Editor in continuation:
I am again, for this and the following chapter, compelled to resume the
pen in my own person, and quit the more agreeable office of a transcriber
for my illustrious patroness.
I have already mentioned that the Princesse de Lamballe, on first
returning from England to France, anticipated great advantages from the
recall of the emigrants. The desertion of France by so many of the
powerful could not but be a deathblow to the prosperity of the monarchy.
There was no reason for these flights at the time they began. The
fugitives only set fire to the four quarters of the globe against their
country. It was natural enough that the servants whom they had left
behind to keep their places should take advantage of their masters’
pusillanimity, and make laws to exclude those who had, uncalled for,
resigned the sway into bolder and more active hands.
I do not mean to impeach the living for the dead; but, when we see those
bearing the lofty titles of Kings and Princesses, escaping with their
wives and families, from an only brother and sister with helpless infant
children, at the hour of danger, we cannot help wishing for a little
plebeian disinterestedness in exalted minds.
I have travelled Europe twice, and I have never seen any woman with that
indescribable charm of person, manner, and character, which distinguished
Marie Antoinette. This is in itself a distinction quite sufficient to
detach friends from its possessor through envy. Besides, she was Queen
of France, the woman of highest rank in a most capricious, restless and
libertine nation. The two Princesses placed nearest to her, and who were
the first to desert her, though both very much inferior in personal and
mental qualifications, no doubt, though not directly, may have
entertained some anticipations of her place. Such feelings are not
likely to decrease the distaste, which results from comparisons to our
own disadvantage. It is, therefore, scarcely to be wondered at, that
those nearest to the throne should be least attached to those who fill
it. How little do such persons think that the grave they are thus
insensibly digging may prove their own! In this case it only did not by
a miracle. What the effect of the royal brothers’ and the nobility’s
remaining in France would have been we can only conjecture. That their
departure caused, great and irreparable evils we know; and we have good
reason to think they caused the greatest. Those who abandon their houses
on fire, silently give up their claims to the devouring element. Thus
the first emigration kindled the French flame, which, though for a while
it was got under by a foreign stream, was never completely, extinguished
till subdued by its native current.
The unfortunate Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette ceased to be Sovereigns
from the period they were ignominiously dragged to their jail at the
Tuileries. From this moment they were abandoned to the vengeance of
miscreants, who were disgracing the nation with unprovoked and useless
murders. But from this moment also the zeal of the Princesses Elizabeth
and de Lamballe became redoubled. Out of one hundred individuals and
more, male and female, who had been exclusively occupied about the person
of Marie Antoinette, few, excepting this illustrious pair, and the
inestimable Clery, remained devoted to the last. The saint-like virtues
of these Princesses, malice itself has not been able to tarnish. Their
love and unalterable friendship became the shield of their unfortunate
Sovereigns, and their much injured relatives, till the dart struck their
own faithful bosoms. Princes of the earth! here is a lesson of
greatness from the great.
Scarcely had the Princesse de Lamballe been reinstated in the Pavilion of
Flora at the Tuileries, when, by the special royal command, and in Her
Majesty’s presence, she wrote to most of the nobility, entreating their
return to France. She urged them, by every argument, that there was no
other means of saving them and their country from the horrors impending
over them and France, should they persevere in their pernicious absence.
In some of these letters, which I copied, there was written on the
margin, in the Queen’s hand, “I am at her elbow, and repeat the necessity
of your returning, if you love your King, your religion, your Government,
and your country. Marie Antoinette. Return! Return! Return!”
Among these letters, I remember a large envelope directed to the Duchesse
de Brisac, then residing alternately at the baths of Albano and the
mineral waters at Valdagno, near Vicenza, in the Venetian States. Her
Grace was charged to deliver letters addressed to Her Majesty’s royal
brothers, the Comte de Provence, and the Comte d’Artois, who were then
residing, I think, at Stra, on the Brenta, in company with Madame de
Polcatre, Diane de Polignac, and others.
A few days after, I took another envelope, addressed to the Count Dufour,
who was at Turin. It contained letters for M. and Madame de Polignac, M.
and Madame de Guiche Grammont, the King’s aunts at Rome, and the two
Princesses of Piedmont, wives of His Majesty’s brothers.
If, therefore, a judgment can be formed from the impressions of the Royal
Family, who certainly must have had ample information with respect to the
spirit which predominated at Paris at that period, could the nobility
have been prevailed on to have obeyed the mandates of the Queen and
prayers and invocations of the Princess, there can be no doubt that much
bloodshed would have been spared, and the page of history never have been
sullied by the atrocious names which now stand there as beacons of human
infamy.
The storms were now so fearfully increasing that the King and Queen, the
Duc de Penthievre, the Count Fersen, the Princesse Elizabeth, the
Duchesse d’Orleans, and all the friends of the Princesse de Lamballe,
once more united in anxious wishes for her to quit France. Even the Pope
himself endeavoured to prevail upon Her Highness to join the royal aunts
at Rome. To all these applications she replied, “I have nothing to
reproach myself with. If my inviolable duty and unalterable attachment
to my Sovereigns, who are my relations and my friends; if love for my
dear father and for my adopted country are crimes, in the face of God and
the world I confess my guilt, and shall die happy if in such a cause!”
The Duc de Penthievre, who loved her as well as his own child, the
Duchesse d’Orleans, was too good a man, and too conscientious a Prince,
not to applaud the disinterested firmness of his beloved daughter-in-law;
yet, foreseeing and dreading the fatal consequence which must result from
so much virtue at a time when vice alone predominated, unknown to the
Princesse de Lamballe, he interested the Court of France to write to the
Court of Sardinia to entreat that the King, as head of her family, would
use his good offices in persuading the Princess to leave the scenes of
commotion, in which she was so much exposed, and return to her native
country. The King of Sardinia, her family, and her particular friend,
the Princess of Piedmont, supplicated ineffectually. The answer of Her
Highness to the King, at Turin, was as follows:
“SIRE, AND MOST AUGUST COUSIN,--
“I do not recollect that any of our illustrious ancestors of the house of
Savoy, before or since the great hero Charles Emmanuel, of immortal
memory, ever dishonoured or tarnished their illustrious names with
cowardice. In leaving the Court of France at this awful crisis, I should
be the first. Can Your Majesty pardon my presumption in differing from
your royal counsel? The King, Queen, and every member of the Royal
Family of France, both from the ties of blood and policy of States,
demand our united efforts in their defence. I cannot swerve from my
determination of never quitting them, especially at a moment when they
are abandoned by every one of their former attendants, except myself. In
happier days Your Majesty may command my obedience; but, in the present
instance, and given up as is the Court of France to their most atrocious
persecutors, I must humbly insist on being guided by my own decision.
During the most brilliant period of the reign of Marie Antoinette, I was
distinguished by the royal favour and bounty. To abandon her in
adversity, Sire, would stain my character, and that of my illustrious
family, for ages to come, with infamy and cowardice, much more to be
dreaded than the most cruel death.”
Similar answers were returned to all those of her numerous friends and
relatives, who were so eager to shelter her from the dangers threatening
Her Highness and the Royal Family.
Her Highness was persuaded, however, to return once more to England,
under the pretext of completing the mission she had so successfully
began; but it is very clear that neither the King or Queen had any
serious idea of her succeeding, and that their only object was to get her
away from the theatre of disaster. Circumstances had so completely
changed for the worst, that, though Her Highness was received with great
kindness, her mission was no longer listened to. The policy of England
shrunk from encouraging twenty thousand French troops to be sent in a
body to the West Indies, and France was left to its fate. A conversation
with Mr. Burke, in which the disinclination of England to interfere was
distinctly owned, created that deep-rooted grief and apprehension in the
mind of the Queen from which Her Majesty never recovered. The Princesse
de Lamballe was the only one in her confidence. It is well known that
the King of England greatly respected the personal virtues of Their
French Majesties; but upon the point of business, both King and Ministers
were now become ambiguous and evasive. Her Highness, therefore, resolved
to return. It had already been whispered that she had left France, only
to save herself, like the rest; and she would no longer remain under so
slanderous an imputation. She felt, too, the necessity of her friendship
to her royal mistress. Though the Queen of England, by whom Her Highness
was very much esteemed, and many other persons of the first consequence
in the British nation, foreseeing the inevitable fate of the Royal
Family, and of all their faithful adherents, anxiously entreated her not
to quit England, yet she became insensible to every consideration as to
her own situation and only felt the isolated one of her august Sovereign,
her friend, and benefactress.