(1755-1793)
[Illustration: Marie Antoinette.]
Maria Theresa, the Empress of Austria, was not highly educated; and
she was incapable of directing the studies of her children, although
by precept and example she laid the foundation of characters, all of
which became more or less remarkable. Marie Antoinette, her youngest
child, was perhaps the most neglected. She once innocently caused
the dismissal of her governess, through a confession that all the
letters and drawings shown to her mother, in proof of her
improvement, had been previously traced with a pencil. At fifteen
her knowledge of Italian, studied under Metastasio, was the only
branch of her education which had been fairly attended to, if we
except considerable conversance with the "Lives of the Saints" and
other legendary lore, the favorite fictions of monastic compilers.
Nature had, nevertheless, done much for the young archduchess; she
possessed great facility for learning, and was not slow in taking
advantage of opportunities for improvement when they were afforded.
In person she was most attractive. "Beaming with freshness," says
Madame Campan, "she appeared to all eyes more than beautiful. Her
walk partook at once of the noble character of the princesses of her
house and of the graces of the French; her eyes were mild, her smile
lovely. It was impossible to refrain from admiring her aërial
deportment; her smile was sufficient to win the heart; and in this
enchanting being, in whom the splendor of French gayety shone forth,
an indescribable but august serenity--perhaps, also, the somewhat
proud position of her head and shoulders--betrayed the daughter of
the Cæsars." Such, according to her affectionate chronicler,
appeared Marie Antoinette, when her nuptials were celebrated at
Versailles with the Dauphin of France.
Superstitious minds discovered fatal omens from the earliest years
of the hapless dauphiness. She had begun ill by first drawing breath
upon the very day of the earthquake of Lisbon; this made a great
impression on the mother, and later upon the child also. Another
incident was not less discouraging: the empress had "protected a
person named Gassner," who fancied himself inspired, and affected to
predict events. "Tell me," she said to him one day, "whether my
Antoinette will be happy?" At first Gassner turned pale and remained
silent, but, urged by the empress, and dreading to distress her by
his own fancies, he said, equivocally, "Madame, there are crosses
for all shoulders." Goethe notices that a pavilion erected to
receive Marie Antoinette and her suite in the neighborhood of
Strasburg was lined with tapestry depicting the story of Jason, "the
most fatal union" on record; and a few days later, when the young
queen arrived from Versailles to witness the rejoicings of the
people upon her marriage, she was compelled to fly, terrified, from
a scene remarkable not for festivity and happiness, but for the
variety and horror of its accidents. These circumstances threw a
gloom over the prospective triumphs of the impressionable bride; but
her nature and age were alike favorable to vivacity, and she shook
off the morbid influence.
Something of her mother's wise advice to her as to the course she
should follow in her new position has been preserved in the
following letter:
"MY DEAR DAUGHTER:
"... Do not take any recommendations; listen to no one, if you would
be at peace. Have no curiosity,--this is a fault which I fear
greatly for you; avoid all familiarity with your inferiors. Ask of
Monsieur and Madame de Noailles, and even exact of them, under all
circumstances, advice as to what, as a foreigner and being desirous
of pleasing the nation, you should do, and that they should tell you
frankly if there be anything in your bearing, discourse, or any
point which you should correct. Reply amiably to every one, and with
grace and dignity; you can if you will. You must learn to refuse....
After Strasburg you must accept nothing without taking counsel of
Monsieur and Madame de Noailles; and you should refer to them every
one who would speak to you of his personal affairs, saying frankly
that being a stranger yourself, you cannot undertake to recommend
any one to the king. If you wish you may add, in order to make your
reply more emphatic, 'The empress, my mother, has expressly
forbidden me to undertake any recommendations.' Do not be ashamed to
ask advice of any one, and do nothing on your own responsibility....
In the king you will find a tender father who will also be your
friend if you deserve it. Put entire confidence in him; you will run
no risk. Love him, obey him, seek to divine his thoughts; you cannot
do enough on this moment when I am losing you.... Concerning the
dauphin I shall say nothing; you know my delicacy on this point. A
wife should be submissive in everything to her husband, and should
have no thought but to please him and do his will.... The only true
happiness in this world lies in a happy marriage; I know whereof I
speak. Everything depends on the wife if she be yielding, sweet, and
amusing.... I counsel you, my dear daughter, to reread this letter
on the twenty-first of every month. I beg you to be true to me on
this point. My only fear for you is negligence in your prayers and
studies; and lukewarmness succeeds negligence. Fight against it, for
it is more dangerous than a more reprehensible, even wicked state;
one can conquer that more easily. Love your family; be affectionate
to them--to your aunts as well as to your brothers-in-law and
sisters-in-law. Suffer no evil-speaking; you must either silence the
persons, or escape it by withdrawing from them. If you value your
peace of mind, you must from the start avoid this pitfall, which I
greatly fear for you knowing your curiosity....
"Your mother,
"MARIA-THERESA."
The grand annoyance Marie Antoinette experienced upon her entrance
into the French Court, was the necessity of observing a system of
etiquette to which she had been unaccustomed, and soon pronounced,
with girlish vehemence, insupportable. Barrière copies a ridiculous
anecdote in illustration of this from the manuscript fragments of
Madame Campan: "Madame de Noailles" (this was the first lady of
honor to the dauphiness) "abounded in virtues; I cannot pretend to
deny it. Her piety, charity, and irreproachable morals rendered her
worthy of praise, but etiquette was to her a sort of atmosphere; at
the slightest derangement of the consecrated order, one would have
thought she would have been stifled, and that life would forsake her
frame. One day I unintentionally threw this poor lady into a
terrible agony. The queen was receiving I know not whom--some
persons just presented, I believe; the lady of honor, the queen's
tire-woman, and the ladies of the bed-chamber were behind the queen.
I was near the throne with the two women on duty. All was right; at
least, I thought so. Suddenly I perceived the eyes of Madame de
Noailles fixed on mine. She made a sign with her head, and then
raised her eyebrows to the top of her forehead, lowered them, raised
them again, then began to make little signs with her hand. From all
this pantomime, I could easily perceive that something was not as it
should be; as I looked about on all sides to find out what it was,
the agitation of the countess kept increasing. The queen, who
perceived all this, looked at me with a smile. I found means to
approach her Majesty, who said to me in a whisper: '_Let down your
lappets, or the countess will expire._' All this bustle arose from
two unlucky pins, which fastened up my lappets, while the etiquette
of costume said '_Lappets hanging down_.'"
To the Countess de Noailles Marie Antoinette speedily gave the name
of Madame l'Étiquette; this pleasantry the object of it could
pardon, not so the French nation. The avowed dislike to ceremony
manifested by the lively little dauphiness, her desire to substitute
the simple manners of her native Vienna for the stately formality of
Versailles, displeased more than her genuine condescension and
affability attracted. Early also in her married life, to beguile the
heavy tedium of their evenings, she instituted a variety of childish
games which became talked of and condemned; she liked theatrical
representations, and persuaded her two young brothers-in-law, with
the princesses, to join her in performing plays, and though they
were kept secret for a time, she suffered for her innocent
contrivances in public opinion. It must be remembered that Marie
Antoinette had no sincere friends upon her arrival in France, except
the Duc de Choiseul and his party, and his disgrace prevented her
deriving much benefit from the man who had first negotiated her
marriage. The house of Austria was looked upon with dislike and
doubt; nor were these, even in the case of the young dauphin's aunt,
Madame Adelaide, made a matter of concealment. Thus, at her entrance
upon public life, Antoinette was met with cynicism and prejudice,
and unfortunately her own conduct rather increased than quieted the
insidious voice--the "_bruit sourd_"--of both.
Louis XV. had manifested from the first great pleasure in the
society of his grandson's bride. After dining in his apartment at
the Tuileries, upon her arrival at Paris, she was obliged to
acknowledge the shouts of the multitude, which filled the garden
below, by presenting herself on the balcony. The Governor of Paris
had told her politely at the time, that "these were so many lovers."
Little did she think that at the very moment a strong party around
her was planning her divorce, under the supposition that the
dauphin's coldness to his bride proceeded from dislike. Louis was a
timid, though rough, youth at the time, and for a considerable
period treated the attractions which the courtiers so highly
extolled, with churlish indifference. The French king, indeed, did
his best to promote a better understanding, and when the reserve of
the dauphin once thawed, the latter became tenderly attached to her,
and greatly improved by her influence and society.
An interesting trait of this youthful pair is told, as occurring at
the moment when they might have been excused for entertaining other
and more selfish thoughts. They were expecting the intelligence of
the death of Louis XV. It had been agreed, as the disorder was one
frightfully contagious, that the court should depart immediately
upon learning it could be of no further assistance, and that a
lighted taper, placed in the window of the dying monarch's chamber,
should form a signal for the cavalcade to prepare for the journey.
The taper was extinguished; a tumult of voices and advancing feet
were heard in the outer apartment. "It was the crowd of courtiers
deserting the dead sovereign's ante-chamber, to come and bow to the
new power of Louis XVI." With a spontaneous impulse the dauphin and
his bride threw themselves upon their knees, and shedding a torrent
of tears, exclaimed, "O God! guide us, protect us; we are too young
to govern." Thus the Countess de Noailles found them as she entered,
the first to salute Marie Antoinette as Queen of France.
[Illustration: Marie Antoinette.]
For some time the young queen's liking for children was ungratified by
the possession of any of her own, and this gave rise to an amusing
attempt to adopt one belonging to others. One day, when she was
driving near Luciennes, a little peasant boy fell under the horses'
feet, and might have been killed. The queen took him to Versailles,
appointed him a nurse, and installed him in the royal apartments,
constantly seating him in her lap at breakfast and dinner. This child
afterward grew up a most sanguinary revolutionist! It was nine years
before Marie Antoinette had the blessing of any offspring; four
children were after that interval, born to her, two of whom died in
their infancy, and two survived to share their parent's subsequent
imprisonment. The sad history of her son's fate, a promising and
attractive boy, is well known.
We have seen the Austrian princess was no favorite with her
husband's nation. After a time accusations as unjust as serious
assailed her, and in the horrors of the succeeding revolution the
popular feeling evinced itself in a hundred frightful ways. Louis
XVI., a mild prince, averse to violence or bloodshed, was unfit to
stem the tide of opposition; had he possessed the energy of his
queen, the Reign of Terror had perhaps never existed. Throughout her
misfortunes, in every scene of flight, of opprobrium, and
desolation, her magnanimity and courage won, even from the ruffians
around, occasional expressions of sympathy. A harrowing and
melancholy history is hers, and one which has been often vividly
narrated; its details, also, are sufficiently recent to be still
fresh within the recollection of many. For these reasons, and
further because it seems to us a repellent, if not a mischievous,
act to amplify such records before advancing age shall have invested
them to the mind with deeper significance, we gladly pass over the
picture suggested by this dark historical page, and, resuming the
narrative where Madame de Campan drops it, content ourselves with a
description of the last scene in the terrible drama.
When this devoted woman left her royal mistress in the miserable
cell at the Convent of the Feuillans, she never again saw her.
Imprisonment, and the intense grief she experienced, more for others
than for herself, completely transformed the once beautiful queen;
her hair was prematurely silvered, like that of Mary Stuart, her
figure bowed, her voice low and tremulous. Then came the separation
from the king. Once more only did her eyes again behold him, and
after the parting between the dethroned monarch and his adoring
family, he might indeed have been able to say, "The bitterness of
death was passed." However weak at intervals, the unhappy Louis met
his death heroically. The sufferings of his wife at the time when
the guns boomed out the fearful catastrophe, may be supposed to have
been as great as the human frame has power to endure. Shortly after,
she was separated from her children and conveyed to the prison of
the Conciergerie, a damp and loathsome place, whence she was
summoned one morning in October to receive a sentence for which it
is probable she ardently longed. Let us look at her through the bars
of her prison upon her return thither after it was pronounced.
It is four o'clock in the morning. The widowed Queen of France
stands calm and resigned in her cell, listening with a melancholy
smile to the tumult of the mob outside. A faint illumination
announces the approach of day; it is the last she has to live!
Seating herself at a table she writes, with hurried hand, a last
letter of ardent tenderness to the sister of her husband, the pious
Madame Elizabeth, and to her children; and now she passionately
presses the insensible paper to her lips, as the sole remaining link
between those dear ones and herself. She stops, sighs, and throws
herself upon her miserable pallet. What! in such an hour as this can
the queen sleep? Even so!
And now look up, daughter of the Cæsars! Thou art waked from dreams
of hope and light, from the imaged embrace of thy beloved Louis, thy
tender infants, by a kind voice, choked by tears. Arise! emancipated
one, thy prison doors are open. Freedom, freedom is at hand!
Immediately in front of the palace of the Tuileries--scene of the
short months of her wedded happiness--there rises a dark, ominous
mass. Around is a sea of human faces; above, the cold frown of a
winter's sky. With a firm step the victim ascends the stairs of the
scaffold, her white garments wave in the chill breeze, a black ribbon
by which her cap is confined beats to and fro against her pale cheeks.
You may see that she is unmindful of her executioners--she glances,
nay, almost smiles, at the sharp edge of the guillotine, and then
turning her eyes toward the Temple, utters, in a few agitated words,
her last earthly farewell to Louis and her children. There is a
hush--a stillness of the grave--for the very headsman trembles as the
horrible blade falls--anon, a moment's delay. And now, look! No,
rather veil your eyes from the dreadful sight; close your ears to that
fiendish shout--_Vive la République!_ It is over! the sacrifice is
accomplished! the weary spirit is at rest!
Let us dwell upon this last mournful pageant only sufficiently far
as to imitate the virtues, and emulate the firmness and resignation
with which she met her doom. Nothing is permitted without a meaning,
all is for either warning or example; and while breathing a prayer
that Heaven may avert a recurrence of such outrages, let us remember
that moral indecision, the undue love of pleasure, and an aimless,
profitless mode of life, as surely, and not less fatally, may raise
the surging tide of events no human skill can quell, as the most
selfish abandonment to uncontrolled desires.