Friday, 18--Stag-hunt. Met at La Belle Image. Took one.
Saturday, 19--Dress-ball in the Salle d'Opera. Fireworks.
Thursday, 31--I had an indigestion.
What might have been expected from a young girl placed as this queen
was placed? She was indeed an earlier Eugenie. The first was of royal
blood, the second was almost a plebeian; but each was headstrong,
pleasure-loving, and with no real domestic ties. As Mr. Kipling
expresses it--
The colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady
Are sisters under their skins;
and so the Austrian woman of 1776 and the Spanish woman of 1856 found
amusement in very similar ways. They plunged into a sea of strange
frivolity, such as one finds to-day at the centers of high fashion.
Marie Antoinette bedecked herself with eccentric garments. On her head
she wore a hat styled a "what-is-it," towering many feet in height and
flaunting parti-colored plumes. Worse than all this, she refused to
wear corsets, and at some great functions she would appear in what
looked exactly like a bedroom gown.
She would even neglect the ordinary niceties of life. Her hands were
not well cared for. It was very difficult for the ladies in attendance
to persuade her to brush her teeth with regularity. Again, she would
persist in wearing her frilled and lace-trimmed petticoats long after
their dainty edges had been smirched and blackened.
Yet these things might have been counteracted had she gone no further.
Unfortunately, she did go further. She loved to dress at night like a
shop-girl and venture out into the world of Paris, where she was
frequently followed and recognized. Think of it--the Queen of France,
elbowed in dense crowds and seeking to attract the attention of common
soldiers!
Of course, almost every one put the worst construction upon this, and
after a time upon everything she did. When she took a fancy for
constructing labyrinths and secret passages in the palace, all Paris
vowed that she was planning means by which her various lovers might
enter without observation. The hidden printing-presses of Paris swarmed
with gross lampoons about this reckless girl; and, although there was
little truth in what they said, there was enough to cloud her
reputation. When she fell ill with the measles she was attended in her
sick-chamber by four gentlemen of the court. The king was forbidden to
enter lest he might catch the childish disorder.
The apathy of the king, indeed, drove her into many a folly. After four
years of marriage, as Mrs. Mayne records, he had only reached the point
of giving her a chilly kiss. The fact that she had no children became a
serious matter. Her brother, the Emperor Joseph of Austria, when he
visited Paris, ventured to speak to the king upon the subject. Even the
Austrian ambassador had thrown out hints that the house of Bourbon
needed direct heirs. Louis grunted and said little, but he must have
known how good was the advice.
It was at about this time when there came to the French court a young
Swede named Axel de Fersen, who bore the title of count, but who was
received less for his rank than for his winning manner, his knightly
bearing, and his handsome, sympathetic face. Romantic in spirit, he
threw himself at once into a silent inner worship of Marie Antoinette,
who had for him a singular attraction. Wherever he could meet her they
met. To her growing cynicism this breath of pure yet ardent affection
was very grateful. It came as something fresh and sweet into the
feverish life she led.
Other men had had the audacity to woo her--among them Duc de Lauzun,
whose complicity in the famous affair of the diamond necklace afterward
cast her, though innocent, into ruin; the Duc de Biron; and the Baron
de Besenval, who had obtained much influence over her, which he used
for the most evil purposes. Besenval tainted her mind by persuading her
to read indecent books, in the hope that at last she would become his
prey.
But none of these men ever meant to Marie Antoinette what Fersen meant.
Though less than twenty years of age, he maintained the reserve of a
great gentleman, and never forced himself upon her notice. Yet their
first acquaintance had occurred in such a way as to give to it a touch
of intimacy. He had gone to a masked ball, and there had chosen for his
partner a lady whose face was quite concealed. Something drew the two
together. The gaiety of the woman and the chivalry of the man blended
most harmoniously. It was only afterward that he discovered that his
chance partner was the first lady in France. She kept his memory in her
mind; for some time later, when he was at a royal drawing-room and she
heard his voice, she exclaimed:
"Ah, an old acquaintance!"
From this time Fersen was among those who were most intimately favored
by the queen. He had the privilege of attending her private receptions
at the palace of the Trianon, and was a conspicuous figure at the
feasts given in the queen's honor by the Princess de Lamballe, a
beautiful girl whose head was destined afterward to be severed from her
body and borne upon a bloody pike through the streets of Paris. But as
yet the deluge had not arrived and the great and noble still danced
upon the brink of a volcano.
Fersen grew more and more infatuated, nor could he quite conceal his
feelings. The queen, in her turn, was neither frightened nor indignant.
His passion, so profound and yet so respectful, deeply moved her. Then
came a time when the truth was made clear to both of them. Fersen was
near her while she was singing to the harpsichord, and "she was
betrayed by her own music into an avowal which song made easy." She
forgot that she was Queen of France. She only felt that her womanhood
had been starved and slighted, and that here was a noble-minded lover
of whom she could be proud.
Some time after this announcement was officially made of the
approaching accouchement of the queen. It was impossible that malicious
tongues should be silent. The king's brother, the Comte de Provence,
who hated the queen, just as the Bonapartes afterward hated Josephine,
did his best to besmirch her reputation. He had, indeed, the
extraordinary insolence to do so at a time when one would suppose that
the vilest of men would remain silent. The child proved to be a
princess, and she afterward received the title of Duchesse d'Angouleme.
The King of Spain asked to be her godfather at the christening, which
was to be held in the cathedral of Notre Dame. The Spanish king was not
present in person, but asked the Comte de Provence to act as his proxy.
On the appointed day the royal party proceeded to the cathedral, and
the Comte de Provence presented the little child at the baptismal font.
The grand almoner, who presided, asked;
"What name shall be given to this child?"
The Comte de Provence answered in a sneering tone:
"Oh, we don't begin with that. The first thing to find out is who the
father and the mother are!"
These words, spoken at such a place and such a time, and with a
strongly sardonic ring, set all Paris gossiping. It was a thinly veiled
innuendo that the father of the child was not the King of France. Those
about the court immediately began to look at Fersen with significant
smiles. The queen would gladly have kept him near her; but Fersen cared
even more for her good name than for his love of her. It would have
been so easy to remain in the full enjoyment of his conquest; but he
was too chivalrous for that, or, rather, he knew that the various
ambassadors in Paris had told their respective governments of the
rising scandal. In fact, the following secret despatch was sent to the
King of Sweden by his envoy:
I must confide to your majesty that the young Count Fersen has been so
well received by the queen that various persons have taken it amiss. I
own that I am sure that she has a liking for him. I have seen proofs of
it too certain to be doubted. During the last few days the queen has
not taken her eyes off him, and as she gazed they were full of tears. I
beg your majesty to keep their secret to yourself.
The queen wept because Fersen had resolved to leave her lest she should
be exposed to further gossip. If he left her without any apparent
reason, the gossip would only be the more intense. Therefore he decided
to join the French troops who were going to America to fight under
Lafayette. A brilliant but dissolute duchess taunted him when the news
became known.
"How is this?" said she. "Do you forsake your conquest?"
But, "lying like a gentleman," Fersen answered, quietly:
"Had I made a conquest I should not forsake it. I go away free, and,
unfortunately, without leaving any regret."
Nothing could have been more chivalrous than the pains which Fersen
took to shield the reputation of the queen. He even allowed it to be
supposed that he was planning a marriage with a rich young Swedish
woman who had been naturalized in England. As a matter of fact, he
departed for America, and not very long afterward the young woman in
question married an Englishman.
Fersen served in America for a time, returning, however, at the end of
three years. He was one of the original Cincinnati, being admitted to
the order by Washington himself. When he returned to France he was
received with high honors and was made colonel of the royal Swedish
regiment.
The dangers threatening Louis and his court, which were now gigantic
and appalling, forbade him to forsake the queen. By her side he did
what he could to check the revolution; and, failing this, he helped her
to maintain an imperial dignity of manner which she might otherwise
have lacked. He faced the bellowing mob which surrounded the Tuileries.
Lafayette tried to make the National Guard obey his orders, but he was
jeered at for his pains. Violent epithets were hurled at the king. The
least insulting name which they could give him was "a fat pig." As for
the queen, the most filthy phrases were showered upon her by the men,
and even more so by the women, who swarmed out of the slums and sought
her life.
At last, in 1791, it was decided that the king and the queen and their
children, of whom they now had three, should endeavor to escape from
Paris. Fersen planned their flight, but it proved to be a failure.
Every one remembers how they were discovered and halted at Varennes.
The royal party was escorted back to Paris by the mob, which chanted
with insolent additions:
"We've brought back the baker, the baker's wife, and the baker's boy!
Now we shall have bread!"
Against the savage fury which soon animated the French a foreigner like
Fersen could do very little; but he seems to have endeavored, night and
day, to serve the woman whom he loved. His efforts have been described
by Grandat; but they were of no avail. The king and queen were
practically made prisoners. Their eldest son died. They went through
horrors that were stimulated by the wretch Hebert, at the head of his
so-called Madmen (Enrages). The king was executed in January, 1792. The
queen dragged out a brief existence in a prison where she was for ever
under the eyes of human brutes, who guarded her and watched her and
jeered at her at times when even men would be sensitive. Then, at last,
she mounted the scaffold, and her head, with its shining hair, fell
into the bloody basket.
Marie Antoinette shows many contradictions in her character. As a young
girl she was petulant and silly and almost unseemly in her actions. As
a queen, with waning power, she took on a dignity which recalled the
dignity of her imperial mother. At first a flirt, she fell deeply in
love when she met a man who was worthy of that love. She lived for most
part like a mere cocotte. She died every inch a queen.
One finds a curious resemblance between the fate of Marie Antoinette
and that of her gallant lover, who outlived her for nearly twenty
years. She died amid the shrieks and execrations of a maddened populace
in Paris; he was practically torn in pieces by a mob in the streets of
Stockholm. The day of his death was the anniversary of the flight to
Varennes. To the last moment of his existence he remained faithful to
the memory of the royal woman who had given herself so utterly to him.