchased it for the favorite sultana. The queen was highly gratified
+with the good fortune of the jeweler, and yet thought it very strange
+how the grand seignior should have purchased his diamonds at Paris.
+Matters continued in this state for some time, until the baptism of the
+Duke d'Angouleme, Maria Antoinette's infant son. The king made his
+idolized boy a baptismal present of a diamond epaulette and buckles,
+which he purchased of Boehmer, and directed him to deliver to the
+queen. As the jeweler presented them, he slipped into the queen's hand a
+letter, in the form of a petition, containing the following expression:
+
+     "I am happy to see your majesty in the possession of the
+     finest diamonds in Europe; and I entreat your majesty not to
+     forget me."
+
+The queen read this strange note aloud, again and again exclaiming,
+"What does the man mean? He must be insane!" She quietly lighted the
+note at a wax taper which was standing near her, and burned it,
+remarking that it was not worth keeping. Afterward, as she reflected
+more upon the enigmatical nature of the communication, she deeply
+regretted that she had not preserved the note. She pondered the matter
+deeply and anxiously, and at last said to Madame Campan,
+
+"The next time you see that man, I wish that you would tell him that I
+have lost all taste for diamonds; that I never shall buy another as long
+as I live; and that, if I had any money to spare, I should expend it in
+purchasing lands to enlarge the grounds at St. Cloud."
+
+A few days after this, Boehmer called upon Madame Campan at her
+country house, extremely uneasy at not having received any answer from
+the queen, and anxiously inquired if Madame Campan had no commission to
+him from her majesty. Madame Campan faithfully repeated to him all that
+the queen had requested her to say.
+
+"But," rejoined Boehmer, "the answer to the letter I presented to her!
+To whom must I apply for that?"
+
+"To no one," was the reply; "her majesty burned your memorial, without
+even comprehending its meaning."
+
+"Ah, madame!" exclaimed the man, trembling with agitation, "that is
+impossible; the queen knows that she has money to pay me."
+
+"Money, M. Boehmer!" replied the lady, "your last accounts against the
+queen were discharged long ago."
+
+"And are you not in the secret?" he rejoined. "The queen owes me three
+hundred thousand dollars, and I am ruined by her neglect to pay me."
+
+"Three hundred thousand dollars!" exclaimed Madame Campan, in amazement;
+"man, you have lost your senses! For what does she owe you that enormous
+sum?"
+
+"For the necklace, madame," replied the jeweler, now pale and trembling
+with the apprehension that he had been deceived.
+
+"The necklace again!" said Madame Campan. "How long is the queen to be
+teased about that necklace? Did not you yourself tell me that you had
+sold it at Constantinople?"
+
+"The queen," added Boehmer, "requested me to make that reply to all
+who inquired upon the subject, for she was not willing to have it known
+that she had made the purchase. She, however, had determined to have the
+necklace, and sent the Cardinal de Rohan to me to take it in her name."
+
+"You are utterly deceived, Boehmer," Madame Campan replied; "the queen
+knows nothing about your necklace. She never speaks even to the Cardinal
+de Rohan, and there is no man at court more strongly disliked by her."
+
+"You may depend upon it, madame, that you are deceived yourself,"
+rejoined the jeweler. "She must hold private interviews with the
+cardinal, for she gave to the cardinal six thousand dollars, which he
+paid me on account, and which he assured me he saw her take from the
+little porcelain secretary next the fire-place in her boudoir."
+
+"Did the cardinal himself assure you of this?" inquired Madame Campan.
+
+"Yes, madame," was the reply.
+
+"What a detestable plot! There is not one word of truth in it; and you
+have been miserably deceived."
+
+"I confess," Boehmer rejoined, now trembling in every joint, "that I
+have felt very anxious about it for some time; for the cardinal assured
+me that the queen would wear the necklace on Whitsunday. I was, however,
+alarmed in seeing that she did not wear it, and that induced me to write
+the letter to her majesty. But what _shall_ I do?"
+
+"Go immediately to Versailles, and lay the whole matter before the king.
+But you have been extremely culpable, as crown jeweler, in acting in a
+matter of such great importance without direct orders from the king or
+queen, or their accredited minister."
+
+"I have not acted," the unhappy man replied, "without direct orders. I
+have now in my possession all the promissory notes, signed by the queen
+herself; and I have been obliged to show those notes to several bankers,
+my creditors, to induce them to extend the time of my payments."
+
+Instead, however, of following Madame Campan's judicious advice,
+Boehmer, half delirious with solicitude, went directly to the
+cardinal, and informed him of all that had transpired. The cardinal
+appeared very much embarrassed, asked a few questions, and said but
+little. He, however, wrote in his diary the following memorandum:
+
+    "On this day, August 3, Boehmer went to Madame Campan's
+    country-house, and she told him that the queen had never had
+    his necklace, and that he had been cheated."
+
+Boehmer was almost frantic with terror, for the loss of the necklace
+was his utter and irremediable ruin. Finding no relief in his interview
+with the cardinal, he hastened to Little Trianon, and sent a message
+to the queen that Madame Campan wished him to see her immediately.
+The queen, who knew nothing of the occurrences we have just related,
+exclaimed, "That man is surely mad. I have nothing to say to him, and I
+will not see him." Madame Campan, however, immediately called upon the
+queen, for she was very much alarmed by what she had heard, and related
+to her the whole occurrence. The queen was exceedingly amazed and
+perplexed, and feared that it was some deep-laid plot to involve her in
+difficulties. She questioned Madame Campan very minutely in reference
+to every particular of the interview, and insisted upon her repeating
+the conversation over and over again. They then went immediately to
+the king, and narrated to him the whole affair. He, aware of the
+many efforts which had been made to traduce the character of Maria
+Antoinette, and to expose her to public contumely, was at once convinced
+that it was a treacherous plot of the cardinal in revenge for his
+neglect at court.
+
+The king instantly sent a command for the cardinal to meet him and the
+queen in the king's closet. He was, apparently, anticipating the
+summons, for he, without delay, appeared before them in all the pomp of
+his pontifical robes, but was nevertheless so embarrassed that he could
+with difficulty articulate a sentence.
+
+"You have purchased diamonds of Boehmer?" inquired the king.
+
+"Yes, sire," was the trembling reply.
+
+"What have you done with them?" the king added.
+
+"I thought," said the cardinal, "that they had been delivered to the
+queen."
+
+"Who commissioned you to make this purchase?"
+
+"The Countess Lamotte," was the reply. "She handed me a letter from the
+queen requesting me to obtain the necklace for her. I truly thought that
+I was obeying her majesty's wishes, and doing her a favor, by taking
+this business upon myself."
+
+"How could you imagine, sir," indignantly interrupted the queen, "that
+I should have selected _you_ for such a purpose, when I have not even
+spoken to you for eight years? and how could you suppose that I should
+have acted through the mediation of such a character as the Countess
+Lamotte?"
+
+The cardinal was in the most violent agitation, and, apparently hardly
+knowing what he said, replied, "I see plainly that I have been duped. I
+will pay for the necklace myself. I suspected no trick in the affair,
+and am extremely sorry that I have had any thing to do with it."
+
+He then took a letter from his pocket directed to the Countess Lamotte,
+and signed with the queen's name, requesting her to secure the purchase
+of the necklace. The king and queen looked at the letter, and instantly
+pronounced it a forgery. The king then took from his own pocket a letter
+addressed to the jeweler Boehmer, and, handing it to de Rohan, said,
+
+"Are you the author of that letter?"
+
+The cardinal turned pale, and, leaning upon his hand, appeared as though
+he would fall to the floor.
+
+"I have no wish, cardinal," the king kindly replied, "to find you
+guilty. Explain to me this enigma. Account for all those maneuvers with
+Boehmer. Where did you obtain these securities and these promissory
+notes, signed in the queen's name, which have been given to Boehmer?"
+
+The cardinal, trembling in every nerve, faintly replied, "Sire, I am too
+much agitated now to answer your majesty. Give me a little time to
+collect my thoughts."
+
+"Compose yourself, then, cardinal," the king added. "Go into my cabinet.
+You will there find papers, pens, and ink. At your leisure, _write_ what
+you have to say to me."
+
+In about half an hour the cardinal returned with a paper, covered with
+erasures, and alterations, and blottings, as confused and unsatisfactory
+as his verbal statements had been. An officer was then summoned into the
+royal presence, and commanded to take the cardinal into custody and
+conduct him to the Bastile. He was, however, permitted to visit his
+home. The cardinal contrived, by the way, to scribble a line upon a
+scrap of paper, and, catching the eye of a trusty servant, he,
+unobserved, slipped it into his hand. It was a direction to the servant
+to hasten to the palace, with the utmost possible speed, and commit to
+the flames all of his private papers. The king had also sent officers
+to the cardinal's palace to seize his papers and seal them for
+examination. By almost superhuman exertions, the cardinal's servant
+first arrived at the palace, which was at the distance of several miles.
+His horse dropped dead in the court-yard. The important documents, which
+might, perhaps, have shed light upon this mysterious affair, were all
+consumed.
+
+The Countess Lamotte was also arrested, and held in close confinement to
+await her trial. She had just commenced living in a style of
+extraordinary splendor, and had vast sums at her disposal, acquired no
+one knew how. It is difficult to imagine the excitement which this story
+produced all over Europe. It was represented that the queen was found
+engaged in a swindling transaction with a profligate woman to cheat the
+crown jeweler out of gems of inestimable value, and that, being
+detected, she was employing all the influence of the crown to shield her
+own reputation by consigning the innocent cardinal to infamy. The
+enemies of the queen, sustained by the ecclesiastics generally, rallied
+around the cardinal. The king and queen, feeling that his acquittal
+would be the virtual condemnation of Maria Antoinette, and firmly
+convinced of his guilt, exerted their utmost influence, in self-defense,
+to bring him to punishment. Rumors and counter rumors floated through
+Versailles, Paris, and all the courts of the Continent. The tale was
+rehearsed in saloon and cafe with every conceivable addition and
+exaggeration, and the queen hardly knew which way to turn from the
+invectives which were so mercilessly showered upon her. Her lofty
+spirit, conscious of rectitude, sustained her in public, and there she
+nerved herself to appear with firmness and equanimity. But in the
+retirement of her boudoir she was unable to repel the most melancholy
+imaginings, and often wept with almost the anguish of a bursting heart.
+The sunshine of her life had now disappeared. Each succeeding day grew
+darker and darker with enveloping glooms.
+
+The trial of the cardinal continued, with various interruptions, for
+more than a year. Very powerful parties were formed for and against him.
+All France was agitated by the protracted contest. The cardinal appeared
+before his judges in mourning robes, but with all the pageantry of the
+most imposing ecclesiastical costume. He was conducted into court with
+much ceremony, and treated with the greatest deference. In the trying
+moment in which he first appeared before his judges, his courage seemed
+utterly to fail him. Pale and trembling with emotion, his knees bent
+under him, and he had to cling to a support to prevent himself from
+falling to the floor. Five or six voices immediately addressed him in
+tones of sympathy, and the president said, "His eminence the cardinal is
+at liberty to sit down, if he wishes it." The distinguished prisoner
+immediately took his seat with the members of the court. Having soon
+recovered in some degree his composure, he arose, and for half an hour
+addressed his judges, with much feeling and dignity, repeating his
+protestations of entire innocence in the whole affair.
+
+At the close of this protracted trial, the cardinal was fully acquitted
+of all guilt by a majority of three voices. The king and queen were
+extremely chagrined at this result. During the trial, many insulting
+insinuations were thrown out against the queen which could not easily be
+repelled. A friend who called upon her immediately after the decision,
+found her in her closet weeping bitterly. "Come," said Maria, "come and
+weep for your queen, insulted and sacrificed by cabal and injustice."
+The king came in at the same moment, and said, "You find the queen much
+afflicted; she has great reason to be so. They were determined through
+out this affair to see only an ecclesiastical prince, a Prince de Rohan,
+while he is, in fact, a needy fellow, and all this was but a scheme to
+put money into his pockets. It is not necessary to be an Alexander to
+cut this Gordian knot." The cardinal subsequently emigrated to Germany,
+where he lived in comparative obscurity till 1803, when he died.
+
+The Countess Lamotte was brought to trial, but with a painfully
+different result. Dressed in the richest and most costly robes, the
+dissolute beauty appeared before her judges, and astonished them all by
+her imperturbable self-possession, her talents, and her cool effrontery.
+It was clearly proved that she had received the necklace; that she had
+sold here and there the diamonds of which it was composed, and had thus
+come into possession of large sums of money. She told all kinds of
+stories, contradicting herself in a thousand ways, accusing now one and
+again another as an accomplice, and unblushingly declaring that she had
+no intention to tell the truth, for that neither she nor the cardinal
+had uttered one single word before the court which had not been false.
+She was found guilty, and the following horrible sentence was pronounced
+against her: that she should be whipped upon the bare back in the
+court-yard of the prison; that the letter V should be burned into the
+flesh on each shoulder with a hot iron; and that she should be
+imprisoned for life. The king and queen were as much displeased with the
+terrible barbarity of the punishment of the countess as they were
+chagrined at the acquittal of the cardinal. As the countess was a
+descendant of the royal family, they felt that the ignominious character
+of the punishment was intended as a stigma upon them.
+
+As the countess was sitting one morning in the spacious room provided
+for her in the prison, in a loose robe, conversing gayly with some
+friends, and surrounded by all the appliances of wealth, an attendant
+appeared to conduct her into the presence of the judges. Totally
+unprepared for the awful doom impending over her, she rose with careless
+alacrity and entered the court. The terrible sentence was pronounced.
+Immediately terror, rage, and despair seized upon her, and a scene of
+horror ensued which no pen can describe. Before the sentence was
+finished, she threw herself upon the floor, and uttered the most
+piercing shrieks and screams. The tumult of agitation into which she was
+thrown, dreadful as it was, relaxed not the stern rigor of the law. The
+executioner immediately seized her, and dragged her, shrieking and
+struggling in a delirium of phrensy, into the court-yard of the prison.
+As her eye fell upon the instruments of her ignominious and brutal
+punishment, she seized upon one of her executioners with her teeth, and
+tore a mouthful of flesh from his arm. She was thrown upon the ground,
+her garments, with relentless violence, were stripped from her back, and
+the lash mercilessly cut its way into her quivering nerves, while her
+awful screams pierced the damp, chill air of the morning. The hot irons
+were brought, and simmered upon her recoiling flesh. The unhappy
+creature was then carried, mangled and bleeding, and half dead with
+torture, and terror, and madness, to the prison hospital. After nine
+months of imprisonment she was permitted to escape. She fled to England,
+and was found one morning dead upon the pavements of London, having been
+thrown from a third story window in a midnight carousal.
+
+Such was the story of the Diamond Necklace. Though no one can now doubt
+that Maria Antoinette was perfectly innocent in the whole affair, it, at
+the time, furnished her enemies with weapons against her, which they
+used with fatal efficiency. It was then represented that the Countess
+Lamotte was an accomplice of the queen in the fraudulent acquisition of
+the necklace, and that the Cardinal de Rohan was their deluded but
+innocent victim. The horrible punishment of Madame Lamotte, who boasted
+that royal blood circulated in her veins, was understood to be in
+contempt of royalty, and as the expression of venomous feeling toward
+the queen. Both Maria Antoinette and Louis felt it as such, and were
+equally aggrieved by the acquittal of the cardinal and the barbarous
+punishment of the countess.
+
+Whether the cardinal was a victim or an accomplice is a question which
+never has been, and now never can be, decided. The mystery in which the
+affair is involved must remain a mystery until the secrets of all hearts
+are revealed at the great day of judgment. If he was the guilty
+instigator, and the poor countess but his tool and victim, how much has
+he yet to be accountable for in the just retributions of eternity! There
+were three suppositions adopted by the community in the attempt to
+solve the mystery of this transaction:
+
+     1. The first was, that the queen had really employed the
+     Countess Lamotte to obtain the necklace by deceiving the
+     cardinal. That it was a trick by which the queen and the
+     countess were to obtain the necklace, and, by selling it
+     piecemeal, to share the spoil, leaving the cardinal
+     responsible for the payment. This was the view the enemies
+     of Maria Antoinette, almost without exception, took of the
+     case; and the sentence of acquittal of the cardinal, and the
+     horrible condemnation of the countess, were intended to
+     sustain this view. This opinion, spread through Paris and
+     France, was very influential in rousing that animosity which
+     conducted Maria Antoinette to sufferings more poignant and
+     to a doom more awful than the Countess Lamotte could by any
+     possibility endure.
+
+     2. The second supposition was, that the cardinal and the
+     countess forged the signature of the queen to defraud the
+     jeweler; that they thus obtained the rich prize of three
+     hundred and twenty thousand dollars, intending to divide the
+     spoil between them, and throw the obloquy of the transaction
+     upon the queen. The king and queen were both fully
+     convinced that this was the true explanation of the fraud,
+     and they retained this belief undoubted until they died.
+
+     3. The third supposition, and that which now is almost
+     universally entertained, was, that the crafty woman Lamotte,
+     by forgery, and by means of an accomplice, who very much, in
+     figure, resembled Maria Antoinette, completely duped the
+     cardinal. His anxiety was such to be restored to the royal
+     favor, that he eagerly caught at the bait which the wily
+     countess presented to him. But, whoever may have been the
+     guilty ones, no one now doubts that Maria Antoinette was
+     entirely innocent. She, however, experienced all the
+     ignominy she could have encountered had she been involved in
+     the deepest guilt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE MOB AT VERSAILLES.
+
+1789
+
+A gathering storm.--Condition of the French people.--Forces assembled
+at Versailles.--The populace rise upon the troops.--Terror and
+confusion.--Attack on the Bastile.--The Bastile taken.--Awful
+tumult.--Energy of the queen.--Resolution of the king.--The king
+visits Paris.--Strange cavalcade.--Painful suspense of the
+queen.--Return of the king.--The banquet at Versailles.--Enthusiastic
+loyalty.--News of the banquet.--Famine in Paris.--The mob marches to
+Versailles.--Heroic reply of the queen.--Violence of the mob.--The
+queen retires to rest.--Peril of the queen.--Her narrow escape.--The
+mob in the palace.--Heroic conduct of the queen.--The queen appears
+on the balcony.--Her composure.--The queen applauded.--The royal
+family taken to Paris.--An army of vagabonds.--The royal family
+grossly insulted.--The royal family in the Tuileries.--The queen's
+self-sacrificing spirit.--Rioting and violence.--The dauphin's
+question.--The king's explanation to his son.--Flight of the
+nobility.--Inflammatory placards.--The Duke of Orleans.--The Duke
+of Orlean's plans frustrated.--Rumors of an invasion.--The leaders of
+the populace.--The queen urged to attend the theater.--Dignified reply
+of the queen.--Her unpopularity increases.--The queen's vigorous
+action.--Ultimate cause of the popular fury.--Transgressors visited
+in their children.
+
+
+The year 1789 opened upon France lowering with darkness and portentous
+storms. The events to which we have alluded in the preceding chapters,
+and various others of a similar nature, conspired to foment troubles
+between the French monarch and his subjects, which were steadily and
+irresistibly increasing. The great mass of the people, ignorant,
+degraded, and maddened by centuries of oppression, were rising, with
+delirious energy, to batter down a corrupt church and a despotic throne,
+and to overwhelm the guilty and the innocent alike in indiscriminate
+ruin. The storm had been gathering for ages, but those who had been
+mainly instrumental in raising it were now slumbering in their graves.
+Mobs began to sweep the streets of Paris, phrensied with rum and rage,
+and all law was set at defiance. The king, mild in temperament, and with
+no force of character, was extremely averse to any measures of violence.
+The queen, far more energetic, with the spirit of her heroic mother,
+would have quelled these insurrections with the strong arm of military
+power.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF THE BASTILE.]
+
+The king at last was compelled, in order to protect the royal family
+from insult, to encamp his army around his palaces; and long trains
+of artillery and of cavalry incessantly traversed the streets of
+Versailles, to prop the tottering monarchy. As Maria Antoinette, from
+the windows, looked down upon these formidable bands, and saw the
+crowd of generals and colonels who filled the saloons of the palace,
+her fainting courage was revived. The sight of these soldiers, called
+to quell the insurgent people, roused the Parisians to the intensest
+fury. "To arms! to arms! the king's troops are coming to massacre us,"
+resounded through the streets of Paris in the gloom of night, in tones
+which caused the heart of every peaceful citizen to quake with terror.
+The infuriated populace hurled themselves upon the few troops who were
+in Paris. Many of the soldiers of the king threw down their arms and
+fraternized with the people. Others were withdrawn, by order of Louis,
+to add to the forces which were surrounding his person at Versailles.
+Paris was thus left at the mercy of the mob. The arsenals were
+ransacked, the powder magazines were broken open, pikes were forged,
+and in a day, as it were, all Paris was in arms. Thousands of the
+noble and the wealthy fled in consternation from these scenes of
+ever-accumulating peril, and bands of ferocious men and women, from
+all the abodes of infamy, with the aspect and the energy of demons,
+ravaged the streets.
+
+When the morning of the 14th of March, 1789, dawned upon the city,
+a scene of terror and confusion was witnessed which baffles all
+description. In the heart of Paris there was a prison of terrible
+celebrity, in whose dark dungeons many victims of oppression and crime
+had perished. The Bastile, in its gloomy strength of rock and iron, was
+the great instrument of terror with which the kings of France had, for
+centuries, held all restless spirits in subjection. Now, the whole
+population of Paris seemed to be rolling like an inundation toward this
+apparently impregnable fortress, resolved to batter down its execrated
+walls. "To the Bastile! to the Bastile!" was the cry which resounded
+along the banks of the Seine, and through every street of the insurgent
+metropolis; and men, women, and boys poured on and poured on, an
+interminable host, choking every avenue with the agitated mass, armed
+with guns, knives, swords, pikes--dragging artillery bestrode by
+amazons, and filling the air with the clamor of Pandemonium. A conflict,
+fierce, short, bloody, ensued, and the exasperated multitude, many of
+them bleeding and maddened by wounds, clambered over the walls and
+rushed through the shattered gateways, and, with yells of triumph,
+became masters of the Bastile. The heads of its defenders were stuck
+upon poles upon the battlements, and the mob, intoxicated with the
+discovery of their resistless power, were beginning to inquire in what
+scenes of violence they should next engage. At midnight, couriers
+arrived at Versailles, informing the king and queen of the terrible
+insurrections triumphant in the capital, and that the royal troops every
+where, instead of being enthusiastic for the defense of the king,
+manifested the strongest disposition to fraternize with the populace.
+The tumult in Paris that night was awful. The rumor had entered every
+ear that the king was coming with forty thousand troops to take dreadful
+vengeance in the indiscriminate massacre of the populace. It was a night
+of sleeplessness and terror--the carnival of all the monsters of crime
+who thronged that depraved metropolis. The streets were filled with
+intoxication and blasphemy. No dwelling was secure from pillage. The
+streets were barricaded; pavements torn up, and the roofs of houses
+loaded with the stones.
+
+All the energies of the queen were aroused for a vigorous and heroic
+resistance. She strove to inspire the king with firmness and courage.
+He, however, thought only of concessions. He wished to win back the love
+of his people by favors. He declared openly that never should one drop
+of blood be shed at his command; and, with the heroism of endurance,
+which he abundantly possessed, and to prove that he had been grossly
+calumniated, he left Versailles in his carriage to go unprotected to
+Paris, into the midst of the infuriated populace. Just as he was
+entering his carriage on this dangerous expedition, he received
+intelligence that a plot was formed to assassinate him on the way. This,
+however, did not in the slightest degree shake his resolution. The agony
+of the queen was irrepressible as she bade him adieu, never expecting to
+see him again.
+
+The National Assembly, consisting of nearly twelve hundred persons, was
+then in session at Versailles, the great majority of them sympathizing
+with the populace, and yet were alarmed in view of the lawless violence
+which their own acts had awakened, and which was every where desolating
+the land. As, on the morning of the 17th of July, the king entered his
+carriage with a slender retinue, and with no military protection, to
+expose himself to the dangers of his tumultuous capital, this whole
+body formed in procession on foot and followed him. A countless throng
+of artisans and peasants flocked from all the streets of Versailles,
+and poured in from the surrounding country, armed with scythes and
+bludgeons, and joined the strange cavalcade. Every moment the multitude
+increased, and the road, both before and behind the king, was so clogged
+with the accumulating mass, that seven hours passed before the king
+arrived at the gates of the city. During all this time he was exposed to
+every conceivable insult. As Louis was conducted to the Hotel de Ville,
+a hundred thousand armed men lined the way, and he passed along under
+the arch of their sabers crossed over his head. The cup of degradation
+he was compelled to drain to its dregs.
+
+While the king was absent from Versailles on this dreadful visit,
+silence and the deepest gloom pervaded the palace. The queen,
+apprehensive that the king would be either massacred or retained a
+prisoner in Paris, was overwhelmed with the anguish of suspense. She
+retired to her chamber, and, with continually gushing tears, prepared
+an appeal to the National Assembly, commencing with these words:
+"Gentlemen, I come to place in your hands the wife and family of your
+sovereign. Do not suffer those who have been united in heaven to be put
+asunder on earth." Late in the evening the king returned, to the
+inexpressible joy of his household. But the narrative he gave of the
+day's adventure plunged them all again into the most profound grief.
+
+The visit of the king had no influence in diminishing the horrors of the
+scenes now hourly enacted in the French capital. His friends were openly
+massacred in the streets, hung up at the lamp-posts, and roasted at slow
+fires, while their dying agonies were but the subjects of derision. The
+contagion of crime and cruelty spread to every other city in the empire.
+The higher nobility and the more wealthy citizens began very generally
+to abandon their homes, seeing no escape from these dangers but by
+precipitate flight to foreign lands. Such was the state of affairs,
+when the officers of some of the regiments assembled at Versailles for
+the protection of the king had a public banquet in the saloon of the
+opera. All the rank and elegance which had ventured yet to linger around
+the court graced the feast with their presence in the surrounding boxes.
+In the midst of their festivities, their chivalrous enthusiasm was
+excited in behalf of the king and queen. They drank their health--they
+vowed to defend them even unto death. Wine had given fervor to their
+loyalty. The ladies showered upon them bouquets, waved their
+handkerchiefs, and tossed to them white cockades, the emblem of Bourbon
+power. And now the cry arose, loud, and long, and enthusiastic, for the
+king and queen to come and show themselves to their defenders. The door
+suddenly opened, and the king and queen appeared. Enthusiasm immediately
+rose almost to phrensy. The hall resounded with acclamations, and the
+king, entirely unmanned by these expressions of attachment, burst into
+tears. The band struck up the pathetic air, "O Richard! O my king! the
+world abandons you." There was no longer any bounds to the transport.
+The officers and the ladies mingled together in a scene of indescribable
+enthusiasm.
+
+The tidings of this banquet spread like wildfire through Paris,
+magnified by the grossest exaggerations. It was universally believed
+that the officers had contemptuously trampled the tri-colored cockade,
+the adopted emblem of popular power, under their feet; that they had
+sharpened their sabers, and sworn to exterminate the National Assembly
+and the people of Paris. All business was at a stand. No laborer was
+employed. The provisions in the city were nearly all consumed. No baker
+dared to appear with his cart, or farmer to send in his corn, for
+pillage was the order of the day. The exasperated and starving people
+hung a few bakers before their own ovens, but that did not make bread
+any more plenty. The populace of Paris were now starving, literally and
+truly starving. A gaunt and haggard woman seized a drum and strode
+through the streets, beating it violently, and mingling with its din her
+shrieks of "Bread! bread!" A few boys follow her--then a score of female
+furies--and then thousands of desperate men. The swelling inundation
+rolls from street to street; the alarm bells are rung; all Paris
+composes one mighty, resistless mob, motiveless, aimless, but ripe
+for any deed of desperation. The cry goes from mouth to mouth "To
+Versailles! to Versailles!" Why, no one knows, only that the king and
+queen are there. Impetuously, as by a blind instinct, the monster mass
+moves on. La Fayette, at the head of the National Guard, knows not what
+to do, for all the troops under his command sympathize with the people,
+and will obey no orders to resist them. He therefore merely follows on
+with his thirty-five thousand troops to watch the issue of events. The
+king and queen are warned of the approaching danger, and Louis entreats
+Maria Antoinette to take the children in the carriages and flee to some
+distant place of safety. Others join most earnestly in the entreaty.
+"Nothing," replies the queen, "shall induce me, in such an extremity, to
+be separated from my husband. I know that they seek my life. But I am
+the daughter of Maria Theresa, and have learned not to fear death."
+
+[Illustration: GARDENS AT VERSAILLES.]
+
+From the windows of their mansion the disorderly multitude were soon
+descried, in a dense and apparently interminable mass, pouring along
+through the broad avenues toward the palaces of Versailles. It was in
+the evening twilight of a dark and rainy day. Like ocean tides, the
+frantic mob rolled in from every direction. Their shouts and revels
+swelled upon the night air. The rain began to fall in torrents. They
+broke into the houses for shelter; insulted maids and matrons; tore
+down every thing combustible for their watch fires; massacred a few
+of the body-guard of the queen, and, with bacchanalian songs, roasted
+their horses for food. And thus passed the hours of this long and
+dreary night, in hideous outrages for which one can hardly find a
+parallel in the annals of New Zealand cannibalism. The immense gardens
+of Versailles were filled with a tumultuous ocean of half-frantic men
+and women, tossed to and fro in the wildest and most reckless
+excitement.
+
+Toward morning, the queen, worn out with excitement and sleeplessness,
+having received from La Fayette the assurance that he had so posted
+the guard that she need be in no apprehension of personal danger, had
+retired to her chamber for rest. The king had also retired to his
+apartment, which was connected with that of the queen by a hall, through
+which they could mutually pass. Two faithful soldiers were stationed at
+the door of the queen's chamber for her defense. Hardly had the queen
+placed her head upon her pillow before she heard a dreadful clamor upon
+the stairs--the discharge of fire-arms, the clashing of swords, and the
+shouts of the mob rushing upon her door. The faithful guard, bleeding
+beneath the blows of the assailants, had only time to cry to the queen,
+"Fly! fly for your life!" when they were stricken down. The queen sprang
+from her bed, rushed to the door leading to the king's apartments, when,
+to her dismay, she found that it was locked, and that the key was upon
+the other side. With the energy of despair, she knocked and called for
+help. Fortunately, some one rushed to her rescue from the king's chamber
+and opened the door. The queen had just time to slip through and again
+turn the key, when the whole raging mob, with oaths and imprecations,
+burst into the room, and pierced her bed through and through with their
+sabers and bayonets. Happy would it have been for Maria if in that short
+agony she might have died. But she was reserved by a mysterious
+Providence for more prolonged tortures and for a more dreadful doom.
+
+A few of the National Guard, faithful to the king, rallied around the
+royal family, and La Fayette soon appeared, and was barely able to
+protect the king and queen from massacre. He had no power to effectually
+resist the tempest of human passion which was raging, but was swept
+along by its violence. Nearly all of the interior of the palace was
+ransacked and defiled by the mob. The bloody heads of the massacred
+guards, stuck upon pikes, were raised up to the windows of the king, to
+insult and to terrify the royal family with these hideous trophies of
+the triumph of their foes.
+
+At length the morning succeeding this dreadful night dawned lurid and
+cheerless. It was the 8th of October, 1789. Dark clouds over-shadowed
+the sky, showers of mist were driven through the air, and the branches
+of the trees swayed to and fro before the driving storm. Pools of water
+filled the streets, and a countless multitude of drunken vagabonds, in a
+mass so dense as to be almost impervious, besieged the palace, having no
+definite plan or desire, only furious with the thought that now was the
+hour in which they could wreak vengeance upon aristocrats for ages of
+oppression. Muskets were continually discharged by the more desperate,
+and bullets passed through the windows of the palace. Maria Antoinette,
+in these trying scenes, indeed appeared queenly. Her conduct was heroic
+in the extreme. Her soul was nerved to the very highest acts of
+fearlessness and magnanimity. Seeing the mob in the court-yard below
+ready to tear in pieces some of her faithful guard whom they had
+captured, regardless of the shots which were whistling by her, she
+persisted in exposing herself at the open window to beg for their lives;
+and when a friend, M. Luzerne, placed himself before her, that his body
+might be her shield from the bullets, she gently, but firmly, with her
+hand, pressed him away, saying, "The king can not afford to lose so
+faithful a servant as you are."
+
+At length the crowd began vigorously to shout, "The queen! the queen!"
+demanding that she should appear upon the balcony. She immediately came
+forth, with her children at her side, that, as a mother, she might
+appeal to their hearts. The sight moved the sympathies of the multitude;
+and execrating, as they did, Maria Antoinette, whom they had long been
+taught to hate, they could not have the heart, in cold blood, to
+massacre these innocent children. Thousands of voices simultaneously
+shouted, "Away with the children!" Maria, apparently without the tremor
+of a nerve, led back her children, and again appearing upon the balcony
+alone, folded her arms, and, raising her eyes to heaven, stood before
+them, a self-devoted victim. The heroism of the act changed for a moment
+hatred to admiration. Not a gun was fired; there was a moment of
+silence, and then one spontaneous burst of applause rose apparently from
+every lip, and shouts of "Vive la reine! vive la reine!" pierced the
+skies.
+
+[Illustration: MOB AT VERSAILLES.]
+
+And now the universal cry ascends, "To Paris! to Paris!" La Fayette,
+with the deepest mortification, was compelled to inform the king that
+he had no force at his disposal sufficient to enable him to resist
+the demands of the mob. The king, seeing that he was entirely at the
+mercy of his foes, who were acting without leaders and without plan,
+as the caprice of each passing moment instigated, said, "You wish, my
+children, that I should accompany you to Paris. I can not go but on
+condition that I shall not be separated from my wife and family." To
+this proposal there was a tumultuous assent. At one o'clock, the king
+and queen, with their two children, entered the royal carriage to be
+escorted by the triumphant mob as captives to Paris. Behind them, in a
+long train, followed the carriages of the king's suite and servants.
+Then followed twenty-five carriages filled with the members of the
+National Assembly. After them came the thirty-five thousand troops
+of the National Guard; and before, behind, and around them all,
+a hideous concourse of vagabonds, male and female, in uncounted
+thousands, armed with every conceivable weapon, yelling, blaspheming,
+and crowding against the carriages so that they surged to and fro like
+ships in a storm. This motley multitude kept up an incessant discharge
+of fire-arms loaded with bullets, and the balls often struck the
+ornaments of the carriages, and the king and queen were often almost
+suffocated with the smoke of powder. The two body-guard, who had been
+massacred while so faithfully defending the queen at the door of her
+chamber, were beheaded, and, their gory heads affixed to pikes, were
+carried by the windows of the carriage, and pressed upon the view of
+the wretched captives with every species of insult and derision. La
+Fayette was powerless. He was borne along resistlessly by this
+whirlwind of human passions. None were so malignant, so ferocious, so
+merciless, as the degraded women who mingled with the throng. They
+bestrode the cannon singing the most indecent and insulting songs. "We
+shall now have bread," they exclaimed; "for we have with us the baker,
+and the baker's wife, and the baker's boy." During seven long hours
+of agony were the royal family exposed to these insults, before the
+unwieldy mass had urged its slow way to Paris. The darkness of night
+was settling down around the city as the royal captives were led into
+the Hotel de Ville. No one seemed then to know what to do, or why the
+king and queen had been brought from Versailles. The mayor of the city
+received them there with the external mockery of respect and homage.
+He had them then conducted to the Tuileries, the gorgeous city palace
+of the kings of France, now the prison of the royal family. Soldiers
+were stationed at all the avenues to the palace, ostensibly to
+preserve the royal family from danger, but, in reality, to guard them
+from escape.
+
+A moment before the queen entered her carriage for this march of
+humiliation, she hastily retired to her private apartment, and, bursting
+into tears, surrendered herself to the most uncontrollable emotion. Then
+immediately, as if relieved and strengthened by this flood of tears, she
+summoned all her energies, and appeared as she had ever appeared, the
+invincible sovereign. Indeed, through all these dreadful scenes she
+never seemed to have a thought for herself. It was for her husband and
+her children alone that she wept and suffered. Through all the long
+hours of the night succeeding this day of horror, Paris was one boiling
+caldron of tumult and passion. Rioting and violence filled all its
+streets, and the clamor of madness and inebriation drove sleep from
+every pillow. The excitement of the day had been too terrible to allow
+either the king or the queen to attempt repose. The two children, in
+utter exhaustion, found a few hours of agitated slumber from the terror
+with which they had so long been appalled. But in the morning, when the
+dauphin awoke, being but six or eight years of age, hearing the report
+of musketry and the turmoil still resounding in the streets, he threw
+his arms around his mother's neck, and, as he clung trembling to her
+bosom, exclaimed, "O mother! mother! is to-day yesterday again?" Soon
+after, his father came into the room. The little prince, to whom sorrow
+had given a maturity above his years, contemplated his father for a
+moment with a pensive air, went up to him and said, "Dear father, why
+are your people, who formerly loved you so well, now, all of a sudden
+so angry with you? And what have you done to irritate them so much?"
+
+[Illustration: GRAND AVENUE OF THE TUILERIES.]
+
+The king thus replied. "I wished, my dear child, to render the
+people still happier than they were. I wanted money to pay the
+expenses occasioned by wars. I asked the Parliament for money, as my
+predecessors have always done. Magistrates composing the Parliament
+opposed it, and said that the _people_ alone had a right to consent
+to it. I assembled the principal inhabitants of every town, whether
+distinguished by birth, fortune, or talents, at Versailles. That is
+what is called the _States-General_. When they were assembled, they
+required concessions of me which I could not make, either with due
+respect for myself or with justice to you, who will be my successor.
+Wicked men, inducing the people to rise, have occasioned the excesses
+of the last few days. The _people_ must not be blamed for them."
+
+While these terrific scenes were passing in Paris and in France, the
+majority of the nobility were rapidly emigrating to find refuge in other
+lands. Every night the horizon was illumined by the conflagration of
+their chateaux, burned down by mobs. Many of them were mercilessly
+tortured to death. Large numbers, however, gathering around them such
+treasures as could easily be carried away, escaped to Germany on the
+frontiers of France. Some fifteen hundred of these emigrants were
+at Coblentz, organizing themselves into a military band, seeking
+assistance from the Austrian monarchy, and threatening, with an
+overwhelming force of invasion, to recover their homes and their
+confiscated estates, and to rescue the royal family. The populace in
+Paris were continually agitated with the rumors of this gathering army
+at Coblentz. As Maria was an Austrian, she was accused of being in
+correspondence with the emigrants, and of striving to rouse the Austrian
+monarchy to make war upon France, and to deluge Paris with the blood of
+its citizens. Most inflammatory placards were posted in the streets.
+Speeches full of rancor and falsehood were made to exasperate the
+populace. And when the fish-women wished to cast upon the queen some
+epithet of peculiar bitterness, they called her "The Austrian."
+
+It is confidently asserted that the mob was instigated to the march to
+Versailles by the emissaries of the Duke of Orleans, the father of
+Louis Philippe. The duke hoped that the royal family, terrified by the
+approach of the infuriated multitude, would enter their carriages and
+flee to join the emigrants at Coblentz. The throne would then be vacant,
+and the people would make the Duke of Orleans, who, to secure this
+result, had become one of the most violent of the Democrats, their king.
+It was a deeply-laid plot and a very plausible enterprise. But the king
+understood the plan, and refused thus to be driven from the throne of
+his fathers. He, however, entreated the queen to take the children and
+escape. She resolutely declared that no peril should induce her to
+forsake her husband, but that she would live or die by his side. During
+all the horrors of that dreadful night, when the palace at Versailles
+was sacked, the duke, in disguise, with his adherents, was endeavoring
+to direct the fury of the storm for the accomplishment of this purpose.
+But his plans were entirely frustrated. The caprice seized the mob to
+carry the king to Paris. This the Duke of Orleans of all things dreaded;
+but matters had now passed entirely beyond his control. Rumors of the
+approaching invasion were filling the kingdom with alarm. There was a
+large minority, consisting of the most intelligent and wealthy, who were
+in favor of the king, and who would eagerly join an army coming for
+his rescue. Should the king escape and head that army, it would give
+the invaders a vast accession of moral strength, and the insurgent
+people feared a dreadful vengeance. Consequently, there were great
+apprehensions entertained that the king might escape. The leaders of the
+populace were not yet prepared to plunge him into prison or to load him
+with chains. In fact, they had no definite plan before them. He was
+still their recognized king. They even pretended that he was not their
+captive--that they had politely, affectionately invited him, escorted
+him on a visit to his capital. They entreated the king and queen to show
+that they had no desire to escape, but were contented and happy, by
+entering into all the amusements of operas, and theaters, and balls. But
+in the mean time they doubled the guards around them, and drove away
+their faithful servants, to place others at their tables and in their
+chambers who should be their spies.
+
+But two days after these horrid outrages, in the midst of which the king
+and queen were dragged as captives to Paris, the city sent a deputation
+to request the queen to appear at the theater, and thus to prove, by
+participating in those gay festivities, that it was with pleasure that
+she resided in her capital. With much dignity the queen replied, "I
+should, with great pleasure, accede to the invitation of the people of
+Paris; but time must be allowed me to soften the recollection of the
+distressing events which have recently occurred, and from which I have
+suffered so severely. Having come to Paris preceded by the heads of my
+faithful guards, who perished before the door of their sovereign, I can
+not think that such an entry into the capital ought to be followed by
+rejoicings. But the happiness I have always felt in appearing in the
+midst of the inhabitants of Paris is not effaced from my memory; and I
+hope to enjoy that happiness again, so soon as I shall find myself able
+to do so."
+
+The queen was, however, increasingly the object of especial obloquy. She
+was accused of urging the king to bombard the city, and to adopt other
+most vigorous measures of resistance. It was affirmed that she held
+continual correspondence with the emigrants at Coblentz, and was doing
+all in her power to rouse Austria to come to the rescue of the king.
+Maria would have been less than the noble woman she was if she had not
+done all this, and more, for the protection of her husband, her child,
+and herself. She inherited her mother's superiority of mind and mental
+energy. Had Louis possessed her spirit, he might have perished
+more heroically, but probably none the less surely. Maria did,
+unquestionably, do every thing in her power to rouse her husband to
+a more energetic and manly defense. Generations of kings, by
+licentiousness, luxury, and oppression; by total disregard of the rights
+of the people, and by the naughty contempt of their sufferings and
+complaints, had kindled flames of implacable hatred against all kingly
+power. Circumstances, over which neither Louis nor Maria had any
+control, caused these flames to burst out with resistless fury around
+the throne of France, at the time in which they happened to be seated
+upon it. Though there never had been seated upon that throne more
+upright, benevolent, and conscientious monarchs, they were compelled
+to drain to the dregs the poisoned chalice which their ancestors had
+mingled. Perhaps this world presents no more affecting illustration
+of that mysterious principle of the divine government, by which the
+transgressions of the parents are visited upon the children. Louis XIV.,
+as haughty and oppressive a monarch as ever trod an enslaved people into
+the dust, died peacefully in his luxurious bed. His descendant, Louis
+XVI., as mild and benignant a sovereign as ever sat upon an earthly
+throne, received upon his unresisting brow the doom from which his
+unprincipled ancestors had escaped. It is difficult for us, in the
+sympathy which is excited for the comparatively innocent Maria
+Antoinette and Louis, to remember the ages of wrong and outrage by
+which the popular exasperation had been raised to wreak itself in
+indiscriminating atrocities. There is but one solution to these
+mysteries: "After death comes the judgment."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE PALACE A PRISON.
+
+1789-1791
+
+Condition of the royal family.--Ignominiously insulted.--The royal
+family surrounded by spies.--The queen refuses to escape.--Excuse
+for the emigrants.--Their plans.--Profligate women.--Their talk
+with the queen.--Bravos of the women.--Plan for the queen's
+escape.--Letter from the queen.--Her employments.--The king's
+unwillingness to flee.--Execution of the Marquis of Favras.--Imprudence
+of some of the queen's friends.--Her embarrassment.--The queen
+weeps.--Present to Madame Favras.--The king continues inactive.--Plan
+of Count d'Inisdal.--Indecision of the king.--The queen's
+disappointment.--Displeasure of Count d'Inisdal.--An alarm.--Attempts
+to assassinate the queen.--Removal to St. Cloud.--Another plan
+for flight.--It is abandoned.--Exhibitions of attachment.--Emotions
+of the queen.--The assassin in the garden.--Midnight
+interviews.--Deliberations of the king's friends.--Taunting gift.--The
+king's aunts leave France.--They are arrested.--Exciting debate.--The
+ladies permitted to depart.--The royal family start for St. Cloud.--They
+are compelled to return.--Preparations for flight.--Imprudence of the
+king and queen.--Garments for the children.--The queen's diamonds and
+jewels.--The queen's dressing-case.--The faithful Leonard.
+
+
+The king and queen now found themselves in the gorgeous apartments of
+the Tuileries, surrounded with all the mockery of external homage, but
+incessantly exposed to the most ignominious insults, and guarded with
+sleepless vigilance from the possibility of escape. The name of the
+queen was the watchword of popular execration and rage. In the pride of
+her lofty spirit, she spurned all apologies, explanations, or attempts
+at conciliation. Inclosing herself in the recesses of her palace, she
+heard with terror and resentment, but with an unyielding soul, the daily
+acts of violence perpetrated against royalty and all of its friends. All
+her trusty servants were removed, and spies in their stead occupied her
+parlors and her chambers. Trembling far more for her husband and her
+children than for herself, every noise in the streets aroused her
+apprehensions of a new insurrection. And thus, for nearly two years of
+melancholy days and sorrowful nights, the very nobleness of her nature,
+glowing with heroic love, magnified her anguish. The terror of the times
+had driven nearly all the nobility from the realm. The court was
+forsaken, or attended only by the detested few who were forced as
+ministers upon the royal family by the implacable populace. Every word
+and every action of Maria Antoinette were watched, and reported by the
+spies who surrounded her in the guise of servants. To obtain a private
+interview with any of her few remaining friends, or even with her
+husband, it was necessary to avail herself of private stair-cases, and
+dark corridors, and the disguise of night. The queen regretted extremely
+that the nobles, and others friendly to royalty, should, in these hours
+of gathering danger, have fled from France. When urged to fly herself
+from the dangers darkening around her, she resolutely refused, declaring
+that she would never leave her husband and children, but that she would
+live or die with them. The queen, convinced of the impolicy of
+emigration, did every thing in her power to induce the emigrants to
+return. Urgent letters were sent to them, to one of which the queen
+added the following postscript with her own hand: "If you love your
+king, your religion, your government, and your country, return! return!
+return! Maria Antoinette." The emigrants were severely censured by many
+for abandoning their king and country in such a crisis. But when all law
+was overthrown, and the raging mob swayed hither and thither at its
+will, and nobles were murdered on the high way or hung at lamp-posts in
+the street, and each night the horizon was illumined by the
+conflagration of their chateaux, a husband and father can hardly be
+severely censured for endeavoring to escape with his wife and children
+from such scenes of horror.
+
+A year of gloom now slowly passed away, almost every moment of which was
+embittered by disappointed hopes and gathering fears. The emigrants, who
+were assembled at Coblentz, on the frontiers of Germany, were organizing
+an army for the invasion of France and the restoration of the regal
+power. The people were very fearful that the king and queen might
+escape, and, joining the emigrants, add immeasurably to their moral
+strength. There were thousands in France, overawed by the terrors of the
+mob, who would most eagerly have rallied around the banners of such an
+invading army, headed by their own king. Louis, however, with his
+characteristic want of energy, was very unwilling to assume a hostile
+attitude toward his subjects, and still vainly hoped, by concessions and
+by the exhibition of a forgiving spirit, to reconcile his disaffected
+people.
+
+On the morning after the arrival of the king and queen at the Tuileries,
+an occurrence took place highly characteristic of the times. A crowd of
+profligate women, the same who bestrode the cannon the day before,
+insulting the queen with the most abusive language, collected under the
+queen's windows, upon the terrace of the palace. Maria, hearing their
+outcries, came to the window. A furious termagant addressed her, telling
+her that she must dismiss all such courtiers as ruin kings, and that she
+must love the inhabitants of her good city. The queen replied,
+
+"I have loved them at Versailles, and will also love them at Paris."
+
+"Yes! yes!" answered another. "But you wanted to besiege the city and
+have it bombarded. And you wanted to fly to the frontiers and join the
+emigrants."
+
+The queen mildly replied, "You have been told so, my friends, and have
+believed it, and that is the cause of the unhappiness of the people and
+of the best of kings."
+
+Another addressed her in German, to which the queen answered, "I do not
+understand you. I have become so entirely French as even to have
+forgotten my mother tongue."
+
+At this they all clapped their hands, and shouted, "Bravo! bravo!" They
+then asked for the ribbons and flowers out of her hat. Her majesty
+unfastened them herself, and then tossed them out of the window to the
+women. They were received with great eagerness, and divided among the
+party; and for half an hour they kept up the incessant shout, "Maria
+Antoinette forever! Our good queen forever!"
+
+In the course of a few weeks some of the devoted friends of the queen
+had matured a plan by which _her_ escape could be, without difficulty,
+effected. The queen, whose penetrating mind fully comprehended the peril
+of her situation, replied, while expressing the deepest gratitude to her
+friends for their kindness, "I will never leave either the king or my
+children. If I thought that I alone were obnoxious to public hatred, I
+would instantly offer my life as a sacrifice. But it is the throne which
+is aimed at. In abandoning the king, no other advantage can be obtained
+than merely saving my life; and I will never be guilty of such an act of
+cowardice."
+
+The following letter, which she wrote at this time to a friend, in reply
+to a letter of sympathy in reference to the outrage which had torn her
+from Versailles, will enable one to form a judgment of her situation and
+state of mind at that time. "I shed tears of affection on reading your
+sympathizing letter. You talk of my courage; it required much less to go
+through the dreadful crisis of that day than is now daily necessary to
+endure our situation, our own griefs, those of our friends, and those of
+the persons who surround us. This is a heavy weight to sustain; and but
+for the strong ties by which my heart is bound to my husband, my
+children, and my friends, I should wish to sink under it. But you bear
+me up. I ought to sacrifice such feelings to your friendship. But it is
+I who bring misfortune on you all, and all your troubles are on my
+account."
+
+The queen now lived for some time in much retirement. She employed the
+mornings in superintending the education of her son and daughter, both
+of whom received all their lessons in her presence, and she endeavored
+to occupy her mind, continually agitated as it was by ever-recurring
+scenes of outrage and of danger, by working large pieces of tapestry.
+She could not sufficiently recall her thoughts from the anxieties which
+continually engrossed them to engage in reading. The king was extremely
+unwilling to seek protection in flight, lest the throne should be
+declared vacant, and he should thus lose his crown. He was ever hoping
+that affairs would soon take such a turn that harmony would be restored
+to his distracted kingdom. Maria Antoinette, however, who had a much
+more clear discernment of the true state of affairs, soon felt convinced
+that reconciliation, unless effected by the arm of power, was hopeless,
+and she exerted all her influence to rouse the king to vigorous measures
+for escape. While firmly resolved never to abandon her husband and her
+family to save her own life, she still became very anxious that all
+should endeavor to escape together.
+
+About this time the Marquis of Favras was accused of having formed a
+plan for the rescue of the royal family. He was very hastily tried, the
+mob surrounding the tribunal and threatening the judges with instant
+death unless they should condemn him. He was sentenced to be hung, and
+was executed, surrounded by the insults and execrations of the populace
+of Paris. The marquis left a wife and a little boy overwhelmed with
+grief and in hopeless poverty. On the following Sunday morning, some
+extremely injudicious friends of the queen, moved with sympathy for the
+desolated family, without consulting the queen upon the subject,
+presented the widow and the orphan in deepest mourning at court. The
+husband and father had fallen a sacrifice to his love for the queen and
+her family. The queen was extremely embarrassed. What course could she
+with safety pursue? If she should yield to the dictates of her own
+heart, and give expression to her emotions of sympathy and gratitude,
+she would rouse to still greater fury the indignation of the populace
+who were accusing her of the desire to escape, and who considered this
+desire as one of the greatest of crimes. Should she, on the other hand,
+surrender herself to the dictates of prudence, and neglect openly to
+manifest any special interest in their behalf, how severely must she be
+censured by the Loyalists for her ingratitude toward those who had been
+irretrievably ruined through their love for her.
+
+The queen was extremely pained by this unexpected and impolitic
+presentation; for the fate of others, far dearer to her than her own
+life, were involved in her conduct. She withdrew from the painful scene
+to her private apartment, threw herself into a chair, and, weeping
+bitterly, said to an intimate friend, "We must perish! We are assailed
+by men who possess extraordinary talent, and who shrink from no crime.
+We are defended by those who have the kindest intentions, but who have
+no adequate idea of our situation. They have exposed me to the animosity
+of both parties by presenting to me the widow and the son of the Marquis
+of Favras. Were I free to act as my heart impels me, I should take the
+child of the man who has so nobly sacrificed himself for us, and adopt
+him as my own, and place him at the table between the king and myself.
+But, surrounded by the assassins who have destroyed his father, I did
+not dare even to cast my eyes upon him. The Royalists will blame me for
+not having appeared interested in this poor child. The Revolutionists
+will be enraged at the idea that his presentation should have been
+thought agreeable to me." The next day the queen sent, by a confidential
+friend, a purse of gold to Madame Favras, and assured her that she would
+ever watch, with the deepest interest, over her fortune and that of her
+son.
+
+Innumerable plans were now formed for the rescue of the royal family,
+and abandoned. The king could not be roused to energetic action. His
+passive courage was indomitable, but he could not be induced to act on
+the offensive, and, still hoping that by a spirit of conciliation he
+might win back the affections of his people, he was extremely reluctant
+to take any measures by which he should be arrayed in hostility against
+them. Maria, on the contrary, knew that decisive action alone could be
+of any avail. One night, about ten o'clock, the king and queen were
+sitting in their private apartment of the Tuileries, endeavoring to
+beguile the melancholy hours by a game of cards. The sister of the king,
+Madame Elizabeth, with a very pensive countenance, was kneeling upon a
+stool, by the side of the table, overlooking the game. A nobleman, Count
+d'Inisdal, devotedly attached to the fortunes of the royal family,
+entered, and, in a low tone of voice, informed the king and queen that a
+plan was already matured to rescue them that very night; that a section
+of the National Guard was gained over, that sets of fleet horses were
+placed in relays at suitable distances, that carriages were ready, and
+that now they only wanted the king's consent, and the scheme, at
+midnight, would be carried into execution. The king listened to every
+word without the movement of a muscle of his countenance, and, fixing
+his eyes upon the cards in his hand, as if paying no attention to what
+had been said, uttered not a syllable. For some time there was perfect
+silence. At last Maria Antoinette, who was extremely anxious that the
+king should avail himself of this opportunity for escape, broke the
+embarrassing silence by saying, "Do you hear, sir, what is said to us?"
+"Yes," replied the king, calmly, "I hear," and he continued his game.
+Again there was a long silence. The queen, extremely anxious and
+impatient, for the hour of midnight was drawing near, again interrupted
+the silence by saying earnestly, "But, sir, some reply must be made to
+this communication." The king paused for a moment, and then, still
+looking upon the cards in his hand, said, "_The king can not consent to
+be carried off._" Maria Antoinette was greatly disappointed at the want
+of decision and of magnanimity implied in this answer. She, however,
+said to the nobleman very eagerly, "Be careful and report this answer
+correctly, the king can not _consent_ to be carried off." The king's
+answer was doubtless intended as a tacit consent while he wished to
+avoid the responsibility of participating in the design. The count,
+however, was greatly displeased at this answer, and said to his
+associates, "I understand it perfectly. He is willing that we should
+seize and carry him, as if by violence, but wishes, in case of failure,
+to throw all the blame upon those who are periling their lives to save
+him." The queen hoped earnestly that the enterprise would not be
+abandoned, and sat up till after midnight preparing her cases of
+valuables, and anxiously watching for the coming of their deliverers.
+But the hours lingered away, and the morning dawned, and the palace was
+still their prison. The queen, shortly after, remarking upon this
+indecision of the king, said, "We _must_ seek safety in flight. Our
+peril increases every day. No one can tell to what extremities these
+disturbances will lead."
+
+La Fayette had informed the king, that, should he see any alarming
+movement among the disaffected, threatening the exposure of the royal
+family to new acts of violence, he would give them an intimation of
+their danger by the discharge of a few cannon from the battery upon the
+Pont Neuf. One night the report of guns from some casual discharge was
+heard, and the king, regarding it as the warning, in great alarm flew
+to the apartments of the queen. She was not there. He passed hastily
+from room to room, and at last found her in the chamber of the dauphin,
+with her two children in her arms. "Madame," said the king to her, "I
+have been seeking you. I was very anxious about you." "You find me,"
+replied the queen pointing to her children, "at my station."
+
+Several unavailing attempts were made at this time to assassinate the
+queen. These discoveries, however, seemed to cause Maria no alarm, and
+she could not be induced to adopt any precautions for her personal
+safety. Rarely did a day pass in which she did not encounter, in some
+form, ignominy or insult. As the heat of summer came on, the royal
+family removed to the palace of St. Cloud without any opposition, though
+the National Guard followed them, professedly for their protection, but,
+in reality, to guard against their escape. Here another plan was formed
+for flight. The different members of the royal family, in disguise, were
+to meet in a wood four leagues from St. Cloud. Some friends of the royal
+family, who could be perfectly relied upon, were there to join them. A
+large carriage was to be in attendance, sufficient to conduct the whole
+family. The attendants at the palace would have no suspicion of their
+escape until nine o'clock in the evening, as the royal carriages were
+frequently out until that hour, and it would then take some time to send
+to Paris to call together the National Assembly at midnight, and to send
+couriers to overtake the fugitives. Thus, with fleet horses and fresh
+relays, and having six or seven hours the start, the king and queen
+might hope to escape apprehension. The queen very highly approved of
+this plan, and was very anxious to have it carried into execution. But
+for some unknown reason, the attempt was relinquished.
+
+There were occasional exhibitions of strong individual attachment for
+the king and queen which would, for a moment, create the illusion that a
+reaction had commenced in the public mind. One day the queen was sitting
+in her apartment at St. Cloud, in the deepest dejection of spirits,
+mechanically working upon some tapestry to occupy the joyless and
+lingering hours. It was four o'clock in the afternoon. The palace was
+deserted and silent. The very earth and sky seemed mourning in sympathy
+with the mourning queen. Suddenly, an unusual noise, as of many persons
+conversing in an under tone, was heard beneath the window. The queen
+immediately rose and went to the window; for every unaccustomed sound
+was, in such perilous times, an occasion of alarm. Below the balcony,
+she saw a group of some fifty persons, men and women, from the country,
+apparently anxious to catch a glimpse of her. They were evidently humble
+people, dressed in the costume of peasants. As soon as they saw the
+queen, they gave utterance to the most passionate expressions of
+attachment and devotion. The queen, who had long been accustomed only to
+looks and words of defiance and insult, was entirely overpowered by
+these kind words, and could not refrain from bursting into tears. The
+sight of the weeping queen redoubled the affectionate emotions of the
+loyal group, and, with the utmost enthusiasm, they reiterated their
+assurances of love and their prayers for her safety. A lady of the
+queen's household, apprehensive that the scene might arrest the
+attention of the numerous spies who surrounded them, led her from the
+window. The affectionate group, appreciating the prudence of the
+measure, with tears of sympathy expressed their assent, and with
+prayers, tears, and benedictions retired. Maria was deeply touched by
+these unwonted tones of kindness, and, throwing herself into her chair,
+sobbed with uncontrollable emotion. It was long before she could regain
+her accustomed composure.
+
+Many unsuccessful attempts were made at this time to assassinate the
+queen. A wretch by the name of Rotondo succeeded one day in scaling the
+walls of the garden, and hid himself in the shrubbery, intending to stab
+the queen as she passed in her usual solitary promenade. A shower
+prevented the queen from going into the garden, and thus her life was
+saved. And yet, though the assassin was discovered and arrested, the
+hostility of the public toward the royal family was such that he was
+shielded from punishment.
+
+The king and queen occasionally held private interviews at midnight,
+with chosen friends, secretly introduced to the palace, in the apartment
+of the queen. And there, in low tones of voice, and fearful of detection
+by the numerous spies which infested the palace, they would deliberate
+upon their peril, and upon the innumerable plans suggested for their
+extrication. Some recommended the resort to violence; that the king
+should gather around him as many of his faithful subjects as possible,
+and settle the difficulties by an immediate appeal to arms. Others
+urged further compromise, and the spirit of conciliation, hoping that
+the king might thus regain his lost popularity, and re-establish his
+tottering throne. Others urged, and Maria coincided most cordially in
+this opinion, that it was necessary for the royal family to escape from
+Paris immediately, which was the focus of disaffection, and at a safe
+distance, surrounded by their armed friends, to treat with their enemies
+and to compel them to reasonable terms. The indecision of the king,
+however, appeared to be an insuperable obstacle in the way of any
+decisive action.
+
+One day a delegation appeared before the royal family from the
+_conquerors of the Bastile_, with a new year's gift for the young
+dauphin. The present consisted of a box of dominoes curiously wrought
+from the stone of which that celebrated state prison was built. It was
+an ingenious plan to insult the royal family under the pretense of
+respect and affection, for on the lid of the box there was engraved the
+following sentiment: "_These stones, from the walls which inclosed the
+innocent victims of arbitrary power, have been converted into a toy, to
+be presented to you, monseigneur, as an homage of the people's love,
+and to teach you the extent of their power._"
+
+About this time, the two aunts of the king left France, ostensibly for
+the purpose of travelling, but, in reality, as an experiment, to see
+what opposition would be made to prevent members of the royal family
+from leaving the kingdom. As soon as their intention was known, it
+excited the greatest popular ferment. A vast crowd of men and women
+assembled at the palace, to prevent, if possible, with lawless violence,
+their departure. It was merely two elderly ladies who wished to leave
+France, but the excitement pervaded even the army, and many of the
+soldiers joined the mob in the determination that they should not be
+permitted to depart. The traces of the carriages were cut, and the
+officers, who tried to protect the princesses, were nearly murdered. The
+whole nation was agitated by the attempts of these two peaceful ladies
+to visit Rome. When at some distance from Paris, they were arrested, and
+the report of their arrest was sent to the National Assembly. The king
+found the excitement so great, that he wrote a letter to the Assembly,
+informing them that his aunts wished to leave France to visit other
+countries, and that, though he witnessed their separation from him and
+his family with much regret, he did not feel that he had any right to
+deprive them of the privilege which the humblest citizens enjoyed, of
+going whenever and wherever they pleased. The question of their
+detention was for a long time debated in the Assembly. "What right,"
+said one, "have we to prohibit these ladies from traveling." "We have a
+law," another indignantly replied, "paramount to all others--the law
+which commands us to take care of the public safety." The debate was
+finally terminated by the caustic remark of a member who was ashamed of
+the protracted discussion. "Europe," said he, "will be greatly
+astonished, no doubt, on hearing that the National Assembly spent four
+hours in deliberating upon the departure of two ladies who preferred
+hearing mass at Rome rather than at Paris." The debate was thus
+terminated, and the ladies were permitted to depart.
+
+[Illustration: PALACE OF ST. CLOUD.]
+
+Early in the spring of 1791, the king and queen, who had been passing
+some time in Paris at the Tuileries, wished to return to their country
+seat at St. Cloud. Many members of the household had already gone
+there, and dinner was prepared for the royal family at the palace
+for their reception. The carriages were at the door, and, as the king
+and queen were descending, a great tumult in the yard arrested their
+attention. They found that the guard, fearful that they might escape,
+had mutinied, and closed the door of the palace, declaring that they
+would not let them pass. Some of the personal friends of the king
+interposed in favor of the insulted captives, and endeavored to secure
+for them more respectful treatment. They were, however, seized by the
+infuriated soldiers, and narrowly escaped with their lives. The king
+and queen returned in humiliation to their apartments, feeling that
+their palace was indeed a prison. They, however, secretly did not
+regret the occurrence, as it made more public the indignities to
+which they were exposed, and would aid in justifying before the
+community any attempts they might hereafter make to escape.
+
+The king had at length become thoroughly aroused to a sense of the
+desperate position of his affairs. But the royal family was watched so
+narrowly that it was now extremely difficult to make any preparations
+for departure; and the king and queen, both having been brought up
+surrounded by the luxuries and restraints of a palace, knew so little of
+the world, and yet were so accustomed to have their own way, that they
+were entirely incapable of forming any judicious plan for themselves,
+and, at the same time, they were quite unwilling to adopt the views of
+their more intelligent friends. They began, however, notwithstanding the
+most earnest remonstrances, to make preparations for flight by providing
+themselves with every conceivable comfort for their exile. In vain did
+their friends assure them that they could purchase any thing they
+desired in any part of Europe; that such quantities of luggage would be
+only an encumbrance; that it was dangerous, under the eyes of their
+vigilant enemies, to be making such extensive preparations. Neither the
+king nor queen would heed such monitions. The queen persisted in her
+resolution to send to Brussels, piece by piece, all the articles of a
+complete and extensive wardrobe for herself and her children, to be
+ready for them there upon their arrival. Madame Campan, the intimate
+friend and companion of the queen, was extremely uneasy in view of this
+imprudence; but, as she could not dissuade the queen, she went out again
+and again, in the evening and in disguise, to purchase the necessary
+articles and have them made up. She adopted the precaution of purchasing
+but few articles at any one shop, and of employing various
+seamstresses, lest suspicion should be excited. She had the garments
+made for the daughter of the queen, cut by the measure of another young
+lady who exactly resembled her in size. Gradually they thus filled one
+large trunk with clothing, which was sent to the dwelling of a lady, one
+of the friends of the queen, who was to convey it to Brussels.
+
+The queen had a very magnificent dressing-case, which cost twelve
+hundred dollars. This she also determined that she could not leave
+behind. It could not be taken from the palace, and sent away out of the
+country, without attracting attention, and leading at once to the
+conviction that the queen was to follow it. The queen, in her innocent
+simplicity of mankind, thought that the people could be blinded like
+children, by telling them that she intended to send it as a present to
+the Archduchess Christina. However, by the most earnest remonstrances
+of her friends, she was induced only so far to change her plan as to
+consent that the _charge d'affaires_ from Vienna should ask her at her
+toilet, and in the presence of all around her, to have just such a
+dressing-case made for the archduchess. This plan was carried into
+execution, and the dressing-case was thus publicly made; but, as it
+could not be finished in season, the queen sent her own dressing-case,
+saying that she would keep the new one herself. It, however, did not
+deceive the spies who surrounded the queen. They noticed all these
+preparations, and communicated them to the authorities. She also very
+deliberately collected all her diamonds and jewels in her private
+boudoir, and beguiled the anxious hours in inclosing them in cotton and
+packing them away. These diamonds, carefully boxed, were placed in the
+hands of the queen's hair-dresser, a man in whom she could confide, to
+be carried by him to Brussels. He faithfully fulfilled his trust. But
+one of the women of the queen, whom she did not suspect of treachery,
+but who was a spy of the Assembly, entered her boudoir by false keys
+when the queen was absent, and reported all these proceedings. The
+hair-dresser perished upon the scaffold for his fidelity. Let the name
+of Leonard be honored. The infamous informer has gone to oblivion, and
+we will not aid even to embalm her name in contempt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE FLIGHT.
+
+1791
+
+Increasing excitement.--Inflammatory speech of Marat.--The king and
+queen resolve to fly.--Effort's of the king's brother.--Exasperation
+of the people.--Intention of the king.--Deliberations of the
+emigrants.--Dangers thicken.--The plan of flight.--The Marquis
+de Bouille.--The king refuses to change his plan.--The Marquis
+d'Agoult.--The Count de Fersen.--His noble character.--The king and
+queen leave the palace.--The queen loses her way.--Departure from
+Paris.--Arrival at Bondy.--Departure of the Count de Fersen.--The
+passport.--Appearance of the fugitives.--An accident.--The journey
+renewed.--Emotions of the fugitives.--Suspicions excited.--Failure
+of the guard.--The king recognized.--The dragoons and National
+Guard.--The post-master's son.--He forms an ambush.--Arrival at
+Varennes.--Alarm of the king.--The royal family arrested.--The alarm
+given.--The king discovers himself.--His affecting appeal.--An
+affecting scene.--The royal group.--Appeal of the queen.--Telegraphic
+dispatch to Paris.--Intense agony of the queen.--Consternation in
+Paris.--The palace forced.--Insults to the royal family.--Measures
+to arrest the king.--The tumult subsides.
+
+
+The ferment in the National Assembly was steadily and strongly
+increasing. Every day brought new rumors of the preparation of the
+emigrants to invade France, aided by the armies of monarchical Europe,
+and to desolate the rebellious empire with fire and sword. Tidings were
+floating upon every breeze, grossly exaggerated, of the designs of the
+king and queen to escape, to join the avenging army, and to wreak a
+terrible vengeance upon their country. Furious speeches were made in the
+Assembly and in the streets, to rouse to madness the people, now
+destitute of work and of bread. "Citizens," ferociously exclaimed Marat,
+"watch, with an eagle eye, that palace, the impenetrable den where plots
+are ripening against the people. There a perfidious queen lords it over
+a treacherous king, and rears the cubs of tyranny. Lawless priests there
+consecrate the arms which are to be bathed in the blood of the people.
+The genius of Austria is there, guided by the Austrian Antoinette. The
+emigrants are there stimulated in their thirst for vengeance. Every
+night the nobility, with concealed daggers, steal into this den. They
+are knights of the poniard--assassins of the people. Why is not the
+property of emigrants confiscated--their houses burned--a price set upon
+their heads? The king is ready for flight. Watch! watch! a great blow is
+preparing--is ready to burst; if you do not prevent it by a counter blow
+more sudden, more terrible, the people and liberty are annihilated."
+
+The king and queen, in the apartments where they were virtually
+imprisoned, read these angry and inflammatory appeals, and both now felt
+that no further time was to be lost in attempting to effect their
+escape. It was known that the brother of the king, subsequently Charles
+X., was going from court to court in Europe, soliciting aid for the
+rescue of the illustrious prisoners. It was known that the King of
+Austria, brother of Maria Antoinette, had promised to send an army of
+thirty-five thousand men to unite with the emigrants at Coblentz in
+their march upon Paris. Every monarch in Europe was alarmed, in view of
+the instability of his own throne, should the rebellion of the people
+against the throne in France prove triumphant; and Spain, Prussia,
+Sardinia, Naples, and Switzerland had guaranteed equal forces to assist
+in the re-establishment of the French monarchy. It is not strange that
+the exasperation of the people should have been aroused, by the
+knowledge of these facts, beyond all bounds. And their leaders were
+aware that they were engaged in a conflict in which defeat was
+inevitable death.
+
+The king had now resolved, if possible, to escape. He, however, declared
+that it never was his intention to join the emigrants and invade France
+with a foreign force. That, on the contrary, he strongly disapproved of
+the measures adopted by the emigrants as calculated only to increase the
+excitement against the throne, and to peril his cause. He declared that
+it was only his wish to escape from the scenes of violence, insult, and
+danger to which he was exposed in Paris, and somewhere on the frontiers
+of his kingdom to surround himself by his loyal subjects, and there
+endeavor amicably to adjust the difficulties which desolated the empire.
+The character of the king renders it most probable that such was his
+intention, and such has been the verdict of posterity.
+
+But there was another source of embarrassment which extremely troubled
+the royal family. The emigrants were deliberating upon the expediency of
+declaring the throne vacant by default of the king's liberty, and to
+nominate his brother M. le Comte d'Artois regent in his stead. The king
+greatly feared this moral forfeiture of the throne with which he was
+menaced under the pretense of delivering him. He was justly apprehensive
+that the advance of an invading army, under the banners of his brother,
+would be the signal for the immediate destruction of himself and family.
+Flight, consequently, had become his only refuge; and flight was
+encompassed with the most fearful perils. Long and agonizing were the
+months of deliberation in which the king and queen saw these dangers
+hourly accumulating around them, while each day the vigilance of their
+enemies were redoubled, and the chances of escape diminished.
+
+The following plan was at last adopted for the flight. The royal family
+were to leave Paris at midnight in disguise, in two carriages, for
+Montmedy, on the frontiers of France and Germany, about two hundred
+miles from Paris. This town was within the limits of France, so that
+the king could not be said to have fled from his kingdom. The nearest
+road and the great public thoroughfare led through the city of Rheims;
+but, as the king had been crowned there, he feared that he might meet
+some one by whom he would be recognized, and he therefore determined to
+take a more circuitous route, by by-roads and through small and
+unfrequented villages. Relays of horses were to be privately conveyed to
+all these villages, that the carriages might be drawn on with the
+greatest rapidity, and small detachments of soldiers were to be
+stationed at important posts, to resist any interruption which might
+possibly be attempted by the peasantry. The king also had a large
+carriage built privately, expressly for himself and his family, while
+certain necessary attendants were to follow in another.
+
+The Marquis de Bouille, who commanded a portion of the troops still
+faithful to the king, was the prime confidant and helper in this
+movement. He earnestly, but in vain, endeavored to induce the king to
+make some alterations in this plan. He entreated him, in the first
+place, not to excite suspicion by the use of a peculiar carriage
+constructed for his own use, but to make use of common carriages such as
+were daily seen traversing the roads. He also besought him to travel by
+the common high way, where relays of horses were at all times ready by
+night and by day. He represented to the king that, should he take the
+unfrequented route, it would be necessary to send relays of horses
+beforehand to all these little villages; that so unusual an occurrence
+would attract attention and provoke inquiry. He urged also upon the king
+that detachments of troops sent along these solitary roads would excite
+curiosity, and would inevitably create suspicion. The king, however,
+self-willed, refused to heed these remonstrances, and persisted in his
+own plan. He, however, consented to take with him the Marquis d'Agoult,
+a man of great firmness and energy, to advise and assist in the
+unforeseen accidents which might embarrass the enterprise. He also
+reluctantly consented to ask the Emperor of Austria to make a
+threatening movement toward the frontier, which would be an excuse for
+the movement through these villages of detachments of French troops.
+
+These arrangements made, the Marquis de Bouille sent a faithful officer
+to take an accurate survey of the road, and present a report to the
+king. He then, under various pretexts, removed to a distance those
+troops who were known to be disaffected to the royal cause, and
+endeavored to gather along the line of flight those in whose loyalty
+he thought he could confide.
+
+At the palace of the Tuileries, the secret of the contemplated flight
+had been confided only to the king, the queen, the Princess Elizabeth,
+sister of the king, and two or three faithful attendants. The Count de
+Fersen, a most noble-spirited young gentleman from Sweden, most
+cheerfully periled his life in undertaking the exterior arrangements of
+this hazardous enterprise. He had often been admitted, in the happy days
+of Maria Antoinette, to the parties and fetes which lent wings to the
+hours at the Little Trianon, and chivalrous admiration of her person and
+character induced him to consecrate himself with the most passionate
+devotion to her cause. Three soldiers of the body-guard, Valorg,
+Monstrei, and Maldan, were also received into confidence, and
+unhesitatingly engaged in an enterprise in which success was extremely
+problematical, and failure was certain death. They, disguised as
+servants, were to mount behind the carriages, and protect the royal
+family at all risks.
+
+The night of the 20th of June at length arrived, and the hearts of the
+royal inmates of the Tuileries throbbed violently as the hour approached
+which was to decide their destiny. At the hour of eleven, according to
+their custom, they took leave of those friends who were in the habit
+of paying their respects to them at that time, and dismissed their
+attendants as if to retire to their beds. As soon as they were alone,
+they hastily, and with trembling hands, dressed themselves in the
+disguises which had been prepared for their journey, and by different
+doors and at different times left the palace. It was the dark hour of
+midnight. The lights glimmered feebly from the lamps, but still there
+was the bustle of crowds coming and going in those ever-busy streets.
+The queen, in her traveling dress, leaning upon the arm of one of the
+body-guard, and leading her little daughter Maria Theresa by the hand,
+passed out at a door in the rear of the palace, and hastened through the
+Place du Carrousel, and, losing her way, crossed the Seine by the Pont
+Royal, and wandered for some time through the darkest and most obscure
+streets before she found the two hackney-coaches which were waiting for
+them at the Quai des Theatins. The king left the palace in a similar
+manner, leading his son Louis by the hand. He also lost his way in the
+unfrequented streets through which it was necessary for him to pass. The
+queen waited for half an hour in the most intense anxiety before the
+king arrived. At last, however, all were assembled, and, entering the
+hackney-coaches, the Count de Fersen, disguised as a coachman, leaped up
+on the box, and the wheels rattled over the pavements of the city as the
+royal family fled in this obscurity from their palace and their throne.
+The emotions excited in the bosoms of the illustrious fugitives were too
+intense, and the perils to which they were exposed too dreadful, to
+allow of any conversation. Grasping each other's hands, they sat in
+silence through the dark hours, with the gloomy remembrance of the past
+oppressing their spirits, and with the dread that the light of morning
+might introduce them to new disasters. A couple of hours of silence and
+gloom passed slowly away, and the coaches arrived at Bondy, the first
+stage from Paris. The gray dawn of the morning was just appearing in the
+east as they hurriedly changed their coaches for the large traveling
+carriage the king had ordered and another coach which there awaited
+them. Count de Fersen kissed the hands of the king and queen, and
+leaving them, according to previous arrangements, with their attendants,
+hastened the same night by another route to Brussels, in order to rejoin
+the royal family at a later period.
+
+The king's carriages now rolled rapidly on toward Chalons, an important
+town on their route. The queen had assumed the title and character of a
+German baroness returning to Frankfort with her two children; the king
+was her valet de chambre, the Princess Elizabeth, the king's sister, was
+her waiting-maid. The passport was made out in the following manner:
+
+     "Permit to pass Madame the Baroness of Korf, who is
+     returning to Frankfort with her two children, her
+     waiting-maid, her valet de chambre, and three domestics.
+
+     "The Minister of Foreign Affairs.
+                         "MONTMORIN."
+
+At each post-house on the road relays of eight horses were waiting for
+the royal carriages. When the sun rose over the hills of France they
+were already many leagues from the capital, and as the carriages rattled
+furiously along over hill and dale, the unwonted spectacle on that
+unfrequented road attracted much attention. At every little village
+where they stopped for an exchange of horses, the villagers gathered in
+groups around the carriages, admiring the imposing spectacle. The king
+was fully aware that the knowledge of his escape could not long be
+concealed from the authorities at Paris, and that all the resources of
+his foes would immediately be put into requisition to secure his arrest.
+They therefore pressed on with the utmost speed, that they might get as
+far as possible on their way before the pursuit should commence. The
+remarkable size and structure of the carriage which the king had caused
+to be constructed, the number of horses drawing the carriages, the
+martial figures and commanding features of the three body-guard
+strangely contrasting with the livery of menials, the portly appearance
+and kingly countenance of Louis, who sat in a corner of the carriage in
+the garb of a valet de chambre, all these circumstances conspired to
+excite suspicion and to magnify the dangers of the royal family. They,
+however, proceeded without interruption until they arrived at the little
+town of Montmirail, near Chalons, where, unfortunately, one of the
+carriages broke down, and they were detained an hour in making repairs.
+It was an hour of intense anxiety, for they knew that every moment was
+increasing the probability of their capture. The carriage, however, was
+repaired, and they started again on their flight. The sun shone brightly
+upon the fields, which were blooming in all the verdure of the opening
+summer. The seclusion of the region through which they were passing was
+enchanting to their eyes, weary of looking out upon the tumultuous mobs
+of Paris. The children, worn out by the exhaustion of a sleepless night,
+were peacefully slumbering in their parents' arms. Each revolution of
+the wheels was bringing them nearer to the frontier, where their
+faithful friend, M. de Bouille, was waiting, with his loyal troops, to
+receive them. A gleam of hope and joy now rose in their bosoms; and, as
+they entered the town of Chalons, at half past three o'clock in the
+afternoon, smiles of joy lighted their countenances, and they began to
+congratulate themselves that they were fast approaching the end of their
+dangers and their sufferings. As the horses were changing, a group
+of idlers gathered around the carriages. The king, emboldened by his
+distance from the capital, imprudently looked out at the window of the
+carriage. The post-master, who had been in Paris, instantly recognized
+the king. He, however, without the manifestation of the least surprise,
+aided in harnessing the horses, and ordered the postillion to drive on.
+He would not be an accomplice in arresting the escape of the king. At
+the next relay, at Point Sommeville, quite a concourse gathered around
+the carriages, and the populace appeared uneasy and suspicious. They
+watched the travelers very narrowly, and were observed to be whispering
+with one another, and making ominous signs. No one, however, ventured to
+make any movement to detain the carriages, and they proceeded on their
+way. A detachment of fifty hussars had been appointed to meet the king
+at this spot. They were there at the assigned moment. The breaking down
+of the carriage, however, detained the king, and the hussars, observing
+the suspicions their presence was awaking, departed half an hour before
+the arrival of the carriages. Had the king arrived but one half hour
+sooner, the safety of the royal family would have been secured. The king
+was surprised and alarmed at not meeting the guard he had anticipated,
+and drove rapidly on to the next relay at Sainte Menehould. It was now
+half past seven o'clock of a beautiful summer's evening. The sun was
+just sinking below the horizon, but the broad light still lingered upon
+the valleys and the hills. As they were changing the horses, the king,
+alarmed at not meeting the friends he expected, put his head out of the
+window to see if any friend was there who could inform him why the
+detachments were detained. The son of the post-master instantly
+recognized the king by his resemblance to the imprint upon the coins in
+circulation. The report was immediately whispered about among the crowd,
+but there was not sufficient force, upon the spur of the moment, to
+venture to detain the carriages. There was in the town a detachment of
+troops, friendly to the king, who would immediately have come to his
+rescue had the people attempted to arrest him. It was whispered among
+the dragoons that the king was in the carriage, and the commandant
+immediately ordered the troops to mount their horses and follow to
+protect the royal family; but the National Guard in the place, far more
+numerous, surrounded the barracks, closed the stables, and would not
+allow the soldiers to depart. The king, entirely unconscious of these
+movements, was pursuing his course toward the next relay. Young Drouet,
+however, the post-master's son, had immediately, upon recognizing the
+king, saddled his fleetest horse, and started at his utmost speed for
+the post-house at Varennes, that he might, before the king's arrival,
+inform the municipal authorities of his suspicions, and collect a
+sufficient force to detain the travelers. One of the dragoons,
+witnessing the precipitate departure of Drouet, and suspecting its
+cause, succeeded in mounting his horse, and pursued him, resolved to
+overtake him, and either detain him until the king had passed, or take
+his life. Drouet, however, perceiving that he was pursued, plunged into
+the wood, with every by-path of which he was familiar, and, in the
+darkness of the night, eluded his pursuer, and arrived at Varennes, by a
+very much shorter route than the carriage road, nearly two hours before
+the king. He immediately communicated to a band of young men his
+suspicions, and they, emulous of the glory of arresting their sovereign,
+did not inform the authorities or arouse the populace, but, arming
+themselves, they formed an ambush to seize the persons of the travelers.
+It was half past seven o'clock of a cold, dark, and gloomy night, when
+the royal family, exhausted with twenty-four hours of incessant anxiety
+and fatigue, arrived at the few straggling houses in the outskirts of
+the village of Varennes. They there confidently expected to find an
+escort and a relay of horses provided by their careful friend, M.
+Bouille.
+
+A small river passes through the little town of Varennes, dividing
+it into two portions, the upper and lower town, which villages
+are connected by a bridge crossing the stream. The king, by some
+misunderstanding, expected to find the relay upon the side of the river
+before crossing the bridge. But the fresh horses had been judiciously
+placed upon the other side of the river, so that the carriages, having
+crossed the bridge at full speed, could more easily, with a change of
+horses, hasten unmolested on their way. The king and queen, greatly
+alarmed at finding no horses, left the carriage, and wandered about in
+sad perplexity for half an hour, through the dark, silent, and deserted
+streets. In most painful anxiety, they returned to their carriages, and
+decided to cross the river, hoping to find the horses and their friends
+in the upper town. The bridge was a narrow stone structure, with its
+entrance surmounted by a gloomy, massive arch, upon which was reared
+a tower, a relic of the feudal system, which had braved the storms of
+centuries. Here, under this dark archway, Drouet and his companions had
+formed their ambuscade. The horses had hardly entered the gloomy pass,
+when they were stopped by a cart which had been overturned, and five or
+six armed men, seizing their heads, ordered the travelers to alight and
+exhibit their passports. The three body-guard seized their arms, and
+were ready to sacrifice their lives in the attempt to force the passage,
+but the king would allow no blood to be shed. The horses were turned
+round by the captors, and the carriages were escorted by Drouet and his
+comrades to the door of a grocer named Sausse, who was the humble mayor
+of this obscure town. At the same time, some of the party rushed to the
+church, mounted the belfry, and rang the alarm bell. The solemn booming
+of that midnight bell roused the affrighted inhabitants from their
+pillows, and soon the whole population was gathered around the carriages
+and about the door of the grocer's shop. It was in vain for the king to
+deny his rank. His marked features betrayed him. Clamor and confusion
+filled the night air. Men, women, and children were running to and fro;
+the populace were arming, to be prepared for any emergency; and the
+royal family were worn out by sleeplessness and toil. At last Louis
+made a bold appeal to the magnanimity of his foes. Taking the hand of
+Sausse, he said,
+
+"Yes! I am your king, and in your hands I place my destiny, and that
+of my wife, my sister, and my children. Our lives and the fate of the
+empire depend upon you. Permit me to continue my journey. I have no
+design of leaving the country. I am but going to the midst of a part of
+the army, and in a French town, to regain my real liberty, of which the
+factions at Paris deprive me. From thence I wish to make terms with the
+Assembly, who, like myself, are held in subjection through fear. I am
+not about to destroy, but to save and to secure the Constitution. If you
+detain me, I myself, France, all, are lost. I conjure you, as a father,
+as a man, as a citizen, leave the road free to us. In an hour we shall
+be saved, and with us France is saved. And, if you have any respect for
+one whom you profess to regard as your master, I command you, as your
+king, to permit us to depart."
+
+[Illustration: CAPTURE AT VARENNES.]
+
+The appeal touched the heart of the grocer and the captors by whom
+the king was surrounded. Tears came into the eyes of many, they
+hesitated; the expression of their countenances showed that they would
+willingly, if they dared to consult the dictates of their own hearts,
+let the king pass on. A more affecting scene can hardly be imagined.
+It was midnight. Torches and flambeaux were gleaming around. Men,
+women, and children were hurrying to and fro in the darkness. The
+alarm bell was pealing out its hurried sounds through the still air. A
+crowd of half-dressed peasants and artisans was rapidly accumulating
+about the inn. The king stood pleading with his subjects for liberty
+and life, far more moved by compassion for his wife and children than
+for himself. The children, weary and terrified, and roused suddenly
+from the sleep in which they had been lost in their parents' arms,
+gazed upon the strange scene with undefined dread, unconscious of the
+magnitude of their peril. The queen, seated upon a bale of goods in
+the shop, with her two children clinging to her side, plead, at times
+with the tears of despair, and again with all the majesty of her
+queenly nature, for pity or for justice. She hoped that a woman's
+heart throbbed beneath the bosom of the wife of the mayor, and made an
+appeal to her which one would think that, under the circumstances, no
+human heart could have resisted.
+
+"You are a mother, madame," said the queen, in most imploring accents,
+"you are a wife! the fate of a wife and mother is in your hands. Think
+what I must suffer for these children--for my husband. At one word from
+you I shall owe them to you. The Queen of France will owe you more than
+her kingdom--more than life."
+
+"Madame," coldly replied the selfish and calculating woman, "I should be
+happy to help you if I could without danger. You are thinking of your
+husband, I am thinking of mine. It is a wife's first duty to think of
+her own husband."
+
+The queen saw that all appeals to such a spirit must be in vain, and,
+taking her two children by the hand, with Madame Elizabeth ascended the
+stairs which conducted from the grocer's shop to his rooms above, where
+she was shielded from the gaze of the crowd. She threw herself into a
+chair, and, overwhelmed with anguish, burst into a flood of tears. The
+alarm bell continued to ring; telegraphic dispatches were sent to Paris,
+communicating tidings of the arrest; the neighboring villagers flocked
+into town; the National Guard, composed of people opposed to the king,
+were rapidly assembled from all quarters, and the streets barricaded to
+prevent the possibility of any rescue by the soldiers who advocated the
+royal cause. Thus the dreadful hours lingered away till the morning
+dawned. The increasing crowd stimulated one another to ferocity and
+barbarity. Insults, oaths, and imprecations incessantly fell upon the
+ears of the captives. The queen probably endured as much of mental agony
+that night as the human mind is capable of enduring. The conflict of
+indignation, terror, and despair was so dreadful, that her hair, which
+the night previous had been auburn, was in the morning white as snow.
+This extraordinary fact is well attested, and indicates an enormity of
+woe almost incomprehensible.
+
+There was no knowledge in Paris of the king's departure until seven
+o'clock in the morning, when the servants of the palace entered the
+apartments of the king and queen, and found the beds undisturbed and the
+rooms deserted. The alarm spread like wildfire through the palace and
+through the city. The alarm bells were rung, cannon were fired, and the
+cry resounded through the streets, "The king has fled! the king has
+fled!" The terrified populace were expecting almost at the next moment
+to see him return with an avenging army to visit his rebellious subjects
+with the most terrible retribution. From all parts of the city, every
+lane, and street, and alley leading to the Tuileries was thronged with
+the crowd, pouring on, like an inundation, toward the deserted palace.
+The doors were forced open, and the interior of the palace was instantly
+filled with the swarming multitudes. The mob from the streets polluted
+the sanctuaries of royalty with every species of vulgarity and
+obscenity. An amazon market-woman took possession of the queen's bed,
+and, spreading her cherries upon it, she took her seat upon the royal
+couch, exclaiming, "To-day it is the nation's turn to take their ease."
+One of the caps of the queen was placed in derision upon the head of a
+vile girl of the street. She exclaimed that it would sully her forehead,
+and trampled it under her feet with contempt. Every conceivable insult
+was heaped upon the royal family. Placards, posted upon the walls,
+offered trivial rewards to any one who would bring back the noxious
+animals which had fled from the palace. The metropolis was agitated to
+its very center, and the most vigorous measures immediately adopted to
+arrest the king, if possible, before he should reach the friends who
+could afford him protection. This turmoil continued for many hours,
+till the cry passed from mouth to mouth, and filled the streets, "He
+is arrested! he is arrested!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE RETURN TO PARIS.
+
+1791-1792
+
+Despair of the king.--Lovely character of Madame Elizabeth.--Return to
+Paris.--Insults of the mob.--Massacre of M. Dampierre.--Commissioners
+from Paris.--Noble character of Barnave.--Brutality of Petion.--Approach
+to Paris.--Appalling violence.--Sufferings of the royal family.--Arrival
+at the Tuileries.--Exertions of La Fayette.--Roar of the
+multitude.--Spirit of the queen.--Embarrassing position of La
+Fayette.--The palace rigorously guarded.--The queen grossly
+insulted.--Despair of the king.--Supremacy of the mob.--A brutal
+assemblage.--Ferocious inscriptions.--Attack upon the palace.--The
+mob force an entrance.--Fearlessness of the king.--The mob
+awed.--Courage of Madame Elizabeth.--Cries of the mob.--The red
+bonnet.--First glimpse of Napoleon.--The queen's apartments
+invaded.--Insulted by abandoned women.--The queen's children.--The
+young girl.--Meeting of the National Assembly.--The king's friends
+derided.--The president of the Assembly.--The mob retires.--Deputies
+visit the royal family.--Unfeeling remark.--Hopeless condition of the
+royal family.--Breast-plate for the king.--Dagger-proof corset for the
+queen.--Fete in the Champ de Mars.--The last appearance of the royal
+family in public.
+
+
+During all the long hours of the night, while the king was detained in
+the grocer's shop at Varennes, he was, with anxiety indescribable,
+looking every moment for soldiers to appear, sent by M. Bouille for his
+rescue. But the National Guard, which was composed of those who were in
+favor of the Revolution, were soon assembled in such numbers as to
+render all idea of rescue hopeless. The sun rose upon Varennes but to
+show the king the utter desperation of his condition, and he resigned
+himself to despair. The streets were filled with an infuriated populace,
+and from every direction the people were flocking toward the focus of
+excitement. The children of the royal family, utterly exhausted, had
+fallen asleep. Madame Elizabeth, one of the most lovely and gentle of
+earthly beings, the sister of the king, who, through all these trials,
+and, indeed, through her whole life, manifested peculiarly the spirit of
+heaven, was, regardless of herself, earnestly praying for support for
+her brother and sister.
+
+Preparations were immediately made to forward the captives to Paris,
+lest the troops of M. Bouille, informed of their arrest, should come
+to their rescue. The king did every thing in his power to delay the
+departure, and one of the women of the queen feigned sudden and alarming
+illness at the moment all of the rest had been pressed into the
+carriages. But the impatience of the populace could not thus be
+restrained. With shouts and threats they compelled all into the
+carriages, and the melancholy procession, escorted by three or four
+thousand of the National Guard, and followed by a numerous and
+ever-increasing concourse of the people, moved slowly toward Paris. Hour
+after hour dragged heavily along as the fugitives, drinking the very
+dregs of humiliation, were borne by their triumphant and exasperated
+foes back to the horrors from which they had fled. The road was lined on
+either side by countless thousands, insulting the agonized victims with
+derision, menaces, and the most ferocious gestures. Varennes is distant
+from Paris one hundred and eighty miles, and for this whole distance, by
+night and by day, with hardly an hour's delay for food or repose, the
+royal family were exposed to the keenest torture of which the spiritual
+nature is in this world susceptible. Every revolution of the wheels but
+brought them into contact with fresh vociferations of calumny. The fury
+of the populace was so great that it was with difficulty that the guard
+could protect their captives from the most merciless massacre. Again and
+again there was a rush made at the carriages, and the mob was beaten
+back by the arms of the soldiers. One old gentleman, M. Dampierre, ever
+accustomed to venerate royalty, stood by the road side, affected by the
+profoundest grief in view of the melancholy spectacle. Uncovering his
+gray hairs, he bowed respectfully to his royal master, and ventured to
+give utterance to accents of sympathy. The infuriated populace fell upon
+him like tigers, and tore him to pieces before the eyes of the king and
+queen. The wheels of the royal carriage came very near running over his
+bleeding corpse.
+
+The procession was at length met by commissioners sent from the Assembly
+to take charge of the king. Ashamed of the brutality of the people,
+Barnave and Petion, the two commissioners, entered the royal carriage to
+share the danger of its inmates. They shielded the prisoners from death,
+but they could not shield them from insult and outrage. An
+ecclesiastic, venerable in person and in character, approached the
+carriages as they moved sadly along, and exhibited upon his features
+some traces of respect and sorrow for fallen royalty. It was a mortal
+offense. The brutal multitude would not endure a _look_ even of sympathy
+for the descendant of a hundred kings. They rushed upon the defenseless
+clergyman, and would have killed him instantly had not Barnave most
+energetically interfered. "Frenchmen!" he shouted, from the carriage
+windows, "will you, a nation of brave men, become a people of
+murderers!" Barnave was a young man of much nobleness of character. His
+polished manners, and his sympathy for the wrecked and ruined family of
+the king, quite won their gratitude. Petion, on the contrary, was coarse
+and brutal. He was a _Democrat_ in the worst sense of that abused word.
+He affected rude and rough familiarity with the royal family, lounged
+contemptuously upon the cushions, ate apples and melons, and threw the
+rind out of the window, careless whether or not he hit the king in the
+face. In all his remarks, he seemed to take a ferocious pleasure in
+wounding the feelings of his victims.
+
+As the cavalcade drew near to Paris, the crowds surrounding the
+carriages became still more dense, and the fury of the populace more
+unmeasured. The leaders of the National Assembly were very desirous of
+protecting the royal family from the rage of the mob, and to shield the
+nation from the disgrace of murdering the king, the queen, and their
+children in the streets. It was feared that, when the prisoners should
+enter the thronged city, where the mob had so long held undisputed sway,
+it would be impossible to restrain the passions of the multitude, and
+that the pavements would be defaced with the blood of the victims.
+Placards were pasted upon the walls in every part of the city, "Whoever
+applauds the king shall be beaten; whoever insults him shall be hung."
+As the carriages approached the suburbs of the metropolis, the
+multitudes which thronged them became still more numerous and
+tumultuous, and the exhibitions of violence more appalling. All the dens
+of infamy in the city vomited their denizens to meet and deride, and, if
+possible, to destroy the captured monarch. It was a day of intense and
+suffocating heat. Ten persons were crowded into the royal carriage. Not
+a breath of air fanned the fevered cheeks of the sufferers. The heat,
+reflected from the pavements and the bayonets, was almost insupportable.
+Clouds of dust enveloped them, and the sufferings of the children were
+so great that the queen was actually apprehensive that they would die.
+The queen dropped the window of the carriage, and, in a voice of agony,
+implored some one to give her a cup of water for her fainting child.
+"See, gentlemen," she exclaimed, "in what a condition my poor children
+are! one of them is choking." "We will yet choke them and you," was the
+brutal reply, "in another fashion." Several times the mob broke through
+the line which guarded the carriages, pushed aside the horses, and,
+mounting the steps, stretched their clenched fists in at the windows.
+The procession moved perseveringly along in the midst of the clashing of
+sabers, the clamor of the blood-thirsty multitude, and the cries of men
+trampled under the hoofs of the horses.
+
+It was the 25th of June, 1791, at seven o'clock in the evening, when
+this dreadful procession, passing through the Barrier de l'Etoile,
+entered the city, and traversed the streets, through double files of
+soldiers, to the Tuileries. At length they arrived, half dead with
+exhaustion and despair, at the palace. The crowd was so immense that it
+was with the utmost difficulty that an entrance could be effected. At
+that moment, La Fayette, who had been adopting the most vigorous
+measures for the protection of the persons of the royal family, came to
+meet them. The moment Maria Antoinette saw him, forgetful of her own
+danger, and trembling for the body-guard who had periled their lives for
+her family, she exclaimed, "Monsieur La Fayette, save the body-guard."
+The king and queen alighted from the carriage. Some of the soldiers took
+the children, and carried them through the crowd into the palace. A
+member of the Assembly, who had been inimical to the King, came forward,
+and offered his arm to the queen for her protection. She looked him a
+moment in the face, and indignantly rejected the proffered aid of an
+enemy. Then, seeing a deputy who had been their friend, she eagerly
+accepted his arm, and ascended the steps of the palace. A prolonged
+roar, as of thunder, ascended from the multitudinous throng which
+surrounded the palace when the king and queen had entered, and the doors
+of their prison were again closed against them.
+
+[Illustration: THE TUILERIES.]
+
+La Fayette was at the head of the National Guard. He was a strong
+advocate for the rights of the people. At the same time, he wished
+to respect the rights of the king, and to sustain a constitutional
+monarchy. As soon as they had entered the palace, Maria Antoinette,
+with that indomitable spirit which ever characterized her, approached
+La Fayette, and offered to him the keys of her casket, as if he were
+her jailer. La Fayette, deeply wounded, refused to receive them. The
+queen indignantly, with her own hands, placed them in his hat. "Your
+majesty will have the goodness to take them back," said the marquis,
+"for I certainly shall not touch them."
+
+The position of La Fayette at this time was about as embarrassing as it
+could possibly have been; and he was virtually the jailer of the royal
+family, answerable with his life for their safe keeping. He had always
+been a firm friend of civil and religious liberty. He was very anxious
+to see France blessed with those free institutions and that recognition
+of popular rights which are the glory of America, but he also wished to
+protect the king and queen from outrage and insult; and a storm of
+popular fury had now risen which he knew not how to control or to guide.
+He, however, resolved to do all in his power to protect the royal
+family, and to watch the progress of events with the hope of
+establishing constitutional liberty and a constitutional throne over
+France.
+
+The palace was now guarded, by command of the Assembly, with a degree of
+rigor unknown before. The iron gates of the courts and garden of the
+Tuileries were kept locked. A list of the persons who were to be
+permitted to see the royal family was made out, and none others were
+allowed to enter. At every door sentinels were placed, and in every
+passage, and in the corridor which connected the chambers of the king
+and queen, armed men were stationed. The doors of the sleeping
+apartments of the king and queen were kept open night and day, and a
+guard was placed there to keep his eye ever upon the victims. No respect
+was paid to female modesty, and the queen was compelled to retire to her
+bed under the watchful eye of an unfeeling soldier. It seems impossible
+that a civilized people could have been guilty of such barbarism. But
+all sentiments of humanity appear to have fled from France. One of the
+queen's women, at night, would draw her own bed between that of the
+queen and the open door, that she might thus partially shield the person
+of her royal mistress. The king was so utterly overwhelmed by the
+magnitude of the calamities in which he was now involved, that his mind,
+for a season, seemed to be prostrated and paralyzed by the blow. For ten
+days he did not exchange a single word with any member of his family,
+but moved sadly about in the apathy of despair, or sat in moody silence.
+At last the queen threw herself upon her knees before him, and,
+presenting to him her children, besought him, for her sake and that of
+their little ones, to rouse his fortitude. "We may all perish," she
+said, "but let us, at least, perish like sovereigns, and not wait to be
+strangled unresistingly upon the very floor of our apartments."
+
+The long and dreary months of the autumn, the winter, and the spring
+thus passed away, with occasional gleams of hope visiting their minds,
+but with the storm of revolution, on the whole, growing continually more
+black and terrific. General anarchy rioted throughout France. Murders
+were daily committed with impunity. There was no law. The mob had all
+power in their hands. Neither the king nor queen could make their
+appearance any where without exposure to insult. Violent harangues in
+the Assembly and in the streets had at length roused the populace to a
+new act of outrage. The immediate cause was the refusal of the king to
+give his sanction to a bill for the persecution of the priests. It was
+the 20th of June, 1792. A tumultuous assemblage of all the miserable,
+degraded, and vicious, who thronged the garrets and the cellars of
+Paris, and who had been gathered from all lands by the lawlessness with
+which crime could riot in the capital, were seen converging, as by a
+common instinct, toward the palace. They bore banners fearfully
+expressive of their ferocity, and filled the air with the most savage
+outcries. Upon the end of a pike there was affixed a bleeding heart,
+with the inscription, "The heart of the aristocracy." Another bore a
+doll, suspended to a frame by the neck, with this inscription, "To the
+gibbet with the Austrian." With the ferocity of wolves, they surrounded
+the palace in a mass impenetrable. The king and queen, as they looked
+from their windows upon the multitudinous gathering, swaying to and fro
+like the billows of the ocean in a storm, and with the clamor of human
+passions, more awful than the voice of many waters, rending the skies,
+instinctively clung to one another and to their children in their
+powerlessness. Madame Elizabeth, with her saint-like spirit, and her
+heaven-directed thoughts, was ever unmindful of her own personal danger
+in her devotion to her beloved brother. The king hoped that the soldiers
+who were stationed as a guard within the inclosures of the palace would
+be able to protect them from violence. The gates leading to the Place du
+Carrousel were soon shattered beneath the blows of axes, and the human
+torrent poured in with the resistlessness of a flood. The soldiers very
+deliberately shook the priming from their guns, as the emphatic
+expression to the mob that they had nothing to fear from them, and the
+artillery men coolly directed their pieces against the palace. Axes and
+iron bars were immediately leveled at the doors, and they flew from
+their hinges; and the drunken and infuriated rabble, with clubs, and
+pistols, and daggers, poured, an interminable throng, through the halls
+and apartments where kings, for ages, had reigned in inapproachable pomp
+and power. The servants of the king, in terror, fled in every direction.
+Still the crowd came rushing and roaring on, crashing the doors before
+them, till they approached the apartment in which the royal family was
+secluded. The king, who, though deficient in active energy, possessed
+passive fearlessness in the most eminent degree, left his wife,
+children, and sister clinging together, and entered the adjoining room
+to meet his assailants. Just as he entered the room, the door, which was
+bolted, fell with a crash, and the mob was before him. For a moment the
+wretches were held at bay by the calm dignity of the monarch, as,
+without the tremor of a nerve, he gazed steadily upon them. The crowd in
+the rear pressed on upon those in the advance, and three friends of the
+king had just time to interpose themselves between him and the mob, when
+the whole dense throng rushed in and filled the room. A drunken
+assassin, with a sharp iron affixed to a long pole, aimed a thrust
+violently at the king's heart. One blow from an heroic citizen laid him
+prostrate on the floor, and he was trampled under the feet of the
+throng. Oaths and imprecations filled the room; knives and sabers
+gleamed, and yet the majesty of royalty, for a few brief moments,
+repelled the ferocity of the assassins. A few officers of the National
+Guard, roused by the peril of the king, succeeded in reaching him, and,
+crowding him into the embrasure of a window, placed themselves as a
+shield before him. The king seemed only anxious to withdraw the
+attention of the mob from the room in which his family were clustered,
+where he saw his sister, Madame Elizabeth, with extended arms and
+imploring looks, struggling to come and share his fate. "It is the
+queen!" was the cry, and a score of weapons were turned toward her. "No!
+no!" exclaimed others, "it is Madame Elizabeth." Her gentle spirit, even
+in these degraded hearts, had won admiration, and not a blow fell upon
+her. "Ah!" exclaimed Madame Elizabeth, "why do you undeceive them?
+Gladly would I die in her place, if I might thus save the queen." By the
+surging of the crowd she was swept into the embrasure of another window,
+where she was hemmed in without any possibility of extrication. By this
+time the crowds were like locusts, climbing up the balconies, and
+pouring in at the windows, and every foot of ground around the palace
+was filled with the excited throng. Shouts of derision filled the air,
+while the mob without were incessantly crying, "Have you killed them
+yet? Throw us out their heads."
+
+Almost miraculously, the friends surrounding the king succeeded in
+warding off the blows which were aimed at him. One of the mob thrust out
+to the king, upon the end of a pike, a _red bonnet_, the badge of the
+Jacobins, and there was a general shout, "Let him put it on! let him
+put it on! It is a sign of patriotism. If he is a patriot he will wear
+it." The king, smiling, took the bonnet and put it upon his head.
+Instantly there rose a shout from the fickle multitude, "_Vive le roi!_"
+The mob had achieved its victory, and placed the badge of its power upon
+the brow of the humbled monarch.
+
+There was at that time standing in the court-yard of the palace a young
+man, with the blood boiling with indignation in his veins, in view of
+the atrocities of the mob. The ignominious spectacle of the red bonnet
+upon the head of the king, as he stood in the recess of the window,
+seemed more than this young man could endure, and, turning upon his
+heel, he hastened away, exclaiming, "The wretches! the wretches! they
+ought to be mown down by grape-shot." This is the first glimpse the
+Revolution presents of Napoleon Bonaparte.
+
+But while the king was enduring their tortures in one apartment, the
+queen was suffering indignities and outrages equally atrocious in
+another. Maria Antoinette was, in the eyes of the populace, the
+personification of every thing to be hated. They believed her to be
+_infamous_ as a wife; proud, tyrannical, and treacherous; that, as an
+Austrian, she hated France; that she was doing all in her power to
+induce foreign armies to invade the French empire with fire and sword;
+and that she had instigated the king to attempt escape, that he might
+head the armies. Maria, conscious of this hatred, was aware that her
+presence would only augment the tide of indignation swelling against the
+king, and she therefore remained in the bed-chamber with her children.
+But her sanctuary was instantly invaded. The door of her apartment had
+been, by some friend, closed and bolted. Its stout oaken panels were
+soon dashed in, and the door driven from its hinges. A crowd of
+miserable women, abandoned to the lowest depths of degradation and
+vulgarity, rushed into the apartment, assailing her ears with the most
+obscene and loathsome epithets the language could afford. The queen
+stood in the recess of a window, with queenly pride curbing her mortal
+apprehension. A few friends had gathered around her, and placed a table
+before her as a partial protection. Her daughter, an exceedingly
+beautiful girl of fourteen years of age, with her light brown hair
+floating in ringlets over her fair brow and shoulders, clung to her
+mother's bosom as if she thought not of herself, but would only, with
+her own body, shield her mother's heart from the dagger of the assassin.
+Her son, but seven years old, clung to his mother's hand, gazing with a
+bewildered look of terror upon the hideous spectacle. The vociferations
+of the mob were almost deafening. But the aspect of the group, so lovely
+and so helpless, seemed to disarm the hand of violence. Now and then, in
+the endless crowd defiling through the room, those in the advance
+pressed resistlessly on by those in the rear, some one more tender
+hearted would speak a word of sympathy. A young girl came crowded along,
+neatly dressed, and with a pleasing countenance. She, however,
+immediately began to revile the queen in the coarsest language of
+vituperation.
+
+"Why do you hate me so, my friend?" said the queen, kindly; "have I ever
+done any thing to injure or to offend you?"
+
+"No! you have never injured me," was the reply, "but it is you who cause
+the misery of the nation."
+
+"Poor child!" rejoined the queen, "you have been told so, and have been
+deceived. Why should I make the people miserable? I am the wife of the
+king--the mother of the dauphin; and by all the feelings of my heart, as
+a wife and mother, I am a Frenchwoman. I shall never see my own country
+again. I can only be happy or unhappy in France. I was happy when you
+loved me."
+
+The heart of the girl was touched. She burst into tears, and exclaimed,
+"Pardon me, good queen, I did not know you; but now I see that I have
+indeed been deceived, and you are truly good."
+
+Hour after hour of humiliation and agony thus rolled away. The National
+Assembly met, and in vain the friends of the king urged its action to
+rescue the royal family from the insults and perils to which they were
+exposed. But these efforts were met by the majority only with derision.
+They hoped that the terrors of the mob would compel the king hereafter
+to give his assent to any law whatever which they might frame. At last
+the shades of night began to add their gloom to this awful scene, and
+even the most bitter enemies of the king did not think it safe to leave
+forty thousand men, inflamed with intoxication and rage, to riot,
+through the hours of the night, in the parlors, halls, and chambers of
+the Tuileries. The president of the Assembly, at that late hour, crowded
+his way into the apartment where, for several hours, the king had been
+exposed to every conceivable indignity. The mysterious authority of law
+opened the way through the throng.
+
+"I have only just learned," said the president, "the situation of your
+majesty."
+
+"That is very astonishing," replied the king, indignantly, "for it is a
+long time that it has lasted."
+
+The president, mounted upon the shoulders of four grenadiers, addressed
+the mob and urged them to retire, and they, weary with the long hours of
+outrages, slowly sauntered through the halls and apartments of the
+palace, and at eight o'clock silence reigned, with the gloom of night,
+throughout the Tuileries. The moment the mob became perceptibly less,
+the king received his sister into his arms, and they hastened to the
+apartment of the queen. During all the horrors of this awful day, her
+heroic soul had never quailed; but, now that the peril was over, she
+threw herself upon the bosom of her husband, and wept in all the
+bitterness of inconsolable grief. As the family were locked in each
+other's arms in silent gratitude for their preservation, the king
+accidentally beheld in a mirror the red bonnet, which he had forgotten
+to remove from his head. He turned red with mortification, and, casting
+upon the floor the badge of his degradation, turned to the queen, with
+his eyes filled with tears, and exclaimed, "Ah, madame, why did I take
+you from your country, to associate you with the ignominy of such a day
+as this!"
+
+After the withdrawal of the mob, several of the deputies of the National
+Assembly were in the apartment with the royal family, and, as the queen
+recounted the horrors of the last five hours, one of them, though
+bitterly hostile to the royal family, could not refrain from tears. "You
+weep," said she to him, "at seeing the king and his family so cruelly
+treated by a people whom he always wished to make happy."
+
+"True, madame," unfeelingly replied the deputy, "I weep for the
+misfortunes of a beautiful and sensitive woman, the mother of a family.
+But do not mistake; not one of my tears falls for either king or queen.
+I hate kings and queens. It is the only feeling they inspire me with. It
+is my religion."
+
+But time stops not. The hours of a dark and gloomy night, succeeding
+this terrible day, lingered slowly along, but no sleep visited the
+eyelids of the inmates of the Tuileries. Scowling guards still eyed them
+malignantly, and the royal family could not unbosom to one another
+their sorrows but in the presence of those who were hostile spies upon
+every word and action. Escape was now apparently hopeless. The events of
+the past day had taught them that they had no protection against popular
+fury. And they were filled with the most gloomy forebodings of woes yet
+to come.
+
+These scenes occurred on the 20th of June, 1792. On the 14th of July of
+the same year there was to be a magnificent fete in the Champ de Mars,
+as the anniversary of the independence of the nation. The king and queen
+were compelled to be present to grace the triumph of the people, and to
+give the royal oath. It was anticipated that there would be many
+attempts on that day to assassinate the king and queen. Some of the
+friends of the royal family urged that they should each wear a
+breast-plate which would guard against the first stroke of a dagger, and
+thus give the king's friends time to defend him. A breast-plate was
+secretly made for the king. It consisted of fifteen folds of Italian
+taffeta, and was formed into an under waistcoat and a wide belt. Its
+impenetrability was tried, and it resisted all thrusts of the dagger,
+and several balls were turned aside by it. Madame Campan wore it for
+three days as an under petticoat before an opportunity could be found
+for the king to try it on unperceived. At length, one morning, in the
+queen's chamber, a moment's opportunity occurred, and he slipped it on,
+saying, at the same time, to Madame Campan, "It is to satisfy the queen
+that I submit to this inconvenience. They will not assassinate me. Their
+scheme is changed. They will put me to death in another way."
+
+A dagger-proof corset had also been prepared for the queen without her
+knowledge. She, however, could not be persuaded to wear it. "If they
+assassinate _me_," she said, "it will be a most happy event. It will
+release me from the most sorrowful existence, and may save from a cruel
+death the rest of the family." The 14th of July arrived. The king,
+queen, and dauphin were marched, like captives gracing an Oriental
+triumph, at the head of the procession, from the palace to the Champ de
+Mars. With pensive features and saddened hearts they passed along
+through the single file of soldiers, who were barely able to keep at bay
+the raging mob, furious for their blood, and maledictions fell heavily
+upon their ears from a thousand tongues. The fountain of tears was dry,
+and despair had nerved them with stoicism. They returned to the palace
+in the deepest dejection, and never again appeared in the streets of
+Paris till they were borne to their execution.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+IMPRISONMENT IN THE TEMPLE.
+
+1792
+
+Apprehension of poison.--The queen daily insulted.--An assassin in the
+queen's chamber.--The allied army.--Parties in France.--The Royalists,
+Girondists, and Jacobins.--Consternation in Paris.--The king's
+dethronement.--Scene from the palace.--Gathering of the mob.--The
+queen with her children.--Brutal remarks of the troops.--Rising of
+the sun.--Disaffection of the troops.--Extremity of the royal
+family.--Spirit of the queen.--The king's calmness.--The mother and
+the queen.--The royal family take refuge in the Assembly.--The
+king's speech.--The square box.--The king's serenity.--The mob at
+the palace.--Brutal massacre of the king's friends.--The mob sack
+the palace.--The dead bodies of the Royalists burned.--The king
+dethroned.--The royal family removed to the Feuillants.--Bitter
+sufferings of the royal family.--Taken back to the Assembly.--The royal
+family consigned to the Temple.--Advance of the allies.--Inhuman
+massacre.--Description of the Temple.--Tower of the Temple.--Apartments
+of the royal family.--Obscene pictures.--Resources of the
+prison.--Employments of the royal family.--Severe restrictions.--Manner
+of obtaining news.--The Princess Lamballe.--Maria's letter to the
+Princess de Lamballe.--She rejoins the queen.--The princess separated
+from the queen.--She is thrown into prison.--Trial of the princess.--She
+refuses to swear.--Assassination of the princess.--Brutality of the
+mob.--Dreadful apprehensions.--Increased severities.--The queen grossly
+insulted.--The king separated from his family.--Wretched state of the
+king.--The queen's anguish at the separation.--The king sees his family
+occasionally.--Condition of the captives.
+
+
+Every day now added to the insults and anguish the royal family were
+called to endure. They were under such apprehension of having their food
+poisoned, that all the articles placed upon the table by the attendants,
+provided by the Assembly, were removed untouched, and they ate and drank
+nothing but what was secretly provided by one of the ladies of the
+bed-chamber. One day the queen stood at her window, looking out sadly
+into the garden of the Tuileries, when a soldier, standing under the
+window, with his bayonet upon his gun, looked up to her and said, "I
+wish, Austrian woman, that I had your head upon my bayonet here, that I
+might pitch it over the wall to the dogs in the street." And this man
+was placed under her window ostensibly for her protection! Whenever the
+queen made her appearance in the garden, she encountered insults often
+too outrageous to be related. An assassin, one night, with his sharpened
+dagger, endeavored to penetrate her chamber. She was awoke by the noise
+of the struggle with the guard at the door. The assassin was arrested.
+"What a life!" exclaimed the queen. "Insults by day, and assassins by
+night! But let him go. He came to murder me. Had he succeeded, the
+Jacobins would have borne him to-morrow in triumph through the streets
+of Paris."
+
+The allied army, united with the emigrants, in a combined force of
+nearly one hundred and fifty thousand men, now entered the frontiers of
+France, to rescue, by military power, the royal family. They issued a
+proclamation, in which it was stated that "the allied sovereigns had
+taken up arms to stop the anarchy which prevailed in France--to give
+liberty to the king, and restore him to the legitimate authority of
+which he had been deprived." The proclamation assured the people of
+Paris that, if they did not immediately liberate the king and return to
+their allegiance, the city of Paris should be totally destroyed, and
+that the enemies of the king should forfeit their heads. This
+proclamation, with the invasion of the French territory by the allied
+army, fanned to the intensest fury the flames of passion already raging
+in all parts of the empire. Thousands of young men from all the
+provinces thronged into the city, breathing vengeance against the royal
+family. In vain did the king declare his disapproval of these violent
+measures on the part of the allies. In vain did he assert his readiness
+to head the armies of France to repel invasion.
+
+There were now three important parties in France struggling for power.
+The first was that of the king, and the nobles generally, wishing for
+the re-establishment of the monarchy. The second was that of the
+Girondists, wishing for the dethronement of the king and the
+establishment of a republic, with the power in the hands of the most
+influential citizens in intelligence and wealth. The third was that of
+the ultra Democrats or Jacobins, who wished to raise the multitude from
+degradation, penury, and infamy, into power, by the destruction of the
+throne, and the subjection of the middling classes, and the entire
+subversion of all the distinctions of wealth and rank. The approach of
+the allies united both of these latter classes against the throne. A
+motion was immediately introduced into the Assembly that the monarchy be
+entirely abolished, and a mob rioting through Paris threatened the
+deputies with death unless they dethroned the king. But an army of one
+hundred and fifty thousand men were marching upon Paris, and the
+deputies feared a terrible retribution if this new insult were heaped
+upon their sovereign. No person can describe the confusion and
+consternation with which the metropolis of France was filled. The mob
+declared, on the 9th of August, that, unless the dethronement were that
+day pronounced, they would that night sack the palace, and bear the
+heads of the royal family through the streets upon their pikes. The
+Assembly, undecided, and trembling between the two opposing perils,
+separated without the adoption of any resolve. All knew that a night of
+dreadful tumult and violence must ensue. Some hundreds of gentlemen
+collected around the king and queen, resolved to perish with them.
+Several regiments of soldiers were placed in and around the palace to
+drive back the mob, but it was well known that the troops would more
+willingly fraternize with the multitude than oppose them. The sun went
+down, and the street lamps feebly glimmered through the darkness of the
+night. The palace was filled with armed men. The gentlemen surrounding
+the king were all conscious of their utter inability to protect him.
+They had come but to share the fate of their sovereign. The queen and
+the Princess Elizabeth ascended to an upper part of the palace, and
+stepped from a low window into the dark shadow of a balcony to look out
+upon the tumultuous city. The sound, as of the gathering of a resistless
+storm, swept through all the streets, and rose loud and threatening
+above the usual roar of the vast metropolis. The solemn tones of the
+alarm bells, pealing through the night air, summoned all the desperadoes
+of France to their several places of rendezvous, to march upon the
+palace. The rumbling of artillery wheels, and the frequent discharge of
+musketry, proclaimed the determination and the desperation of the
+intoxicated mob. In darkness and silence, the queen and her sister stood
+listening to these fearful sounds, and their hearts throbbed violently
+in view of the terrible scene through which they knew that they must
+pass. The queen, pale but tearless, and nerved to the utmost by queenly
+pride, descended to the rooms below. She walked into the chamber where
+her beautiful son was sleeping, gazed earnestly upon him for a moment,
+bent over him, and imprinted upon his cheek a mother's kiss--and yet
+without a tear. She entered the apartment of her daughter--lovely,
+surpassingly lovely in all the blooming beauty of fifteen. The
+princess, comprehending the peril of the hour, could not sleep. Maria
+pressed her child to her throbbing heart, and the pride of the queen was
+soon vanquished by the tenderness of the mother, as with convulsive
+energy she embraced her, and wept in anguish almost unendurable. Shouts
+of unfeeling derision arose from the troops below, stationed for the
+protection of the royal family, and their ears were assailed by remarks
+of the most brutal barbarity. Hour after hour of the night lingered
+along, the clamor without incessantly increasing, and the crowds
+surrounding the palace augmenting. The excitement within the palace was
+so awful that no words could give it utterance. The few hundred
+gentlemen who had come so heroically to share the fate of their
+sovereign were aware that no resistance could be made to the tens of
+thousands who were thirsting for their blood.
+
+Midnight came. It was fraught with horror. The queen, in utter
+exhaustion, threw herself upon a sofa. At that moment a musket shot was
+fired in the court-yard. "There is the first shot," said the queen, with
+the calmness of despair, "but it will not be the last. Let us go and be
+with the king." At length, from the windows of their apartment, a few
+gleams of light began to redden the eastern sky. "Come," said the
+Princess Elizabeth, "and see the rising sun." Maria went mournfully to
+the window, gazed long and steadfastly upon the rising luminary, feeling
+that, before that day's sun should go down, she and all whom she loved
+would be in another world. It was an awful spectacle which the light of
+day revealed. All the avenues to the palace were choked with intoxicated
+thousands. The gardens, and the court-yard surrounding the palace, were
+filled with troops, placed there for the protection of the sovereign,
+but evidently sympathizing with the mob, with whom they exchanged badges
+and friendly greetings. The queen, apprehensive that the children might
+be massacred in their beds, had them dressed, and placed by the side of
+herself and the king. It was recommended to the king that he should go
+down into the court-yard, among the troops stationed there for his
+defense; that his presence might possibly awaken sympathy and enthusiasm
+in his behalf. The king and queen, with their son and daughter, and
+Madame Elizabeth, went down with throbbing hearts to visit the ranks of
+their defenders. They were received with derisive insults and hootings.
+Some of the gunners left their posts, and thrust their fists into the
+face of the king, insulting him with menaces the most brutal. They
+instantly returned to the palace, pallid with indignation and despair.
+
+Soon an officer came in and informed the king that all resistance was
+hopeless; that six pieces of artillery were already pointed against the
+main door of the palace; that a mob of countless thousands, well armed,
+and dragging with them twelve heavy cannon, were rapidly approaching the
+scene of conflict; that the whole populace of Paris were up in arms
+against the king, and that no reliance whatever could be placed in the
+soldiers stationed for his defense. "There is not," said he, "a single
+moment to lose. You will all inevitably and immediately perish, unless
+you hasten to the hall where the Assembly is in session, and place
+yourself under the protection of that body." The pride of the queen was
+intensely aroused in view of appealing to the Assembly, their bitterest
+enemy, for succor, and she indignantly replied, "I would rather be
+nailed to the walls of the palace than leave it to take refuge in the
+Assembly." And the heroism of Maria Theresa instinctively inspiring her
+bosom, she seized, from the belt of an officer, two pistols, and,
+presenting them to the king, exclaimed, "Now, sire, is the time to show
+yourself, and if we must perish, let us perish with glory." The king
+calmly received the pistols, and silently handed them back to the
+officer.
+
+"Madame," said the messenger, "are you prepared to take upon yourself
+the responsibility of the death of the king, of yourself, of your
+children, and of all who are here to defend you? All Paris is on the
+march. Time presses. In a few moments it will be too late." The queen
+cast a glance upon her daughter, and a mother's fears prevailed. The
+crimson blood mounted to her temples. Then, again, she was pale as a
+corpse. Then, rising from her seat, she said, "Let us go." It was seven
+o'clock in the morning.
+
+The king and queen, with their two children, Madame Elizabeth, and a few
+personal friends, descended the great stair-case of the Tuileries, to
+pass out through the bands of soldiers and the tumultuous mob to the
+hall of the Assembly. At the stair-case there was a large concourse of
+men and women, gesticulating with fury, who refused to permit the royal
+family to depart. The tumult was such that the members of the royal
+family were separated from each other, and thus they stood for a moment
+mingled with the crowd, listening to language of menace and insult, when
+a deputy assured the mob that an order of the Assembly had summoned the
+royal family to them. The rioters then gave way, and the mournful group
+passed out of the door into the garden. They forced their way along,
+surrounded by a few friends, through imprecations, insults, gleaming
+daggers, and dangers innumerable, until they arrived at the hall of the
+Assembly, which the king was with difficulty enabled to enter, in
+consequence of the immense concourse which crowded him, thirsting for
+his blood, and yet held back by an unseen hand. As the king entered the
+hall, he said, with dignity, to the president, "I have come here to save
+the nation from the commission of a great crime. I shall always consider
+myself, with my family, safe in your hands." The royal family sat down
+upon a bench. Mournful silence pervaded the hall. A more sorrowful,
+heart-rending sight mortal eyes have seldom seen. The father, the
+mother, the saint-like sister, the innocent and helpless children, had
+found but a momentary refuge from cannibals, who were roaring like
+wolves around the hall, and battering at the doors to break in and
+slake their vengeance with blood. It was seriously apprehended that the
+mob would make a rush, and sprinkle the blood of the royal family upon
+the very floor of the sanctuary where they had sought a refuge.
+
+Behind the seat of the president there was a box about ten feet square,
+constituting a seat reserved for reporters, guarded by an iron railing.
+Into this box the royal family were crowded for safety. A few friends of
+the king gathered around the box. The heat of the day was almost
+insupportable. Not a breath of air could penetrate the closely-packed
+apartment; and the heat, as of a furnace, glowed in the room. Scarcely
+had the royal family got into this frail retreat, when the noise without
+informed them that their friends were falling before the daggers of
+assassins, and the greatest alarm was felt lest the doors should be
+driven in by the merciless mob. In this awful hour, the king appeared as
+calm, serene, and unconcerned as if he were the spectator of a scene in
+which he had no interest. The countenance of the queen exhibited all the
+unvanquished firmness of her soul, as with flushed cheek and indignant
+eye she looked upon the drama of terror and confusion which was
+passing. The young princess wept, and her cheeks were marked with the
+furrows which her tears, dried by the heat, had left. The young dauphin
+appeared as cool and self-possessed as his father. The rattling fire of
+artillery, and the report of musketry at the palace, proclaimed to the
+royal family and the affrighted deputies the horrid conflict, or,
+rather, massacre which was raging there. Immediately after the king and
+queen had left the Tuileries, the mob broke in at every avenue. A few
+hundred Swiss soldiers left there remained faithful to the king. The
+conflict was short--the massacre awful. The infuriated multitude rushed
+through the halls and the apartments of the spacious palace, murdering,
+without mercy and without distinction of age or sex, all the friends of
+the king whom they encountered. The mutilated bodies were thrown out of
+the windows to the mob which filled the garden and the court. The
+wretched inmates of the palace fled, pursued in every direction. But
+concealment and escape were alike hopeless. Some poor creatures leaped
+from the windows and clambered up the marble monuments. The wretches
+refrained from firing at them, lest they should injure the statuary, but
+pricked them with their bayonets till they compelled them to drop down,
+and then murdered them at their feet. A pack of wolves could not have
+been more merciless. The populace, now rioting in their resistless
+power, with no law and no authority to restrain them, gave loose rein to
+vengeance, and, having glutted themselves with blood, proceeded to sack
+the palace. Its magnificent furniture, and splendid mirrors, and costly
+paintings, were dashed to pieces and thrown from the windows, when the
+fragments were eagerly caught by those below and piled up for bonfires.
+Drunken wretches staggered through all the most private apartments,
+threw themselves, with blood-soaked boots, upon the bed of the queen,
+ransacked her drawers, made themselves merry over her notes, and
+letters, and the various articles of her toilet, and polluted the very
+air of the palace by their vulgar and obscene ribaldry. As night
+approached, huge fires were built, upon which the dead bodies of the
+massacred Royalists were thrown, and all were consumed.
+
+During all the long hours of that dreadful day, and until two o'clock
+the ensuing night, the royal family remained, almost without a change of
+posture, in the narrow seat which had served them for an asylum. Who can
+measure the amount of their endurance during these fifteen hours of
+woe? An act was passed, during this time, in obedience to the demands of
+the mob, dethroning the king. The hour of midnight had now come and
+gone, and still the royal sufferers were in their comfortless
+imprisonment, half dead with excitement and exhaustion. The young
+dauphin had fallen asleep in his mother's arms. Madame Elizabeth and the
+princess, entirely unnerved, were sobbing with uncontrollable grief. The
+royal family were then transferred, for the remainder of the night, to
+some deserted and unfurnished rooms in the old monastery of the
+Feuillants. Some beds and mattresses were hastily collected, and a few
+coarse chairs for their accommodation. As soon as they had entered these
+cheerless rooms, and were alone, the king prostrated himself upon his
+knees, with his family clinging around him, and gave utterance to the
+prayer, "Thy trials, O God! are dreadful. Give us courage to bear them.
+We adore the hand which chastens, as that which has so often blessed us.
+Have mercy on those who have died fighting in our defense."
+
+Utter exhaustion enabled the unhappy family to find a few hours of
+agitated sleep. The sun arose the ensuing morning with burning rays,
+and, as they fell upon the eyelids of the queen, she looked wildly
+around her for a moment upon the cheerless scene, and then, with a
+shudder, exclaiming, "Oh! I hoped it was all a dream," buried her face
+again in her pillow. The attendants around her burst into tears. "You
+see, my unhappy friends," said Maria, "a woman even more unhappy than
+yourselves, for she has caused all your misfortunes." The queen wept
+bitterly as she was informed of the massacre of her friends the
+preceding day. Already the royal family felt the pressure of poverty.
+They were penniless, and had to borrow some garments for the children.
+The king and queen could make no change in their disordered dress.
+
+At ten o'clock in the morning, a guard came and conducted the royal
+family again to the Assembly. Immediately the hall was surrounded by a
+riotous mob, clamoring for their blood. At one moment the outer doors
+were burst open, and the blood-thirsty wretches made a rush for the
+interior. The king, believing that their final hour had come, begged his
+friends to seek their own safety, and abandon him and his family to
+their fate. The day of agitation and terror, however, passed away, and,
+as the gloom of night again darkened the city, the illustrious
+sufferers were reconveyed to the Feuillants. All their friends were
+driven from them, and guards were placed over them, who, by rudeness and
+insults, did what they could to add bitterness to their captivity.
+
+It was decided by the Assembly that they should all be removed to the
+prison of the Temple. At three o'clock the next day two carriages were
+brought to the door, and the royal family were conveyed through the
+thronged streets and by the most popular thoroughfares to the prison.
+The enemies of royalty appeared to court the ostentatious display of its
+degradation. As the carriages were slowly dragged along, an immense
+concourse of spectators lined the way, and insults and derision were
+heaped upon them at every step. At last, after two hours, in which they
+were constrained to drain the cup of ignominy to its dregs, the
+carriages rolled under the gloomy arches of the Temple, and their prison
+doors were closed against them.
+
+In the mean time the allied army was advancing with rapid strides toward
+the city. The most dreadful consternation reigned in the metropolis. The
+populace rose in its rage to massacre all suspected of being in favor of
+royalty. The prisons were crowded with the victims of suspicion. The
+rage of the mob would not wait for trial. The prison doors were burst
+open, and a general and awful massacre ensued. There was no mercy shown
+to the innocence of youth or to female helplessness. The streets of
+Paris were red with the blood of its purest citizens, and the spirit of
+murder, with unrestrained license, glutted its vengeance. In one awful
+day and night many thousands perished. The walls of rock and iron of the
+Temple alone protected the royal family from a similar fate.
+
+The Temple was a dismal fortress which stood in the heart of Paris, a
+gloomy memorial of past ages of violence and crime. It was situated not
+far from the Bastile, and inclosed within its dilapidated yet massive
+walls a vast space of silence and desolation. In former ages cowled
+monks had moved with noiseless tread through its spacious corridors, and
+their matins and vespers had vibrated along the stone arches of this
+melancholy pile. But now weeds choked its court-yard, and no sounds were
+heard in its deserted apartments but the shrieking of the wind as it
+rushed through the grated windows and whistled around the angles of the
+towers. The shades of night were adding to the gloom of this wretched
+abode as the captives were led into its deserted and unfurnished cells.
+It was after midnight before the rooms for their imprisonment were
+assigned to them. It was a night of Egyptian darkness. Soldiers with
+drawn swords guarded them, as, by the light of a lantern, they picked
+their way through the rank weeds of the castle garden, and over piles of
+rubbish, to a stone tower, some thirty feet square and sixty feet high,
+to whose damp, cheerless, and dismal apartments they were consigned.
+"Where are you conducting us?" inquired a faithful servant who had
+followed the fortunes of his royal master. The officer replied, "Thy
+master has been used to gilded roofs, but now he will see how the
+assassins of the people are lodged."
+
+[Illustration: THE TOWER OF THE TEMPLE.]
+
+Madame Elizabeth was placed in a kind of kitchen, or wash-room, with a
+truckle bed in it, on the ground floor. The second floor of the Tower
+was assigned to the attendants of the household. One common wooden
+bedstead and a few old chairs were the only furniture of the room. The
+third floor was assigned to the king, and queen, and the two children.
+A footman had formerly slept in the room, and had left suspended
+upon the walls some coarse and vulgar prints. The king, immediately
+glancing at them, took them down and turned their faces to the wall,
+exclaiming, "I would not have my daughter see such things." The king
+and the children soon fell soundly asleep; but no repose came to the
+agitated mind of Maria Antoinette. Her lofty and unbending spirit felt
+these indignities and atrocities too keenly. She spent the night in
+silent tears, and indulging in the most gloomy forebodings of the fate
+which yet awaited them.
+
+The morning sun arose, but to show still more clearly the dismal
+aspect of the prison. But few rays could penetrate the narrow windows
+of the tower, and blinds of oaken plank were so constructed that the
+inmates could only look out upon the sky. A very humble breakfast was
+provided for them, and then they began to look about to see what
+resources their prison afforded to beguile the weary hours. A few
+books were found, such as an odd volume of Horace, and a few volumes
+of devotional treatises, which had long been slumbering, moth-eaten,
+in these deserted cells, where, in ages that were past, monks had
+performed their severe devotions. The king immediately systematized
+the hours, and sat down to the regular employment of teaching his
+children. The son and the daughter, with minds prematurely developed
+by the agitations and excitements in the midst of which they had been
+cradled, clung to their parents with the most tender affection, and
+mitigated the horrors of their captivity by manifesting the most
+engaging sweetness of disposition, and by prosecuting their studies
+with untiring vigor. The queen and Madame Elizabeth employed
+themselves with their needles. They breakfasted at nine o'clock, and
+then devoted the forenoon to reading and study. At one o'clock they
+were permitted to walk for an hour, for exercise, in the court-yard of
+the prison, which had long been consigned to the dominion of rubbish
+and weeds. But in these walks they were daily exposed to the most
+cruel insults from the guards that were stationed over them. At two
+o'clock they dined. During the long hours of the evening the king
+read aloud. At night, the queen prepared the children for bed, and
+heard them repeat their prayers. Every day, however, more severe
+restrictions were imposed upon the captives. They were soon deprived
+of pens and paper; and then scissors, knives, and even needles were
+taken away, under the pretense that they might be the instruments of
+suicide. They were allowed no communication of any kind with their
+friends without, and were debarred from all acquaintance with any
+thing transpiring in the world. In that gloomy tower of stone and
+iron they were buried. A faithful servant, however, adroitly opened
+communication with a news boy, who, under the pretense of selling the
+daily papers, recounted under their prison windows, in as loud a voice
+as he could, the leading articles of the journals he had for sale.
+The servant listened at the window with the utmost care, and then
+privately communicated the information to the king and queen.
+
+[Illustration: THE ROYAL FAMILY IN THE TEMPLE.]
+
+The fate of the Princess Lamballe, who perished at this time, is highly
+illustrative of the horrors in the midst of which all the Royalists
+lived. This lovely woman, left a widow at eighteen, was attracted to
+the queen by her misfortunes, and became her most intimate and devoted
+friend. She lodged in an apartment adjoining to the queen's, that she
+might share all her perils. Occasionally the princess was absent to
+watch over and cheer an aged friend, the Duke de Penthievre, her
+father-in-law, who resided at the Chateau de Vernon. She had gone a
+short time before the 20th of June to visit the aged duke, and Maria
+Antoinette, who foresaw the terrible storm about to burst upon them,
+wrote the following touching letter to her friend, urging her not to
+return to the sufferings and dangers of the Tuileries. The letter was
+found in the hair of the Princess de Lamballe after her assassination.
+
+     "Do not leave Vernon, my dear Lamballe, before you are
+     perfectly recovered. The good Duke de Penthievre would be
+     sorry and distressed, and we must all take care of his
+     advanced age and respect his virtues. I have so often told
+     you to take heed of yourself, that, if you love me, you
+     must think of yourself; we shall require all of our strength
+     in the times in which we live. Oh! do not return, or return
+     as late as possible. Your heart would be too deeply
+     wounded; you would have too many tears to shed over my
+     misfortunes--you, who loved me so tenderly. This race of
+     tigers which infests the kingdom would cruelly enjoy itself
+     if it knew all the sufferings we undergo. Adieu, my dear
+     Lamballe; I am always thinking of you, and you know I never
+     change."
+
+The princess, notwithstanding this advice, hastened to join her friend
+and to share her fate. She stood by the side of the queen during the
+sleeplessness of the night preceding the 20th of June, and clung to her
+during all those long and terrific hours in which the mob filled her
+apartment with language of obscenity, menace, and rage. She accompanied
+the royal family to the Assembly, shared with them the cheerless night
+in the old monastery of the Feuillants, and followed them to the gloomy
+prison of the Temple. The stern decree of the Assembly, depriving the
+royal family of the presence of any of their friends, excluded the
+princess from the prison. She still, however, lived but to weep over the
+sorrows of those whom she so tenderly loved.
+
+She was soon arrested as a Loyalist, and plunged, like the vilest
+criminal, into the prison of La Force. For the crime of loving the king
+and queen she was summoned to appear before the Revolutionary tribunal.
+The officers found her lying upon her pallet in the prison, surrounded
+by other wretched victims of lawless violence, scarcely able to raise
+her head from her pillow. She entreated them to leave her to die where
+she was. One of the officers leaned over her bed, and whispered to her
+that they were her friends, and that her life depended upon her entire
+compliance with their directions. She immediately arose and accompanied
+the guard down the prison stairs to the door. There two brutal-looking
+wretches, covered with blood, stood waiting to receive her. As they
+grasped her arms, she fainted. It was long before she recovered. As soon
+as she revived she was led before the judges. "Swear," said one of them,
+"that you love liberty and equality; and swear that you hate all kings
+and queens." "I am willing to swear the first," she replied, "but as to
+hatred of kings and queens, I can not swear it, for it is not in my
+heart." Another judge, moved with pity by her youth and innocence, bent
+over her and whispered, "Swear any thing, or you are lost." She still
+remained silent. "Well," said one, "you may go, but when you get into
+the street, shout _Vive la nation!_" The court-yard was filled with
+assassins, who cut down, with pikes and bludgeons, the condemned as they
+were led out from the court, and the mutilated and gory bodies of the
+slain were strewn over the pavement. Two soldiers took her by the arm to
+lead her out. As she passed from the door, the dreadful sight froze her
+heart with terror, and she exclaimed, forgetful of the peril, "O God!
+how horrible!" One of the soldiers, by a friendly impulse, immediately
+covered her mouth, with his hand, that her exclamations might not be
+heard. She was led into the street, filled with assassins thirsting for
+the blood of the Royalists, and had advanced but a few steps, when a
+journeyman barber, staggering with intoxication and infuriated with
+carnage, endeavored, in a kind of brutal jesting, to strike her cap from
+her head with his long pike. The blow fell upon her forehead, cutting a
+deep gash, and the blood gushed out over her face. The assassins around,
+deeming this the signal for their onset, fell upon her. A blow from a
+bludgeon laid her dead upon the pavement. One, seizing her by the hair,
+with a saber cut off her head. Others tore her garments from her
+graceful limbs, and, cutting her body into fragments, paraded the
+mutilated remains upon their pikes through the streets. The dissevered
+head they bore into an ale house, and drank and danced around the
+ghastly trophy in horrid carousal. The rioting multitude then, in the
+phrensy of intoxication, swarmed through the streets to the Temple,
+to torture the king and queen with the dreadful spectacle. The king,
+hearing the shoutings and tumultuous laughter of the mob, went to the
+window, and recognized, in the gory head thrust up to him upon the point
+of a pike, the features of his much-loved friend. He immediately led the
+queen to another part of the room, that she might be shielded from the
+dreadful spectacle.
+
+Such were the flashes of terror which were ever gleaming through the
+bars of their windows. The horrors of each passing moment were magnified
+by the apprehension of still more dreadful evils to come. There was,
+however, one consolation yet left them. They were permitted to cling
+together. Locked in each other's arms, they could bow in prayer, and by
+sympathy and love sustain their fainting hearts. It was soon, however,
+thought that these indulgences were too great for dethroned royalty to
+enjoy. But a few days of their captivity had passed away, when, at
+midnight, they were aroused by an unusual uproar, and a band of brutal
+soldiers came clattering into their room with lanterns, and, in the most
+harsh and insulting manner, commanded the immediate expulsion of all the
+servants and attendants of the royal family. Expostulation and entreaty
+were alike unavailing. The captives were stripped of all their friends,
+and passed the remainder of the night in sleeplessness and in despair.
+With the light of the morning they endeavored to nerve themselves to
+bear with patience this new trial. The king performed the part of a
+nurse in aiding to wash and dress the children. For the health of the
+children, they went into the court-yard of the prison before dinner for
+exercise and the fresh air. A soldier, stationed there to guard them,
+came up deliberately to the queen, and amused his companions by puffing
+tobacco smoke from his pipe into her face. The parents read upon the
+walls the names of their children, described as "whelps who ought to be
+strangled."
+
+Six weeks of this almost unendurable agony passed away, when, one night,
+as the unhappy captives were clustered together, finding in their mutual
+and increasing affection a solace for all their woes, six municipal
+officers entered the tower, and read a decree ordering the entire
+separation of the king from the rest of his family. No language can
+express the consternation of the sufferers in view of this cruel
+measure. Without mercy, the officers immediately executed the barbarous
+command, by tearing the king from the embraces of his agonized wife and
+his grief-distracted children. The king, overwhelmed with anguish in
+view of the sufferings which his wife and children must endure, most
+earnestly implored them not to separate him from his family. They were
+inflexible and, hardly allowing the royal family one moment for their
+parting adieus, hurried the king away. It was the dark hour of a gloomy
+night. The few rays of light from the lanterns guided them through
+narrow passages, and over piles of rubbish to a distant angle of the
+huge and dilapidated fortress, where they thrust the king into an
+unfurnished cell, and, locking the door upon him, they left him with one
+tallow candle to make visible the gloom and the solitude. There was, in
+one corner, a miserable pallet, and heaps of moldering bricks and mortar
+were scattered over the damp floor. The king threw himself, in utter
+despair, upon this wretched bed, and counted, till the morning dawned,
+the steps of the sentinel pacing to and fro before his door. At length a
+small piece of bread and a bottle of water were brought him for his
+breakfast.
+
+The anguish of the queen in the endurance of this most cruel separation
+was apparently as deep as human nature could experience. Her woe
+amounted to delirium. Pale and haggard, she walked to and fro,
+beseeching her jailers that they would restore to her and to her
+children the husband and the father. Her pathetic entreaties touched
+even their hearts of stone. "I do believe," said one of them, "that
+these infernal women will make even me weep." After some time, they
+consented that the king should occasionally be permitted to partake his
+meals with his family, a guard being always present to hear what they
+should say. Immediately after the meal, he was to be taken back to his
+solitary imprisonment.
+
+Such was the condition of the royal family during a period of about four
+months, varied by the capricious mercy or cruelty of the different
+persons who were placed as guards over them. Their clothes became
+soiled, threadbare, and tattered; and they were deprived of all means of
+repairing their garments, lest they should convert needles and scissors
+into instruments of suicide. The king was not allowed the use of a razor
+to remove his beard; and the luxury of a barber to perform that
+essential part of his toilet was an expense which his foes could not
+incur. It was the studied endeavor of those who now rode upon the
+crested yet perilous billows of power, to degrade royalty to the lowest
+depths of debasement and contempt--that the beheading of the king and
+the queen might be regarded as merely the execution of a male and a
+female felon dragged from the loathsome dungeons of crime.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+EXECUTION OF THE KING.
+
+1792-1793
+
+Ominous preparations.--The king summoned before the Convention.--The
+king before the Convention.--Charges brought against him.--The king
+begs for a morsel of bread.--He is taken back to prison.--Advance
+of the allies.--Clamor for the king's life.--The king condemned
+to death.--Emotion of Malesherbes.--The king's demands.--The
+Abbe Edgeworth.--The last interview.--Anguish of the royal
+family.--The last embrace.--The separation.--The king receives
+the sacrament.--Mementoes to his family.--The king summoned to
+execution.--Brutality of the officers.--The brutal jailer.--The
+king conducted to execution.--A sad procession.--Admirable calmness
+of the king.--Attempt to rescue the king.--Its failure.--The
+guillotine.--Associations.--The king's thoughtfulness.--He undresses
+himself.--The king ascends the scaffold.--His speech.--The last
+act in the tragedy.--Burial of the king's body.--The blood-red
+obelisk.--Character of Louis.
+
+
+On the 11th of December, 1792, just four months after the royal family
+had been consigned to the Temple, as the captives were taking their
+breakfast, a great noise of the rolling of drums, the neighing of
+horses, and the tramp of a numerous multitude was heard around the
+prison walls; soon some one entered, and informed the king that these
+were the preparations which were making to escort him to his trial. The
+king knew perfectly well that this was the step which preceded his
+execution, and, as he thought of the awful situation of his family, he
+threw himself into his chair and buried his face in his hands, and for
+two hours remained in that attitude immovable. He was roused from his
+painful revery by the entrance of the officers to conduct him to the bar
+of his judges, from whom he was aware he could expect no mercy. "I
+follow you," said the king, "not in obedience to the orders of the
+Convention, but because my enemies are the more powerful." He put on his
+brown great-coat and hat, and, silently descending the stairs to the
+door of the tower, entered a carriage which was there awaiting him. As
+he had long been deprived of his razors, his chin and cheeks were
+covered with masses of hair. His garments hung loosely around his
+emaciated frame, and all dignity of aspect was lost in the degraded
+condition to which designing cruelty had reduced him. The captive
+monarch was escorted through the streets by regiments of cavalry,
+infantry, and artillery, every man furnished with fifteen rounds of
+ammunition to repel any attempts at a rescue. A countless throng of
+people lined the streets through which the illustrious prisoner was
+conveyed. The multitude gazed upon the melancholy procession in profound
+silence. He soon stood before the bar of the Convention. "Louis," said
+the president, "the French nation accuses you. You are about to hear the
+charges which are to be preferred. Louis, be seated." The king listened
+with perfect tranquillity and self-possession to a long catalogue of
+accusations, in which his efforts to sustain the falling monarchy, and
+his exertions to protect himself and family from insults and death, were
+construed into crimes against the nation.
+
+The examination of the king was long, minute, and was conducted by those
+who were impatient for his blood. At its close, the king, perfectly
+exhausted by mental excitement and the want of refreshment, was led back
+into the waiting-room of the Convention. He was scarcely able to stand
+for faintness. He saw a soldier eating a piece of bread. He approached,
+and, in a whisper, begged him for a piece, and ate it. Here was the
+monarch of thirty millions of people, in the heart of his proud capital,
+and with all his palaces around him, actually begging bread of a poor
+soldier. The king was again placed in the carriage, and conveyed back to
+his prison in the Temple. As the cortege passed slowly by the palace of
+the Tuileries, the scene of all his former grandeur and happiness, the
+king gazed long and sadly on the majestic pile, so lost in thought that
+he heeded not, and apparently heard not the insulting cries which were
+resounding around him. As the king entered the Temple, he raised his
+eyes most wistfully to the queen's apartment, but the windows were so
+barred that no glances could be interchanged. The king was conducted to
+his apartment, and was informed that he could no longer be permitted to
+hold any communication whatever with the other members of his family.
+He contrived, however, by means of a tangle of thread, in which was
+inclosed a piece of paper, perforated by a needle, to get a note to the
+queen, and to receive a few words in return. He, however, felt that his
+doom was sealed, and began from that hour to look forward to his
+immortality. He made his will, in which he spoke in most affecting terms
+of his wife, and his children, and his enemies, commending them all to
+the protection of God.
+
+An indescribable gloom now reigned throughout Paris. The allied armies
+on the frontiers were gradually advancing. The French troops were
+defeated. It was feared that the Royalists would rise, and join the
+invaders, and rescue the king. Desperadoes rioted through the streets,
+clamoring for the blood of their monarch. With knives and bludgeons they
+surrounded the Convention, threatening the lives of all if they did not
+consign the king to the guillotine. The day for the final decision
+came--Shall the king live or die? On that day the heart of the
+metropolis throbbed as never before. It was the 20th of January, 1793.
+The Convention had already been in uninterrupted session for fifteen
+hours. The clamor of the tumultuous and threatening mob gave portentous
+warning of the doom which awaited the members of the Assembly should
+they dare to spare the life of the king. One by one the deputies mounted
+the tribune as their names were called in alphabetical order, and gave
+their vote. For some time death and exile seemed equally balanced. The
+results of the vote were read. The Convention comprised seven hundred
+and twenty-one voters, three hundred and thirty-four of whom voted for
+exile, and three hundred and eighty-seven for death.
+
+Louis sat alone in his prison, calmly awaiting the decision. He laid
+down that night knowing that his doom was sealed, and yet not knowing
+what that doom was. Malesherbes, the venerable friend who had
+volunteered for his defense, came to communicate the mournful tidings.
+He fell at the king's feet so overcome with emotion that he could not
+speak. The king understood the language of his silence and his tears,
+and uttered himself the sentence "Death." But a few moments elapsed
+before the officers of the Convention came, in all the pomp and parade
+of the land, to communicate to the king his doom to the guillotine in
+twenty-four hours. With perfect calmness, and fixing his eye immovably
+upon his judges he heard the reading of the sentence. The reading
+concluded, the king presented a paper to the deputies, which he first
+read to them in the clear and commanding tones of a monarch upon his
+throne, demanding a respite of three days, in order to prepare to appear
+before God; also permission to see his family, and to converse with a
+priest. The Convention, angry at these requests, informed the king that
+he might see any priest he pleased, and that he might see his family,
+but that the execution must take place in twenty-four hours from the
+time of the sentence. Darkness had again fallen upon the city, when the
+minister of religion, M. Edgeworth, was led through the gloomy streets,
+to administer the consolations of piety to the condemned monarch. As he
+entered the apartment of the king, he fell at his feet and burst into
+tears. Louis for a moment wept, when, recovering himself, he said,
+"Pardon me this momentary weakness. I have so long lived among enemies,
+that habit has rendered me insensible to hatred. The sight of a faithful
+friend restores my sensibility, and moves me to tears in spite of
+myself." A long conversation ensued, in which the king inquired, with
+the greatest interest, respecting the fate of his numerous friends. He
+read his will with the utmost deliberation, his voice faltering only
+when he alluded to his wife, children, and sister. At seven o'clock he
+was to have his last agonizing interview with his beloved family, and
+the thought of this agitated him far more than the prospect of the
+scaffold.
+
+The hour for the last sad meeting arrived. The king, having prepared his
+heart by prayer for the occasion, descended into a small unfurnished
+room, where he was to meet his family. The door opened. The queen,
+leading his son, and Madame Elizabeth, leading his daughter, with
+trembling, fainting steps, entered the room. Not a word was uttered. The
+king threw himself upon a bench, drew the queen to his right side, his
+sister to the left, and their arms encircled his neck, and their heads
+hung upon his breast. The son climbed upon his father's knee, clinging
+with his arms frantically to his bosom; and the daughter, throwing
+herself at his feet, buried her head in his lap, her beautiful hair, in
+disordered ringlets, falling over her shoulders. A long half hour thus
+passed, in which not one single articulate word was spoken, but the
+anguish of these united hearts was expressed in cries and lamentations
+which pierced through the stone walls of their prison, and were heard
+by passers by in the streets. But human nature could not long endure
+this intensity of agony. Total exhaustion ensued. Their tears dried upon
+their cheeks; embraces, kisses, whispers of tenderness and love, and woe
+ensued, which lasted for two hours.
+
+The king then clasped them each in a long embrace, pressing his lips to
+their cheeks, and prepared to retire. Clinging to each other in an
+inseparable group, they approached the stair-case which the king was to
+ascend, when their piercing, heart-rending cries were renewed. The king,
+summoning all his fortitude to his aid, tore himself from them, and, in
+most tender accents, cried "_Adieu! adieu!_" hastily ascended the stairs
+and disappeared, having partially promised that he would see them again
+in the morning. The princess royal fell fainting upon the floor, and was
+borne insensible to her room. The king, reaching his apartment, threw
+himself into a chair, and exclaimed, "What an interview I have had! Why
+do I love so fondly? Alas! why am I so fondly loved? But we have now
+done with time, let us occupy ourselves with eternity."
+
+The hour of midnight had now arrived. The king threw himself upon his
+bed, and slept as calmly, as peacefully, as though he had never known
+a sorrow. At five o'clock he was awakened, and received the sacrament
+of the Lord's Supper. Then, taking a small parcel from his bosom, and
+removing his wedding ring from his finger, he said to an attendant,
+"After my death, I wish you to give this seal to my son, this ring to
+the queen. Say to the queen, my dear children, and my sister, that I had
+promised to see them this morning, but that I desired to spare them the
+agony of this bitter separation twice over. How much it has cost me to
+part without receiving their last embraces!" Here his utterance was
+impeded by sobs. He then called for some scissors, that he might cut off
+locks of hair for his family. As he soon after stood by the stove,
+warming himself, he exclaimed, "How happy am I that I maintained my
+Christian faith while on the throne! What would have been my condition
+now, were it not for this hope!" Soon faint gleams of the light of day
+began to penetrate through the iron bars and planks which guarded his
+windows. It was the signal for the beating of drums, the tramp of armed
+men, the rolling of heavy carriages of artillery, and the clattering of
+horses' hoofs. As the escort were arriving at their stations in the
+court-yard of the Temple, a great noise was heard upon the stair-case.
+"They have come for me," said the king; and, rising with perfect
+calmness and without a tremor, he opened the door. It was a false
+summons. Again and again, under various pretexts, the door was opened,
+until nine o'clock, when a tumultuous noise upon the stair-case
+announced the approach of a body of armed men. Twelve municipal officers
+and twelve soldiers entered the apartment. The soldiers formed in two
+lines. The king, with a serene air, placed himself between the double
+lines, and, looking to one of the municipal officers, said, presenting
+to him a roll of paper, which was his last will and testament, "I beg of
+you to transmit this paper to the queen." The municipal brutally
+replied, "That is no affair of mine. I am here to conduct you to the
+scaffold." "True," the king replied, and gave the paper to another, who
+received it. The king then, taking his hat and declining his coat,
+notwithstanding the severity of the cold, said, with a dignified gesture
+and a tone of command, "Let us go." The king led the way, followed
+rather than conducted by his escort. Descending the stairs, he met the
+turnkey, who had been disrespectful to him the night before, and whom
+the king had reproached for his insolence. Louis immediately approached
+the unfeeling jailer, and said to him, "Mathey, I was somewhat warm with
+you yesterday; forgive me, for the sake of this hour." The imbruted
+monster turned upon his heel without any reply.
+
+As he crossed the court-yard of the Temple, he anxiously gazed upon the
+windows of the apartment where the queen, his sister, and his children
+were imprisoned. The windows were so guarded by plank shutters that no
+glances from the loved ones within could meet his eye. As the heart of
+the king dwelt upon the scenes of anguish which he knew must be passing
+there, it seemed for a moment that his fortitude would fail him. But,
+with a violent effort, he recovered his composure and passed on. At the
+entrance of the Temple a carriage awaited the king. Two soldiers entered
+the carriage, and took seats by his side. The king's confessor also rode
+in the carriage. It was the 21st of January, 1793, a gloomy winter's
+day. Dark clouds lowered in the sky. Fog and smoke darkened the city.
+The atmosphere was raw, and cold in the extreme. Nature seemed in
+harmony with man's deed of cruelty and crime. The shops were all
+closed, the markets were empty. No citizens were allowed to cross the
+streets on the line of march, or even to show themselves at the windows.
+Sixty drums kept up a deafening clamor as the vast procession of
+cavalry, infantry, and artillery marched before, behind, and on each
+side of the carriage. Cannon, loaded with grape-shot, with matches
+lighted, guarded the main street on the line of march, to prevent the
+possibility of an attempt even at rescue. The noise of the drums, the
+clatter of the iron hoofs of the horses, and the rumbling of the heavy
+pieces of artillery over the pavements prevented all discourse, and the
+king, leaning back in his carriage, surrendered himself to such
+reflections as the awful hour would naturally suggest. The perfect
+calmness of the king excited the admiration of those who were near his
+person, and a few hearts in the multitude, touched with pity, gave
+utterance to the cry of "Pardon! pardon!" The sounds, however, died away
+in the throng, awakening no sympathetic response. As the procession
+moved along, no sound proceeded from human lips. A feeling of awe
+appeared to have taken possession of the whole city. The sentiment of
+loyalty had, for so many centuries, pervaded the bosoms of the French
+people, that they could not conduct their monarch to the scaffold
+without the deepest emotions of awe. A feeling of consternation
+oppressed every heart in view of the deed now to be perpetrated. But it
+was too late to retract. Perhaps there was not an individual in that
+vast throng who did not shudder in view of the crime of that day. At one
+spot on the line of march, seven or eight young men, in the spirit of
+desperate heroism which the occasion excited, hoping that the pity of
+the multitude would cause them to rally for their aid, broke through the
+line, sword in hand, and, rushing toward the carriage, shouted, "Help
+for those who would save the king." Three thousand young men had
+enrolled themselves in the conspiracy to respond to this call. But the
+preparations to resist such an attempt were too formidable to allow of
+any hopes of success. The few who heroically made the movement were
+instantly cut down. At the Place de la Revolution, one hundred thousand
+people were gathered in silence around the scaffold. The instrument of
+death, with its blood-red beams and posts, stood prominent above the
+multitudinous assemblage in the damp, murky air.
+
+The guillotine was erected in the center of the Place de la Revolution,
+directly in the front of the garden of the Tuileries. This celebrated
+instrument of death was invented in Italy by a physician named
+Guillotin, and from him received its name. A heavy ax, raised by
+machinery between two upright posts, by the touching of a spring fell,
+gliding down between two grooves, and severed the head from the body
+with the rapidity of lightning. The palace in which Louis had passed the
+hours of his infancy, and his childhood, and the days of his early
+grandeur; the magnificent gardens of the palace, where he had so often
+been greeted with acclamations; the spacious Elysian Fields, the pride
+of Paris, were all spread around, as if in mockery of the sacrifice
+which was there to be offered. This whole space was crowded with a
+countless multitude, clustered upon the house tops, darkening the
+windows, swinging upon the trees, to witness the tragic spectacle of the
+beheading of their king. Arrangements had been made to have the places
+immediately around the scaffold filled by the unrelenting foes of the
+monarch, that no emotions of pity might retard the bloody catastrophe.
+As the carriage approached the place of execution, the hum of the
+mighty multitude was hushed, and a silence, as of death, pervaded the
+immense throng.
+
+At last the carriage stopped at the foot of the scaffold. The king
+raised his eyes, and said to his confessor, in a low but calm tone, "We
+have arrived, I think." By a silent gesture the confessor assented. The
+king, ever more mindful of others than of himself, placed his hand upon
+the knee of the confessor, and said to the officers and executioners who
+were crowded around the coach, "Gentlemen, I recommend to your
+protection this gentleman. See that he be not insulted after my death. I
+charge you to watch over him." As no one made any reply, the king
+repeated the admonition in tones still more earnest. "Yes! yes!"
+interrupted one, jeeringly, "make your mind easy about that; we will
+take care of him. Let us alone for that." Three of the executioners then
+approached the king to undress him. He waved them from him with an
+authoritative gesture, and himself took off his coat, his cravat, and
+turned down his shirt collar. The executioners then came with cords to
+bind him to a plank. "What do you intend to do?" he exclaimed,
+indignantly. "We intend to bind you," they replied, as they seized his
+hands. To be bound was an unexpected indignity, at which the blood of
+the monarch recoiled. "No! no!" he exclaimed, "I will never submit to
+that. Do your business, but you shall not bind me." The king resisted.
+The executioners called for help. A scene of violence was about to
+ensue. The king turned his eye to his confessor, as if for counsel.
+"Sire," said the Abbe Edgeworth, "submit unresistingly to this fresh
+outrage, as the last resemblance to the Savior who is about to
+recompense your sufferings." Louis raised his eyes to heaven, and said,
+"Assuredly there needed nothing less than the example of the Savior to
+induce me to submit to such an indignity." He then reached his hands out
+to the executioners, and said, "Do as you will; I will drink the cup to
+the dregs." Leaning upon the arm of his friend, he ascended the steep
+and slippery steps of the guillotine; then, walking across the platform
+firmly, he looked for a moment intently upon the sharp blade of the ax,
+and turning suddenly to the populace, exclaimed, in a voice clear and
+distinct, which penetrated to the remotest extremities of the square,
+"People, I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge. I pardon
+the authors of my death, and pray God that the blood you are about to
+shed may never fall again upon France. And you, unhappy people--" Here
+the drums were ordered to beat, and the deafening clamor drowned his
+words. The king turned slowly to the guillotine and surrendered himself
+to the executioners. He was bound to the plank. "The plank sunk. The
+blade glided. The head fell."
+
+One of the executioners seized the severed head of the monarch by the
+hair, and, raising the bloody trophy of their triumph, showed it to the
+shuddering throng, while the blood dripped from it on the scaffold. A
+few desperadoes dipped their sabers and the points of their pikes in the
+blood, and, waving them in the air, shouted "Vive la Republique!" The
+multitude, however, responded not to the cry. Explosions of artillery
+announced to the distant parts of the city that the sacrifice was
+consummated. The remains of the monarch were conveyed on a covered cart
+to the cemetery of the Madeleine, and lime was thrown into the grave
+that the body might be speedily and entirely consumed.
+
+Over the grave where he was buried Napoleon subsequently began the
+splendid Temple of Glory, in commemoration of the monarch and other
+victims who fell in the Revolution. The completion of the edifice was
+frustrated by the fall of Napoleon. The Bourbons, however, on their
+restoration to the throne, finished the building, and it is now called
+the Church of the Madeleine, and it constitutes one of the most
+beautiful structures of Paris. The spot on which the monarch fell is now
+marked by a colossal obelisk of blood-red granite, which the French
+government, in 1833, transported from Thebes, in Upper Egypt. Louis was
+unquestionably one of the most conscientious and upright sovereigns who
+ever sat upon a throne. He loved his people, and earnestly desired to do
+every thing in his power to promote their welfare. And it can hardly be
+doubted that he was guided through life, and sustained through the awful
+trial of his death, by the principle of sincere piety. The tidings of
+his execution sent a thrill of horror through Europe, and fastened such
+a stigma upon Republicanism as to pave the way for the re-erection of
+the throne.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF MARIA ANTOINETTE.
+
+1793
+
+Sufferings of the queen.--Announcement of her husband's death.--Cruel
+decree.--Maria's defense of her boy.--The dauphin's cell.--The
+queen summoned to the Conciergerie.--Painful partings.--The
+Conciergerie.--Loathsome apartments of the queen.--The jailer's
+wife.--The jailer's daughter.--The garter.--Dignity of the queen
+during her trial.--She is condemned to death.--The queen dressed for
+the guillotine.--Her hands bound.--Car of the condemned.--Indignities
+heaped upon the queen.--Arrival at the guillotine.--The queen's
+composure.--The queen's prayer.--Maternal love.--The last adieu.--End
+of the tragedy.
+
+
+While the king was suffering upon the guillotine, the queen, with Madame
+Elizabeth and the children, remained in their prison, in the endurance
+of anguish as severe as could be laid upon human hearts. The queen was
+plunged into a continued succession of swoons, and when she heard the
+booming of the artillery, which announced that the fatal ax had fallen
+and that her husband was headless, her companions feared that her life
+was also, at the same moment, to be extinguished. Soon the rumbling of
+wheels, the rolling of heavy pieces of cannon, and the shouts of the
+multitude penetrating through the bars of her cell, proclaimed the
+return of the procession from the scene of death. The queen was
+extremely anxious to be informed of all the details of the last moments
+of the king, but her foes refused her even this consolation.
+
+Days and nights now lingered slowly along while the captives were
+perishing in monotonous misery. The severity of their imprisonment was
+continually increased by new deprivations. No communications from the
+world without were permitted to reach their ears. Shutters were so
+arranged that even the sky was scarcely visible, and no employment
+whatever was allowed them to beguile their hours of woe. About four
+months after the death of the king, a loud noise was heard one night at
+the door of their chamber, and a band of armed men came tumultuously in,
+and read to the queen an order that her little son should be entirely
+separated from her, and imprisoned by himself. The poor child, as he
+heard this cruel decree, was frantic with terror, and, throwing himself
+into his mother's arms, shrieked out, "O mother! mother! mother! do not
+abandon me to those men. They will kill me as they did papa." The queen
+was thrown into a perfect delirium of mental agony. She placed her child
+upon the bed, and, stationing herself before him, with eyes glaring like
+a tigress, and with almost superhuman energy, declared that they should
+tear her in pieces before they should touch her poor boy. The officers
+were subdued by this affecting exhibition of maternal love, and
+forbore violence. For two hours she thus contended against all their
+solicitations, until, entirely overcome by exhaustion, she fell in a
+swoon upon the floor. The child was then hurried from the apartment, and
+placed under the care of a brutal wretch, whose name, Simon, inhumanity
+has immortalized. The unhappy child threw himself upon the floor of
+his cell, and for two days remained without any nourishment. The queen
+abandoned herself to utter despair. Madame Elizabeth and Maria Theresa
+performed all the service of the chamber, making the beds, sweeping the
+room, and attending upon the queen. No importunities on the part of
+Maria Antoinette could obtain for her the favor of a single interview
+with her child.
+
+Three more months passed slowly away, when, early in August, the queen
+was aroused from her sleep at midnight by armed men, with lanterns,
+bursting into her room. With unfeeling barbarity, they ordered her to
+accompany them to the prison of the Conciergerie, the most dismal prison
+in Paris, where those doomed to die awaited their execution. The queen
+listened, unmoved, to the order, for her heart had now become callous
+even to woe. Her daughter and Madame Elizabeth threw themselves at the
+feet of the officers, and most pathetically, but unavailingly, implored
+them not to deprive them of their only remaining solace. The queen was
+compelled to rise and dress in the presence of the wretches who exulted
+over her abasement. She clasped her daughter for one frantic moment
+convulsively to her heart, covered her with embraces and kisses, spoke a
+few words of impassioned tenderness to her sister, and then, as if
+striving by violence to throw herself from the room, she inadvertently
+struck her forehead a severe blow against the low portal of the door.
+"Did you hurt you?" inquired one of the men. "Oh no!" was the despairing
+reply, "nothing now can further harm me."
+
+A few lights glimmered dimly from the street lamps as the queen entered
+the carriage, guarded by soldiers, and was conveyed through the somber
+streets to her last earthly abode. The prison of the Conciergerie
+consists of a series of subterranean dungeons beneath the floor of the
+Palais de Justice. More damp, dark, gloomy dens of stone and iron the
+imagination can not conceive. Down the dripping and slippery steps she
+was led, groping her way by the feeble light of a tallow candle, until
+she approached, through a labyrinth of corridors, an iron door.
+It grated upon its hinges, and she was thrust in, two soldiers
+accompanying her, and the door was closed. It was midnight. The lantern
+gave just light enough to show her the horrors of her cell. The floor
+was covered with mud and water, while little streams trickled down the
+stone walls. A miserable pallet in one corner, an old pine table and one
+chair, were all the comforts the kingdom of France could afford its
+queen.
+
+[Illustration: MARIA ANTOINETTE IN THE CONCIERGERIE.]
+
+The heart of the wife of the jailer was touched with compassion in
+view of this unmitigated misery. She did not dare to speak words of
+kindness, for they would be reported by the guard. She, however,
+prepared for her some food, ventured to loan her some needles, and a
+ball of worsted, and communicated intelligence of her daughter and
+son. The Committee of Public Safety heard of these acts of mercy, and
+the jailer and his wife were immediately arrested, and plunged into
+those dungeons into which they would have allowed the spirit of
+humanity to enter. The shoes of the queen, saturated with water, soon
+fell from her feet. Her stockings and her dress, from the humidity
+of the air, were in tatters. Two soldiers, with drawn swords, were
+stationed by her side night and day, with the command never, even
+for one moment, to turn their eyes from her. The daughter of the new
+jailer, touched with compassion, and regardless of the fate of the
+predecessors of her parents, entered her cell every morning to dress
+her whitened locks, which sorrow had bleached. The queen ventured one
+day to solicit an additional counterpane for her bed. "How dare you
+make such a request?" replied the solicitor general of the commune;
+"you deserve to be sent to the guillotine!" The queen succeeded
+secretly, by means of a tooth-pick, which she converted into a
+tapestry needle, in plaiting a garter from thread which she plucked
+from an old woollen coverlet. This memorial of a mother's love she
+contrived, by stratagem, to transmit to her daughter. This was the
+richest legacy the daughter of Maria Theresa and the Queen of France
+could bequeath to her child. That garter is still preserved as a
+sacred relic by those who revere the memory and commiserate the
+misfortunes of Maria Antoinette.
+
+Two months of this all but insupportable imprisonment passed away, when,
+early in October, she was brought from her dungeon below to the
+court-room above for her trial. Her accusation was that she abhorred
+the revolution which had beheaded her husband, and plunged her and her
+whole family into woes, the remembrance of which it would seem that even
+eternity could hardly efface. The queen condescended to no defense. She
+appeared before her accusers in the calm dignity of despair, and yet
+with a spirit as unbroken and queenly as when she moved in the gilded
+saloons of Versailles. The queen was called to hear her sentence. It was
+death within twenty-four hours. Not the tremor of a muscle showed the
+slightest agitation as the mob, with clappings and shoutings, manifested
+their hatred for their victim, and their exultation at her doom. Insults
+and execrations followed her to the stair-case as she descended again to
+her dungeon. It was four o'clock in the morning. A few rays of the
+dawning day struggled through the bars of her prison window, and she
+seemed to smile with a faint expression of pleasure at the thought that
+her last day of earthly woe had dawned. She called for pen and ink,
+and wrote a very affecting letter to her sister and children. Having
+finished the letter, she repeatedly and passionately kissed it, as if
+it were the last link which bound her to the loved ones from whom she
+was so soon to be separated by death. She then, as if done with earth,
+kneeled down and prayed, and with a tranquillized spirit, threw herself
+upon her bed, and fell into a profound slumber.
+
+An hour or two passed away, when the kind daughter of the jailer came,
+with weeping eyes and a throbbing heart, into the cell to dress the
+queen for the guillotine. It was the 14th of October, 1793. Maria
+Antoinette arose with alacrity, and, laying aside her prison-worn
+garments of mourning, put on her only remaining dress, a white robe,
+emblematic of the joy with which she bade adieu to earth. A white
+handkerchief was spread over her shoulders, and a white cap, bound to
+her head by a black ribbon, covered her hair. It was a cold and foggy
+morning, and the moaning wind drove clouds of mist through the streets.
+But the day had hardly dawned before crowds of people thronged the
+prison, and all Paris seemed in motion to enjoy the spectacle of the
+sufferings of their queen. At eleven o'clock the executioners entered
+her cell, bound her hands behind her, and led her out from the prison.
+The queen had nerved her heart to die in the spirit of defiance to her
+foes. She thought, perhaps, too much of man, too little of God. Queenly
+pride rather than Christian resignation inspired her soul. Expecting to
+be conducted to the scaffold, as the king had been, in a close carriage,
+she, for a moment, recoiled with horror when she was led to the
+ignominious car of the condemned, and was commanded to enter it. This
+car was much like a common hay cart, entirely open, and guarded by a
+rude but strong railing. The female furies who surrounded her shouted
+with laughter, and cried out incessantly, "Down with the Austrian!"
+"Down with the Austrian!" The queen was alone in the cart. Her hands
+were tied behind her. She could not sit down. She could not support
+herself against the jolting of the cart upon the rough pavement. The car
+started. The queen was thrown from her equilibrium. She fell this way
+and that way. Her bonnet was crowded over her eyes. Her gray locks
+floated in the damp morning air. Her coarse dress, disarranged, excited
+derision. As she was violently pitched to and fro, notwithstanding her
+desperate endeavors to retain the dignity of her appearance, the
+wretches shouted, "These are not your cushions of Trianon." It was a
+long ride, through the infuriated mob, to the scaffold, which was reared
+directly in front of the garden of the Tuileries. As the car arrived at
+the entrance of the gardens of the palace where Maria had passed through
+so many vicissitudes of joy and woe, it stopped for a moment, apparently
+that the queen might experience a few more emotions of torture as she
+contemplated the abode of her past grandeur. Maria leaned back upon the
+railing, utterly regardless of the clamor around her, and fixed her eyes
+long and steadfastly upon the theater of all her former happiness. The
+thought of her husband, her children, her home, for a moment overcame
+her, and a few tears trickled down her cheeks and fell upon the floor of
+the cart. But, instantly regaining her composure, she looked around
+again upon the multitude, waving like an ocean over the whole
+amphitheater, with an air of majesty expressive of her superiority over
+all earthly ills. A few turns more of the wheels brought her to the foot
+of the guillotine. It was upon the same spot where her husband had
+fallen. She calmly, firmly looked at the dreadful instrument of death,
+scrutinizing all its arrangements, and contemplating, almost with an air
+of satisfaction, the sharp and glittering knife, which was so soon to
+terminate all her earthly sufferings. Two of the executioners assisted
+her by the elbows as she endeavored to descend from the cart. She
+waited for no directions, but with a firm and yet not hurried tread,
+ascended the steps of the scaffold. By accident, she trod upon the foot
+of one of the executioners. "Pardon me!" she exclaimed, with all the
+affability and grace with which she would have apologized to a courtier
+in the midst of the social festivities of the Little Trianon. She
+kneeled down, raised her eyes to heaven, and in a low but heart-rending
+prayer, all forgetful of herself, implored God to protect her sister and
+her helpless children. She was deaf to the clamor of the infuriate mob
+around her. She was insensible to the dishonor of her own appearance,
+with disheveled locks blinding her eyes, and with her faded garments
+crumpled and disarranged by the rough jostling of the cart. She forgot
+the scaffold on which she stood, the cords which bound her hands, the
+blood-thirsty executioners by her side, the fatal knife gleaming above
+her head. Her thoughts, true to the irrepressible instincts of maternal
+love, wandered back to the dungeons from whence she had emerged, and
+lingered with anguish around the pallets where her orphan, friendless,
+persecuted children were entombed. Her last prayer was the prayer of
+agony. She rose from her knees, and, turning her eyes toward the tower
+of the Temple, and speaking in tones which would have pierced any hearts
+but those which surrounded her, exclaimed, "Adieu! adieu! once again, my
+dear children. I go to rejoin your father."
+
+She was bound to the plank. Slowly it descended till the neck of the
+queen was brought under the groove down which the fatal ax was to glide.
+The executioner, hardened by deeds of daily butchery, could not look
+upon this spectacle of the misery of the Queen of France unmoved. His
+hand trembled as he endeavored to disengage the ax, and there was a
+moment's delay. The ax fell. The dissevered head dropped into the basket
+placed to receive it. The executioner seized it by the hair, gushing
+with blood, raised it high above his head, and walked around the
+elevated platform of the guillotine, exhibiting the bloody trophy to the
+assembled multitude. One long shout of "Vive la Republique!" rent the
+air, and the long and dreadful tragedy of the life of Maria Antoinette
+was closed.
+
+The remains of the queen were thrown into a pine coffin and hurried to
+an obscure burial. Upon the records of the Church of La Madeleine we now
+read the charge, "_For the coffin of the Widow Capet, seven francs._"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE PRINCESS ELIZABETH, THE DAUPHIN, AND THE PRINCESS ROYAL.
+
+1793-1795
+
+The dauphin and the princesses.--Painful uncertainty.--Sufferings
+of the princesses.--Their dismal cell.--Painful thoughts.--Unwelcome
+visitors.--The princesses separated.--Brutality of the
+soldiers.--Elizabeth taken before the tribunal.--A group of noble
+captives.--Trial of Madame Elizabeth.--Her condemnation.--Sad
+reverses.--Character of Madame Elizabeth.--Madame Elizabeth at the
+guillotine.--Execution of her companions.--Death of Madame
+Elizabeth.--Her faith and piety.--Situation of the dauphin.--The
+brute Simon.--Inhuman treatment of the dauphin.--He becomes
+insane.--The reaction.--Change in the dauphin's treatment.--Death
+of the dauphin.--Sympathy awakened by it.--Situation of the princess
+royal.--Her deep sufferings.--Sympathy for the princess royal.--She
+is released.--Arrival of the princess royal in Vienna.--Her
+settled melancholy.--Love felt for Maria.--She recovers her
+cheerfulness.--Maria's marriage.--Her present residence.--Advanced
+age of Maria.--Still retains traces of her early sorrows.
+
+
+When Maria Antoinette was taken from the Temple and consigned to the
+dungeons of the Conciergerie, there to await her trial for her life,
+the dauphin was imprisoned by himself, though but a child seven years
+of age, in a gloomy cell, where he was entirely excluded from any
+communication with his aunt and sister. The two latter princesses
+remained in the room from which the queen had been taken. They were,
+however, in the most painful uncertainty respecting her fate. Their
+jailers were commanded to give them no information whatever respecting
+the external world. Their prison was a living tomb, in which they were
+allowed to breathe, and that was all. The Princess Elizabeth had
+surmised, from various little incidents, what had been the fate of the
+queen, but she tried to cheer the young, and affectionate, and still
+beautiful child with the hope that her mother yet lived, and that they
+might meet again. Eight months of the most dreary captivity rolled
+slowly away. It was winter, and yet they were allowed no fire to dispel
+the gloom and the chill of their cell. They were deprived of all books.
+They were not allowed the use of pens or paper. The long winter nights
+came. In their cell there was but a few hours during which the rays of
+the sun struggled faintly through the barred windows. Night, long,
+dismal, impenetrable, like that of Egypt, enveloped them for fifteen
+hours. They counted the strokes of the clocks in the distant churches.
+They listened to the hum of the vast and mighty metropolis, like the
+roar of the surf upon the shore. Reflections full of horror crowded upon
+them. The king was beheaded. The queen was, they knew not where, either
+dead or in the endurance of the most fearful sufferings. The young
+dauphin was imprisoned by himself, and they knew only that the gentle,
+affectionate, idolized child was exposed to every cruelty which
+barbarism could inflict upon him. What was to be their own fate? Were
+they to linger out the remnant of their days in this wretched captivity?
+Would their inhuman jailers envy them the consolation they found in each
+other's arms, and separate them? Were they also to perish upon the
+guillotine, where nearly all whom they had loved had already perished?
+Were they ever to be released? If so, what joy could there remain on
+earth for them after their awful sufferings and bereavements? Woes, such
+as they had endured, were too deep ever to be effaced from the mind.
+Nearly eight months thus lingered slowly along, in which they saw only
+brutal and insulting jailers, ate the coarsest food, and were clothed in
+the unwashed and tattered garb of the prison. Time seemed to have
+stopped its flight, and to have changed into a weary, woeful eternity.
+
+On the 9th of May, the Princess Elizabeth and her niece, who had
+received the name of Maria Theresa in memory of her grandmother, were
+retiring to bed. They were enveloped in midnight darkness. With their
+arms around each other's necks, they were kneeling at the foot of the
+bed in prayer. Suddenly a great noise was heard at the door, accompanied
+with repeated and violent blows, almost heavy enough to shiver the door
+from its hinges. Madame Elizabeth hastened to withdraw a bolt, which
+constituted an inner fastening, when some soldiers rushed in with their
+lanterns, and said to Madame Elizabeth, "You must immediately follow
+us." "And my niece," replied the princess, ever forgetful of herself in
+her thoughtfulness for others, "can she go too?" "We want you only now!"
+was the answer; "we will take care of her by-and-by." The aunt foresaw
+that the hour for the long-dreaded separation had come. She threw her
+arms around the neck of the trembling maiden, and wept in uncontrollable
+grief. The brutal soldiers, unmoved by these tears, loaded them both
+with reproaches and insults, as belonging to the detested race of kings,
+and imperiously commanded the Princess Elizabeth immediately to depart.
+She endeavored to whisper a word of hope into the ear of her despairing
+niece. "I shall probably soon return again, my dear Maria." "No,
+citoyenne, you won't," rudely interrupted one of the jailers; "you will
+never ascend these stairs again. So take your bonnet and come down."
+Bathing the face of the young girl with her tears, invoking the blessing
+of heaven upon her, turning again and again to enfold her in a last
+embrace, she was led out by the soldiers, and conducted down the dark
+and damp stairs to the gate. Here the soldiers rudely searched her
+person anew, and then thrust her into a carriage. It was midnight. The
+carriage was driven violently through the deserted streets to the
+Conciergerie. The Tribunal was, even at that hour, in session, for in
+those days of blood, when the slide of the guillotine had no repose from
+morning till night, the day did not contain hours enough for the work of
+condemnation. The princess was conducted immediately into the presence
+of the Revolutionary Tribunal. A few questions were asked her, and then
+she was led into a hall, and left to catch such repose as she could upon
+the bench where Maria Antoinette but a few months before had awaited her
+condemnation.
+
+The morning had hardly dawned when she was again conducted to the
+Tribunal, in company with twenty-four others, of every age and of both
+sexes, whose crime was that they were nobles. Ladies were there,
+illustrious in virtue and rank, who had formerly graced the brilliant
+assemblies of the Tuileries and of Versailles. Young men, whose family
+names had been renowned for ages, stood there to answer for the crime
+of possessing a distinguished name. While looking upon this group of
+nobles, gathered before that merciless tribunal, where judgment was
+almost certain condemnation, the public accuser, with cruel irony
+remarked, "Of what can Madame Elizabeth complain, when she sees herself
+at the foot of the guillotine, surrounded by her faithful nobility? She
+can now fancy herself back again in the gay festivities of Versailles."
+
+The charges against Elizabeth were, that she was the sister of a tyrant,
+and that she loved that royal family whom the nation had adjudged not
+fit to live. "If my brother had been the tyrant you declare him to have
+been," the princess remarked, "you would not be where you now are, nor I
+before you." But it is vain for the lamb to plead with the wolf. She was
+condemned to die. She listened to her sentence with the most perfect
+composure, and almost with satisfaction. The only favor she asked was,
+that she might see a priest, and receive the consolations of religion,
+according to the faith she professed. Even this request was denied her.
+The crime of loyalty was of too deep a dye to allow of any, the
+slightest, mitigation of punishment. From the judgment hall she was led
+down into one of the dungeons of the Conciergerie, where, with the rest
+of her companions, she awaited the execution of their doom. It was,
+indeed, a melancholy meeting. These illustrious captives had formerly
+dwelt in the highest splendor which earth allows. They had met in regal
+palaces, surrounded by all the pomp and grandeur of courts. Now, after
+months of the most cruel imprisonment, after passing through scenes of
+the most protracted woe, having been deprived of all their possessions,
+of all their ancestral honors, having surrendered one after another of
+those most dear to them to the guillotine, they were collected in a dark
+and foul dungeon, cold and wet, hungry and exhausted, to be conveyed
+in a few hours, in the cart of the condemned, to the scaffold. The
+character of Elizabeth was such, her weanedness from the world, her mild
+and heavenly spirit, as to have secured almost the idolatrous veneration
+of those who knew her. The companions of her misfortunes now clustered
+around her, as the one to whom they must look for support and strength
+in this awful hour. The princess, more calm and peaceful even than when
+surrounded by all the splendors of royalty, looked forward joyfully to
+the guillotine as the couch of sweet and lasting repose. Faith enabled
+her to leave the children, now the only tie which bound her to earth, in
+the hands of God, and, conscious that she had done with all things
+earthly, her thoughts were directed to those mansions of rest which,
+she doubted not, were in reserve for her. She bowed her head with a
+smile to the executioner as he cut off her long tresses in preparation
+for the knife. The locks fell at her feet, and even the executioners
+divided them among them as memorials of her loveliness and virtue.
+
+Her hands were bound behind her, and she was placed in the cart with
+twenty-two companions of noble birth, and she was doomed to wait at the
+foot of the scaffold till all those heads had fallen, before her turn
+could come. The youth, the beauty, the innocence, the spotless life of
+the princess seemed to disarm the populace of their rage, and they gazed
+upon her in silence and almost with admiration. Her name had ever been
+connected with every thing that was pure and kind. And even a feeling of
+remorse seemed to pervade the concourse surrounding the scaffold in view
+of the sacrifice of so blameless a victim.
+
+One by one, as the condemned ascended the steps of the guillotine to
+submit to the dreadful execution, they approached Elizabeth and
+encircled her in an affectionate embrace. At last every head had fallen
+beneath the ax but that of Elizabeth. The mutilated bodies were before
+her. The gory heads of those she loved were in a pile by her side. It
+was a sight to shock the stoutest nerves. But the princess, sustained
+by that Christian faith which had supported her through her almost
+unparalleled woes, apparently without a tremor ascended the steps,
+looked calmly and benignantly around upon the vast multitude, as if in
+her heart she was imploring God's blessing upon them, and surrendered
+herself to the executioner. Probably not a purer spirit nor one more
+attuned for heaven existed in France than the one which then ascended
+from the scaffold, we trust, to the bosom of God. Maria Antoinette died
+with the pride and the firmness of the invincible queen. Elizabeth
+yielded herself to the spirit of submissive piety, and fell asleep upon
+the bosom of her Savior. Our thoughts would more willingly follow her to
+those mansions of rest, where faith instructs us that she winged her
+flight, than turn again to the prison where the orphan children lingered
+in solitude and woe.
+
+Young Louis was left in one of the apartments of the Temple, under the
+care of the brutal Simon, whose commission it was to _get quit of him_.
+To send a child of seven years of age to the guillotine because his
+father was a king, was a step which the Revolutionary Tribunal _then_
+was hardly willing to take, out of regard to the opinions of the world.
+It would be hardly consistent with the character of the great nation to
+_poison_ the child; and yet, while he lived, there was a rallying point
+around which the sympathies of royalty could congregate. _Louis must
+die!_ Simon must not _kill_ him; he must not _poison_ him; he must _get
+quit of him_. The public safety demands it. Patriotism demands it. In
+the accomplishment of this undertaking, the young prince was shut up
+alone, entirely alone, like a caged beast, in one of the upper rooms of
+a tower of the Temple. There he was left, day and night, week after
+week, and month after month, with no companion, with no employment, with
+no food for thought, with no opportunity for exercise or to breathe the
+fresh air. A flagon of water, seldom replenished, was placed at his
+bedside. The door was occasionally half opened, and some coarse food
+thrown in to the poor child. He never washed himself. For more than a
+year, his clothes, his shirt, and his shoes had never been changed. For
+six months his bed was not made, and the unhappy child, consigned to
+this living burial, remained silent and immovable upon the impure
+pallet, breathing his own infection. By long inactivity his limbs
+became rigid. His mind, by the dead inaction which succeeded terror,
+lost its energy, and became, not only brutalized, but depraved. The
+noble child of warm affections, polished manners, and active intellect,
+was thus degraded far below the ordinary condition of the brute.
+
+Thus eighteen months rolled away, and the poor boy became insane through
+mental exhaustion and debility. But even then he retained a lively sense
+of gratitude for every word or act of kindness. At one time, the inhuman
+wretch who was endeavoring by slow torture to conduct this child to the
+grave, seized him by the hair, and threatened to dash out his brains
+against the wall. A surgeon, M. Naulin, who chanced to be near by,
+interfered in behalf of the unhappy victim, and rescued him from the
+rage of the tyrant. Two pears that evening were given to the
+half-famished child for his supper. He hid them under his pillow, and
+went supperless to sleep. The next day he presented the two pears to his
+benefactor, very politely expressing his regret that he had no other
+means of manifesting his gratitude.
+
+Torrents of blood were daily flowing from the guillotine. Illustrious
+wealth, or rank, or virtue, condemned the possessor to the scaffold.
+Terror held its reign in every bosom. No one was safe. The public became
+weary of these scenes of horror. A reaction commenced. Many of the
+firmest Republicans, overawed by the tyranny of the mob, began secretly
+to long for the repose which kingly power had given the nation. Sympathy
+was excited for the woes of the imprisoned prince. It is difficult to
+record, without pleasure, that one of the first acts of this returning
+sense of humanity consisted in leading the barbarous Simon to the
+guillotine. History does not inform us whether he shuddered in view of
+his crimes under the ax. But his crimes were almost too great for
+humanity to forgive. Louis was placed under the care of more merciful
+keepers. His wasted frame and delirious mind, generous and affectionate
+even in its delirium, moved their sympathy and their tears. They washed
+and dressed their little prisoner; spoke to him in tones of kindness;
+soothed and comforted him. Louis gazed upon them with a vacant air,
+hardly knowing, after more than two years of hatred, execration, and
+abuse, what to make of expressions of gentleness and mercy. But it was
+too late. Simon had faithfully executed his task. The constitution of
+the young prince was hopelessly undermined. He was seized with a fever.
+The Convention, ashamed of the past, sent the celebrated physician
+Dessault to visit him. The patient, inured to suffering, with blighted
+hopes and a crushed heart, lingered in silence and patience for a few
+days upon his bed, and died on the 9th of June, 1795, in the tenth year
+of his age.
+
+The change which had commenced in the public mind, preparing the way for
+Napoleon to quell these revolutionary horrors, was so great, that a very
+general feeling of sympathy was awakened by the death of the young
+prince, and a feeling of remorse pervaded the conscience of the nation.
+History contains few stories more sorrowful than the death of this
+child. To the limited vision of mortals, it is indeed inexplicable why
+he should have been left by that God, who rules in infinite wisdom and
+love, to so dreadful a fate. For the solution of this and all other
+inexplicable mysteries of the divine government, we must look forward to
+our immortality.
+
+But we must return to Maria Theresa. We left her at midnight, delirious
+with grief and terror, upon the pallet of her cell, her aunt having
+just been torn from her embrace. Even the ravages of captivity had not
+destroyed the exceeding beauty of the princess, now sixteen years of
+age. The slow hours of that night of anguish lingered away, and the
+morning, cheerless and companionless, dawned through the grated window
+of her prison upon her woe. Thus days and nights went and came. She knew
+not what had been the fate of her mother. She knew not what doom awaited
+her aunt. She could have no intercourse with her brother, who she only
+knew was suffering every conceivable outrage in another part of the
+prison. Her food was brought to her by those who loved to show their
+brutal power over the daughter of a long line of kings. Weeks and months
+thus rolled on without any alleviation--without the slightest gleam of
+joy or hope penetrating the midnight gloom of her cell. It is impossible
+for the imagination to paint the anguish endured by this beautiful,
+intellectual, affectionate, and highly-accomplished princess during
+these weary months of solitude and captivity. Every indulgence was
+withheld from her, and conscious existence became the most weighty woe.
+Thus a year and a half lingered slowly away, while the reign of terror
+was holding its high carnival in the streets of blood-deluged Paris,
+and every friend of royalty, of whatever sex or age, all over the
+empire, was hunted down without mercy.
+
+When the reaction awakened by these horrors commenced in the public
+mind, the rigor of her captivity was somewhat abated. The death of her
+brother roused in her behalf, as the only remaining child of the wrecked
+and ruined family, such a feeling of sympathy, that the Assembly
+consented to regard her as a prisoner of war, and to exchange her with
+the Austrian government for four French officers whom they held as
+prisoners. Maria Theresa was led, pale, pensive, heart-broken, hopeless,
+from her cell, and placed in the hands of the relatives of her mother.
+But her griefs had been so deep, her bereavements so utter and
+heart-rending, that this change seemed to her only a mitigation of
+misery, and not an accession of joy. She was informed of the death of
+her mother and her aunt, and, weeping over her desolation, she emerged
+from her prison cell and entered the carriage to return to the palaces
+of Austria, where her unhappy mother had passed the hours of her
+childhood. As she rode along through the green fields and looked out
+upon the blue sky, through which the summer's sun was shedding its
+beams--as she felt the pure air, from which she had so long been
+excluded, fanning her cheeks, and realized that she was safe from
+insults and once more free, anguish gave place to a calm and settled
+melancholy. She arrived in Vienna. Love and admiration encircled her.
+Every heart vied in endeavors to lavish soothing words and delicate
+attentions upon this stricken child of grief. She buried her face in the
+bosoms of those thus soliciting her love, her eyes were flooded with
+tears, and she sobbed with almost a bursting heart. After her arrival in
+Vienna, one full year passed away before a smile could ever be won to
+visit her cheek. Woes such as she had endured pass not away like the
+mists of the morning. The hideous dream haunted her by day and by night.
+The headless trunks of her father, her mother, and her aunt were ever
+before her eyes. Her beloved brother, suffering and dying upon a
+beggar's bed, was ever present in her dreams while reposing under the
+imperial canopy of the Austrian kings. The past had been so long and so
+awful that it seemed an ever-living reality. The sudden change she could
+hardly credit but as the delirium of a dream.
+
+Time, however, will diminish the poignancy of every sorrow save those of
+remorse. Maria was now again in a regal palace, surrounded with every
+luxury which earth could confer. She was young and beautiful. She was
+beloved, and almost adored. Every monarch, every prince, every
+embassador from a foreign court, delighted to pay her especial honor. No
+heart throbbed near her but with the desire to render her some
+compensation for the wrongs and the woes which had fallen upon her
+youthful and guileless heart. Wherever she appeared, she was greeted
+with love and homage. Those who had never seen her would willingly peril
+their lives in any way to serve her. Thus was she raised to
+consideration, and enshrined in the affections of every soul retaining
+one spark of noble feeling. The past receded farther and farther from
+her view, the present arose more and more vividly before the eye. Joy
+gradually returned to that bosom from which it had so long been a
+stranger. The flowers bloomed beautifully before her eyes, the birds
+sung melodiously in her ears. The fair face of creation, with mountain,
+vale, and river, beguiled her thoughts, and introduced images of peace
+and beauty to dispel the hideous phantoms of dungeons and misery. The
+morning drive around the beautiful metropolis; the evening serenade; the
+moonlight sail; and, above all, the voice of _love_, reanimated her
+heart, and roused her affections from the tomb in which they so long had
+slumbered. The smile of youth, though still pensive and melancholy,
+began to illumine her saddened features. Hope of future joy rose to
+cheer her. The Duc d'Angouleme, son of Charles X., sought her as his
+bride, and she was led in tranquil happiness to the altar, feeling as
+few can feel the luxury of being tenderly beloved.
+
+Upon the fall of Napoleon she returned to France with the Bourbon
+family, and again moved, with smiles of sadness, among the brilliant
+throng crowding the palaces of her ancestors. The Revolution of 1830,
+which drove the Bourbons again from the throne of France, drove Maria
+Theresa, now Duchesse d'Angouleme, again into exile. She resided for a
+time with her husband in the Castle of Holyrood, in Scotland, under the
+name of the Count and Countess of Main; but the climate being too severe
+for her constitution, she left that region for Vienna. There she was
+received with every possible demonstration of respect and affection. She
+now resides in the imperial castle of Prague, a venerated widow, having
+passed through three-score years and ten of a more varied life than is
+often experienced by mortals. Even to the present hour, her furrowed
+cheeks retain the traces, in their pensive expression, of the sorrow
+which darkened her early years.
+
+
+
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+1. Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors and to
+ensure consistent spelling and punctuation in this e-text; otherwise,
+every effort has been made to remain true to the original book.
+
+2. The chapter summaries in this text were originally published as
+banners in the page headers, and have been moved to beginning of the
+chapter for the reader's convenience.
+
+3. The page reference in the Table of Contents for Chapter III has
+been corrected to show the chapter as beginning on page 78.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARIA ANTOINETTE***
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