THE ORPHAN OF THE TEMPLE.
Those who would follow the story of the dark days in the Temple, can
do so best by the perusal of the record left by Madame Royale herself.
Written with an almost naive simplicity, it is touching in the highest
degree, while incidentally it affords graphic pictures of the various
members of the royal family.
Here, for instance, is Marie Antoinette sketched to the life. “Her calm
contempt and her dignified air generally struck them (the municipal
officers) with respect. They seldom ventured to speak to her.”
“We passed the entire day together,” writes the princess. “My father
gave a lesson in geography to my brother; my mother made him read
some pages of history, and learn some verses, and my aunt gave him a
lesson in arithmetic. My father was so fortunate as to find a library
which gave him occupation; my mother employed her time in working
embroidery.... My aunt spent the greater part of her time in praying,
and always read the prayers of the day. She read a great number of
books of piety, which my mother frequently requested her to read aloud.”
Every day exposed the prisoners to fresh insults.
“Antoinette pretends to be proud,” said Rocher, one of their guards,
“but I have brought her pride down. She, her daughter, and Elizabeth
bow as they pass me, in spite of themselves. They must bend to me, for
I keep the wicket low. Every night I puff my smoke into the eyes of
Elizabeth as she passes.” “Ca ira” was sung under the King’s windows,
and he was openly threatened from time to time with death. After the
end of September he was separated from his family, and they were only
allowed to meet at meals. At these times they were only permitted
to converse in a loud tone, and in French, and Madame Elizabeth was
severely rebuked by one of the guards because she spoke to her brother
in a low voice.
In December and January came the King’s trial and condemnation. The
agony of these days of suspense to the Queen, her sister, and her
children, cannot be described. When the fatal sentence was pronounced,
they were allowed one parting interview. The story of that farewell
has often been told. It lasted for nearly two hours and a half. When
the moment of separation came, Madame Royale swooned at her father’s
feet, and had to be borne away by the faithful Cléry, from whom she
was snatched by one of the municipal officers, who carried her roughly
to her room. All the night she fell from one swoon to another, and her
aunt only left her to prostrate herself before the crucifix in an agony
of prayer.
“The Queen had scarcely strength sufficient left to undress my brother
and put him to bed. She herself lay down in her clothes, and all night
long we could hear her shivering with cold and anguish.” The King had
promised to see them again in the morning, but he deemed it better not
to expose them to the further ordeal. The beat of the drums and the
shouts of the people told them that all was over.
“Nothing succeeded in calming the anguish of my mother,” writes Madame
Royale; “life or death had become indifferent to her. She sometimes
gazed at us with a piteously forlorn air that made us shudder. Happily
my own illness was increased by sorrow, and this gave my poor mother
some occupation.”
Marie Antoinette was unwilling to walk in the garden of the Temple
after her husband’s death, for in so doing she was obliged to pass the
door of the room where he had been confined. Afraid, however, that
the want of air would tell on her children’s health, she obtained
leave to walk with them on the top of the Tower. The platform was,
however, surrounded with lattice work, and the air-holes were carefully
stopped. The Queen asked to have a door opened between her room and
that of Madame Elizabeth, but this request, after being referred to the
Council General, was refused. At all hours—sometimes in the dead of
night—their rooms were invaded by the municipals, or by commissaries of
the convention, often intoxicated, who rudely searched every corner,
and took away whatever little trifles they could find. “They searched
even beneath our mattresses,” says Madame Royale, on one occasion; “my
poor brother was sleeping. They tore him roughly from his bed that they
might search it, and my mother held him in her arms, quite benumbed
with cold.”
In the beginning of July the Convention ordered that the Dauphin should
be separated from his mother, and committed to the guardianship of
Simon, the shoemaker, in another part of the Tower. A terrible scene
ensued when this decree was communicated to the hapless prisoners.
The poor boy—he was only eight years old—threw himself with cries of
terror into his mother’s arms for protection, and Marie Antoinette
for more than an hour defended the bed on which she laid him against
the municipal officers, protesting that they should kill her before
they should take away her child. “At length they grew enraged, and
threatened so positively to kill both him and me, that her love for us
once more compelled her to yield. My aunt and I took my brother out of
bed, as my mother herself had no strength left; and, as soon as he was
dressed, she took him in her arms, and, after bathing him in her tears,
which were the more bitter as she foresaw that it was the last time
she should ever see him, she placed him herself in the hands of the
municipal officers.”
The mother’s cup of sorrows was nearly full. Madame Royale thus
pictures the days that followed:—
“We ascended to the top of the Tower very frequently, because my
brother also walked there at his side of the building, and the only
pleasure my mother now had was to get an occasional distant glimpse of
him through a small slit in the division wall. She used to remain there
for entire hours, watching the moment when she could see her child.
This was her only desire, her only solace, and her only occupation.”
A month later Marie Antoinette’s own turn came, and she was removed to
the Conciergerie. She rose up, and submitted herself in silence.
“My mother, having first tenderly embraced me and exhorted me to take
courage, to pay every attention to my aunt, and to obey her as a second
mother, repeated to me the religious instructions I had before received
from my father, and then, throwing herself into the arms of my aunt,
she recommended her children to her care. I could not utter a word in
reply, so overwhelmed was I at the thought that it might be the last
time I should see her. My aunt said a few words to her in a low voice
of anguish and despair. My mother then hastened from the room without
casting another look towards us, fearful, no doubt, lest her firmness
should desert her. She was stopped for some time at the bottom of the
stairs while the municipal officers drew up a _procès verbal_ for the
keeper of the prison as a discharge for her person. In passing through
the prison gate she struck her head against the wicket, her thoughts
being so occupied that she forgot to stoop. She was asked if she had
hurt herself. ‘Oh, no,’ said she; ‘nothing now can hurt me.’”
Madame Royale and her aunt were now left alone. Inconsolable at the
loss of the Queen, they made constant and urgent inquiries concerning
her, and begged earnestly to be reunited to her. They were only told,
however, in the vaguest terms that no harm would come to her. In
September the rigour of their imprisonment was increased. They were
confined to one room, and no longer allowed a servant to do the coarse
work. “We made our beds ourselves, and were obliged to sweep the room,
which took us a long time to do at first, until we got accustomed to
it.” They were not allowed to walk on the Tower, for fear they should
attempt to escape, although the windows were all barred. Anything
that could tend in any way to their comfort or convenience was taken
away. Madame Elizabeth asked for something instead of meat on fast
days. She was told that under the new rules of equality there was no
difference between the days. When she asked another time, she was
told, “No one but fools believe now in all that nonsense.” In spite
of these refusals, however, she managed to keep Lent strictly when it
came. She took no breakfast, and reserved the coffee then provided for
her dinner, while at night she only took bread. She wisely, however,
forbade Madame Royale following her example, and urged her to eat
whatever was brought, saying she had not yet come to an age which
required her to abstain. In the winter evenings she taught her niece
tric-trac, which they played together, “as a sort of distraction to our
grief.” As the days began to get longer, however, they were not allowed
any more candles, and had to go to bed as soon as it was dark.
The beautiful prayer composed by Madame Elizabeth, which the aunt
and niece used daily, shows us the pure influence which was helping
to mould Madame Royale’s character, and the spirit in which days of
dreariness and grief were met and conquered:—
“What may befall me this day, O God! I know not; but I do know that
nothing can happen to me which Thou hast not foreseen, ruled, willed,
and ordained from all eternity; and that suffices me. I adore Thy
eternal and inscrutable designs. I submit to them with all my heart,
through love to Thee. I accept all; I make unto Thee a sacrifice of
all; and to this poor sacrifice I add that of my Divine Saviour. In
His name, and for the sake of His infinite merits, I ask of Thee that
I may be endowed with patience under suffering, and with the perfect
submission which is due to all which Thou willest or permittest.”
All this time they remained ignorant of the fate of the Queen.
They had, indeed, heard the street hawkers crying the sentence of
death under their windows; but, though their hearts misgave them at
times, they refused to believe that the sentence could have been
actually carried out, and so hoped against hope. Whether from callous
indifference or because no one had the heart to tell them, the fatal
news never reached their ears, and it was eighteen months before Madame
Royale knew of her mother’s death.
Thus the days passed until the 9th of May, 1794. The day had been
spent as usual, and the prisoners were just going to bed, when loud
and continued knocking at the door and demands for immediate admission
warned them of some new evil. The summons was for Madame Elizabeth.
“Citizen, will you accompany us downstairs?” “And my niece?” “She
shall be taken care of afterwards.” Madame Elizabeth embraced her
niece, and told her, by way of reassuring her, that she would soon
return. “No, citizen,” said the ruffians; “you will not return. Put on
your bonnet and go downstairs.” “She bore it all with patience,” says
Madame Royale, “put on her bonnet, embraced me once more, and told me
to take courage and be firm, to place my hope in God, to live in the
good principles of religion which my parents had taught me, and to keep
constantly in my mind the last advice of my father and mother. She then
departed.”
The young girl of fifteen was thus left, as she herself expresses it,
“in an utter state of desolation.” She “passed a cruel night”; but,
though filled with fears, she could not believe that serious harm could
be intended to one who was so saintly and pure, and who could never
be accused of taking any share in the Government or of any political
offence. She was told the next day, in answer to her inquiries, that
her aunt had been to take the air. She little thought that Madame
Elizabeth had even then travelled her last journey and reached her long
home.
Madame Royale’s health did not sink under these accumulated sorrows,
heavy and bitter though they were. Hué, her father’s faithful
attendant, writes of her:—“She had attained an age in which sorrows are
keenly felt, but had learned by great examples to show herself superior
to adversity. Left entirely by herself in the Tower of the Temple, God
being her only adviser and support, she increased in grace and virtue,
and grew like the lily which the tempest spared.” The loving foresight
of her aunt doubtless contributed in great measure to the preservation
of her health. She had planned out the days for her, appointing set
times for prayer, reading, work, and the care of her room. She had
taught her to do everything for herself, showed her how to freshen the
air of the room by sprinkling water, and had made her take regular
exercise by walking rapidly, watch in hand, for an hour at a time. She
saw no one except the municipal officers, who continued to search her
room at frequent intervals, and the persons who brought her meals. To
the latter she never spoke; to the former only to answer briefly a
direct question. Madame Elizabeth had impressed on her that if ever she
were left alone, she should immediately ask to have a woman to live
with her. She felt obliged to obey her aunt’s wish, but feared that if
her request were granted, some uncongenial person would be given her
for a companion. It was, however, refused, and the princess confesses
that she was very glad.
So the long summer days passed away, and the autumn came and went. Day
followed day in a dreary sameness of solitude. The Princess of France
grew to be thankful for very small mercies. “I continued at least to
keep myself clean,” she writes. “I had soap and water, and I swept my
room every day.... I was not allowed any light; but in the long days
I did not much feel this privation. They refused to give me any other
books; those I had were books of piety and travels, which I had read
over and over a thousand times. I also had a knitting machine, of which
I was completely tired.”
The appointment of a fresh commissary of the Convention, named
Laurent, to take charge of the princess and her brother, brought some
little relief. The unhappy Dauphin, after enduring six months’ brutal
treatment from Simon, had been left six months unattended and alone,
and was reduced to the last degree of misery. Laurent, who seems to
have been a kind-hearted man, did what he could for him, and treated
Madame Royale with civility and consideration. She ventured to ask for
news of her mother and her aunt, and asked him to use his influence to
have her restored to her mother, but “he replied with an evident air of
embarrassment and pain, that these were matters with which he had no
concern.”
“The winter passed with tolerable tranquillity,” writes the princess,
“and I had reason to be satisfied with the civility of my keepers. They
offered to make my fire, and allowed me as much wood as I wished, which
was a source of great comfort to me. They also brought me the books I
asked for; Laurent had already procured me some. The greatest distress
I had was in not being able to learn anything respecting my mother or
my aunt.”
The course of the spring of 1795 was marked only by the gradual fading
away of the Dauphin. The Committee of General Safety sent physicians
at last, and fresh keepers strove by their kindness to compensate in
some feeble measure for the past cruelties he had endured, but it was
too late. He grew weaker and weaker, then fever set in, which he had no
strength to resist, and he died on the 9th of June. The poor child was
only a little over ten years old.
With the death of her brother, Madame Royale’s memoirs come to a
conclusion, but we learn from other sources what followed.
The Government seem to have felt they had gone too far. A feeling
of pity for “the daughter of the last King” began to be awakened. A
petition was presented from the City of Orleans, urging that she should
be restored to freedom, and negotiations were set on foot which had in
view an exchange of the princess for some prisoners in the custody of
the Austrian Government. Meanwhile Madame Royale was treated with much
greater consideration, and a lady, Madame de Chantereine, was appointed
to attend on her.
Above all her old friends, Madame de Tourzel, and her daughter,
Pauline, and Madame de Mackan, former sub-governess to the children
of France, were, after some difficulty, allowed to visit the Temple.
Madame de Tourzel, in her memoirs, has left us many details of their
first meeting.
[Illustration: THE PARTING.]
They had left the princess feeble and delicate, and were surprised to
find her beautiful, tall, and strong, and with that air of distinction
which was her peculiar characteristic, while they traced in her the
features of the King, the Queen, and even of Madame Elizabeth. She had
much to tell them of all three, and they drew from her many touching
particulars of her solitary captivity. She confessed she had grown so
weary of her profound solitude, that she had said to herself that she
should not be able to keep from loving any companion they might give
her short of a monster. When Madame de Tourzel expressed a hope that
she might be allowed to leave France, Madame Royale answered sadly
“that she still found some comfort in dwelling in a country which held
the ashes of those who had been dearest to her in the world.” And, she
added with a burst of tears, that “she would have been much happier if
she could have shared their fate instead of being condemned to weep for
them.” No single expression of bitterness, however, escaped from her.
The good Marquise was considerably shocked at the freedom with which
Madame de Chantereine treated the princess, and the airs of authority
which she assumed over her. The Marquise and her daughter endeavoured
to make her see this by the great respect which they themselves showed
Madame Royale, but is was to no purpose. Madame Royale, however, had
attached herself to the lady, and did not resent her familiarity. Any
companion who showed her kindness was welcome to her, and Madame de
Chantereine was an educated person, could speak Italian, of which the
princess was fond, and gave her lessons in embroidery, at which she was
very skilful.
Madame Royale was allowed once more to walk in the garden of the
Temple. The faithful Hué hired a room in a house overlooking the
garden, and ventured to sing in her hearing a ballad which foretold
that her captivity would soon be over. More than this, he contrived
to have conveyed to the princess a letter, with which he had been
entrusted by her uncle, Louis XVIII., and to obtain her reply. From
Madame de Tourzel Madame Royale learnt that it was the wish of her
uncle, as it had been that of her parents, that she should wed her
cousin, the Duc d’Angoulême. It was the first time she had heard this,
and she expressed surprise that her father and mother had never spoken
to her on the subject, but Madame de Tourzel explained that they had
probably refrained on account of her youth, and for fear of distracting
her attention from her studies. The thought of being able to carry
out what had been her parents’ wish made a great impression on the
princess, and with a fresh interest thus awakened she asked Madame de
Tourzel many questions respecting the Duke.
The discovery, however, of a supposed Royalist plot, and, later on, the
application of the Tuscan Envoy to be allowed to salute the princess,
caused her to be again more closely confined and debarred from the
society of her friends. But her captivity was now to be only of short
duration, and at the end of November the following order opened the
gates of the Temple:—
“The Executive Directory resolve that the Ministers of the Interior
and Foreign Relations are charged to take the measures necessary to
accelerate the exchange of the daughter of the last King for the
Citizens Camus, Quinette, and other deputies or agents of the Republic;
to appoint a proper officer of the gendarmerie, fit for the purpose, to
accompany the daughter of the last King as far as Basle; and to allow
her to take with her such persons engaged in her education as she likes
best.”
(_To be continued._)
[Illustration]
EVERY GIRL A BUSINESS WOMAN.
A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO THE WORLD OF INDUSTRY AND THRIFT.
BY JAMES MASON.