Chapter VII: A Providential Event (3)

Anne has been compared by some of her admirers and biographers to Blanche of Castille; but, while rendering full justice to the queenly qualities of the Austro-Spanish regent, we own that the comparison strikes us as being suggested rather by their circumstances than by the characters of the two queen-mothers who each played so remarkable a part in the history of their epochs. Blanche of Castille made it her first and paramount ambition to render her son worthy of that imperishable crown which awaited him in the Kingdom that is not of this world: Anne of Austria aimed at securing for hers the supremacy of earthly glory—at making him a great and powerful king. In each case, as it mostly happens, the omnipotent mother’s will worked out its own ideal. The minority of the future Grand Monarque opened in troubled times; the elements of the Fronde were fermenting deep down under the apparently smooth surface, and the _fêtes_, and masquerades, and merry-making with which the regent celebrated her tardy accession to sovereign power were soon followed by more exciting events. Mazarin had succeeded to Richelieu—oily, pliant Mazarin, so zealous in his endeavors to keep well with all parties; flattering the ambitious hopes of Gaston d’Orléans, and laying himself out with elaborate zeal to please the regent and secure her confidence; yielding outwardly, with alluring grace, to every caprice of her soft despotic sway; and pulling dexterously the complicated strings of the malcontents, Condé, and Conti, and Longueville, and many other illustrious personages who chafed uneasily under the sceptre of the foreigner; benevolent and outspoken, but irreclaimably despotic. Mazarin, in his desire to please all parties whom it was of use to propitiate, and make money plentiful where it was needed for his purposes, had gone on taxing till he raised the devil in the _then_ much enduring people. Everything was ready for an outbreak. The _Te Deum_ after the victory of Lens gave the signal for it. It was a burning day in August, in the year 1648. The city had turned out to join in the jubilee, and, amidst the inspiriting chorus of trumpets, and cannons, and bells that sent exulting chimes from many belfries, such small matters as hunger and empty hearths and misery in its multiform moods and tenses were forgotten for a moment. But it needed only a touch to rouse the sleeping furies in the hearts of the hungry, rejoicing crowd. Broussel was seized by the troops, who had just played their part in the gay thanksgiving, and carried off to prison—Broussel, the venerable magistrate, the people’s sturdy friend; who had fought their battles over and over again against mighty Mazarin himself; who had stood by them and upheld their rights in the teeth of the foreign queen and her foreign minister; Broussel, whom the people called _notre père_—were they going to see him seized by soldiers, and carried off before their eyes? No; they would stand by him as he had stood by them. The last notes of the _Te Deum_ were still ringing over the city, when up leaped the shouts of revolution and the cry “To arms!” and chased away their holy echoes. The mob surrounded the carriage in which Broussel was placed, guarded on all sides by armed men; they were beaten back and trodden down; the people returned to the charge undaunted, and finally bore down on the Palais Royal, vociferating unmannerly threats, and demanding Broussel: “Give us Broussel, or we will burn down your house about you!”—pleasant sounds for the queen to hear beneath her windows! Anne of Austria had not foreseen this bursting up of the vulgar depths over which she had hitherto ridden in safe and scornful unconcern; nor, in all probability, had Mazarin. He was with the queen in that sumptuous apartment called the queen’s boudoir, whose one broad window, mounted in a frame of massive silver wrought like a brooch, looked out upon the court; the regent paced the room in feverish excitement, her face flushed, her hands, alternately crossed on her breast with an air of stern resolve, moving in the animated and expressive play that was familiar to her; every now and then she would stand in the embrasure of the rich and cunningly carved window, and cast a glance of mingled scorn and defiance on the vociferous rabble below. They catch sight of her, and greet her with ominous signs and gestures. They see in her cool courage a taunt that rouses them to desperation. All unarmed as they are, except with stones and sticks and such like unmilitary weapons, they are ready to give battle to her troops. At this crisis, when the Fronde was born, a young man named Gondi starts to the surface, shooting up from the dark horizon like a glittering rocket. He is endowed with that peculiar kind of alcoholic eloquence which appears to be in all climes and ages the apanage of demagogues. Gondi had already made himself conspicuous as a discontented spirit whom it would be well either to crush or to conciliate; and Mazarin would in all likelihood have adopted the latter plan but for the fact of his jealousy having been aroused by the queen’s kindly notice of the young firebrand; he foresaw a possible rival in Gondi’s ardor and talents, and forthwith decreed his ruin. Gondi was just now making himself popular by declaiming on the wrongs of the people, and denouncing the seizure of Broussel as iniquitous and tyrannical. There was some talk of sending a despatch to the regent to demand his release; Mazarin caught at this opportunity of lowering Gondi in the estimation of the queen by placing him in the position of a leader of the Fronde, so he sent word to him indirectly to come to the Palais Royal and present the people’s petition. Gondi, who saw in the mission an occasion for distinguishing himself with all parties, accepted it. He told the people that he undertook to ask, and pledged himself to obtain, the liberation of Broussel within an hour. They followed him with enthusiastic cheers to the Palais Royal, where he was admitted to the presence of the queen. She received him with flattering promptitude, unconscious of the motive of his visit. Anne was in no mood for compromises or concessions; the rebellious attitude of her subjects had steeled her heart for the moment against the demands of clemency, and when Gondi, announcing himself the bearer of the demands of the people, asked for the liberation of the magistrate, her anger broke out into violence: “Give up Broussel!” she cried, with a sardonic laugh, “I will strangle him first with my own hands!” And clenching those beautiful little hands that have been sung by every poet of her day, she went close up to Gondi, and shook them in his face. The deputy, confounded, stood rooted to the spot, and uttered not a word; when Anne, abruptly turning away, said, with a quiet sarcasm the more chilling from its sudden contrast with her foregoing vehemence: “Go and rest, Monsieur de Gondi; you have worked hard.”

He left her presence, and carried his perplexity to Mazarin. But Mazarin, who had led him into the dilemma of playing false to the people and vexing the queen, coldly declined interfering, and bowed the unsuccessful diplomatist out. Gondi, betrayed and baffled, left the Palais Royal with an oath that the morrow would see him master of Paris. When a lad of eighteen, he had written an essay on the _Conjuration de Fiesque_, which drew from Richelieu the remark: “_Voilà un esprit dangereux._”[43] The day had come when the fiery young author was to fulfil this sagacious prophecy. The future Cardinal de Retz had entered the Palais Royal an ambitious courtier: he left it an infuriated _frondeur_. The next day Paris was bristling with barricades—its traditional mode of expressing its irritated feelings.

This day, famous as _la journée des barricades_, saw Mathieu Molé appear in one of the finest attitudes that have marked his noble and honorable career.

While still young, Molé had risen to the brilliant and perilous position of _Premier Président du Parlement de Paris_ by the mere force of talent and rigid integrity of character; he had never courted the patronage of a minister, nor accepted a favor from one; he had lent no base compliance to Richelieu’s despotism or to Mazarin’s more captivating rule; he had remained the staunch friend of the heterodox Abbé de St. Cyran, holding faster by him in his disgrace and imprisonment than in the days of his transient popularity, persecuting Richelieu to obtain his pardon, dodging the inaccessible minister late and early, waylaying him in all possible and impossible places with the same persistent cry, “Give me back my friend St. Cyran,” till at last Richelieu, worn out with his importunity, seized the president by the arm one day, and said: “This M. Molé is a worthy magistrate, but the most obstinate pleader in France,” and gave him back his Abbé de St. Cyran. This was the man who was chosen to head a second embassy from the people to the Palais Royal. The regent was aware of his coming, and received him with cold civility; but her high spirit was slightly subdued since the preceding day; she had passed a sleepless night waiting for the events of the morrow, and was disposed to admit the possibility of coming to a compromise with her unruly citizens. Mathieu Molé was not an orator in the classical sense of the word, but he had that sort of eloquence that stirs the hearts of men. It achieved a victory, in the first place, over the angry mob by making them listen to reason and take a dispassionate view of their position, and now it gained an equally important one with the regent, inducing her to yield a reluctant consent to the liberation of Broussel. The barricades were lowered, and Paris gave a joyous welcome to its friend. But the blaze thus rashly kindled was not to be so quickly quenched. Anne of Austria eventually conquered both the Fronde and the less violent but equally dangerous pretensions of Mazarin, who, succumbing with a fairly good grace before the indomitable courage and inflexible firmness of the regent, renounced the ambition of making her his tool, and was satisfied with being her right hand in governing the state. How high his ambition soared may be guessed from the following trait. Once, when conversing with Anne of Austria, emboldened by that gracious _abandon_ of manner which made the haughty Spaniard so charming in her amiable moods, Mazarin alluded to the boyish passion of the king for his niece, Marie Mancini, and observed how deeply he would have deplored it had his majesty, yielding to the infatuation of the hour, committed the chivalrous folly of marrying her. Anne of Austria drew herself up with all the pride of her Castilian blood, and answered: “Had my son been capable of such an unworthiness, I should have placed myself with his brother at the head of the nation against him and against you.” The proud daughter of kings, who, by the strength of her solitary will, could govern a nation and cow the daring leaders of the Fronde, was in person as tender and delicate as a child; her health was fragile, and her skin so sensitive that it was difficult to find any cambric soft enough to clothe without hurting her. Mazarin, alluding once to this Sybarite delicacy of temperament, declared to the regent that her purgatory in the next world would be to sleep in Holland sheets. Yet, when Anne was attacked by the cruel malady which ended her days, no Roman matron could have endured it with greater fortitude. Her piety, which had guarded her youth through the alluring temptations of the court, despite the neglect and rudeness of a morose and heartless husband, sustained her in the protracted tortures of her last illness. Shortly before she expired, Louis XIV. was kneeling by the bedside of his mother, weeping bitterly, and covering her hand with his tears; she drew it gently away, and, looking for a moment at that hand which had been her chief woman’s vanity, she murmured: “They are beginning to swell; it is time to go!” Some historians have flippantly taxed Anne with having systematically kept her son in the background, and sacrificed him selfishly to the prolongation of her own power; but Louis’ passionate grief at her death, and his lifelong gratitude to the memory of his mother, sufficiently repudiate this charge. Louis XIV. never resided at the Palais Royal after her death; when necessity obliged him to remain in Paris, he occupied the Louvre.

The characters and careers of Richelieu and Mazarin furnish one of those points of comparison which history is so fond of. Richelieu was undeniably the more brilliant statesman of the two; he was endowed with greater originality and a larger breadth of view; he left a deeper impress on his time, and his remote action on France was more enduring; but if the achievement of peace be more valuable to a people than the prosecution of war, Mazarin has paramount claims on the gratitude of his country. The Treaty of Westphalia, and the Peace of the Pyrenees, are two monuments raised by Mazarin to his own fame that out-top all the dazzling trophies of his predecessors, and establish a nobler claim to the admiration of the civilized world than all Richelieu’s victorious accomplishments in war. Both statesmen were pre-eminently gifted with that power of reading men which is so serviceable an agent in the hands of those who are called to govern. It was this electric instinct which prompted Richelieu to single out Mazarin from the crowd as the man best fitted to be his successor—a choice which the young Italian justified by carrying out with unswerving fixity of purpose the vast unfinished designs of the patron whom death had cut short in the midst of his work. Mazarin, on the other hand, gave a striking proof of this same subtle insight when he said of the young king, then a mere boy in his mother’s leading-strings, and as yet having done nothing to reveal the future grand monarch: “There is stuff enough in him to make four kings and one honest man.” Both ministers set their influence and power above the interest and authority of the sovereign; but both labored with unflinching steadiness of aim to raise the monarchy to a height of splendor it had never before reached, and was not destined long to retain. Both carried their _soutane_ with more of martial dignity than priestly gravity—that _soutane_ of which Richelieu boasted: “I mow down everything, I upset everything, and then I cover it all with my red _soutane_.” Both made it the business of their lives while at the head of the state to humble Austria and Spain, and both succeeded. The marriage of Louis XIV. with the Infanta of Spain was one of Mazarin’s most successful diplomatic acts; he foresaw in this union the probable succession of the Bourbons to the crown of Charles Quint. But alongside of his many services to his country, there is one act of his that goes far to annul them—this was his introduction of gambling into France. To this deplorable importation the Abbé St. Pierre traces, not perhaps without a shade of exaggeration, but with palpable logic, the rapid decadence of the national morals and character; he says that Mazarin inoculated the young king with the passion for games of hazard, in order to keep his mind aloof from things in which it became him better to be interested, and thereby to prevent his interference in the affairs of state; the regent, in her turn, became smitten with the novel mania, and would spend whole nights with her court playing cards. Mazarin himself was an incorrigible gambler, and often devoted to this passion the hours he should have given to sleep after his day’s arduous task. He was looked upon more as a player of doubtful honesty—“_un joueur plus que suspect_”; but “who allowed others in turn to cheat him, provided they did it cleverly,” St. Pierre tells us; and he goes on to say: “The young nobles, first at court, and then all over the country, followed his example, and took to card-playing; they forsook the athletic sports and manly amusements which had delighted their fathers, and gave themselves up to this enervating and ruinous passion; they became weaker, more ignorant, and less polished; women caught the fever, and grew to respect themselves less, and to be less respected.” Mazarin’s avarice was as insatiable as his ambition; he died colossally rich; but during his last illness, seized with remorse, he made over all his unjust gains to the king, who, of course, refused to accept them, and the cardinal then divided his vast wealth between Louis, the queen, Condé, Turenne, his friend Louis de Haro, and several members of his own family. He bequeathed a large sum for the foundation of a college, which he also endowed with his splendid library, recollected after its dispersion by the Frondeurs at immense trouble and expense. He wished this college to be called _Collége des quatre nations_, destining it chiefly for the education of young men belonging to the four provinces annexed to France during his ministry—Pignerol, Alsace, Roussillon, and Artois. Le Tellier, who was his executor, punctually obeyed all his instructions except the last-named. By desire of the king, it was called Collége Mazarin, which was to become the magnificent Bibliothèque Royale of to-day.

Henrietta Maria of England occupied the Palais Royal in 1644. The marriage of her daughter Henrietta to Philip of Orleans, then Duc d’Anjou, was celebrated here with great pomp, and here the young princess held a brilliant court for a few years, while her mother dwelt in the cloistered retreat of Chaillot. The thread of this bright young life was suddenly snapped asunder. Bossuet’s “O night of horror!” came like a thunderbolt from a summer sky, scattering the volatile court, and spreading the news of its loss over the whole of France. Then came the Regency, which was to add a chapter of such dark and lamentable notoriety to the history of the Palais Royal. The nephew of Louis XIV. inherited all the vices and foibles of his race without any of their redeeming qualities. His selfish, easy-going _bonhomie_ has been sometimes lauded as clemency; but it may more justly be considered a combination of weakness and cynical contempt for the claims of justice. When the enraged populace gathered before his palace, dragging three naked corpses—the victims of their legitimate but misplaced anger—along with them, the regent looked out at the tempestuous scene, and remarked coolly: “The mob are right; the wonder is they bear so much from us.” And truly it was a wonder; and if the Revolution of ‘93 did not break out under the lawless and exasperating rule of the Regency, it must only have been because, as St. Simon explained it, “three things are necessary to make a revolution: leaders, brains, and funds, none of which were to be found in France at this period.” The _petits soupers de la Régence_, which have acquired an infamous celebrity through all the chronicles of the time, can have no place in our sketch.

The visit of Peter the Great broke in on the luxurious and effeminate court of the Palais Royal like a Spartan appearing suddenly in the midst of a banquet of Sybarites. Peter, who had “civilized his people by cutting their heads off,” set his heart on visiting France during the preceding reign; but Louis XIV., partly from an insurmountable antipathy to the semi-barbarous autocrat, partly from political motives, had signified to his brother of all the Russias that his absence would be more agreeable than his presence. Peter was compelled, therefore, to wait until the Grand Monarque had rejoined his ancestors before gratifying his desire to visit Paris. The regent, far from making any difficulty about receiving him, made the most sumptuous preparations for the Northern reformer, and invited him to be his guest at the Palais Royal. But the hardy Muscovite could not conceal his contempt for the epicurean habits of his host, and horrified him by declaring that he never slept on anything softer than a camp-stretcher, which he carried with him in all his peregrinations, and used on the field of battle and in his own palace, and which he insisted now on substituting for the luxurious couch prepared for him. Altogether, the ways of Peter bewildered the nephew of Louis XIV. He was up with the birds, and flying over the city to see things and people that the latter would never have dreamed of calling his attention to. He expressed a wish to see Mme. de Maintenon, then living in dignified retreat at St. Cyr. Her Solidity, as Louis XIV. had dubbed her, pleaded ill-health as an excuse for declining the honor and fatigue of an official reception. Peter, therefore, set off one morning and scared the learned and sedate ladies of St. Cyr out of their propriety by requesting to be shown at once to Mme. de Maintenon’s room. On arriving there, he entered without knocking, walked straight to the bed, pushed aside the curtains, and, sitting down beside the astonished lady, entered brusquely into conversation. The Sorbonne he also honored with one of these unceremonious visitations; perceiving a statue of Richelieu in one of the galleries, he rushed up to it, and, clasping the marble in his arms, exclaimed: “O incomparable man! would that thou wert still alive, and I would give thee one-half of my empire to teach me how to govern the other!”

But with all this rough and somewhat ostentatious disregard of etiquette, Peter had a keen sense of what was due to his imperial mightiness, and, with the caprice of a despot, could assert it trenchantly enough when he thought fit. The regent invited a number of the most illustrious men of the day to meet his eccentric guest at a banquet at the Palais Royal. As they were about to enter the dining-room, little Louis XV. stood back to let the czar pass first; Peter was unwilling to take precedence of the King of France, and equally reluctant to walk behind a child, so he wittily solved the difficulty by catching up the small monarch in his arms and carrying him to his seat.

The regent closed his ignoble life at the Palais Royal in 1723. His son Louis, Duke of Orleans, succeeded him. This prince brought his young bride, Jeanne de Bade, there soon after he took possession of his ancestral home, and lost her after a brief and blissful union. At the time of her death, Louis XV. was lying mortally sick, it was believed, at Metz, and thither, in the frenzy of his grief, the bereaved husband flew, and, going straight to the room of the dying king, demanded admittance; the attendants expostulated, but Louis pushed them aside, and kicked in the door to announce his loss to the kinsman who himself lay battling with death. He survived Jeanne some years, but never recovered her loss; he led a solitary and desolate life, and gave himself up to works of benevolence and the study of oriental languages. He became a perfect adept in the Arabic, Hebrew, and Greek tongues, and never appeared at court as a widower except when the imperious etiquette of Versailles occasionally demanded it. He died in 1752. His son’s reign at the Palais Royal is chiefly remarkable by his having inoculated his own children with small-pox; the daring experiment, which was performed by Tronchin, summoned from Geneva for the purpose, was crowned with success. Paris, transported with joy, made bonfires in the Place in front of the palace, and for a time the rash and fortunate father was the hero of toast and song. Another event which signalized his occupation of Richelieu’s palace was the destruction of the theatre by fire (1763). The duke rebuilt it on a somewhat larger but infinitely less gorgeous scale as to decoration. He was an enlightened patron of art, and especially kind in assisting young men whose talent was struggling to make head against poverty. He divined the genius of the young poet Le Fèvre, and encouraged him both by personal notice and by liberal gifts. He was so pleased with Le Fèvre’s tragedy _Zuma_ that immediately on its appearance he bestowed a pension of 1,200 crowns on the poet out of his privy purse; and on the latter’s asking what services were expected from him in return for this munificence, the duke answered: “It obliges you to work henceforth more ardently for your own fame—nothing more.” This prince, though he allowed himself to be drawn, to a certain extent, into the fashionable follies of the court, had inherited from his father many sterling and beautiful qualities. His benevolence was unbounded; but it was only after his death that his real character was revealed, so carefully did he shun everything like ostentation in the exercise of his favorite virtue. It was then discovered that two-thirds of his immense revenue had been spent upon the poor, in the payment of pensions to artists, men of letters, widows, etc.; some granted in his own name, others in the name of one or other of his ancestors. His condescending kindness towards his dependents endeared him to all who approached him. A chamberlain coming one day to announce to him the death of a most inefficient and tiresome valet, who had been twenty years in the duke’s service, “Poor fellow!” sighed the duke, “for twenty years he served me, and for twenty years he worried me!” “Why did you keep him, monseigneur?” inquired a bystander. “Why, he would never have found a place if I had turned him away,” replied the prince, and then added: “We must see now that his wife and children are provided for.” Was it not Sophocles who said, “Only a great soul knows how much glory there is in being kind”? What a germ of true glory there lies buried in this quiet little trait of Louis d’Orléans!

The death of this magnificent patron, forbearing master, and generous father of the poor makes way for another prince of the House of Orleans who has earned a louder but less enviable notoriety on the world-stage of history. Almost immediately on his becoming master of the Palais Royal, the new Duc d’Orléans had the vexation of seeing the theatre so recently rebuilt by his father burnt down again. Discouraged, no doubt, by this precedent, he refused to rebuild it at his own expense, and applied to the city of Paris for the necessary funds; but that body declined to furnish them. The _Comédie Française_ was consequently transferred to the Porte St. Martin, where a building was erected in the space of six weeks by Lenoir. It was not till many years later that Richelieu’s beautiful temple to dramatic art was rebuilt by a prince of the House of Orleans, to be henceforth hired out on lease to enterprising managers.

We are told that in his early youth Joseph Philippe d’Orléans gave promise of an estimable manhood. How wofully this promise was belied by his after-life and shameful and tragic death we know. He was born at St. Cloud in 1747, and married, in 1769, the only daughter of the Duc de Penthièvre—a creature endowed with every charm of person and mind to make her at once reverenced and loved. Philippe was tall, slight, and well proportioned, his features finely cut and lit up with vivacity and intelligence, his manners gracious and dignified. Such is the portrait handed down to us of him in those early days before the shadow of coming infamy had obscured the picture. He fell soon into habits of unbridled dissipation; but, so long as he confined himself to this, to mad charioteering pranks on the boulevards, and aerial escapades in balloons, with boon companions as mad as himself, the people looked on in contemptuous disapproval. It was necessary, in order to stimulate this passive feeling to one of direct antagonism, that he should interfere with the popular pleasure and convenience. This he did by turning his broad and richly planted garden into a huge shop, thus depriving the _bourgeois_ and idlers of Paris of their accustomed resort on the sultry days and long mellow evenings of summer. His royal highness had contrived very soon to compromise a fortune more than royal in its extent; and, in order to replenish his coffers, he decided to cut down his ancestral chestnuts, and build up in their place long rows of shops, to be hired out at a high rent to tradespeople. The fashionables and the _bourgeois_, and, more important than all in a Frenchman’s eyes, the children, were thus driven to promenade under a stone colonnade, instead of enjoying the green shade of Richelieu’s groves, where the buzz of a multifarious bazaar had replaced the cooing of doves and the twitter of singing-birds. By-and-by we see the thermometer rising from resentful dislike to fierce hatred. Philip is smitten with Anglomania, and spends his time and, what is of more consequence to Paris, his money in London. He wears only London-made coats, drives English horses, hires English grooms, altogether affects the ways and manners of _outre-mer_, to the great disgust of Versailles and the boulevards. Wretched Philip! well had it been for him and for Versailles had he dwelt content in these puerile masquerades and self-degrading follies! But under the frivolous surface there lay a substratum of cruel vindictiveness, a bristling self-love, that was quick to see an affront, and implacable in avenging it. Marie Antoinette had the dire ill-luck to offend her disreputable cousin of Orleans. When her brother, the Archduke Maximilian, came to see her at Versailles, the queen, then in her twentieth year, very naturally desired to see as much as possible of this dear companion of her childhood during his short stay; so she dispensed, as far as she could, with court ceremonial, remaining chiefly in her private apartments with her brother. It did not probably occur to her that, in omitting to invite the Duc d’Orléans to share this sisterly intercourse, she was inflicting a wound that would one day distil its deadly poison upon herself and those dearest to her. So it was, however. Philip never forgave what he considered a slight, and bitterly did he make the thoughtless young queen repent having inflicted it.

The gardens of the Palais Royal, which had given rise to his first unpopularity, were destined to be the scene of the upheaving of the revolution. All was ready, only waiting for a bold hand to give a push to the pendulum and set it going. Camille Desmoulins did it. It was the 12th of July, 1789. Yesterday the great crisis had been prepared, and to-day it burst. Necker, the universal genius whose advent to the ministry was hailed as the panacea for all discords, and difficulties, and threatened dangers; Necker, the “Achilles of computation,” whose, vigorous hand and capacious brain were to seize France, tottering on the brink of some invisible gulf, and steady her; Necker, to whom the timid, apathetic king, and the proud, valiant queen, had all but gone on their knees to induce him to come and redeem the treasury by “swift arithmetic,” and save the government and—yes, even at this date they must have included it in the salvations to be accomplished by Necker—the throne; Necker, who had yielded to the royal suppliants with these words: “I yield in obedience to duty, but with the certainty that I am doomed”—Necker had been dismissed. On the 11th of July, Louis XVI. signed the letter imploring the minister to leave the kingdom “at once and without _éclat_.” When his secretary objected that Necker’s extraordinary popularity was a strong presumption against his obeying this last command; that he had only to show himself, and the people would rise _en masse_ to prevent his flight, Louis replied: “I know Necker; he will guard us against himself; he will obey me scrupulously, and fly without _éclat_.” And he was right. The minister received the letter at three in the afternoon, and quietly put it in his pocket without communicating its contents even to his wife; he dined at the usual hour with some friends already invited; nothing in his appearance or conversation betrayed the slightest emotion during the repast; on leaving the table, he showed the letter of dismissal to Mme. Necker, ordered his carriage, and they went out for a drive; when they were about two hundred yards from the house, he pulled the check-string, and desired the coachman to drive to the nearest post-station. It was not till the following morning that his daughter and his numerous friends knew of his departure. The news electrified everybody. Camille Desmoulins’ grand opportunity had arrived. He had already made himself notorious as a leader of malcontents; this afternoon he was drinking with a certain set of them in a _café_ at the Palais Royal—of late a favorite rendezvous of patriots of his type—noisy and blustering, believing in copious libations as the most efficacious proof of patriotism. Desmoulins, on hearing the news, rushed out, pistol in hand, and, jumping on an orange-tree tub, proceeded to harangue the assembled multitude. He was afflicted with a painful stuttering in his speech, but this impediment appears to have been no hindrance to the effect of his oratory; on the contrary, it gave it a more vehement character, impelling him to wild and passionate gesticulation, by way of helping out his defective utterance. He spoke with his eyes, his teeth, every member of his body; he would shake out his hair in lion-like fashion, stamp his feet, toss his arms with clenched fists above his head to supply the word his tongue refused to articulate, and the energetic pantomine elicited the sympathy, while it fired the passions, of his hearers. “Citizens!” he cried, “I come from Versailles.” (He came from a neighboring _café_, as we have seen, but what of that?) “Necker is dismissed. This dismissal is the tocsin of S. Bartholomew for all patriots. Before the sun has gone down, we shall see the Swiss and German battalions marching from the Champs de Mars to murder us like dogs. One chance yet remains to us. To arms! Let us choose a cockade whereby we may know each other.” This exordium was covered with thundering salvos by the patriots. “What color shall we choose?” continued the orator. “Speak, patriots! Select your own flag. Shall it be green, the emblem of hope, or blue—the color of free America, of liberty, and democracy?” A voice from the patriots cried out: “Green, the color of hope!” But the choice was negatived by the voice of popular prejudice. Green, it was said, was unlucky. No; they would not have green.

A scene of indescribable tumult followed while the momentous question of the cockade was being canvassed. Finally, by what train of argument history does not record, blue, white, and red were elected to the honor of representing the patriots. They happened to be the colors of the House of Orleans. From the tub which served as a rostrum to the orator the decree was shouted to the serried ranks around, and all through the gardens it was borne along the colonnade rapid as lightning, swelling, as it went, into a deafening peal that soon reverberated from the boulevards and the thoroughfares of Paris to Versailles. It is said, we know not whether or not on authentic testimony, that while this wild uproar, which terminated in the adoption of his House’s colors by the popular party, was going on under his windows, Philip of Orleans, henceforth to be known under the title of Egalité, was coolly looking out at the performance, smoking his cigar, and discussing the probable effect of it all at Versailles. By the time the whole city was out-of-doors, it was the hour for the performance to begin in the Palais Royal theatre, close by the scene of Camille’s rhetorical triumph; other more interesting pieces, beginning with comedy and ending with tragedy, were now to be performed; a band of patriots, with Camille at their head, burst into the theatre, and, rushing on the stage, summarily reversed the programme of the evening. They flung tricolor cockades right and left, and called the spectators to arms. “The audience rose _en masse_” at the appeal, like a true-born Parisian audience, and, surging from pit and boxes, poured out impetuous and desperate, it knew not well why, at the bidding of Camille Desmoulins. He marched off, with the swelling stream behind him, to the studio of the sculptor Curtius; there the patriots seized a bust of Necker and Philip of Orleans, and carried them in procession through the streets. This was Egalité’s official _début_, as a leader of the Red Revolution. It was at the Palais Royal he was arrested. Here, on the site of its first eruption, the wild demon which he had, in the measure of his power, evoked and called up from the smouldering lava depths to the full activity of its satanic life, and flattered and bowed down to, was doomed at the appointed hour of retribution to raise its bloody hand against the regicide, and strike him down. On his way to the guillotine, the car, whether by accident or design, passed under Egalité’s old home. He raised his eyes for a moment to the windows, and, surveying them with an unmoved countenance, turned his glance calmly again upon the yelling crowd.

While the Terror lasted, the Palais Royal remained untenanted. After the Restoration it was occupied by Louis Philippe while Duke of Orleans; when the son of Egalité called himself to the throne of his nephew, he forsook it for the Tuileries, and during the remainder of his reign it was open to the public as an historical monument and museum. On the resurrection of the Empire, the Palais Royal became the residence of Prince Jerome Bonaparte, only surviving brother of Napoleon I. When this last venerable twig fell from the old imperial tree, it continued in the possession of his son, Prince Napoleon. Hither, in March, 1859, he brought his young bride, the Princess Clothilde, daughter of Victor Emmanuel, and there he resided until the memorable summer of 1870, when the disastrous war with Prussia came like a cyclone, and tore up the old tree by the roots, and sent the branches flying hither and thither over the astonished face of Europe.

The Commune closes our retrospect of Richelieu’s palace. The Tuileries and the Palais Royal sent up their petroleum flames together to the soft summer skies where the bright May sun was shining down, serenely sad, upon the awful spectacle of Paris on fire—a funeral pile whereon were consumed, let us hope never again to rise from their ashes, the Commune itself, and the delusions of the few honest fools, if such there were, who believed in its insane theories. Surely as they fled, scared from their old historic haunts by the blaze and stench of the devilish modern fluid, the ghosts of Richelieu, and Mazarin, and Anne of Austria, and all that band of majestic figures from the unburied past, must have laughed a bitter laugh, wherein horror was not without a note of triumph, as they looked back upon the ghastly scene. “Our little systems had their day,” the dead legislators may have said, one to another, as they stood in the lurid light of the conflagration that illuminated, to the eyes of their disembodied spirit, the far-stretching vistas of the present and the past; “they were all faulty, how faulty we know now with unavailing knowledge, but, compared to this, were they not the Millennium, Eutopia, the ideal of the reign of justice upon the earth?”

AN ABUSE OF DIPLOMATIC AUTHORITY.

THE tendency, to which we have heretofore alluded, to ostracize Catholics, and to take it for granted that this is a Protestant country, to be ruled exclusively by anti-Catholics, has had even a more dangerous and far-reaching effect beyond our borders, and that, too, apparently with official sanction. The popular prejudice has not unnaturally reached and infected the authorities at Washington. We do not allude especially to the present Administration or Congress, for the evil is of long standing; but we have no hesitation in saying that our diplomatic and consular systems as at present conducted are unjust to a very respectable minority of the American people, and are likely to mislead and deceive the nations with which we are on terms of peace and amity. The foreign appointees are, almost without exception, taken from the ranks of non-Catholics and without regard either to the feelings of a large class of our own citizens or the wishes of the people to whom they are sent. The ministers plenipotentiary to the great powers of Europe have been invariably selected from the ultra Protestant class like Motley; while the numerous consuls, with a few honorable exceptions, have been men of the same way of thinking, according to their limited understanding. When the Holy Father was yet in possession of his dominions, we used to delight in sending him now and then a specimen of a genuine Know-Nothing; and when Spain—Catholic and conservative Spain—began to feel the Gem of the Antilles slipping from her grasp, we despatched an atheistical _filibustero_, Soulé, to assure her of our friendship and good-will With Catholic countries generally we have acted in the same spirit of contradiction, as if our object were to excite hostility rather than to perpetuate kindness and harmony, as among them, particularly in South America, each legation and consulate habitually formed the nucleus of anti-Catholic society. As long as this blundering—we will not call it by a harsher name—was confined to our European appointments, it mattered little; for the relative condition of Catholics and the sects in this country is there pretty well known, and, the faith of the people being well fixed, prejudice and bigotry, even when protected by the stars and stripes, could do little harm.

It is of the character of our representatives in Turkey, Africa, India, China, and other places _in partibus infidelium_ that we have most reason to complain. These American envoys and consuls seem to become volunteer lay evangelizers; and if, like our friends of the Methodist and Presbyterian missionary societies of this city, they do not succeed in converting the benighted heathen from the error of their ways, they endeavor, by the exercise of all their delegated authority, to thwart and depreciate the labors of those who can—the Catholic missionaries from other countries. Take, for example, India and China, the great missionary fields of the world, containing as they do at least one-half of the whole human race in a comparative state of civilization. The former being a province of Great Britain, it is natural that sectarian missions should receive at least a semi-official recognition and protection from the appointees of the head of the Protestant Church “as by law established”; but even in this respect the English officials have been outdone in zeal and officiousness by our own agents in the Indian Peninsula, as we learn from a late work on that country.[44] But in China, with its four or five hundred millions of idolaters, the case is different. There the Catholic priest and the devoted Sister of Charity, unsupported by the temporal arm, and unawed by threats, torture, and death, have been most active and most successful in advancing the standard of the cross and winning souls to Christ. Their converts are numbered by tens of thousands, and their churches, schools, and orphanages dot the southern and western coasts; while the sectarian missionaries, lacking the sustaining power of the state, have practically done nothing. This has long been a source of much chagrin to the various dissenting proselytizing societies in England and the United States, as it also seems to have been the cause of exasperation to our Minister at Peking, Mr. Frederick F. Low.

That gentleman’s mission to China appears to have embraced but three objects, if we except his attempt and absurd failure to bring the Coreans into communication with the outside world. The first of these was the protection of American Protestant missionaries, and them only; the second, to convince the Chinese officials that the United States have nothing to do with Catholics, or, as he is pleased to style them on all occasions, “Romanists”; and the third, to send home false despatches and mistranslated documents.

In looking over the foreign correspondence of our government for 1871, as presented to Congress with the President’s Message,[45] we find that, in October, 1870, Mr. Low, without any authority whatever from Washington, ordered a United States war-vessel from Chefoo to Tungchow, for the sole purpose of returning some Protestant missionaries to the latter place, who, with their usual regard for the first law of nature, had fled from it upon the slightest rumor of danger. The ship was the _Benecia_, and her precious cargo consisted of “the missionaries (number not stated), their teachers and servants, also _their children_, amounting to a total of twenty-four persons.” Of the reverend gentlemen at whose disposal a public vessel had been so obsequiously placed by the accommodating Mr. Low, Commander Kimberly, in his report, bluntly says:

“The missionaries expressed themselves perfectly satisfied with everything that had been done in regard to returning them to their homes, and wished me to visit the shore and walk about the city with the officers of the ship in full uniform, which I declined to do, as, after the promises made by the Chinese officials, I considered it unnecessary, and the Chinese being perfectly willing and pleased, as far as I could judge, that they had returned. From my interview, I came to the conclusion that there never existed any real danger at Tungchow-foo, but the missionaries were frightened by the threats of some Chinese not in authority. Mischievous persons are found in every community, and Tungchow-foo is not free from this infliction. The massacre of Tientsin capped the climax, and the missionaries left in consequence.”

The cowardly conduct of the missionaries, who were thus so honorably reconducted to their homes, is even partially admitted by the minister in his explanatory despatch, for he says: “In this connection, I desire to say that I have had no information from the missionaries, except a short note from one of them saying that they had all reached Tungchow. Without expressing any opinion as to the real peril they were in, or whether there was or was not cause for the step they took, I am of the opinion that their removal and the manner of their return will, on the whole, result in good.”

We admit that it is the duty of every envoy, consul, or other foreign agent of our government to succor and protect our citizens abroad in all things lawful; but here, in this respect, their duty ends. They have no shadow of right to employ the public vessels of the country, paid for by the public at large, and destined for far other purposes, in any other business, much less for the transportation of runaway missionaries, “their teachers, servants, and children.” This is not a Protestant country _de facto_ or _de jure_, and, as far as the national government is concerned, no religion whatever is recognized. If it were an equal number of merchants or traders who had fled in terror from imaginary danger, is it likely that Mr. Low would have depleted our small squadron in the Chinese seas by putting at their service, and that of their “teachers, servants, and children,” one of the best vessels in the fleet? Or does any one suppose that, if those persons had been Catholic missionaries, he would have been guilty of a similar abuse of authority? But he apologetically says, “The manner of their return will, on the whole, result in good.” Just so. Good to Mr. Low, though we have not yet heard of a vote of thanks having been presented to him by any of our numerous foreign missionary societies, or that they have sent on to Washington deputations for his retention or promotion. That his conduct deserves such commendation from these bodies no one can doubt who reads further his despatches to the State Department.

In 1858, a treaty was formed between China, on the one part, and the leading Western powers, on the other, whereby, among other things, it was stipulated that the Christian converts in the former country should practise their religion without molestation, and also enjoy certain immunities; and that in the free or open ports and districts the ministers of religion should be guaranteed the full exercise of their functions, etc. In 1870, as previously agreed upon, this treaty came up for revision, and France, ever foremost in the work of civilization and conversion, proposed five amendments to the treaty, all relating directly or indirectly to commerce. The second of these reads as follows:

“You have expressed a desire to know the demands which I have engaged my government to make from the Chinese government when the treaty of 1858 is revised. I have no objection to satisfy you, for I believe that the alterations are indispensable, and I shall be happy to learn that the other governments allied with China have decided also to demand them.... Second, I demand that we shall have the right to place salaried consuls wherever we judge proper, and that those cities where consuls reside shall also be opened to foreign trade.”

These demands seemed rational enough, and have since, we understand, been substantially complied with; but our clear-sighted minister immediately detected the danger that lurked beneath them, particularly the one just quoted, and hastened to advise his government not to second the propositions of the French ambassador. Here is one of his reasons:

“I see so many objections to such a treaty provision, and so many chances of its proving a delusion and a snare, that, unless the proposition can be more definitely defined, I should not be inclined to favor it. If the exact truth could be ascertained, it would be found, I expect, that the whole idea of the French _chargé_ in this scheme is the better protection of the French missionaries; and were it possible to obtain the concession asked for, these additional consuls would be, to all intents and purposes, agents of Roman Catholic missionaries. Their official positions and influence would be used to sustain missionary claims and assumptions, some of which have been described in a former despatch. So far as trade is concerned, it may well be questioned whether the presence of French consuls in the interior would not prove a damage instead of a benefit.”

And this is the representative of a free and commercial people who desire to be considered Christian! Rather than see Catholic missions extended, and paganism eradicated from the hearts of millions of human beings, he would be willing to keep some of the most populous and fertile portions of the Celestial Empire closed for ever against civilization and commerce. But let us follow this model minister a little further.

In February, 1871, the Chinese Foreign Office submitted to the foreign representatives at the capital, for consideration and approval, the draft of a minute, and eight rules for the guidance and government of missionaries in the entire empire. They were drawn up with true Tartar cunning and ingenuity, and were intended, if adopted, to baffle the straightforward demands of France. In terms they were plausible enough, but in reality exceedingly restrictive, and evidently aimed at the Sisters of Charity, whose schools and orphan asylums were rapidly increasing, and at those zealous and enterprising missionaries who, under various disguises, and despite the vigilance of the local authorities, are in the habit, at imminent personal danger, of penetrating into the very heart of the country, and preaching the Word of God where his name has never before been heard. This was a chance for Mr. Low to exhibit his sectarian bigotry before the mandarins, and he eagerly availed himself of it. Answering their communication in his official capacity, and while dissenting generally from their views, he takes occasion, we think very gratuitously, to say:

“It is a noticeable fact that, among all the cases cited, there does not appear to be one in which Protestant missionaries are charged with violating treaty, law, or custom. So far as I can ascertain, your complaints are chiefly against the action and attitude of the missionaries of the Roman Catholic faith, and, as these are under the exclusive protection and control of the government of France, I might with great propriety decline to discuss _a matter with which the government of the United States has no direct interest or concern_, for the reason that none of its citizens are charged with violating treaty or local law, and thus causing trouble.”

And again, with equal truthfulness and appositeness, he adds: