BRIDAL DAYS.
1770-1775
Louis XV.--Prince Louis.--Madame du Barri.--Her dissolute
character.--Children of Louis XV.--Anecdote of Madame du
Barri.--Madame du Barri's beauty.--Her political influence.--Madame
du Barri's pavilion.--The Duke de Brissac.--Madame du Barri's
flight.--She is betrayed.--Condemnation of Madame du Barri.--Her
anguish and despair.--Execution of Madame du Barri.--Letter from
Maria Theresa.--Departure of Maria for Paris.--Emotions of the
populace.--Magnificent pavilion.--Singular custom.--Grand
procession.--The reception.--Young Louis's indifference.--The
marriage.--Insensibility of young Louis.--Acclamations of the
Parisians.--Maria shows herself to the populace.--She receives
their homage.--The fire-works.--Awful conflagration.--Scene of
horror.--Consternation of Maria.--Presents from Louis XV.--Malice
of Madame du Barri.--Maria's difficulties.--The Countess de
Noailles.--Laws of etiquette.--An illustration.--Countess de
Noailles's ideas of etiquette.--An anecdote.--Maria's contempt
for etiquette.--The Countess de Noailles nicknamed.--Ludicrous
scene.--Rage of the old ladies.--Habits of Maria Theresa.--The
dauphiness becomes unpopular.--Dining in public.--How it was
done.--Versailles.--Magnificence of the palace.--Gallery of paintings,
statuary, etc.--Gorgeous saloons.--Splendid gardens.--Other
palaces.--The Great and the Little Trianon.--Gardens, cascades,
etc.--Nature of Maria's mind.--Walks in the garden.--Maria's want
of education.--She attempts to supply it.--Maria's enemies.--Their
malignant slanders.--Visit of Maximilian.--A quarrel about
forms.--Unexpected tenderness of Louis.
When Maria Antoinette was fifteen years of age, a light-hearted,
blooming, beautiful girl, hardly yet emerging from the period of
childhood, all Austria, indeed all Europe, was interested in the
preparations for her nuptials with the destined King of France. Louis
XV. still sat upon the throne of Charlemagne. His eldest son had died
about ten years before, leaving a little boy, some twelve years of age,
to inherit the crown his father had lost by death. The young Louis,
grandchild of the reigning king, was mild, inoffensive, and bashful,
with but little energy of mind, with no ardor of feeling, and singularly
destitute of all passions. He was perfectly exemplary in his conduct,
perhaps not so much from inherent strength of principle as from
possessing that peculiarity of temperament, cold and phlegmatic, which
feels not the power of temptation. He submitted passively to the
arrangements for his marriage, never manifesting the slightest emotion
of pleasure or repugnance in view of his approaching alliance with one
of the most beautiful and fascinating princesses of Europe. Louis was
entirely insensible to all the charms of female beauty, and seemed
incapable of feeling the emotion of love.
Louis XV., a pleasure-loving, dissolute man, had surrounded his throne
with all the attractions of fashionable indulgence and dissipation.
There was one woman in his court, Madame du Barri, celebrated in the
annals of profligacy, who had acquired an entire ascendency over the
mind of the king. The disreputable connection existing between her and
the monarch excluded her from respect, and yet the king loaded her with
honors, received her at his table, and forced her society upon all the
inmates of the palace. The court was full of jealousies and bickerings;
and while one party were disposed to welcome Maria Antoinette, hoping
that she would espouse and strengthen their cause, the other party
looked upon her with suspicion and hostility, and prepared to meet her
with all the weapons of annoyance.
Neither morals nor religion were then of any repute in the court of
France. Vice did not even affect concealment. The children of Louis XV.
were educated, or rather not educated, in a nunnery. The Princess
Louisa, when twelve years of age, knew not the letters of her alphabet.
When the children did wrong, the sacred sisters sent them, for penance,
into the dark, damp, and gloomy sepulcher of the convent, where the
remains of the departed nuns were moldering to decay. Here the timid and
superstitious girls, in an agony of terror, were sent alone, to make
expiation for some childish offense. The little Princess Victoire, who
was of a very nervous temperament, was thrown into convulsions by this
harsh treatment, and the injury to her nervous system was so
irreparable, that during her whole life she was exposed to periodical
paroxysms of panic terror.
One day the king, when sitting with Madame du Barri, received a package
of letters. The petted favorite, suspecting that one of them was from an
enemy of hers, snatched the packet from the king's hand. As he
endeavored to regain it, she resisted, and ran two or three times around
the table, which was in the center of the room, eagerly pursued by the
irritated monarch. At length, in the excitement of this most strange
conflict, she threw the letters into the glowing fire of the grate,
where they were all consumed. The king, enraged beyond endurance,
seized her by the shoulders, and thrust her violently out of the room.
After a few hours, however, the weak-minded monarch called upon her. The
countess, trembling in view of her dismissal, with its dreadful
consequences of disgrace and beggary, threw herself at his feet, bathed
in tears, and they were reconciled.
The remaining history of this celebrated woman is so remarkable that we
can not refrain from briefly recording it. Her marvelous beauty had
inflamed the passions of the king, and she had obtained so entire an
ascendency over his mind that she was literally the monarch of France.
The treasures of the empire were emptied into her lap. Notwithstanding
the stigma attached to her position, the nation, accustomed to this
laxity of morals, submitted to the yoke. As the idol of the king, and
the dispenser of honors and powers, the clergy, the nobility, the
philosophers, all did her homage. She was still young, and in all the
splendor of her ravishing beauty, when the king died. For the sake of
appearances, she retired for a few months into a nunnery. Soon, however,
she emerged again into the gay world. Her limitless power over the
voluptuous old monarch had enabled her to amass an enormous fortune.
With this she reared and embellished for herself a magnificent retreat,
adorned with more than regal splendor, in the vicinity of Paris--the
Pavillon de Luciennes, on the borders of the forest of St. Germain. The
old Duke de Brissac, who had long been an admirer of her charms, here
lived with her in unsanctified union. Almost universal corruption at
that time pervaded the nobility of France--one of the exciting causes of
the Revolution. Though excluded from appearing at the court of Louis
XVI. and Maria Antoinette, her magnificent saloons were crowded by those
ever ready to worship at the shrine of wealth, and rank, and power. But,
as the stormy days of the Revolution shed their gloom over France, and
an infuriated populace were wrecking their vengeance upon the throne and
the nobles, Madame du Barri, terrified by the scenes of violence daily
occurring, prepared to fly from France. She invested enormous funds in
England, and one dark night went out with the Duke de Brissac alone,
and, by the dim light of a lantern, they dug a hole under the foot of a
tree in the park, and buried much of the treasure which she was unable
to take away with her. In disguise, she reached the coast of France,
and escaped across the Channel to England. Here she devoted her immense
revenue to the relief of the emigrants who were every day flying in
dismay from the horrors with which they were surrounded. The Duke de
Brissac, who was commander of the constitutional guard of the king,
appeared at Versailles in an hour of great excitement. The mob attacked
him. He was instantly assassinated. His head, covered with the white
locks of age, was cut off, and planted upon one of the palisades of the
palace gates, a fearful warning to all who were suspected of advocating
the cause of the king.
And now no one knew of the buried treasure but Madame du Barri herself.
She, anxious to regain them, ventured, in disguise, to return to France
to disinter her diamonds, and take them with her to England. A young
negro servant, whom she had pampered with every indulgence, and had
caressed with the fondness with which a mother fondles her child, whom
she had caused to be painted by her side in her portraits, saw his
mistress and betrayed her. She was immediately seized by the mob, and
dragged before the revolutionary tribunal of Luciennes. She was
condemned as a Royalist, and was hurried along in the cart of the
condemned, amid the execrations and jeers of the delirious mob, to the
guillotine. Her long hair was shorn, that the action of the knife might
be unimpeded; but the clustering ringlets, in beautiful profusion, fell
over her brow and temples, and veiled her voluptuous features and bare
bosom, from which the executioner had torn the veil. The yells of the
infuriated and deriding populace filled the air, as they danced
exultingly around the aristocratic courtesan. But the shrieks of the
unhappy victim pierced shrilly through them all. She was frantic with
terror. Her whole soul was unnerved, and not one emotion of fortitude
remained to sustain the woman of pleasure through her dreadful doom.
With floods of tears, and gestures of despair, and beseeching,
heart-rending cries, she incessantly exclaimed, "Life--life--life! O
save me! save me!" The mob jeered, and derided, and insulted her in
every conceivable way. They made themselves merry with her anguish and
terror. They shouted witticisms in her ear respecting the pillow of the
guillotine upon which she was to repose her head. Struggling and
shrieking, she was bound to the plank. Suddenly her voice was hushed.
The dissevered head, dripping with blood, fell into the basket, and her
soul was in eternity. Poor woman! It is easy to condemn. It is better
for the heart to pity. Endowed with almost celestial beauty, living in a
corrupt age, and lured, when a child, by a monarch's love, she fell. It
is well to weep over her sad fate, and to remember the prayer, "Lead us
not into temptation."
Such were the characters and such the state of morals of the court into
which this beautiful and artless princess, Maria Antoinette, but fifteen
years of age, was to be introduced. As she left the palaces of Vienna to
encounter the temptations of the Tuileries and Versailles, Maria Theresa
wrote the following characteristic letter to the future husband of her
daughter.
"Your bride, dear dauphin, is separated from me. As she has
ever been my delight, so will she be your happiness. For
this purpose have I educated her; for I have long been aware
that she was to be the companion of your life. I have
enjoined upon her, as among her highest duties, the most
tender attachment to your person, the greatest attention to
every thing that can please or make you happy. Above all, I
have recommended to her humility toward God, because I am
convinced that it is impossible for us to contribute to the
happiness of the subjects confided to us without love to Him
who breaks the scepters and crushes the thrones of kings
according to his will."
The great mass of the Austrian population, hating the French, with whom
they had long been at war, were exceedingly averse to this marriage. As
the train of royal carriages was drawn up, on the morning of her
departure, to convey the bride to Paris, an immense assemblage of the
populace of Vienna, men, women, and children, surrounded the cortege
with weeping and lamentation. Loyalty was then an emotion existing in
the popular mind with an intensity which now can hardly be conceived. At
length, in the excitement of their feelings, to save the beloved
princess from a doom which they deemed dreadful, they made a rush toward
the carriages to cut the traces and thus to prevent the departure. The
guard was compelled to interfere, and repel, with violence, the
affectionate mob. As the long and splendid train, preceded and followed
by squadrons of horse, disappeared through the gate of the city, a
universal feeling of sadness oppressed the capital. The people returned
to their homes silent and dejected, as if they had been witnessing the
obsequies rather than the nuptials of the beloved princess.
The gorgeous cavalcade proceeded to Kell, on the frontiers of Austria
and France. There a magnificent pavilion had been erected, consisting
of a vast saloon, with an apartment at either end. One of these
apartments was assigned to the lords and ladies of the court of
Vienna; the other was appropriated to the brilliant train which
had come from Paris to receive the bride. The two courts vied with
each other in the exhibition of wealth and magnificence. It was
an established law of French etiquette, always observed on such
occasions, that the royal bride should receive her wedding dress from
France, and should retain absolutely nothing belonging to a foreign
court. The princess was, consequently, in the pavilion appropriated to
the Austrian suite, unrobed of all her garments, excepting her body
linen and stockings. The door was then thrown open, and in this plight
the beautiful and blushing child advanced into the saloon. The French
ladies rushed to meet her. Maria threw herself into the arms of the
Countess de Noailles, and wept convulsively. The French were perfectly
enchanted with her beauty; and the proud position of her head and
shoulders betrayed to their eyes the daughter of the Caesars. She was
immediately conducted to the apartment appropriated to the French
court. Here the few remaining articles of clothing were removed from
her person, and she was re-dressed in the most brilliant attire which
the wealth of the French monarchy could furnish.
[Illustration: BRIDAL TOUR.]
And now, charioted in splendor, surrounded by the homage of lords and
ladies, accompanied by all the pomp of civic and military parade, and
enlivened by the most exultant strains of martial bands, Maria was
conducted toward Paris, while her Austrian friends bade her adieu and
returned to Vienna. The horizon, by night, was illumined by bonfires,
flaming upon every hill; the church bells rang their merriest peals;
cities blazed with illuminations and fire-works; and files of maidens
lined her way, singing their songs of welcome, and carpeting her path
with roses. It was a scene to dazzle the most firm and contemplative. No
dream of romance could have been more bewildering to the ardent and
romantic princess, just emerging from the cloistered seclusion of the
palace nursery.
Louis, then a young man about twenty years of age, came from Paris with
his grandfather, King Louis XV., and a splendid retinue of courtiers, as
far as Compiegne, to meet his bride. Uninfluenced by any emotions of
tenderness, apparently entirely unconscious of all those mysterious
emotions which bind loving hearts, he saluted the stranger with cold and
distant respect. He thought not of wounding her feelings; he had no
aversion to the connection, but he seemed not even to think of any more
intimacy with Maria than with any other lady who adorned the court. The
ardent and warm-hearted princess was deeply hurt at this indifference;
but instinctive pride forbade its manifestation, except in bosom
converse to a few confiding friends.
The bride and her passive and unimpassioned bridegroom were conducted to
Versailles. It was the 16th of May, 1770, when the marriage ceremony was
performed, with all the splendor with which it could be invested. The
gorgeous palaces of Versailles were thronged with the nobility of
Europe, and filled with rejoicing. The old king was charmed with the
beauty and affability of the young bride. All hearts were filled with
happiness, except those of the newly-married couple. Louis was tranquil
and contented. He was neither allured nor repelled by his bride He
never sought her society alone, and ever approached her with the same
distance and reserve with which he would approach any other young lady
who was a visitor at the palace. He never intruded upon the privacy of
her apartments, and she was his wife but in name. While all France was
filled with the praises of her beauty, and all eyes were enchanted by
her graceful demeanor, her husband alone was insensible to her charms.
After a few days spent with the rejoicing court, amid the bowers and
fountains of Versailles, the nuptial party departed for Paris, and
entered the palace of the Tuileries, the scene of future sorrows such as
few on earth have ever experienced.
As Maria, in dazzling beauty, entered Paris, the whole city was in a
delirium of pleasure. Triumphal arches greeted her progress. The
acclamations of hundreds of thousands filled the air. The journals
exhausted the French language in extolling her loveliness. Poets sang
her charms, and painters vied with each other in transferring her
features to canvas. As Maria sat in the dining saloon of the Tuileries
at the marriage entertainment, the shouts of the immense assemblage
thronging the gardens rendered it necessary for her to present herself
to them upon the balcony. She stepped from the window, and looked out
upon the vast sea of heads which filled the garden and the Place Louis
XV. All eyes were riveted upon her as she stood before the throng upon
the balcony in dazzling beauty, and the air resounded with applauses.
She exclaimed, with astonishment, "What a concourse!" "Madame," said the
governor of Paris, "I may tell you, without fear of offending the
dauphin, that they are so many lovers." The heir apparent to the throne
of France is called the dauphin; and, until the death of Louis XV.,
Louis and Maria Antoinette were called the dauphin and dauphiness. Louis
seemed neither pleased nor displeased with the acclamations and homage
which his bride received. His singularly passionless nature led him to
retirement and his books, and he hardly heard even the acclamations with
which Paris was filled.
Arrangements had been made for a very brilliant display of fire-works,
in celebration of the marriage, at the Place Louis XV. The hundreds of
thousands of that pleasure-loving metropolis thronged the Place and all
its avenues. The dense mass was wedged as compactly as it was possible
to crowd human beings together. Not a spot of ground was left vacant
upon which a human foot could be planted. Every house top, every
balcony, every embrasure of a window swarmed with the multitude. Long
lines of omnibuses, coaches, and carriages of every description, filled
with groups of young and old, were intermingled with the countless
multitude--men and horses so crowded into contact that neither could
move. It was an impervious ocean of throbbing life. In the center of
this Place, the pride of Paris, the scene of its most triumphant
festivities and its most unutterable woe, vast scaffolds had been
reared, and they were burdened with fire-works, intended to surpass in
brilliancy and sublimity any spectacle of the kind earth had ever before
witnessed. Suddenly a bright flame was seen, a shriek was heard, and the
whole scaffolding, by some accidental spark, was enveloped in a sheet of
fire. Then ensued such a scene as no pen can describe and no imagination
paint. The awful conflagration converted all the ministers of pleasure
into messengers of death. Thousands of rockets filled the air, and, with
almost the velocity of lightning, pierced their way through the
shrieking, struggling, terror-stricken crowd. Fiery serpents, more
terrible, more deadly than the fabled dragons of old, hissed through
the air, clung to the dresses of the ladies, enveloping them in flames,
and mercilessly burning the flesh to the bone. Mines exploded under the
hoofs of the horses, scattering destruction and death on every side.
Every species of fire was rained down, a horrible tempest, upon the
immovable mass. Shrieks from the wounded and the dying filled the air;
and the mighty multitude swayed to and fro, in Herculean, yet unavailing
efforts to escape. The horses, maddened with terror, reared and plunged,
crushing indiscriminately beneath their tread the limbs of the fallen.
The young bride, in her carriage, with a brilliant retinue, and eager to
witness the splendor of the anticipated fete, had just approached the
Place, when she was struck with consternation at the shrieks of death
which filled the air, and at the scene of tumult and terror which
surrounded her. The horses were immediately turned, and driven back
again with the utmost speed to the palace. But the awful cries of the
dying followed her; and it was long ere she could efface from her
distracted imagination the impression of that hour of horror.
Fifty-three persons were killed outright by this sad casualty, and more
than three hundred were dangerously wounded. The dauphin and dauphiness
immediately sent their whole income for the year to the unfortunate
relatives of those who had perished on that disastrous day.
The old king was exceedingly pleased with the beauty and fascinating
frankness and cordiality of Maria. He made her many magnificent
presents, and, among others, with a magnificent collar of pearls, the
smallest of which was nearly as large as a walnut, which had been
brought into France by Anne of Austria. These praises and attentions on
the part of the king excited the jealousy of the petted favorite, Madame
du Barri. She consequently became, with the party under her influence,
the relentless and unprincipled enemy of Maria. She lost no opportunity
to traduce her character. She spread reports every where that Maria
hated the French; that she was an Austrian in heart; that her frankness
and freedom from the restraints of etiquette were the result of an
immoral and depraved mind. She exaggerated her extravagance, and accused
her, by whispers and insinuations spread far and near, of the most
ignoble crimes of which woman can be guilty. The young and inexperienced
dauphiness soon found herself involved in most embarrassing
difficulties. She had no kind friend to council her. Louis still
remained cold, distant, and reserved. Thus, week after week, month after
month, year after year passed on, and for eight years Louis never
approached his youthful spouse with any manifestation of confidence and
affection but those with which he would regard a mother or a sister.
Maria was a wife but in name. She did not share his apartment or his
couch. Though deeply wounded by this inexplicable neglect, she seldom
spoke of it even to her most intimate friends. The involuntary sigh, and
the tear which often moistened her cheek, proclaimed her inward
sufferings.
When Maria first arrived in France, the Countess de Noailles was
assigned to her as her lady of honor. She was somewhat advanced in life,
haughty and ceremonious, a perfect mistress of that art of etiquette so
rigidly observed in the French court. Upon her devolved the duty of
instructing the dauphiness in all the punctilios of form, then deemed
far more important than the requisitions of morality. The following
anecdote, related by Madame Campan, illustrates the ridiculous excess to
which these points of etiquette were carried. One winter's day, it
happened that Maria Antoinette, who was entirely disrobed in her
dressing-room, was just going to put on her body linen. Madame, the lady
in attendance, held it ready unfolded for her. The dame d'honneur came
in. As she was of superior rank, etiquette required that she should
enjoy the privilege of presenting the robe. She hastily slipped off her
gloves, took the garment, and at that moment a rustling was heard at the
door. It was opened, and in came the Duchess d'Orleans. She now must be
the bearer of the garment. But the laws of etiquette would not allow the
dame d'honneur to hand the linen directly to the Duchess d'Orleans. It
must pass down the various grades of rank to the lowest, and be
presented by her to the highest. The linen was consequently passed back
again from one to another, till it was placed in the hands of the
duchess. She was just on the point of conveying it to its proper
destination, when suddenly the door opened, and the Countess of Provence
entered. Again the linen passed from hand to hand, till it reached the
hands of the countess. She, perceiving the uncomfortable position of
Maria, who sat shivering with cold, with her hands crossed upon her
bosom, without stopping to remove her gloves, placed the linen upon the
shoulders of the dauphiness. She, however, was quite unable to restrain
her impatience, and exclaimed, "How disagreeable, how tiresome!"
Another anecdote illustrates the character of Madame de Noailles, who
exerted so powerful an influence upon the destiny of Maria Antoinette.
She was a woman of severe manners, but etiquette was the very atmosphere
she breathed; it was the soul of her existence. The slightest
infringement of the rules of etiquette annoyed her almost beyond
endurance. "One day," says Madame Campan, "I unintentionally threw the
poor lady into a terrible agony. The queen was receiving, I know not
whom--some persons just presented, I believe. The ladies of the
bed-chamber were behind the queen. I was near the throne, with the two
ladies on duty. All was right; at least I thought so. Suddenly I
perceived the eyes of Madame de Noailles fixed on mine. She made a sign
with her head, and then raised her eyebrows to the top of her forehead,
lowered them, raised them again, and then began to make little signs
with her hand. From all this pantomime, I could easily perceive that
something was not as it should be; and as I looked about on all sides
to find out what it was, the agitation of the countess kept increasing.
Maria Antoinette, who perceived all this, looked at me with a smile. I
found means to approach her, and she said to me, in a whisper, 'Let down
your lappets, or the countess will expire.' All this bustle rose from
two unlucky pins, which fastened up my lappets, while the etiquette of
costume said _lappets hanging down_."
One can easily imagine the contempt with which Maria, reared in the
freedom of the Austrian court, would regard these punctilios. She did
not refrain from treating them with good-natured but unsparing ridicule,
and thus she often deeply offended those stiff elderly ladies, who
regarded these trifles, which they had been studying all their lives,
with almost religious awe. She gave Madame de Noailles the nickname of
Madame Etiquette, to the great merriment of some of the courtiers and
the great indignation of others. The more grave and stately matrons were
greatly shocked by these indiscretions on the part of the mirth-loving
queen.
On one occasion, when a number of noble ladies were presented to Maria,
the ludicrous appearance of the venerable dowagers, with their little
black bonnets with great wings, and the entire of their grotesque dress
and evolutions, appealed so impressively to Maria's sense of the
ridiculous, that she, with the utmost difficulty, refrained from open
laughter. But when a young marchioness, full of fun and frolic, whose
office required that she should continue standing behind the queen,
being tired of the ceremony, seated herself upon the floor, and,
concealed behind the fence of the enormous hoops of the attendant
ladies, began to play off all imaginable pranks with the ladies' hoops,
and with the muscles of her own face, the contrast between these
childish frolics and the stately dignity of the old dowagers so
disconcerted the fun-loving Maria, that, notwithstanding all her efforts
at self-control, she could not conceal an occasional smile. The old
ladies were shocked and enraged. They declared that she had treated them
with derision, that she had no sense of decorum, and that not one of
them would ever attend her court again. The next morning a song
appeared, full of bitterness which was spread through Paris. The
following was the chorus:
"Little queen! you must not be
So saucy with your twenty years
Your ill-used courtiers soon will see
You pass once more the barriers."
While Madame de Noailles was thus torturing Maria Antoinette with her
exactions, the Abbe de Vermond, on the contrary, was exerting all the
strong influence he had acquired over her mind to induce her to despise
these requirements of etiquette, and to treat them with open contempt.
Maria Theresa, in the spirit of independence which ever characterizes a
strong mind, ordinarily lived like any other lady, attending
energetically to her duties without any ostentation. She would ride
through the streets of Vienna unaccompanied by any retinue; and the
other members of the royal family, on all ordinary occasions, dispensed
with the pomp and splendors of royalty. Maria Antoinette's education and
natural disposition led her to adhere to the customs of the court of her
ancestors. Thus was she incessantly annoyed by the diverse influences
crowding upon her. Following, however, the bent of her own inclinations,
she daily made herself more and more unpopular with the haughty dames
who surrounded her.
It was a very great annoyance to Maria that she was compelled to dine
every day as a public spectacle. It must seem almost incredible to an
American reader that such a custom could ever have existed in France.
The arrangement was this. The different members of the royal family
dined in different apartments: the king and queen, with such as were
admitted to their table, in one room, the dauphin and dauphiness in
another, and other members of the royal family in another. Portions of
these rooms were railed off, as in court-houses, police rooms, and
menageries, for spectators. The good, honest people from the country,
after visiting the menageries to see the lions, tigers, and monkeys fed,
hastened to the palace to see the king and queen take their soup. They
were always especially delighted with the skill with which Louis XV.
would strike off the top of his egg with one blow of his fork. This was
the most valuable accomplishment the monarch over thirty millions of
people possessed, and the one in which he chiefly gloried. The
spectators entered at one door and passed out at another. No respectably
dressed person was refused admission. The consequence was, that during
the dining hour an interminable throng was pouring through the
apartment; those in the advance crowded slowly along by those in the
rear, and all eyes riveted upon the royal feeders. The members of the
royal family of France, accustomed to this practice from infancy, did
not regard it at all. To Maria Antoinette it was, however, excessively
annoying, and though she submitted to it while she was dauphiness, as
soon as she ascended the throne she discontinued the practice. The
people felt that they were thus deprived of one of their inalienable
privileges, and murmurs loud and angry rose against the innovating
Austrian.
Much of the time of Louis and his bride was passed at the palaces of
Versailles. This renowned residence of the royal family of France is
situated about ten miles from Paris, in the midst of an extensive plain.
Until the middle of the seventeenth century it was only a small village.
At this time Louis XIV. determined to erect upon this solitary spot a
residence worthy of the grandeur of his throne. Seven years were
employed in completing the palace, garden, and park. No expense was
spared by him or his successors to render it the most magnificent
residence in Europe. No regal mansion or city can boast a greater
display of reservoirs, fountains, gardens, groves, cascades, and the
various other embellishments and appliances of pleasure. The situation
of the principal palace is on a gentle elevation. Its front and wings
are of polished stone, ornamented with statues, and a colonnade of the
Doric order is in the center. The grand hall is about two hundred and
twenty feet in length, with costly decorations in marble, paintings, and
gilding. The other apartments are of corresponding size and elegance.
This beautiful structure is approached by three magnificent avenues,
shaded by stately trees, leading respectively from Paris, St. Cloud, and
Versailles.
[Illustration: VERSAILLES--FRONT VIEW.]
[Illustration: VERSAILLES--COURT-YARD.]
This gorgeous mansion of the monarchs of France presents a front eight
hundred feet in length, and has connected with it fifteen projecting
buildings of spacious dimensions, decorated with Ionic columns and
pilasters, constituting almost a city in itself. One great gallery,
adorned with statuary, paintings, and architectural embellishments, is
two hundred and thirty-two feet long, thirty broad, and thirty-seven
high, and lighted by seventeen large windows. Many gorgeous saloons,
furnished with the most costly splendor, a banqueting-room of the
most spacious dimensions, where luxurious kings have long rioted in
midnight revels, an opera house and a chapel, whose beautifully fluted
pillars support a dome which is the admiration of all who look up
upon its graceful beauty, combine to lend attractions to these royal
abodes such as few other earthly mansions can rival, and none,
perhaps, eclipse. The gardens, in the midst of which this voluptuous
residence reposes, are equal in splendor to the palace they are
intended to adorn. Here the kings of France had rioted in boundless
profusion, and every conceivable appliance of pleasure was collected
in these abodes, from which all thoughts of retribution were
studiously excluded. The expense incurred in rearing and embellishing
this princely structure has amounted to uncounted millions. But we
must not forget that these millions were wrested from the toiling
multitude, who dwelt in mud hovels, and ate the coarsest food, that
their proud and licentious rulers might be "clothed in purple and fine
linen, and fare sumptuously every day." Such was the home to which the
beautiful Maria Antoinette, the bride of fifteen, was introduced; and
in the midst of temptations to which such voluptuousness exposed her,
she entered upon her dark and gloomy career. This, however, was but
one of her abodes. It was but one even of her country seats. At
Versailles there were other palaces, in the construction and the
embellishment of which the revenues of the kingdom had been lavished
and in whose luxurious chambers all the laws of God had been openly
set at defiance by those earthly kings who ever forgot that there was
one enthroned above them as the King of kings.
[Illustration: FOUNTAINS AT VERSAILLES.]
[Illustration: FOUNTAIN OF THE STAR.]
Within the circuit of the park are two smaller palaces, called the
Great and the Little Trianon. These may be called royal residences in
miniature; seats to which the king and queen retired when desirous of
laying aside their rank and state. The Little Trianon was a beautiful
palace, about eighty feet square. It was built by Louis XV. for Madame
du Barri. Its architectural style was that of a Roman pavilion, and it
was surrounded with gardens ornamented in the highest attainments of
French and English art, diversified with temples, cottages, and
cascades. This was the favorite retreat of Maria Antoinette. This she
regarded as peculiarly her home. Here she was for a time comparatively
happy. Though living in the midst of all the jealousies, and
intrigues, and bickerings of a court, and though in heart deeply
pained by the strange indifference and neglect which her husband
manifested toward her person, the buoyancy of her youthful spirit
enabled her to triumph, in a manner, over those influences of
depression, and she was the life and the ornament of every gay
scene. As her mind had been but little cultivated, she had but few
resources within herself to dispel that ennui which is the great foe
of the votaries of fashion; and, unconscious of any other sources of
enjoyment, she plunged with all the zest of novelty into an incessant
round of balls, operas, theaters, and masquerades. Her mind, by
nature, was one of the noblest texture, and by suitable culture might
have exulted in the appreciation of all that is beautiful and sublime
in the world of nature and in the realms of thought. She loved the
retirement of the Little Trianon. She loved, in the comparative
quietude of that miniature palace, of that royal home, to shake off
all the restraints of regal state, and to live with a few choice
friends in the freedom of a private lady. Unattended she rambled among
the flowers of the garden; and in the bright moonlight, leaning upon
the arm of a female friend, she forgot, as she gazed upon the moon,
and the stars, and all the somber glories of the night, that she was a
queen, and rejoiced in those emotions common to every ennobled spirit.
Here she often lingered in the midst of congenial joys, till the
murmurs of courtiers drew her away to the more exciting, but far less
satisfying scenes of fashionable pleasure. She often lamented
bitterly, and even with tears, her want of intellectual cultivation,
and so painfully felt her inferiority when in the society of ladies of
intelligence and highly-disciplined minds, that she sought to surround
herself with those whose tastes were no more intellectual than her
own. "What a resource," she once exclaimed, "amid the casualties of
life, is a well-cultivated mind! One can then be one's own companion,
and find society in one's own thoughts." Here, in her Little Trianon,
she made several unavailing attempts to retrieve, by study, those
hours of childhood which had been lost. But it was too late. For a few
days, with great zeal and self-denial, she would persevere in
secluding herself in the library with her books. But it was in vain
for the Queen of France to strive again to become a school-girl. Those
days had passed forever. The innumerable interruptions of her station
frustrated all her endeavors, and she was compelled to abandon the
attempt in sorrow and despair. We know not upon how trivial events the
great destinies of the world are suspended; and had the Queen of
France possessed a highly-disciplined mind--had she been familiar with
the teachings of history, and been capable of inspiring respect by
her intellectual attainments, it is far from impossible that she might
have lived and died in peace. But almost the only hours of enjoyment
which shone upon Maria while Queen of France, was when she forgot that
she was a queen, and, like a village maiden, loitered through the
gardens and the groves in the midst of which the Little Trianon was
embowered.
[Illustration: LITTLE TRIANON.]
The enemies of Maria had sedulously endeavored to spread the report
through France that she was still in heart an Austrian; that she loved
only the country she had left, and that she had no affection for the
country over which she was to reign as queen. They falsely and
malignantly spread the report that she had changed the name of Little
Trianon into Little Vienna. The rumor spread rapidly. It excited great
displeasure. The indignant denials of Maria were disregarded. Thus the
number of her enemies was steadily increasing.
Another unfortunate occurrence took place, which rendered her still more
unpopular at court. Her brother Maximilian, a vain and foolish young
man, made a visit to his sister at the court of Versailles, not
traveling in his own proper rank, but under an assumed name. It was
quite common with princes of the blood-royal, for various reasons, thus
to travel. The young Austrian prince insisted that the first visit was
due to him from the princes of the royal family in France. They, on the
contrary insisted that, as he was not traveling in his own name, and in
the recognition of his own proper rank, it was their duty to regard him
as of the character he had assumed, and as this was of a rank inferior
to that of a royal prince, it could not be their duty to pay the first
visit. The dispute ran high. Maria, seconded by the Abbe Vermond, took
the part of her brother. This greatly offended many of the highest
nobility of the realm. It became a family quarrel of great bitterness. A
thousand tongues were busy whispering malicious accusations against
Maria. Ribald songs to sully her name were hawked through the streets.
Care began to press heavily upon the brow of the dauphiness, and sorrow
to spread its pallor over her cheek. Her high spirit could not brook the
humility of endeavoring the refutation of the calumnies urged against
her. Still, she was too sensitive not to feel them often with the
intensest anguish. Her husband was comparatively a stranger to her. He
bowed to her with much civility when they met, but never addressed her
with a word or gesture of tenderness, or manifested the least desire to
see her alone. One evening, when walking in the garden of Little
Trianon, he astonished the courtiers, and almost overpowered Maria with
delightful emotions, by offering her his arm. This was the most
affectionate act with which he had ever approached her. Such were the
bridal days of Maria Antoinette.