Chapter XII: Part 12

On the 22d of October, 1781, a child is born at Versailles. The king advances towards the queen’s couch; with a profound bow, and in a voice that falters with emotion, he exclaims, “Madame, you have fulfilled the dearest wishes of my heart and the anxious hopes of the nation; you are the mother of a _Dauphin_.” Nothing could exceed the public rejoicings; the triumph became well-nigh frantic. For it is recorded that their superabundant joy found expression in a sort of delirium,—people of all grades, and who had no previous acquaintance with each other, indulging in fraternal embraces in the street. The king himself went through a similar display of excessive joy. He laughed, he wept, the tears streaming down his fat face. He ran in and out of the antechamber, presenting his hand to kiss or to shake—or both, if they pleased—to all and each indiscriminately, from the solemn _grandees_, who were there to attest the birth, to the humblest lackey in attendance. “The royal infant, splendidly arrayed and with the grand cross of St. Louis on his breast, was placed in his satin and point-lace bassinet to receive the homage of the great officers of state. It is recorded that he replied in a most suitable manner to the many flattering speeches addressed to him; and this being the first opportunity he had had of exhibiting the power of his lungs, he availed himself of it freely.” Madame Royale had been born three years before; two other children were subsequently added,—the Duc de Normandie, and the Princess Sophie; but only Madame Royale and the Duc de Normandie were destined to survive to endure those woes which eventually overwhelmed the royal family.

Marie Antoinette was now in the flower of her beauty, on which French biographers love to dwell. Tilly said, “Her eyes recalled all the changes of the waves of the sea, and seemed made to reveal and reflect the blue of the sky.” Her fine throat and the lofty carriage of her head were remarkable; and she once said, laughingly, to Madame Le Brun, “If I were not a queen, should not I look insolent?”

“As one would have offered a chair to another woman, one would have offered a throne to her; and when she descended the marble staircase at Versailles, preceded by the officers who announced her approach, saluted in the great court by the beating of drums and the presentation of arms, all heads were uncovered respectfully, all hearts were filled with admiration of the woman, as well as with loyalty to the queen.”

Who shall tell the true story of the diamond necklace? It will probably never be told. The papers of the Cardinal de Rohan, which might have thrown much light upon the subject, were unfortunately destroyed. Little did Marie Antoinette think, as she entered Strasburg in triumph on her marriage journey, that she would encounter, in the magnificent robes of a cardinal’s coadjutor, a man who was to prove her deadly foe,—the insolent and profligate Prince Louis de Rohan. He had been ambassador at Vienna, where he had disgusted Maria Theresa by his profligacy and arrogance. She had procured his withdrawal. He had not been allowed to appear at the court of Versailles; and now for ten long years he had fretted and fumed under a sense of the royal displeasure. Boehmer, the crown jeweller, had, for a period of years, been collecting and assorting the stones which should form an incomparable necklace, in row upon row, pendants and tassels of lustrous diamonds, till the price had reached the royal pitch of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. This costly “collar” he offered to the king, who would willingly have bought it for the queen had she desired it; but Marie Antoinette replied, that if the money were to be spent, it had better be used in fitting a frigate for the royal navy. His Most Christian Majesty concurred exactly in this sentiment, and, returning the necklace to Boehmer with the words, “We have more need of ships than of diamonds,” thought no more about the matter. Not so did the Cardinal de Rohan, and the _intrigante_ Madame de Lamotte. They had made up their minds to possess the three hundred and fifty thousand dollars represented by the glittering gems. So they laid their clever heads together, and, by forging notes of the queen and sundry other little plots which were wonderfully successful, obtained the necklace, leaving Boehmer to look to the queen for payment. Of course payment was not forthcoming, and in his distress the jeweller related the affair to Madame Campan, telling her he feared he had been duped. Madame Campan proceeded at once to Versailles, and laid the matter before the queen. It was the 15th of August, 1784, Assumption day, and Prince Louis de Rohan, in full pontificals, and wearing the Grand Cross of St. Louis, arrived at Versailles to perform mass in the royal chapel; but he had scarcely entered the _Œil de Bœuf_, when he was summoned to the cabinet of the king. As he entered, Louis XVI. turned upon him suddenly, inquiring, “You have purchased diamonds of Boehmer?” “Yes, sire,” was the trembling reply. “What have you done with them?” the king added. “I thought,” replied the cardinal, “that they had been delivered to the queen.” “Who commissioned you to make this purchase?” “The Comtesse de Lamotte,” was the reply; “she handed me a letter from her Majesty, requesting me to obtain the necklace for her. Indeed, I thought I was obeying her Majesty’s wishes by taking this business upon myself.”

“How could you imagine, sir,” indignantly interrupted Marie Antoinette, “that I should have selected _you_ for such a purpose, when I have not addressed you for eight years, and how could you suppose that I should have acted through the mediation of such a character as Madame la Comtesse de Lamotte?”

The cardinal was in the most violent agitation; he drew from his pocket a letter, directed to the Comtesse de Lamotte, and signed with the queen’s name. Her Majesty glanced at it, and instantly pronounced it a forgery, and the king added, “How could you, a prince of the church and grand almoner of my household, not have detected it? This letter is signed _Marie Antoinette de France_. Queens sign their names short; it is not even the queen’s handwriting.” Then drawing a letter from his pocket, and handing it to De Rohan, he said, “Are you the author of that letter?”

The cardinal turned pale, and, leaning upon a table, appeared as though he would fall to the floor.

“I have no wish, Monsieur le Cardinal,” the king added, “to find you guilty; explain to me this enigma; account for all these manœuvres with Boehmer. Where did you obtain these securities and these promissory notes, signed in the queen’s name?”

The cardinal was trembling in every nerve: “Sire, I am too much agitated now to answer your Majesty; give me a little time to collect my thoughts.” “Go into my cabinet,” replied the king; “you will there find papers, pens, and ink. At your leisure, _write_ what you desire to to say to me.”

But the written statements of M. de Rohan were as unsatisfactory as his verbal ones. In half an hour he returned with a paper covered with blottings, alterations, and erasures. Louis’ anger was aroused, and, throwing open the folding doors, he cried out in imperious tones,—very unusual for him,—which resounded through the _Œil de Bœuf_ and _grande galerie_: “Arrest the Cardinal de Rohan!” The Baron de Bretuil approached through the crowd of astonished courtiers, and, summoning the officer on guard, he indicated the cardinal with the words, “_De par le roi, Monseigneur_, you are arrested; at your risk, officer.” But, before the cardinal could be removed, he had spoken three words in German to one of his officials, and given him a slip of paper. The horse on which the man rode post haste to the cardinal’s palace in Paris, fell dead in the courtyard; but the red portfolio, containing the supposed autographs of the queen’s letters, lay in ashes before it could be sealed up in the name of justice and of the king. The cardinal was taken to the Bastile. More arrests followed, including that of the Comtesse de Lamotte. For nine months the trial lasted before the Council of the Grand Chambre. The Pope protested against a prince of the church being made accountable for his acts to any but the highest ecclesiastical tribunal (an assembly of the cardinals at Rome); while the _haute noblesse_ looked on the cause of the Prince de Rohan as their own, considering the rights and privileges of their rank intrenched upon, when a near relative of the princes of the blood was put on his trial before the Council of the Grand Chambre. So the cardinal was eventually acquitted, and Madame de Lamotte alone was severely punished by flogging and branding on both shoulders.

Their Majesties were chagrined at the acquittal of M. de Rohan and shocked at the punishment of the countess. The former was an insult to the king, the latter to the queen; for Madame de Lamotte boasted a descent from the House of Valois and royal blood within her veins. Such was the affair of the Diamond Necklace, which, though apparently trivial in itself, involved consequences of the most momentous importance.

“Mind that miserable affair of the necklace,” said Talleyrand; “I should be in nowise surprised if it should overturn the French monarchy.”

Whoever were the guilty ones, Marie Antoinette was entirely innocent. She, however, experienced all the ignominy she could have encountered had she been involved in the deepest guilt, and the affair furnished a fine theme for the malevolence of Bellevue and Luviciennes.

Respect for royalty was on the wane. The king, of course, had shared with the queen in the disrespect which Mesdames, his aunts, were desirous should rest on her alone; and the insulting conduct towards him of his brothers, Monsieur le Comte de Provence and the libertine, the Comte d’Artois, who, according to an eye-witness, “on occasions of great state or solemnity, will pass before the king twenty times, push him aside, tread on his feet, and this, apparently, without any thought of apology or excuse,” together with the affair of the Diamond Necklace, were well calculated to debase him further in the eyes of his courtiers and in public opinion. Nowhere was this more evident than when the court assembled in the Grand Gallery of Versailles, where once the _Grand Monarque_ held his _réunions_ called “_Appartements_.” At such times, “a stranger would have found it difficult to recognize the king by any particular attention or any deference paid to him.” What, then, must have been the agonized sensations of the perturbed spirit of the superb _Louis Quatorze_, if ever, to look on his degenerate posterity, he revisited the scene of his former greatness and grandeur, where once he sat enthroned like Jupiter among the inferior gods, and where all around him were but too willing to fall down in the dust at his royal feet, had it been his “_bon plaisir_” that they should do so! Ah, those were palmy days for church and state!

Brightly dawned the 5th of May, 1789, and Versailles, with its tapestries, its garlands, and its throngs of gayly dressed visitors, wore a festive, smiling air. To many it was indeed a joyous day,—a day of hope; for the king had granted the States General. Such an assemblage France had not witnessed for more than a hundred and fifty years. No wonder, then, it was looked forward to as the dawn of national liberty. But as the procession winds its way along the vast streets of Versailles, the people see, with pain, how marked are the distinctions of rank and costume which divide _their_ representatives from the nobles and the clergy. To the episcopal purple, the croziers, and grand mantles of the dignitaries of the church succeed the long black robes of the “inferior clergy.” Then in all the splendor of velvet and cloth of gold, lace ruffles and cravats, floating plumes and mantles of state, come the _haute noblesse_. Then follow the modest Third Estate of the realm; the absence of finery in their humble garb is atoned for in the eyes of the populace who receive them with hearty cheers, which they have refused the nobles who have preceded them. One only is generally known. It is the “plebian count” de Mirabeau. The _cortège_ of the princes, who are surrounded by courtiers, is allowed to pass in silence. Louis XVI. appears; as usual, he moves without dignity, simple, in spite of his Cross of St. Louis and his _cordon bleu_. Marie Antoinette moves with her accustomed majesty, but her face wears an anxious look. Her lips are closely pressed, as if in a vain effort to dissemble her trouble, for not only is her Dauphin, whose birth had been so proudly hailed, at the point of death, but she is this day greeted, not with the old loyal shouts of “_Vive la reine!_” but with new insulting cries of “_Vive d’Orleans!_” Monsieur le Comte de Provence is grave and pensive, and apparently impressed with the importance of the occasion. He walks with difficulty, owing to his extreme corpulency. The Comte d’Artois shows evident signs of _ennui_ and bad temper, and casts disdainful glances to the right and left upon the crowd that lines the streets, and so, although they little think it, those high-born men and women march onward to their fate. “For although no really hostile sentiments can be said to have _then_ animated that vast throng, nevertheless, alike among those who formed the procession and those who were only its spectators, there was a lurking latent feeling that something strange, something hitherto unknown, coming from the past and pressing on to the future, was moving onwards towards France.”

It was the revolution to be decreed by the _Étâts Généraux_. On the 23d of June, the king held a _séance royale_ at Versailles. It was attended with all the _appareil_ and state of the “bed of justice” of the old régime. The _noblesse_ had determined, if possible, to crush the Third Estate; but the king hardly knew how to utter the arrogant and defiant words which had been put into his mouth. It was the lamb attempting to imitate the roar of the lion. “_Je veux, j’ordonne, je commande_” was the burden of the king’s speech, which was read by the keeper of the seals, upon his knees. One may imagine how it was received by the _Tiers État_.

The address closed with the following words: “I command you, gentlemen, immediately to disperse, and to repair to-morrow morning to the chambers appropriate to your order.”

The king and his attendant court left the hall. The _noblesse_ and the clergy followed him. Exultation beamed upon their faces, for they thought that the _Tiers État_ was now effectually crushed. The Commons remained in their seats. The crisis had arrived. There was now no alternative but resistance or submission, rebellion or servitude. The Marquis de Brézé, grand master of ceremonies, perceiving that the assembly did not retire, advanced to the centre of the hall, and in a loud, authoritative voice,—a voice at whose command nearly fifty thousand troops were ready to march,—demanded, “Did you hear the command of the king?”

“Yes, sir,” responded Mirabeau, with a glaring eye and a thunder tone; “we have heard the king’s command, and you who have neither seat nor voice in this house are not the one to remind us of his speech. Go, tell those who sent you, that we are here by the power of the people, and that nothing shall drive us hence but the power of the bayonet.”

And the grand master of ceremonies went out backwards from the presence of the orator of the people, as it was etiquette to go from the presence of the king.

The _noblesse_, in the meantime, were in exultation. They deemed the popular movement effectually crushed, and hastened with their congratulations to the queen. Marie Antoinette was much elated, and presenting to them the Dauphin, she exclaimed, “I intrust him to the nobility.”

The Marquis de Brézé now entered the council-chamber, to inform the king that the deputies still continued their sitting, and asked for orders. The king walked impatiently once or twice up and down the floor, and then replied hastily, “Very well! leave them alone.” Louis XIV. would have sent every man of them to the Bastile or the scaffold; but the days of Louis XIV. were no more. It was the 14th of July, 1789. All Paris was in confusion. Mobs ransacked the city in pursuit of arms. Every sword, pistol, and musket from private residences were brought forward. The royal arsenal, containing mainly curiosities and suits of ancient armor, was sacked, and while all the costly objects of interest were left untouched, every available weapon was taken away. But why all this turmoil, terror, and excitement? Out at Versailles was Marshal Broglie, proud and self-confident, in conference with the court, and having at his command fifty thousand troops abundantly armed and equipped, all of whom could in a few hours be concentrated in the streets of Paris. Upon the _Champ de Mars_, Benseval had assembled his force of several thousand Swiss and German troops, cavalry and artillery, and at any moment this combined force might be expected to pour, in the king’s name, upon his “good city of Paris,” and chastise his rebellious subjects with terrible severity; while the enormous fortress of the Bastile, with its walls forty feet thick at the base and fifteen at the top, rising with its gloomy towers one hundred and twenty feet in the air, with its cannon charged with grapeshot, already run out at every embrasure, commanded the city; while that remained in the hands of the enemy there was no safety. Could the Bastile be taken? Preposterous! It was as unassailable as the rock of Gibraltar. The mob surged around the Hotel de Ville demanding arms and the immediate establishment of a citizen’s guard. But arms were not to be had. It was well known that there were large stores of them somewhere in the city, but no one knew where to find them. What is this? A rumor runs through the crowd: “There are arms at the Hotel des Invalides; muskets, thirty thousand and more;” and now the discordant cries resolve into one long and steadfast shout, “_Les Invalides! Les Invalides!_” and in the bright sunshine of this July morning, upon the esplanade of the Invalides, thirty thousand men stand grim and menacing. But there is no resistance. The gates are thrown open and the mob rush in. They find in the armory thirty thousand muskets and six pieces of cannon; and now, as by common instinct, resounds the cry, “_La Bastile! La Bastile!_” The crowds across the Seine take up the shout, while from the Champs Élysées, the Tuileries Gardens, and the Palais Royal, comes back, as it were, the echo, indistinct at first, but in ever-increasing volume, “_La Bastile! La Bastile!_” as one hundred thousand men, shouting, swearing, and brandishing their pikes and guns, rush forward, a living torrent, to assail with these feeble means, that fortress _par excellence_ of France,—a fortress which the army of Monsieur le Prince, le grand Condé, had besieged in vain for three and twenty days.

Enormous, massive, blackened with age, the gloomy emblem of royal prerogative, exciting by its mysterious power and menace the terror and execration of every one who passed beneath its shadow; its eight great towers darkening the air in gloomy grandeur, the world-renowned prison of the Bastile, the fortress _par excellence_, loomed lofty at the entrance of Paris, in the very heart of the Faubourg St. Antoine.

De Launey, the governor, from the summit of his towers had, for many hours, heard the roar of the insurgent city; and now, as he saw the black mass of countless thousands approaching, he turned pale and trembled. M. Thuriot was sent by the electors of the Hotel de Ville to summon the Bastile to surrender. The drawbridge was lowered and he was admitted. De Launey received him at the head of his staff. “I summon you,” said Thuriot, “in the name of the people.” But De Launey, who was every moment expecting the arrival of troops from Versailles, refused to surrender the fortress, but added that he would not fire upon the people if they did not fire upon him. Thuriot, perceiving the cannon, and knowing that the governor had received an order from the Hotel de Ville to dismount them, exclaimed:—

“You have not had the cannon dismounted.”

“I have had them drawn in; that is all.”

“You will not have them dismounted, then?”

“No! the king’s cannon are here by the king’s order, sir; they can only be dismounted by an order from the king.”

“Monsieur De Launey,” said Thuriot, “the real king, whom I counsel you to obey, is yonder”; and he showed to the governor the vast crowd filling the square before the fortress, and whose weapons glittered in the sunshine.

“Sir,” replied De Launey haughtily, “you may, perhaps acknowledge two kings; but I, the governor of the Bastile,—I know but _one_, and he is Louis XVI. who has affixed his name to a commission by virtue of which I command here both men and things”; and, stamping his foot, he added angrily: “In the name of the king, sir, leave this place at once.” Thuriot withdrew, but he had hardly emerged from the massive portals and crossed the drawbridge of the moat, which was immediately raised behind him, ere the people commenced the attack. Uproar and confusion ensued. One hundred thousand men, filling all the streets and alleys, all the windows and house-tops of the adjacent buildings, opened upon the Bastile an incessant fire, harmlessly flattening their bullets against the massive stone walls. Priests, nobles, wealthy citizens, ragged and emaciate mendicants, men, women, boys, and girls, were mingled in the assault, pressing side by side; apparently the whole of Paris, with one united will, combined against the great bulwark of tyranny. For five hours the attack continued; at five in the afternoon, the French soldiers raised a flag of truce upon the towers. This movement plunged De Launey into despair. One hundred thousand men were beleaguering his fortress. The troops from Versailles had not arrived, and three-fourths of his garrison had already abandoned him, and gone over to his assailants. Death was his inevitable doom. Seizing a match he rushed toward the magazine, determined to blow up the citadel. There were one hundred and thirty-five barrels of gunpowder in the vaults. Two subaltern officers crossed their bayonets before him, and the lives of one hundred thousand people were saved. Gradually the flag of truce was seen through the smoke; the firing ceased, and the cry resounded through the crowd, and was echoed along the streets of Paris, “_La Bastile_ surrenders!” “The fortress which Louis XIV. and Turenne had pronounced impregnable, surrendered not to the arms of its assailants, for they had produced no impression upon it; it was conquered by the public opinion which pervaded Paris, and which vanquished its garrison.” While these scenes were transpiring at Paris, Versailles was in excitement. Courier after courier arrived, breathless, announcing that the Bastile was taken, that the troops in Paris refused to fire upon the crowd, that De Launey was slain, and that the cavalry of Lambese were flying before the people.

No eye was closed at Versailles that night, unless, perchance, it was that of the king, Louis XVI.; for all felt the counter-shock of that terrible concussion with which Paris was still trembling. The French guards, the bodyguards, and the Swiss, drawn up in platoons and grouped near the openings of all the principal streets, were conversing among themselves, or with those of the citizens whose fidelity to the monarchy inspired them with confidence; for Versailles has at all times been a royalist city. Religious respect for the monarchy and for the monarch was ingrafted in the hearts of its inhabitants as if it were a quality of its soil. Having always lived near kings, fostered by their bounty, beneath the shade of their wonders, having always inhaled the intoxicating perfume of the _fleur-de-lys_, and seen the brilliant gold of the garments, and the smiles upon the august lips of royalty, the inhabitants of Versailles, for whom kings had built a city of marble and porphyry, felt almost kings themselves; and, even at the present day,—even now, when the splendid palace of _Louis Quatorze_ stands silent in its grandeur; when no longer the marble court is thronged with gorgeous equipages, and

“Up the chestnut alley, all in flower so white and pure,
Strut the red and yellow lacqueys of the Madame Pompadour;”

when the vast gardens where once Louis, the _Grand Monarque_, surrounded by his train of lords and ladies, moved majestic, “monarch of all he surveyed and of all who surveyed him,” are silent and deserted;—even now, Versailles must either belie its origin, or, considering itself as a fragment of the fallen monarchy, and no longer feeling the pride of power and wealth, must at least retain the poetical associations of regret and the sovereign charms of melancholy. By his answer to the Marquis de Brézé, Mirabeau had struck the very face of royalty.

By the taking of the Bastile, the people had struck it to the heart, paralyzed its nerves of action, and given it a death-blow. “But the monarch of France, from his palace at Versailles, heard the thunders of the distant cannonade, and yet inscribed upon his puerile journal, ‘_Nothing!_’”

“Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad;” and the adage applies fitly to the French court during the six months preceding the overthrow. Never had the nobles been so haughty and domineering. Never had they looked upon the people with such supreme contempt. Their arrogance passed all bounds. Even Marie Antoinette exclaimed in terror, “This _noblesse_ will ruin us!”

The Flanders regiment had been stationed at Versailles; and on the 1st of October a banquet was given to the officers at the palace. Wine was liberally supplied from the royal cellars, and was so liberally partaken of that the banquet became a scene of riot and disorder. The revolutionary movement was cursed intensely, and the national cockade trampled under foot. The tidings of this _fête_ spread rapidly through Paris, exciting great indignation. The court was feasting; the people starving. Versailles was filled with rejoicing; Paris with mourning.

The morning of the 5th of October dawns dark, cold, and dreary. The people of Paris are starving. About a baker’s shop is a crowd of women and children, crying for bread. Bread is not to be had. “_À Versailles, bonnes femmes!_” cries a man passing by. “_À Versailles!_ there is bread enough there, and to spare. _À Versailles!_ the land of plenty, feasting, and revelry! _À Versailles!_” A young girl seizes a drum, and cries aloud, “Bread! bread!”

Soon a mob is collected; three or four hundred women presently increased to as many thousands. They follow their leader, echoing her cry, “Bread! bread!” On to the Hôtel de Ville they rush. But there is no bread there; and their cry is now, “_À Versailles! À Versailles!_” “We will give the men,” they exclaim, “a lesson in courage. If they cannot support and protect us, we will do it for ourselves.”

And so along beside the Tuileries, and through the Elysian Fields, rushes on this mighty mass, headlong towards Versailles. Couriers have been sent forward to warn the king and queen of the approaching peril. His Majesty, King Louis XVI., for want of something _better_ to do, has gone to chase hares at Meudon. He is sent for, post haste, and returns to Versailles. “About seven hundred gentlemen were then in the palace, all in full dress, _chapeau sous le bras_, and armed only with dress swords. Some few had found pistols; and in that unmilitary fashion they declared themselves determined to defend the château if attacked.”

Five minutes after the king’s return, the women arrived, singing, “_Vive Henri IV.!_” and more like furies than suppliants. All the shops were instantly closed; drums beat to arms, the _tocsin_ sounded, and the troops were drawn up on the Place d’Armes. Entrance to the courts of the palace was refused; but finally the women sent a deputation of fifteen to the king. He received them very graciously, and promised what they desired, so that they came out of the palace shouting, “_Vive le roi!_” and praising the goodness of the king to such an extent that their fellow-Amazons, in rage, would have strung them to the nearest lamp-posts had not the soldiers interfered.

At nine o’clock, news was brought that General de Lafayette, at the head of the National Guards and the _Gardes Française_, and followed by a crowd of the Parisian people, was on his way to Versailles. M. de Saint-Priest immediately sought the king, and urged him to leave the palace before their arrival. “The road is open,” he said; “a picket of the household troops is at the gate of the Orangery, and your Majesty, on horseback, at the head of an escort, can freely pass whithersoever you wish.”

Poor Louis! He would wait the course of events; not from courage to face whatever might happen, but from want of resolution to depart. Rightly had the queen called him “_le pauvre homme_.” In this hour of menacing danger she found no protector in her poor, miserably weak husband and king. But she needed none; for “she alone, among all women and all men, wore a face of courage, of lofty calmness and resolve this day. She alone saw clearly what she meant to do; and Theresa’s daughter dares do what she means, were all France threatening her: abide where her children are, where her husband is.”

Near midnight Lafayette arrived at the château, pale as death, wet through, and splashed with mud. He had ridden hard and fast in advance of his troops, that he might check any alarm felt by the royal family at the sudden incursion of the mixed multitudes of National Guards, _Gardes Française_, and volunteers of all sorts, whom he had unwillingly been made to lead. Assuming the guarding of the château, he prevailed upon the queen and her ladies to retire to their apartments and seek sleep without fear.

Gradually quiet was restored, and tired, tempest-tossed Versailles lay down to rest. Alas, for peaceful dreams! All know the story of that dreadful night. How the mob, prowling round the palace, found a door unguarded; how they rushed in, and, pressing blindly on, came to the queen’s door; how they fought; how the good guard who defended it poured out their life-blood upon the marble floor; how the queen had barely time to escape through the _Œil de Bœuf_, when the howling mob rushed in, and stabbed her bed, again and again, with bloody pikes and swords; and how at last the guards of Lafayette arrived and drove them from the palace. It was a night of horror. The queen was saved; but better for Marie Antoinette would it have been, if in that short agony she could have died. It was not to be. A mysterious Providence reserved her, after years of unutterable suffering, for a death more awful.

The morning of the 6th was now dawning, and the whole multitude, swarming around the palace, demanded as with one voice that the king should go to Paris. As he could not very well do otherwise, the king decided to comply. Loud shouts now rose of “_Vive le roi!_” But threatening voices were raised against the queen; “_À bas l’Autrichienne!_” “_À bas l’Autrichienne!_” they cried.

“Madame,” said Lafayette, “the king goes to Paris; what will you do?”

“Accompany the king,” replied Marie Antoinette.

“Come with me, then,” rejoined the general. He led the queen upon the balcony, from whence she looked upon the multitude, agitated like the ocean in a storm. Proudly she stood, a true daughter of her imperial mother, Maria Theresa, and calmly she gazed upon the mighty throng. The murmurs of the crowd were hushed. At the sight of this fearless woman standing thus exposed to all their fury, those who would have torn in pieces the daughter of the Cæsars were compelled to render homage. Lafayette, bending, took her hand and kissed it, while the marble court resounded with the shouts of “_Vive la reine!_”

A little after noon the royal family entered their carriage, and slowly the melancholy _cortège_ set out for Paris.

As they passed through the gates of Versailles, the queen glanced backward for a moment upon that splendid palace, the scene of so much happiness and grandeur, which she was to see no more. And the carriage rolled on, bearing its occupants to a dungeon and the scaffold. Adieu to Versailles! Royalty was vanquished; and Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette at the Tuileries were but the captive slaves of their subjects.

Months rolled by, months of insult and humiliation, until even the king was aroused, and seriously contemplated flight; that, escaping from the scenes of violence and danger to which he was exposed in Paris, he might draw around him his loyal subjects upon the frontiers of France, and there endeavor amicably to adjust the difficulties which desolated the kingdom.

Gabriel Honoré de Mirabeau, the son of thunder, was the mightiest and most terrible product of the Revolution. He was the ugliest man and the grandest orator in chaotic France. He swayed the multitude; and it seemed, as he himself believed, that if he would, he, and he only, might yet save the monarchy.

It was at St. Cloud that Marie Antoinette held her famous interview with Mirabeau. As she felt the spell of his genius, so he rendered homage to her majesty. The interview lasted an hour, and Mirabeau closed it with the words: “Madame, when the empress, your mother, admitted one of her subjects to the honor of her presence, she did not take leave of him without allowing him to kiss her hand.” Marie Antoinette held out her hand. “Madame,” exclaimed Mirabeau, “the monarchy is saved!” But opportunity was not given him to keep or break his pledge. Under the sweet April sunshine of 1791, Mirabeau breathed his last. His death paralyzed the hopes of the king, and he now resolved to spare no endeavors to secure his escape; and so in the darkness of midnight, on the 20th of June, 1791, the king, the queen, Madame Elizabeth, the two royal children, and Madame Tourzel, their governess, escaped silently from the palace of Tuileries, and entering their carriages, which stood ready, drove rapidly away. Alas for fond hopes! Through the king’s want of caution, the royal family were recognized at Varennes, arrested, and brought back to Paris. Ah, the humiliations of that long and weary, crowd-encompassed, dust-enveloped journey back to Paris! Threats, imprecations, and torrents of abuse were hurled upon the royal family from all sides. More than this they could not do, for a forest of glittering bayonets surrounded the royal carriage. It was by the glaring light of the torches that the sorrowful _cortège_ entered Paris, and under a canopy of glistening steel the royal family ascended once more the marble staircase of the Tuileries Palace.

A year has rolled away. The 20th of June, 1792, has passed,—that day of horrors on which the mob, with shouts of “_Vive la nation!_” broke into and rushed through the palace of the Tuileries; that day on which the queen was exposed for hours to insults, abuses, and derisive jests; that day on which the king was made to place upon his royal brow the red cap of the Jacobins, while the mob, exulting in their victory, cried loudly: “_Vive le roi!_” Poor Louis! As he entered the apartment of the queen, after the rabble had been cleared from the palace, he saw, in the reflection of a mirror, the _bonnet rouge_ upon his head, and flinging it upon the ground, he turned to the queen, exclaiming, with a burst of tears: “Ah! madame, it was not to see me thus insulted that I brought you from Vienna.”

How different were the days when the boy and girl met on that bright spring morning at Compiègne, and hunted, danced, quarrelled, and kissed again, in the old, luxurious times at Versailles and Marly, Fontainebleau and Choisy-le-Roi!

The 10th of August has arrived. The streets are swarming with a frenzied multitude. All Paris is marching toward the Tuileries, for the mob have declared that unless the dethronement of the king is procured, they will sack the palace. The peal of bells, the clangor of drums, the rumbling of artillery wheels, and the shouts of the advancing bands fill the air.

From every direction, east, west, north and south, the portentous booming of the _tocsin_ is heard, and the infuriated insurgents, in numbers which cannot be counted, through all the streets and avenues are pouring toward the palace.

The spectacle aroused the energies of Marie Antoinette, and as she entered the apartment where her “_pauvre homme_” stood bewildered and submissive to his lot, she approached a grenadier, and drawing a pistol from his belt, presented it to the king, exclaiming, “Now, sire, now is the time to show yourself a _king_!”

But there was nothing imperial in the nature of Louis XVI. With a passive meekness, which it is difficult to understand, he took the pistol and quietly handed it back to the grenadier.

It was five o’clock of one of the most brilliant of summer mornings as the king, followed by the queen, and accompanied by six staff officers, descended the marble stairs and entered the courtyard to review the troops and ascertain the spirit with which they were animated. The music of martial bands greeted him, the polished weapons of the soldiers glittered in the sun as they presented arms, and a few voices rather languidly shouted: “_Vive le roi!_” Others, however, shouted defiantly: “_Vive la nation!_” thus showing that many of those who were marshalled for his defence were ready to unite with his assailants. Had the king been a spirited man, in uniform, mounted on horseback, he would have roused their enthusiasm, for the French have always loved the _vrai chevalier_. But fat, awkward Louis was well calculated to excite no other emotion than that of compassion blended with contempt.

“The appearance of the queen in this terrible hour riveted every eye, and excited even the enthusiasm of her foes. Her flushed cheek, dilated nostril, compressed lip, and flashing eye invested her with an imperial beauty almost more than human. Her head was erect, her carriage proud, her step dignified, and she looked around her upon applauding friends and assailing foes with a majesty of courage which touched every heart. Even the most ardent patriots forgot, for the moment, their devotion to liberty, in the enthusiasm excited by the heroism of the queen.”

On entering the palace Marie Antoinette exclaimed in despair, “All is lost! The king has shown no energy. A review like this has done us more harm than good.”

The king had now passed into the garden to ascertain the disposition of the troops stationed there. With his small retinue he traversed the whole length of the line. Some of the battalions received him with applause, others were silent, while here and there voices, in continually increasing numbers, cried, “_À bas le veto! à bas le tyran!_” As the king turned to retrace his steps, menaces and insults were multiplied. Some of the gunners even left their places and thrust their fists in his face, assailing him with the most brutal abuse. The clamor penetrated to the interior of the palace, and the queen, turning pale as death, sank into a chair, exclaiming, “Great God! they are hooting the king. We are all lost.” The king returned to the palace, pale, exhausted, perspiring at every pore, and overwhelmed with shame and confusion. He retired to his cabinet. M. Roederer, chief magistrate of the Department of the Seine, entered immediately.

“Sire,” said he, “you have not a moment to lose. Neither the number nor the disposition of the men here assembled can guarantee your life nor the lives of your family. There is no safety for you but in the National Assembly.” Such a refuge to the high-spirited queen was more dreadful than death. It was draining the cup of humiliation to the dregs.

“Go to the Assembly!” exclaimed Marie Antoinette; “never! never will I take refuge there. Rather than submit to such infamy, I would prefer to be nailed to the walls of the palace.”

“It is there only,” replied M. Roederer, “that the royal family can be in safety, and it is necessary to escape immediately. In another quarter of an hour, perhaps, I shall not be able to command a retreat.”

“What!” rejoined the queen, “have we then no defenders? Are we alone?”

“Yes, madam,” M. Roederer replied, “we are alone. The troops in the garden and in the court are fraternizing with your assailants, and turning their guns against the palace. All Paris is on the march. Action is useless; resistance impossible.”

A gentleman present, who had been active in promoting reform, ventured to add his voice in favor of an immediate retreat to the Assembly. The queen turned upon him sternly, exclaiming: “Silence, sir, silence! It becomes _you_ to be silent here. When the mischief is done, those who did it should not pretend to wish to remedy it.”

M. Roederer resumed, saying: “Madam, you endanger the lives of your husband and your children. Think of the responsibility which you take upon yourself!” The queen cast a glance upon her daughter, and a mother’s fears prevailed. The crimson blood mounted to her temples. Rising from her seat, she said proudly, “Let us go.”

A guard of soldiers was instantly called in, and the royal family descended the stairs, entered the garden, and crossed it unopposed. The leaves of autumn strewed the paths, and the young Dauphin kicked them before him as he walked along. It is characteristic of the weak mental qualities of the king, that in such an hour he should have remarked, “There are a great many leaves. They fall early this year.” Some writers have found in this expression the evidence of a deep and solemn mind _reflecting_ upon the calamities which had fallen upon France. Reflections! What had Louis XVI. to do with _reflections_ at a time like this? His affairs demanded _actions_, not _reflections_.

At the hall of the Assembly they found an immense crowd blocking up the entrance. “They shall not enter here,” was the cry; “they shall no longer deceive the nation. They are the cause of all our misfortunes. _À bas le veto! à bas l’Autrichienne! Abdication ou mort!_” But the soldiers forced their way through, and the royal family entered the Assembly. The king approached the president. “I have come hither,” he said, “to prevent a great crime. I thought I could not be safer than with you.”

“You may rely, sire,” the president replied, “on the firmness of the Assembly.”

But few of the excited thousands who crowded all the approaches to the Tuileries were conscious that the royal family had escaped from the palace. The clamor rapidly increased to a scene of terrific uproar. The volleys of musketry, the deep booming of artillery, the cries of fury, and the shrieks of the wounded and dying filled the air.

The hall of the Assembly was already crowded to suffocation, and the deputies stood powerless and appalled, for all now felt that a storm was beating against the throne which no human power could allay. Suddenly the king beckoned to an attendant, and spoke a few words to him in an undertone. The man started to leave the hall, but the terror-stricken deputies crowded around him.

“What has the king said?” they anxiously inquired; “what new order has he given? Quick! quick! speak out!”

“Why! my friends,” replied the messenger, laughing, “do you not know that you are dealing with a Bourbon? The king has simply _ordered his dinner_.”

And so in the midst of the National Assembly, while outside a raging, howling mob was storming his palace of the Tuileries, and his good Swiss guard were pouring out their life-blood upon the marble stairs, and while the throne of his ancestors hung tottering in the balance, King Louis munched his bread and drank his wine. Thus low had fallen the descendant of the _Grand Monarque_.

The king munched on; the mob took and sacked the palace; thousands lay dead in the Place du Carrousel, around the Tuileries, and in the Champs Élysées. The throne was demolished, and the last vestiges of the old court _régime_ and the monarchy of the superb _Louis Quatorze_ disappeared forever.

And now followed those long months of imprisonment in the Temple,—months of unutterable suffering, while the king was on trial for his life. And then that sorrowful night of the 20th of January, when for the last time the king was permitted to behold his family. Ah! what prayers, what groans, what tears were heard and seen that night. Then came that awful morning of the 21st of January, 1793, and 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 on human hearts. As the deep booming of the artillery announced that the fatal axe had fallen, poor Marie Antoinette swooned dead away.

But haste we on to the last act of the dreadful tragedy.

On the 2d of August, 1793, Marie Antoinette Jeanne Josèphe de Lorraine, Queen of France and Navarre and Archduchess of Austria, the once brilliant sovereign of Versailles, now a prisoner and a widow, torn from her children and treated like a common felon, was removed from the prison of the Temple to that of the Conciergerie, there to linger until her release from human barbarity on the 16th of October. In one of the vast halls of this edifice, when occupied by the Parliament, Louis XIV. had entered during a sitting, booted and spurred, and declared that he was the state. “It was a strange fate that this building, once the dwelling-place of the sovereigns of the House of Capet, when holding their state in the capital, should see a captive within its walls, the widow of their descendant,—the ‘widow Capet,’ as the Jacobins described her in their blood-stained edicts.” The damp, foul dungeons were the most gloomy tombs imagination can conceive. Down the dripping and slimy steps the queen was led by the light of a tallow candle, until, through a labyrinth of corridors, she approached her iron door. The rusty hinges grated as the door was opened, and entering, she struck her forehead against the low beam.

“Did you hurt yourself?” inquired the _gendarme_.

“No, nothing can further harm me.” Poor Marie Antoinette!

“The candle gave just light enough to reveal the horrors of her cell. The floor was covered with mud, and streams of water trickled down the stone walls. A miserable pallet, with a dirty covering of coarse and tattered cloth, a small pine table, and a chair, constituted the only furniture.” So deep was the fall from the _salons_ of Versailles!

Here for two long, weary months the poor queen lingered; her misery being slightly alleviated by the kind-heartedness of Madame Richard, the wife of the jailer, and Rosalie Lamorlière, an inmate of the prison, who did all the rigorous rules allowed them to mitigate her woes. “The night of her arrival at the Conciergerie the queen had not so much as a change of linen. For days she begged to be allowed some, but it was not till the tenth day that her prayer was granted, when Michonis went to the Temple and brought back with him a parcel of linen and some clothes; among others, the white gown which the queen wore on the day of her execution. Little by little everything was taken from the queen. The souvenirs of her happy past, to which she clung, were taken from her; first her watch, a gift of her mother’s, and which had never left her since she left Vienna,—the watch which had counted the happy hours of her youth and womanhood was taken from her. Bitterly she wept at having to part with it, as if it had been a friend. There was not a moment that the queen could be out of sight of her _gens d’armes_; a little screen, four feet high, was the only separation between the space in which she changed her dress and those men.” Imagine the misery of this state for a woman so delicately nurtured, so luxuriously brought up, having at her command a household of over four hundred persons, and accustomed to the refinements of the most polished court in Europe.

In the old days of splendor at Versailles, when her attendants were unable to find some article of dress or toilet, she had exclaimed pettishly: “How _terrible_ it is not to be able to find what one wants!” But now, in these last days of her life, when surrounded by every aggravation that could wound a proud spirit, treated like the worst of offenders, insulted as mother, wife, queen, and woman, she never uttered one word that could be construed into petulance, or gave one angry look.

“With threads taken from her bedding, she worked a kind of garter, and not being allowed any knitting-needles, used a pair of toothpicks. When finished, she dropped it, with a significant look, when her jailer entered the prison. It reached—thanks to one of her loyalest followers, M. Hue, a faithful servant of Louis XVI.—its destination, for he gave it to Madame Royale when he accompanied her, two years later, to Vienna.” This was the richest legacy the daughter of Maria Theresa and the queen of France could bequeath to her child. The queen was not so fortunate with another little relic that she hoped her daughter would receive. This consisted of a pair of gloves and a lock of her hair, which she slipped into the jailer’s hand; but the action was observed by one of the _gens d’armes_, and the little parcel was confiscated. “The damp of the queen’s underground prison was such that her black gown began to fall into rags. She had another,—a white one; but this she wore only on the day of her death.

“The few other clothes she had were in a deplorable state, and required constant repair. She was only permitted three shirts, but the revolutionary tribunal decided that but one of these should be given to the queen, and worn ten days before another was allowed her; even her handkerchiefs were only allowed one by one, and a strict account was kept of every article as it came from or entered her prison.” Not being allowed a chest of drawers she placed her clothes in a paper box that Rosalie brought her, “and which she received,” says Rosalie, “as if it had been the most beautiful piece of furniture in the world.” Rosalie also procured her a little looking-glass, bordered with red, with little Chinese figures painted on the sides. This too seemed much to please the queen; and doubtless it gave her more satisfaction than had done all the miles of gorgeous, gilded mirrors at Versailles.

And now the 14th of October has come, and Marie Antoinette is summoned to appear before her judges. There are wretches present who cry as she enters, “_À bas l’Autrichienne!_” Yet even the fear of the guillotine is not able to check the visible signs of pity and deep-felt sympathy her appearance elicits in others.

How startlingly the sorrowful present contrasts with the gay and brilliant past, when, in her bridal dress of satin, pearls, and diamonds, the Duc de Cossé-Brissac led her to the balcony of the Tuileries to gratify the eager desire of the dense multitude to see her, and bade her behold in them two hundred thousand adorers, while shouts of “_Vive la Dauphine!_” rent the air. Marie Antoinette was then a youthful bride. Twenty-three years have passed away, and she is now a widow. In a faded black dress, she stands in the theatre of that same palace of the Tuileries, amidst a throng of _canaille_, to be tried for her life by men whose own lives would be the forfeit, if either compassion or justice should move them to find her innocent. Alas! the daughter of the Cæsars, she whom Edmund Burke had seen, “glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendor, and joy,” is hurled low indeed. And yet, to me, as she stands there in her frayed and patched black gown, with her widow’s cap upon her almost white hair, before her judges, and her jury, and the crowded tribunes, Marie Antoinette is a far nobler, far grander figure, than when a blooming bride she stood upon the Tuileries balcony, surrounded by the acclamations of the multitude, or when, as queen of France, blazing with diamonds, and in all the pomp and splendor of regality, she received the homage of her courtiers in the gilded galleries of Versailles.