THE TWILIGHT OF THE BOURBON KINGS
It was on a May morning in the year 1770 that the child-bride of the
Dauphin of France arrived at Versailles--the graceful, winsome,
golden-haired Marie Antoinette, daughter of Maria Theresa, Empress of
Austria. The future Queen of France was then not fifteen years of age,
and her affianced husband was but a few months older.
A letter in her own hand, dated at Versailles on the 24th of May, 1770,
describes the incidents of her ceremonious journey from Austria, and her
reception by Louis XV and his heir. Other letters to her family give us
glimpses of the wedding in the chapel of Versailles, of the fetes, the
balls at the palace, the function of distributing bread and wine to the
people, the hunts in nearby forests, the dances, musicales and informal
assemblages of the royal family in the intimate apartments of the chateau.
"Our life here is perpetual movement," wrote the Dauphine to her sister;
and to her mother she sent this quaint epistle a few weeks after her
arrival in France: "You wish to know how I spend my time habitually. I
will say, therefore, that I rise at ten o'clock or nine, or half-past
nine, and after dressing I say my prayers; then I breakfast, after which
I go to my aunts' (Madame Adelaide, Victoire and Sophie), where I usually
meet the King. At eleven I go to have my hair dressed. At noon the
Chambre is called, and any one of sufficient rank may come in. I put on
my rouge and wash my hands before everybody; then the gentlemen go out;
the ladies stay, and I dress before them. At twelve is mass; when the
King is at Versailles I go to mass with him and my husband and my aunts.
After mass we dine together before everybody, but it is over by half-past
one, as we both eat quickly. (Marie Antoinette always found the custom
of eating in public most distasteful.) I then go to Monsieur the
Dauphin; if he is busy I return to my own apartments, where I read, I
write, or I work, for I am embroidering a vest for the King, which does
not get on quickly, but I trust that, with God's help, it will be
finished in a few years! At three I go to my aunts', where the King
usually comes at that time. At four the Abbe (her literary mentor) comes
to me; at five the master for the harpsichord, or the singing-master,
till six. At half-past six I generally go to my aunts' when I do not go
out. You must know that my husband almost always comes with me to my
aunts'. At seven, card-playing till nine. When the weather is fine I go
out; then the card-playing takes place in my aunts' apartments instead of
mine. At nine, supper; when the King is absent my aunts come to take
supper with us; if the King is there, we go to them after supper, and we
wait for the King, who comes usually at a quarter before eleven; but I
lie on a large sofa and sleep till his arrival; when he is not expected
we go to bed at eleven. Such is my day.
"I entreat you, my very dear mother, to, forgive me if my letter is too
long. I ask pardon also for the blotted letter, but I have had to write
two days running at my toilet, having no other time at my disposal."
In the winter the Court made merry with sleighing, skating and dancing
parties, and formal affairs in honor of foreign princes. "There is too
much etiquette here to live the family life," lamented the child to her
mother. "Altogether, the Court at Versailles is a little dull, the
formalities are so fatiguing. But I am happy, for Monsieur the Dauphin
is very polite to me and always attentive." In another letter she
recounted the triumph attending the first presentation of the opera
_Iphigenie_, by Gluck. "The Dauphin applauded everything and Gluck
showed himself very well pleased. . . . He has written me some pieces
that I sing to the harpsichord."
Several times a week, the awkward, bashful boy who was to become Louis
XVI of France pleased his light-hearted wife by taking dancing lessons
with her. Hours were spent with him in the park at Versailles, skipping
about, laughing, playing pranks like the little girl she was. Sometimes
there were charades, and plays by amateurs and professionals behind the
"closed doors" of their own rooms.
In 1774, four years after the marriage of Marie Antoinette to the
Dauphin, Louis XV was taken ill of smallpox during a sojourn at the
Little Trianon, and was removed to Versailles. Within a fortnight he was
dead, and a scandalous reign was ended. "The rush of the courtiers, with
a noise like thunder, as they hastened to pay homage to the new
sovereign," says a narrator of the Queen's story, "was the first
announcement of the great event to the young heir and his wife." The new
King had not yet reached his twentieth year. "God help and protect us!"
they both cried on their knees. "We are too young to reign!"
As Queen of France, Marie Antoinette occupied a series of superbly
appointed rooms in the left wing of the palace. Beyond a dark passageway
were her husband's apartments. Her bed-chamber was the scene of the
formal toilet, a ceremony always irksome to the youthful sovereign. In
this sumptuous room, where queens had borne kings-to-be, and had closed
their eyes forever upon a melancholy existence, she gave birth to four
children. The royal bed was raised on steps and surrounded by a gilt
balustrade; nearby was a gorgeously fitted dressing-table. There were
also armchairs, we are told, with down cushions, "tables for writing, and
two chests of drawers of elaborate workmanship. The curtains and
hangings were of rich but plain blue silk. The stools for those that had
the privilege of being seated in the royal presence, with a sofa for the
Queen's use, were placed against the walls, according to the formal
custom of the time. The canopy of the bed was adorned with Cupids
playing with garlands and holding gilt lilies, the royal flower."
Other rooms prepared for the Queen faced an inner court, and here with
music, small talk and embroidery she spent contented moments, remote from
the demands of her high estate.
Usually the mistress of Versailles was wakened at eight o'clock by a lady
of the bedchamber, whose first duty it was to proffer a ponderous volume
containing samples of the dresses that were in the royal wardrobe. Marie
Antoinette marked with pins, taken from an embroidered cushion, the
costumes she wished to put on for the various events of the day--the
brocaded and hooped Court dress for the morning mass, the negligee to be
worn during leisure hours in her own living rooms, and the gown to be
donned for evening festivities. These vital matters determined, the
Queen proceeded with her bath and her breakfast of chocolate and rolls.
She was accustomed then to return to bed, and, with her tapestry-work in
hand, receive various persons attached to her service. Physicians,
reader, secretary, came to ask her wishes and do her bidding. At noon
followed the "rising," and the stately progress of the Queen and her
attendants through the Salon of Peace to the dazzling Hall of Mirrors,
where the King awaited her on his way to chapel. Often at this hour
there were admitted to the Grand Gallery of Mirrors respectful groups of
commoners, who gathered to watch the passing of the gracious Marie
Antoinette beside the husband whose uncouth gait and features were ever
in forbidding contrast to her own comely bearing.
Amid all the follies and splendors of life at Versailles appeared the
sturdy American figure of Dr. Benjamin Franklin. In the year 1767 he was
presented at Court on the occasion of his first visit to Paris.
"You see," said he, in a letter to Miss Stevenson, daughter of his
landlady in London, "I speak of the Queen as if I had seen her; and so I
have, for you must know I have been at Court. We went to Versailles last
Sunday, and had the honor of being presented to the King, Louis XV. In
the evening we were at the _Grand Convert_, where the family sup in
public. The table was half a hollow square, the service of gold. . . .
An officer of the Court brought us up through the crowd of spectators,
and placed Sir John (Pringle) so as to stand between the Queen and Madame
Victoire. The King talked a good deal to Sir John, and did me, too, the
honor of taking some notice of me.
"Versailles has had infinite sums laid out in building it and supplying
it with water. Some say the expenses exceeded eighty millions sterling
($400,000,000). The range of buildings is immense; the garden-front most
magnificent, all of hewn stone; the number of statues, figures, urns,
etc., in marble and bronze of exquisite workmanship, is beyond
conception. But the water-works are out of repair, and so is a great
part of the front next the town, looking, with its shabby, half-brick
walls, and broken windows, not much better than the houses in Durham
Yard. There is, in short, both at Versailles and Paris, a prodigious
mixture of magnificence and negligence with every kind of elegance except
that of cleanliness, and what we call tidiness."
Franklin next appeared at the Court of Versailles upon the momentous
occasion of the ratification of the alliance signed in 1778 by France and
America. Dressed in a black velvet suit with ruffles of snowy white,
white silk stockings and silver buckles, the emissary of the United
States appeared in a gorgeous coach at the portals of Versailles. It is
related that the chamberlain hesitated a moment to admit him, for he was
without the wig and sword Court etiquette demanded, "but it was only for
a moment; and all the Court were captivated at the democratic effrontery
of his conduct." Franklin and the four envoys that accompanied him were
conducted to the dressing-room of Louis XVI, who, without ceremony,
assured them of his friendship for the new-born country they represented.
In the evening the Americans were invited to watch the play of the royal
family at the gaming-table, and Dr. Franklin, so Madame Campan relates,
"was honored by the particular notice of the Queen, who courteously
desired him to stand near to her, and as often as the game did not
require her immediate attention, she took occasion to speak to him in
very obliging terms."
The _New York Journal_, under date of July 6, 1778, recounted another
picturesque detail of this presentation of the American envoys at
Versailles. When they entered the inner part of the palace, so the
dispatch ran, "they were received by _les Cents Suisses_ (Swiss Guards),
the major of which announced, '_Les Ambassadeurs des treize provinces
unies,' i.e., The Ambassadors from the Thirteen United Provinces."
During the Revolution in America the newspapers made much of Marie
Antoinette's liking for Benjamin Franklin. Among others, the _New
Hampshire Gazette_ printed this story, which went the rounds of the
States. "Franklin being lately in the gardens of Versailles, showing the
Queen some electrical experiment, she asked him in a fit of raillery if
he did not dread the fate of Prometheus, who was so severely served for
stealing fire from Heaven. 'Yes, please your Majesty' (replied old
Franklin, with infinite gallantry), 'if I did not behold a pair of eyes
pass unpunished which have stolen infinitely more fire from Jove than I
ever did, though they do more mischief in a week than I have done in all
my experiments.'"
On January 20, 1783, at the office of the Count de Vergennes at
Versailles, in the presence of Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams, the
representatives of England, France and Spain affixed their signatures to
the preliminary documents declaring war at an end between America and
England. A little over seven months later, on September 3, 1783, at the
Hotel de York in Paris, the final treaty between Great Britain and the
United States was signed. Later on the same day, the definitive treaty
between England and France was concluded at Versailles. When Franklin
was about to take leave of France and return to Philadelphia, Louis XVI
presented to him the royal portrait, framed by 408 diamonds, the value of
which was estimated at $10,000.
No less than his predecessor had the new Monarch of Versailles and his
gay, ease-loving, oft-times imprudent young wife disregarded the
traditions and dignity of the Sun King's palace. If Louis XV demolished
the Staircase of the Ambassadors and mutilated the _grands appartements_,
Marie Antoinette imitated his desecrations in the royal dwelling by
commanding any change that pleased her fancy, by reducing rooms of state
to mere private chambers, and shutting herself off from the irritating
claims of Court life. Many of the trees in the park died that had been
set out at the proud command of Louis XIV. The gardens became neglected
and desolate. The famous Labyrinth of Aesop's fountains disappeared.
A grove planted on the place formerly beautified by the Grotto of Thetis
(or Tethys) gave sanctuary to the impious scheming of that Madame de
Lamotte, whose intrigue and evil ambition brought upon the Queen in 1785
the scandal of the Diamond Necklace, with the subsequent dramatic arrest
of Cardinal de Rohan in the fateful Hall of Mirrors, and the humiliating
trial of Marie Antoinette.
Bored by incessant publicity, finding no pleasure in the formal
promenades of the palace park, the Queen pleaded for "a house of her
own," where she could find recreation after her own tastes, unobserved by
the curious and the critical. Louis XV had built near the Grand Trianon
a small villa for Madame de Pompadour. On the modest estate were several
small outbuildings, to which were added a pavilion for open-air pastimes
and a "French garden." It was Gabriel, architect of the Opera House,
that drew the plans for the little chateau, begun in 1762. But Madame de
Pompadour died before the villa of her fancy was completed. Dubarry
succeeded her as chatelaine, and richly embellished the interior of the
delectable retreat.
When Marie Antoinette desired to possess a _maison de plaisance_ of which
she should be sole mistress, the King, always eager to satisfy her whims,
bade her accept for her own use both the Grand and the Petit Trianon.
Said he, graciously, "These charming houses have always been the repair
of favorites of the reigning king--consequently they should now be
yours." The Queen was much pleased with the gift and with her husband's
gallantry. She responded, laughingly, that she would accept the Little
Trianon on condition that he would not come there except when invited!
During the tenancy of Marie Antoinette, some of the rooms of the Petit
Trianon were altered according to the elaborate style that received the
name of Louis XVI. Sculptures, wood-work, gilded chimneys, staircases,
were fashioned by the hands of master artists. No sooner was she
possessor of her new domain than the Queen desired a garden after the
pastoral English style that was then coming in favor. A lake, a stream
with ornamental bridges, clusters of trees, supplanted the symmetrical
design of a botanical garden that had been much admired. A gallant
attached to the Court wrote an _Elegie_ in praise of the Petit Trianon,
its flowers, tulip trees and fragrant walks. At one end of the lake a
hamlet was created, with a picture-mill and a dairy, fitted with marble
tables and cream jugs of rare porcelain. There was also a farm where the
Queen pastured a splendid herd of Swiss cattle. Among these bucolic
surroundings the King of France, forgetful of his people and their
growing anguish, played shepherd to his shepherdess Queen. In the Temple
of Love they basked on summer days among rosy vines, while the music of
Court players wafted through the trees from a nearby pavilion. Every
Sunday during the summer season there was a ball in the park, where any
one might dance whose clothes and behavior were respectable. The Queen,
sensing the need to propitiate a disgruntled populace, shared in the
afternoon's revelries, petted the children that flocked about her knees,
chatted with their nurses and parents. Often, Marie Antoinette resided
for weeks at a time at her favorite dwelling, fishing in the lake,
tending her herd, picking berries in her garden patch. The King and the
princes came every day for supper, and were received by a Queen dressed
in white with a fichu of net--sometimes in a "rumpled gown of cotton." A
score of favorites composed the Court of the Little Trianon. All others
were excluded. Heavy silks and towering head-dresses were forgotten in
the simple life of the Petit Trianon. Tiresome etiquette was banished,
together with thoughts of international matters of portent and impending
calamity. Occasionally, comedies were given, or groves and canal were
illuminated in honor of a visitor of high degree--the Emperor Joseph of
Austria (brother of the Queen), the King of Sweden, ambassadors, princes,
archduchesses.
Surrounded by the persons and the objects she most loved--free to go and
come unattended by a train of attendants--those were the least unhappy
days in the life of Marie Antoinette at Versailles.
At the Little Trianon, Madame Vigee Lebrun made, in 1787, the painting of
Marie Antoinette with her children, which the Queen's intimates counted
the truest likeness among all her portraits. Two years later, on the
fifth day of October, the Queen was at Trianon when news came of the
approach of the mob of starving, angry women that stormed the road from
Paris, swept across the Place d'Armes, and surged about the doors of the
despised palace. On that day, Marie Antoinette left her "little house,"
never to see it again.
For many months the clouds had been gathering on the horizon of the
Bourbon King, whose extravagance and weak will were matched by the
childish indiscretions of his Austrian consort.
In November, 1787, the Notables assembled at Versailles in the grand hall
of the palace guards. In May, 1789, the Salon of Hercules witnessed the
presentation of the twelve hundred deputies elected by the people in all
parts of France to the States-General. The Assembly, "the true era of
the birth of the French people," opened on May fifth in the immense
_Salle des Menus_, on the Paris Avenue, outside the gates of the palace.
During the thirty days that the deputies sat inactive under the oratory
of the King, of Necker, Mirabeau and Robespierre, work ceased throughout
the kingdom. "He who had but his hands, his daily labor, to supply the
day, went to look for work, found none, begged, got nothing, robbed.
Starving gangs over-ran the country; wherever they found any resistance,
they became furious, killed, and burned. Horror spread far and near;
communications ceased, and famine went on increasing." At last the
Assembly was founded, but the nation remained in tumult, the King
vacillating, the Queen in retirement, mourning the death of the little
Dauphin. On June twentieth, the people's representatives gathered, in
spite of the King, in the bare tennis-court, without the walls of the
chateau, and made oath as citizens of France never to adjourn until they
had given their country a constitution. On the same day Marie Antoinette
inscribed a letter from Versailles whose import was in piteous contrast
to the prattling epistles of her girlhood. "The Chambre Nationale is
declared," she wrote. "They are deliberating, but I am in despair to see
nothing come of their deliberations; every one is greatly alarmed. The
nobility may be wiped out forever. But the kingdom will be calm; if not,
one cannot estimate the evils by which we shall be menaced. . . . Not
far away civil war exists, and, besides, bread is lacking. God give us
courage!" Three days later the King read to the deputies an arbitrary
declaration that had been composed by interested advisers. He commanded
the assembly to disperse, and met a calm and silent resistance. Workmen
entered to demolish the amphitheater, but laid down their tools on the
declaration of Mirabeau that "whoever laid hands on a deputy was a
traitor, infamous and worthy of death." At last the King, wearied and
confused, commanded, "Let them alone."
The parterres, the courts, even the salons of the palace swarmed with
ruffians that had marched out from Paris to menace Versailles. By June
25th there was open revolt in the capital. "A stormy, heavy, gloomy
time, like a feverish, painful dream," prefaced the furious deeds of the
14th of July. Every day witnessed some new outbreak. July was a month
of insurrections and murders. The Bastille was assailed by rioters.
News came to the King that the ancient fortress had fallen. "Sire,"
announced the Duke of Orleans to the sleepy Monarch in his bedchamber,
"it is a Revolution!"
Lafayette, back from the war across the sea, became the unwilling leader
of the National Guard. On the evening of the first of October occurred
the fatal banquet of the King's guard, held, not in the Orangery or in
some other informal hall, but in the palace theater, where no fete had
been given since the visit of the Emperor Joseph II of Austria. A French
writer describes the scene. "The doors open. Behold the King and the
Queen! The King has been prevailed on to visit them on his return from
the chase. The Queen walks round to every table, looking beautiful, and
adorned with the child she bears in her arms.
"So beautiful and yet so unfortunate! As she was departing with the
King, the band played the affecting air: 'O Richard, O my King, abandoned
by the whole world!' Every heart melted at that appeal. Several tore
off their cockades, and took that of the Queen, the black Austrian
cockade, devoting themselves to her service. . . .
"On the 3rd of October, another dinner; they grow more daring, their
tongues are untied, and the counter-revolution showed itself boldly. In
the long gallery, and in the apartments, the ladies no longer allow the
tricolor cockade to circulate. With their handkerchiefs and ribands they
make white cockades, and tie them themselves."
Stories of royalist revels and open insults to the cockade of the
Revolutionists still further inflamed starving Paris. On the fifth of
October there were thousands of inhabitants that had tasted no food for
thirty hours. And then the ravenous women of Paris arose--mothers,
shop-girls, courtesans--and, gathering recruits as they swept through the
restless city streets, they rolled like an angry flood out the
eleven-mile road to Versailles. The King was hunting at Meudon; a
courier was sent for him. The Queen Consort was in her retreat at
Trianon. The messenger found her, sad and contemplative, seated in her
grotto. Hastily she was brought back to the palace. Later, she and the
King would have fled the anger of the crowd whose shouts of "Bread!
Bread!" echoed across the Marble Court to the windows of the royal
apartments. But their decision, put off from moment to moment, came too
late. The gates were closed. They were prisoners within the walls of
Versailles.
"It was a rainy night," relates a French historian of the Revolution.
"The crowd took shelter where they could; some burst open the gates of
the great stables, where the regiment of Flanders was stationed, and
mixed pell-mell with the soldiers. Others, about four thousand in
number, had remained in the Assembly. The men were quiet enough, but the
women were impatient at that state of inaction; they talked, shouted, and
made an uproar.
"The King's heart was beginning to fail him; he perceived that the Queen
was in peril. However agonizing it was to his conscience to consecrate
the legislative work of philosophy, at ten o'clock in the evening he
signed the Declaration of Rights.
"Mounier was at last able to depart. He hastened to resume his place as
president before the arrival of that vast army from Paris, whose projects
were not yet known. He reentered the hall; but there was no longer any
Assembly; it had broken up; the crowd, ever growing more clamorous and
exacting, had demanded that the prices of bread and meat should be
lowered. Mounier found in his place, in the president's chair, a tall,
fine, well-behaved woman, holding the bell in her hand, who left the
chair with reluctance. He gave orders that they were to try to collect
the deputies again; meanwhile, he announced to the people that the King
had just accepted the constitutional article. The women, crowding about
him, then entreated him to give them copies of them; others said: 'But,
Monsieur President, will this be very advantageous? Will this give bread
to the poor people of Paris?' Others exclaimed: 'We are very hungry. We
have eaten nothing to-day.' Mounier ordered bread to be fetched from the
bakers. Provisions then came in on all sides. They all began eating in
the hall with much clamour."
At midnight Lafayette arrived at the head of twenty thousand men of the
National Guard. To the amazement of the soldiers and onlookers, he dared
to pass unattended through the palace doors to the Bull's Eye. "He
appeared very calm," says Madame de Stael, Necker's observant daughter.
"Nobody ever saw him otherwise." When he had reported his arrival to the
King, Lafayette stationed guards about the palace, and, worn with hours
of marching in the rain and mud, so far forgot his duty to his Sovereign
and his command that he retired to his house in the town of Versailles to
seek sleep. In the masses of people outside the gates were thieves and
men of violence. "What a delightful prospect was opened for pillage in
the wonderful palace of Versailles, where the riches of France had been
amassed for more than a century!" exclaims the commentator, Michelet.
Here follows a dramatic account of what followed, based on the story of
Madame de Stael, who witnessed many of the bloody scenes in person. "At
five in the morning, before daylight, a large crowd was already prowling
about the gates, armed with pikes, spits, and scythes. About six
o'clock, this crowd, composed of Parisians and people of Versailles,
scale or force the gates, and advance into the courts with fear and
hesitation. The first who was killed, if we believe the Royalists, died
from a fall, having slipped in the Marble Court. According to another
and a more likely version, he was shot dead by the body-guard.
"Some took to the left, toward the Queen's apartment, others to the
right, toward the chapel stairs, nearer the King's apartment. On the
left, a Parisian running unarmed, among the foremost, met one of the body
guard, who stabbed him with a knife. The guardsman was killed. On the
right, the foremost was a militia-man of the guard of Versailles, a
diminutive locksmith, with sunken eyes, almost bald, and his hands
chapped by the heat of the forge. This man and another, without
answering the guard, who had come down a few steps and was speaking to
him on the stairs, strove to pull him down by his belt, and hand him over
to the crowd rushing behind. The guards pulled him towards them; but two
of them were killed. They all fled along the Grand Gallery, as far as
the _Oeil-de-boeuf_ (Bull's Eye), between the apartments of the King and
the Queen. Other guards were already there.
"The most furious attack had been made in the direction of the Queen's
apartment. The sister of her _femme de chambre_, Madame de Campan,
having half opened the door, saw a guardsman covered with blood, trying
to stop the furious rabble. She quickly bolted that door and the next,
put a petticoat on the Queen, and tried to lead her to the King. An
awful moment! The door was bolted on the other side! They knock again
and again. The King was not within; he had gone round by another passage
to reach the Queen. At that moment a pistol was fired, and then a gun
close to them. 'My friends, my dear friends,' cried the Queen, bursting
into tears, 'save me and my children!' At length the door was opened,
and she rushed into the King's apartment.
"The crowd was knocking louder and louder to enter the _Oeil-de-boeuf_.
The guards barricaded the place, piling up benches, stools, and other
pieces of furniture; the lower panel was burst in. They expected nothing
but death; but suddenly the uproar ceased, and a kind clear voice
exclaimed: 'Open!' As they did not obey, the same voice repeated: 'Come,
open to us, body-guard; we have not forgotten that you men saved us
French Guards at Fontenoy.'
"It was indeed the French Guards, now become National Guards, with the
brave and generous Hoche, then a simple sergeant-major--it was the
people, who had come to save the nobility. They opened, threw themselves
into one another's arms, and wept.
"At that moment, the King, believing the passage forced, and mistaking
his saviors for his assassins, opened his door himself, by an impulse of
courageous humanity, saying to those without: 'Do not hurt my guards.'
"The danger was past, and the crowd dispersed; the thieves alone were
unwilling to be inactive. Wholly engaged in their own business, they
were pillaging and moving away the furniture. The grenadiers turned that
rabble out of the castle.
"Lafayette, awakened but too late, then arrived on horseback. He saw one
of the body-guards whom they had taken and dragged near the body of one
of those killed by the guards, in order to kill him by way of
retaliation. 'I have given my word to the King,' cried Lafayette, 'to
save his men. Cause my word to be respected.'
"He then entered the castle. Madame Adelaide, the King's aunt, went up
to him and embraced him: 'It is you,' cried she, 'who have saved us.' He
ran to the King's cabinet. Who would believe that etiquette still
subsisted? A grand officer stopped him for a moment, and then allowed
him to pass: 'Sir,' said he seriously, 'the King grants you _les grandes
entrees_.'
"The King showed himself at the balcony, and was welcomed with the
unanimous shout of 'God save the King.' 'Vive le Roi!'
"At that moment several voices raised a formidable shout: 'The Queen!'
The people wanted to see her in the balcony. She hesitated: 'What!' said
she, 'all alone?' 'Madame, be not afraid,' said Lafayette. She went,
but not alone, holding an admirable safeguard--in one hand her daughter,
in the other her son. The Court of Marble was terrible, in awful
commotion, like the sea in its fury; the National Guards, lining every
side, could not answer for the center; there were fire-arms, and men
blind with rage. Lafayette's conduct was admirable; for that trembling
woman, he risked his popularity, his destiny, his very life; he appeared
with her on the balcony, and kissed her hand.
"The crowd felt all that; the emotion was unanimous. They saw there the
woman and the mother, nothing more. 'Oh! how beautiful she is! What! is
that the Queen? How she fondles her children!'"
The King, overcome by dread, was forced to agree to the demand of the
people that he go to Paris. In leaving his palace, he realized that he
was finally surrendering all his claims to royalty. About noon on the
sixth day of October, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, under the
protection of the Marquis de Lafayette, turned their faces forever from
Versailles. Little they knew that they were even then traveling the long
road to the guillotine. A rabble of men and women surrounded them, some
on foot, some in carts and carriages. "All were very merry and amiable
in their own fashion, except a few jokes addressed to the Queen."
Such was the end of royal Versailles. Who can contest its tragic
grandeur? In these halls, these gardens, these secluded villas the
supreme destiny of the Bourbon monarchy was achieved. They witnessed the
apogee, the decline, and the ruin of the dynasty.