Louis the Seventeenth was born in 1785. He was the second son of the
princess who passed through Saint Menehould from Vienna, after her
marriage. From being Dauphiness she had since become queen, and her
eldest boy was now the Dauphin. This second son, whose history we are
to follow, was called the Duke of Normandy; and as he was never likely
to be anything more, there was less pomp and fuss about him than was
made about his brother, the heir to the throne. Yet, from the day of
his birth, he had an establishment of his own; and while a little
unconscious baby, not knowing one person from another, and wanting
nothing but to eat and sleep, he was called the master of several
ladies, waiting-women, gentlemen, and footmen, who were appointed to
attend upon him.
We happen to have full accounts of the way of living of this royal
family in the days of their prosperity, as well as of their adventures
when adversity overtook them. Up to the time when the Duke of Normandy
was four years old, life in the palace was as follows.
The oldest members of the royal family were the king's aunts,--the great
aunts of the Duke of Normandy. There were four sisters, all unmarried.
One of them had gone into a convent, and found herself very happy there.
After the dulness of her life at home, she quite enjoyed taking her
turn with the other nuns in helping to cook in the kitchen, and in
looking after the linen in the wash-house. Her three sisters led
dreadfully dull lives. They had each spacious apartments, with ladies
and gentlemen ushers to wait on them,--a reader to read aloud so many
hours a day, and money to buy whatever they liked. But they had nothing
to do,--and nobody to love very dearly. They were without husbands and
children, and even intimate friends; for all about them of their own age
and way of thinking were of a rank too far below their own to be made
intimate friends of. These ladies duly attended divine service in the
royal chapel; and they did a great deal of embroidery and tapestry-work.
When the proper hour came for paying their respects to their niece the
queen, they tied on their large hooped petticoats, and other articles of
court-dress, had their trains borne by their pages, and went to the
queen's apartment to make their courtesies, and sit down for a little
while, chiefly to show that they had a right to sit down unasked in the
royal presence. In a few minutes they went back to their apartments,
slipped off their hooped petticoats and long trains, and sat down to
their work again. They would have liked to take walks about Paris and
into the country, as they saw from their windows that other ladies did;
but it was not to be thought of,--it would have been too undignified: so
they were obliged to be contented with a formal, slow, daily drive, each
in her own carriage, each attended by her lady-in-waiting, and with her
footmen mounted behind. They were fond of plants, and longed above
everything to be allowed to rear flowers with their own hands, in a
garden: but this too was thought out of the question: and they were
obliged to be content with such flowers as would grow in boxes on their
window-sills in the palace. Madame Louise, the one who became a nun,
employed a young lady to read to her while she yet lived in the palace.
Sometimes the poor girl read aloud for five hours together; and when her
failing voice showed that she was quite exhausted, Madame Louise
prepared a glass of _eau sucree_ (sugared water) and placed it beside
her, saying that she was sorry to cause so much fatigue; but that she
was anxious to finish a course of reading which she had laid out. It
does not seem to have occurred to Madame Louise to take the book
herself, or ask some one else to relieve her tired reader.
The king, Louis the Sixteenth, would probably have been a dull man in
any situation in life. His mind was dull. But his tastes showed that
he might have been better and happier in many places than in his own
palace. Till he fell into misfortune, and showed a somewhat patient and
forgiving temper, he seems not to have attached anybody to him. He was
very silent, though now and then giving way to strange bursts of
rudeness, which made his children and servants afraid of him. For many
years after he married, his wife was not sure whether he cared at all
about her. There must always be some doubt of this, for a time, in the
case of royal marriages which take place, as his did, without the
parties having ever met, or being able to tell whether they shall like
one another. The king's manners were such that it was difficult to say
whether he cared about anybody,--except, indeed, one person; and that
person was not the queen, nor his aunts, nor his children, but--a
locksmith of the name of Gamin.
There were three employments that the king was so fond of, that he
seemed to have no interest left for anything else: first, of
lock-making; secondly, of hunting; thirdly, of studying geography. As
long as he could spend his hours with his huntsmen, with Gamin, or
marking his copper globe, or colouring maps, he seemed to care little
how his ministers managed his kingdom, or how his wife spent her time,
and formed her friendships.
A person who had the opportunity of examining his apartments gives an
account of them which shows how little the king liked the common course
of royal life, and how differently he employed his hours in private from
what his people supposed. On the staircase which led from one to
another of his small private apartments, hung six pictures of the king's
hunts, with exact tables of the game he had killed,--the quantity, the
kind of game, and the dates of the occasions, divided into the months,
the seasons, and the years of his reign. In a splendid room below
stairs hung the engravings which had been dedicated to him, and designs
of canals and other public works. The room above this contained the
king's collection of maps, spheres, and globes. Here were found numbers
of maps drawn and coloured by the king,--some finished, and many only
half done. Above this was a workshop, with a turning-lathe, and all
necessary instruments for working in wood. Here, while no one knew
where the king was, did he spend hours with a footman, named Duret, in
cleaning and polishing his tools. Higher up was a library, containing
the books the king valued most, and some private papers relating to the
history of the royal families of Hanover, England, Austria, and Russia.
In the room over this, however, did his majesty most delight to spend
his mornings. It contained a forge, two anvils, and every tool used in
lock-making. Here he took lessons of Gamin, who was smuggled up the
back stairs by Duret; and here the king and the locksmith hammered away
for hours together; while all about the room might be seen common locks,
finished in the most perfect manner, secret locks, and locks of copper
splendidly gilt. Gamin was a vulgar-minded man; and he treated the king
ill, both at this time, and after adversity had overtaken the royal
family. In these early days, he felt that the king was in his power, so
afraid was his majesty of the queen and court knowing about his
lock-making, and Gamin having it in his power to tell, any day. He
spoke gruffly to the king, and ordered him about as if he had been an
apprentice; to which the king always submitted. He not only endured
this treatment, but entrusted Gamin with various secret commissions,
which were sometimes of great importance. The account which Gamin gave
of the king was that he was kind and forbearing, timid, inquisitive, and
_very_ apt to go to sleep.
There was one more apartment, a sort of observatory, on the leads, in
which was an immense telescope. Duret was always at hand, either
sharpening tools, or cleaning the anvil, or pasting maps; and the king
employed him to fix the lens of the telescope so as to suit his
majesty's eye; and there, in an arm-chair at the end of the telescope,
sat the king, for hours together, spying at the people who thronged the
palace courts, or who went to and fro in the avenue.
While his majesty was thus pursuing all this child's play in private,
his people were starving by thousands, and preparing by millions to
rebel; the government was deep in debt, the ministers perplexed, and the
wisest of them in despair, because they never could get his majesty to
speak or act, even so far as to say in council which of two different
opinions he liked the best. He would sit by, hearing consultations on
the most important and pressing affairs, and after all leave his
ministers unable to act, because he would not utter so much as "Yes" or
"No." He had no will, and nothing could be done without it. What a
pity, for suffering France, and for the mild Louis himself and all his
family, that he was not a huntsman or a mechanic instead of a king!
The little Duke of Normandy knew nothing of all this, and saw very
little of his father in any way. What did he see his mother doing? The
formality of the court was such that he saw less of his mother than
almost any child in the kingdom of its parents; but the sort of life the
queen led was as follows.
She had been married, as we know, at fifteen, when she was not only
inexperienced, but very ignorant. Her mother, the Empress of Austria,
was so busy governing her empire, that she could pay little attention to
the education of her children. She gave them governesses; but these
governesses indulged their pupils, doing their lessons for them,--
tracing their writing in pencil,--casting up their sums,--whispering to
them how to spell,--doing the outline of their drawings first, and
touching them up at last. The consequence was, that when this young
girl entered France, a bride, at fifteen years of age, she knew next to
nothing, and though she took some pains, she never learned to spell well
in French, or to write grammatically, even after she declared that she
had forgotten her native language--German. She was very clever,
notwithstanding. She had a strong, firm, and decided mind. Her
ignorance, however, was an irreparable evil,--especially her ignorance
of men and common life. She had no means of repairing this ignorance.
Everybody flattered her; every one yielded to her in the days of her
prosperity; so that she knew no will but her own, till some mistake,
which it was to late to set right, showed her how she had been deceived.
Even during the happiest years of her life, while all appeared to go
well, she was perpetually getting into scrapes, and making enemies; and
we shall see, by-and-by, how, on one occasion, her inexperience cost, in
its consequences, the lives of herself and all her family but one.
Of her many mistakes, however, none were so fatal as that of concluding
that all was well because no one told her to the contrary,--of passing
her days in splendour and pleasure, giving her whole mind to acting
plays, masquerading, and inventing new amusements, and now and then
providing for dependents by giving a licence to sell some necessary
article dear to the poor, while the poor were growing desperate with
famine. She was careless and selfish, but she was not hard-hearted; for
whenever she witnessed misery she hastened to relieve it, often
sacrificing her own pleasures for the purpose; but the people,
hunger-bitten and in rags, seeing her splendour, and hearing reports of
far more than was actually true, believed her hard-hearted; and from
being proud of her, and devoted to her, when she entered France as a
bride, they learned at last to hate her from the bottom of their souls.
There would be no end to the story of how many attendants the queen had,
and what were the formalities observed among them. We will only briefly
go over the history of a day, in order fully to understand how great was
the reverse when she became a prisoner.
The queen was awakened regularly at eight o'clock, at which hour her
first lady of the bed-chamber entered the room, sad came within the gilt
railing which surrounded the bed, bringing in one hand a pincushion, and
in the other the book containing patterns of all the queen's dresses, of
which she had usually thirty-six for each season, besides muslin and
other common dresses. The queen marked with pins the three she chose to
wear in the course of that day;--one during the morning, another at
dinner, and a third in the evening,--at a card-party, a ball, or the
theatre. The book was then delivered to a footman, who carried it to
the lady of the wardrobe. She took down from the shelves and drawers
these dresses and their trimmings; while another woman filled a basket
with the linen, etcetera, which her majesty would want that day. Great
wrappers of green taffeta were thrown over these things, and footmen
carried them to the queen's dressing-room. Sometimes the queen took her
breakfast in bed, and sometimes in her bath. Her linen dress was
trimmed with the richest lace; her dressing-gown was of white taffeta;
and the slippers in which she stepped to the bath were of white dimity,
trimmed with lace.
Two women were kept for the sole business of attending to the bath,
which was usually rolled into the room upon castors. The bathing-gown
was of fine flannel, with collar and cuffs, and lining throughout of
fine linen. The breakfast, of coffee or chocolate, was served on a tray
which stood on the cover of the bath. Meantime one of the ladies warmed
the bed with a silver warming-pan, and the queen returned to it, sitting
up in her white taffeta dressing-gown, and reading; or if any one who
had permission to visit her at that hour wished to see her, she took up
her embroidery. This kind of visit, at a person's rising, is customary
abroad; and it had been so long so at the court of France, that certain
classes of persons were understood to have a right to visit the queen at
the hour of her levee, as it was called. These persons were the
physicians and surgeons of the court; any messengers from the king; the
queen's secretary and others; so that there were often, besides the
ladies in waiting, ten or a dozen persons visiting the queen as she sat
up in bed, at work, or taking her breakfast.
The great visiting hour, however, was noon, when the queen went into
another room to have her hair dressed. We see in prints, how the hair
was dressed at that time,--frizzed and powdered, and piled up with silk
cushions, and ribbons and flowers, till the wonder was how any head
could bear such a weight. It took a long time to dress a lady's hair in
those days. The queen sat before a most splendid toilet-table, in the
middle of the room. The ladies who had been in waiting for twenty-four
hours now went out, and gave place to others in full dress, with
rose-coloured brocade petticoats, wide hoops, and high head-dresses with
lappets, and all the finery of a court. The usher took his place before
the folding-doors; great chairs and stools were set in a circle for such
visitors as had a right to sit down in the presence of royalty. Then
entered the ladies of the palace, the governess of the royal children,
the princes of the royal family, the secretaries of state, the captains
of the guard, and, on Tuesdays, the foreign ambassadors. According to
their rank, the queen either nodded to them as they entered, or bowed
her head, or leaned with her arm upon her toilet-table, as if about to
rise. This last salutation was only to the royal princes. She never
actually rose, for her hair-dresser was powdering her hair.
It was considered presumptuous and dangerous to alter any customs of the
court of France; but this queen thought fit to alter one among others.
It had always, before her time, been the etiquette for the lady of the
highest rank who appeared in readiness in the queen's chamber, to slip
her majesty's petticoats over her head in dressing; but when her majesty
was pleased to have her head dressed so high that no petticoat would go
over it, but must be slipped up from her feet, she used to step into her
closet, to be dressed by her favourite milliner and one of her women.
This change gave great offence to the ladies who thought they had a
right to the honour of dressing the queen.
Her majesty came forth from her closet ready to go to mass in the
chapel, on certain days: and by this time her chaplains were in waiting
among her suite. The royal princesses and their trains stood waiting to
follow the queen to the chapel: but, strangely enough, this was the hour
appointed for signing deeds of gift on the part of the queen. These
gifts were too often licences for the exclusive sale of articles which
all should have been left free to sell. The secretary of the queen
presented the pen to her majesty; and at these hours she signed away the
goodwill of thousands of well-disposed subjects. At such a moment,
while she stood, beautiful and smiling, among a crowd of adorers, and
while her husband, with smutted face and black hands, was filing his
locks in his attic, how little did either of them think that their
eldest son was sinking to his grave, and that the storm of popular fury
was even now growling within their dominions,--the tremendous storm
which was to prove fatal to themselves!
At this hour of the toilet, on the first day of the month, the queen was
presented with her pocket-money for the month--the sum which she might
do what she liked with, and out of which she made presents. This sum
was always in gold, and was presented in a purse of white kid,
embroidered in silver, and lined with white silk. Its amount was, on an
average for the year round, 12,500 pounds. It was by saving out of this
allowance that she paid for the pair of diamond ear-rings which she
bought soon after her marriage; but it took six years' savings to pay
for that one ornament. She was young and giddy when she bought those
jewels, and she paid for them out of her own pocket-money; but, as has
been seen, the purchase did not sound well in the ears of peasants who
boiled nettles for food when they could get no bread, from the pressure
of the taxes. Whether the discontented knew it or not, a good deal of
this monthly gold went in charity--charity, however, which did not do
half the good that self-denial would have done.
Her majesty was waited on at dinner by her ladies. She dined early,
generally eating chicken, and drinking water only. She supped on broth,
or the wing of a fowl, and biscuits which she steeped in water. She
spent the afternoons among her ladies, or with her two most intimate
friends--the Duchess de Polignac, for some time governess to the royal
children, and the Princess de Lamballe, superintendent of the household.
After a time the friendship with both these ladies cooled; but while it
lasted, the pleasantest hours the queen passed were when working and
conversing with these ladies. After the private theatre was given up,
the evenings were commonly spent in small dull card-parties, but
sometimes in more agreeable parties in the apartments of one or other of
her two friends. It was thoughtless and undignified of the queen to act
plays, to which the captains of the guard, and various other persons,
were in time admitted as spectators; but though her best friends would
have been glad that she should have abstained from such performances, it
is not surprising that she inclined to an amusement that gave her
something to think of and to do, and from which she really learned more
of literature than she could otherwise have done. Amidst the deplorable
dulness of such a life as hers, we cannot wonder that studying some of
the best French dramatic poetry, and feeling for the hour that she was
the companion and not the queen, should have been a pleasure which she
was sorry to forego. She sorely lamented afterwards that she had ever
indulged in it.
But, it may be said, she had children and she had friends. Could she
not make herself happy with them? Alas! She found herself disappointed
there,--as she was whichever way she turned for happiness. Though her
friend, the Duchess de Polignac, was governess to her children, and
though she had hoped by this plan to enjoy more freedom with both than
by any other means, all went wrong. The other gentlemen and ladies--the
tutors and under-governesses who were about the children--became jealous
of the duchess, and taught the children to dislike her. The Princess de
Lamballe also had misunderstandings with the duchess; and the queen and
her children's governess began to be equally hated by the people, who
believed that the duchess instigated the queen to all the bad actions of
which she was reported guilty.
The Duke of Normandy was three years old when the serious misfortunes of
his family began. Up to that time he had seen only what was bright and
gay. He himself was a little rosy, plump, merry child, with beautiful
curling hair, and so sweet a temper that everybody loved him. He found
many to love. There was his beautiful, kind mother. She could not do
for him what a mother of a lower rank would have done; she could not
wash and dress him, and keep him on her lap, or play with him half the
day, or walk in the sweet, fresh fields with him--but she often opened
her arms to him, and always smiled upon him, and loved him so much, that
some ill-natured people persuaded his elder brother, the Dauphin, that
the little Duke of Normandy was his mother's favourite, and that she did
not care for her other children.
Then there was the Princess Royal, the eldest of the children. She was
at that time eight years old, and as grave a little girl as was ever
seen at that age. She rarely laughed or played, but she was kind to her
brothers and the people about her.
Next was the Dauphin, a year younger than his sister. He was sinking
under disease; and it made every one's heart ache to see his long sharp
face, and his wasted hands, and his limbs, so shrunk and feeble that he
could not walk. His tutor could not endure the duchess, his governess,
and taught the poor fretful child to be rude to her, and even to his
mother. When the duchess came near to amuse him, he told her to go
away, for he could not bear the perfumes that she was so dreadfully fond
of. This was put into his head, for she used no perfumes. When the
queen carried to her poor boy some lozenges that she knew could not hurt
him, and that he was fond of, the under-tutors, and even a footman of
the Dauphin, started forward, and said she must give him nothing without
the advice of the physicians. She knew that these were the very people
who were always putting it into the Dauphin's head that, she was more
fond of his little brother, and she saw that it was intended to prevent
her having any influence with her own sick child; and bitterly she wept
over all this in her own apartment.
One day, some Indian ambassadors were to visit the king in great
splendour, and it was known that there would be a crowd of people in the
courts and galleries to see them. The queen desired that the Dauphin
might not be encouraged to think of seeing this sight, as it would be
bad for him, and she could not have him exposed, deformed and sickly, to
the gaze of a crowd of people. Notwithstanding her desire, the
Dauphin's tutor helped him to write a letter to his mother, begging that
he might see the ambassadors pass. She was obliged to refuse him. When
she reproached the tutor with having caused her and her boy this pain,
he replied that the Dauphin wished to write, and he could not vex a sick
child--the very thing which he compelled the mother to do, after having
fixed the subject in the boy's mind, and raised his hopes.
There was another sister, younger than the Duke of Normandy--quite a
baby. The Duke of Normandy used to see this little baby every day, and
kiss her, and hear her crow, and see her stretch out her little hand
towards the lighted wax candles, which made the palace almost as light
as day. One morning, baby was not to be seen: everybody looked grave:
his mother's eyes were red, and her face very sad. Baby was dead; and,
young as he was, Louis did not forget Sophie immediately. He saw and
heard things occasionally which put him in mind of baby for long
afterwards.
There was one more person belonging to the family, whom the children and
everybody dearly loved. This was their aunt Elizabeth, the king's
sister, a young lady of such sweet temper--so religious, so humble, so
gentle--that she was a blessing wherever she went. She disliked the
show and formality of a life at court, and earnestly desired to become a
nun. The king and queen loved her so dearly that they could not bear
the idea of her leaving them. They devised every indulgence they could
think of to vary the dulness of the court. The king declared her of age
two years before the usual time, and gave her a pretty country-house,
with gardens, where she might spend her time as she pleased; and he
encouraged her taking long country rides, as she was fond of
horse-exercise. At last, when she was full of gratitude for her
brother's kindness, he begged her to promise not to become a nun before
she was thirty, when, if she still wished it, he would make no further
opposition. She promised. We shall see, by-and-by, what became of this
sweet princess when she was thirty.
She was at this time twenty-three years old. She was a great comfort to
the queen, not concealing from her that she thought the Dauphin was
dying, and the nation growing very savage against the royal family; but
endeavouring to console and strengthen her mind, as religious people are
always the best able to do. The poor queen began to want comfort much.
She went to bed very late now, because she could not sleep; and a little
anecdote shows that her anxieties made her again as superstitious as she
had formerly been, when she dreaded misfortune because she was born on
the day of the great earthquake at Lisbon.
On the table of her dressing-room, four large wax candles were burning
one evening. Before they had burned half-way down, one of them went
out. The lady-in-waiting lighted it. A second went out immediately,
and then a third. The queen in terror grasped the lady's arm, saying,
"If the fourth goes out, I shall be certain that it is all over with
us." The fourth went out. In vain the lady observed that these four
candles had probably been all run in the same mould, and had therefore
the same fault. The queen allowed this to be reasonable, but was still
much impressed by the circumstance.
For one of the impending evils there was no remedy. The Dauphin died
the next June, when the Duke of Normandy, then four years old, became
Dauphin. It may give some idea of the formality of the court
proceedings to mention that, when a deputation of the magistrates of
Paris came, according to custom, to view the lying-in-state, the usher
of the late Dauphin announced to the dead body, as he threw open the
folding-doors, that the magistrates of Paris had come to pay their
respects.