THE HAUNTED CHATEAU
[Illustration: A Veteran of the Chateau]
The Château of Versailles, like the town, dozes through the winter, only
half awakening on Sunday afternoons when the townsfolk make it their
meeting-place. Then conscripts, in clumsy, ill-fitting uniforms, tread
noisily over the shining _parqueterie_ floors, and burgesses gossip
amicably in the dazzling _Galerie des Glaces_, where each morning
courtiers were wont to await the uprising of their king. But on the
weekdays visitors are of the rarest. Sometimes a few half-frozen people
who have rashly automobiled thither from Paris alight at the Château
gates, and take a hurried walk through the empty galleries to restore
the circulation to their stiffened limbs before venturing to set forth
on the return journey.
Every weekday in the Place d'Armes, squads of conscripts are busily
drilling, running hither and thither with unflagging energy, and the air
resounds with the hoarse staccato cries of "Un! Deux! Trois!" wherewith
they accompany their movements, cries that, heard from a short distance,
exactly resemble the harsh barking of a legion of dogs.
[Illustration: Un--Deux--Trois]
Within the gates there is a sense of leisure: even the officials have
ceased to anticipate visitors. In the _Cour Royale_ two little girls
have cajoled an old guide into playing a game of ball. A custodian dozes
by the great log fire in the bedroom of Louis XIV., where the warm
firelight playing on the rich trappings lends such an air of occupation
to the chamber, that--forgetting how time has turned to grey the once
white ostrich plumes adorning the canopy of the bed, and that the
priceless lace coverlet would probably fall to pieces at a touch--one
almost expects the door to open for the entrance of Louis le Grand
himself.
To this room he came when he built the Palace wherein to hide from that
grim summons with which the tower of the Royal sepulture of St. Denis,
visible from his former residence, seemed to threaten him. And here it
was that Death, after long seeking, found him. We can see the little
great-grandson who was to succeed, lifted on to the bed of the dying
monarch.
[Illustration: The Bedchamber of Louis XIV]
"What is your name, my child?" asks the King.
"Louis XV;" replies the infant, taking brevet-rank. And nearly sixty
years later we see the child, his wasted life at an end, dying of
virulent smallpox under the same roof, deserted by all save his devoted
daughters.
To me the Palace of Versailles is peopled by the ghosts of many women. A
few of them are dowdy and good, but by far the greater number are
graceful and wicked. How infinitely easier it is to make a good bad
reputation than to achieve even a bad good one! "Tell us stories about
naughty children," we used to beseech our nurses. And as our years
increase we still yawn over the doings of the righteous, while our
interest in the ways of transgressors only strengthens.
We all know by heart the romantic lives of the shrinking La Vallière, of
Madame de Montespan the impassioned, of sleek Madame de Maintenon--the
trio of beauties honoured by the admiration of Louis le Grand; and of
the bevy of favourites of Louis XV, the three fair and short-lived
sisters de Mailly-Nesle, the frail Pompadour who mingled scheming with
debauchery, and the fascinating but irresponsible Du Barry. Even the most
minute details of Marie Antoinette's tragic career are fresh in our
memories, but which of us can remember the part in the history of France
played by Marie Leczinska? Yet, apart from her claim to notability as
having been the last queen who ended her days on the French throne, her
story is full of romantic interest.
Thrusting aside the flimsy veil of Time, we find Marie Leczinska the
penniless daughter of an exiled Polish king who is living in retirement
in a dilapidated commandatory at a little town in Alsace. It is easy to
picture the shabby room wherein the unforeseeing Marie sits content
between her mother and grandmother, all three diligently broidering
altar cloths. Upon the peaceful scene the father enters, overcome by
emotion, trembling. His face announces great news, before he can school
his voice to speak.
"Why, father! Have you been recalled to the throne of Poland?" asks
Marie, and the naïve question reveals that many years of banishment have
not quenched in the hearts of the exiles the hope of a return to their
beloved Poland.
"No, my daughter, but you are to be Queen of France," replies the
father. "Let us thank God."
[Illustration: Marie Leczinska]
Knowing the sequel, one wonders if it was for a blessing or a curse that
the refugees, kneeling in that meagre room in the old house at
Wissenberg, returned thanks.
Certain it is that the ministers of the boy-monarch were actuated more
by a craving to further their own ends than either by the desire to
please God or to honour their King, in selecting this obscure maiden
from the list of ninety-nine marriageable princesses that had been drawn
up at Versailles. A dowerless damsel possessed of no influential
relatives is not in a position to be exacting, and, whate'er befell,
poor outlawed Stanislas Poniatowski could not have taken up arms in
defence of his daughter.
Having a sincere regard for unaffected Marie Leczinska, I regret being
obliged to admit that, even in youth, "comely" was the most effusive
adjective that could veraciously be awarded her. And it is only in the
lowest of whispers that I will admit that she was seven years older than
her handsome husband, whose years did not then number seventeen. Yet is
there indubitable charm in the simple grace wherewith Marie accepted her
marvellous transformation from pauper to queen. She disarmed criticism
by refusing to conceal her former poverty. "This is the first time in my
life I have been able to make presents," she frankly told the ladies of
the Court, as she distributed among them her newly got trinkets.
It is pleasant to remember that the early years of her wedded life
passed harmoniously. Louis, though never passionately enamoured of his
wife, yet loved her with the warm affection a young man bestows on the
first woman he has possessed. And that Marie was wholly content there is
little doubt. She was no gadabout. Versailles satisfied her. Three years
passed before she visited Paris, and then the visit was more of the
nature of a pilgrimage than of a State progress. Twin daughters had
blessed the union, and the Queen journeyed to the churches of Notre Dame
and Saint Geneviève to crave from Heaven the boon of a Dauphin: a prayer
which a year later was answered.
But clouds were gathering apace. As he grew into manhood the domestic
virtues palled upon Louis. He tired of the needlework which, doubtless,
Marie's skilled hands had taught him. We recall how, sitting between her
mother and grandmother, the future Queen had broidered altar cloths.
Marie Leczinska was an adoring mother; possibly her devotion to their
rapidly increasing family wearied him. Being little more than a child
himself, the King is scarcely likely to have found the infantile society
so engaging as did the mother. Thus began that series of foolish
infidelities that, characterised by extreme timidity and secrecy at
first, was latterly flaunted in the face of the world.
Marie's life was not a smooth one, but it was happier than that of her
Royal spouse. To me there is nothing sadder, nothing more sordid in
history, than the feeble, useless existence of Louis XV., whose early
years promised so well. It is pitiful to look at the magnificent
portrait, still hanging in the palace where he reigned, of the
child-king seated in his robes of State, the sceptre in his hand,
looking with eyes of innocent wonder into the future, then to think upon
the depth of degradation reached by the once revered Monarch before his
body was dragged in dishonour and darkness to its last resting-place.
[Illustration: Madame Adelaide]
Pleasanter figures that haunt the Château are those of the six pretty
daughters of Louis and Marie Leczinska. There are the ill-starred twins,
Elizabeth and Henrietta: Madame Elizabeth, who never lost the love of
her old home, and, though married, before entering her teens, to the
Infanta of Spain, retired, after a life of disappointment, to her
beloved Versailles to die; and the gentle Henrietta who, cherishing an
unlucky passion for the young Duc de Chartres, pined quietly away after
witnessing her lover wed to another.
Then there is Adelaide, whom Nattier loved to paint, portraying her
sometimes as a lightly clad goddess, sometimes sitting demurely in a
pretty frock. Good Nattier! there is a later portrait of himself in
complacent middle age surrounded by his wife and children; but I like to
think that, when he spent so many days at the Palace painting the young
Princess, some tenderer influence than mere artistic skill lent cunning
to his brush.
When the daughters of Louis XV. were sent to be educated at a convent,
Adelaide it was who, by tearful protest to her royal father, gained
permission to remain at the Palace while her sisters meekly endured
their banishment. From this instance of childish character one would
have anticipated a career for Madame Adelaide, and I hate being obliged
to think of her merely developing into one of the three spinster aunts
of Louis XVI. who, residing under the same roof, turned coldly
disapproving eyes upon the manifold frailties of their niece, Marie
Antoinette.
The sisters Victoire and Sophie are faint shades leaving no impression
on the memory; but there is another spirit, clad in the sombre garb of a
Carmelite nun, who, standing aloof, looks with the calm eyes of peace on
the motley throng. It is Louise, the youngest sister of all, who, deeply
grieved by her father's infatuation for the Du Barry--an infatuation
which, beginning within a month of Marie Leczinska's decease, ended only
when on his deathbed the dying Monarch prepared to receive absolution by
bidding his inamorata farewell--resolved to flee her profligate
surroundings and devote her life to holiness.
It is affecting to think of the gentle Louise, secretly anticipating the
rigours of convent life, torturing her delicate skin by wearing coarse
serge, and burning tallow candles in her chamber to accustom herself to
their detestable odour.
Her father's consent gained, Louise still tarried at Versailles. Perhaps
the King's daughter shrank from voluntarily beginning a life of
imprisoned drudgery. We know that at this period she passed many hours
reading contemporary history, knowing that, once within the convent
walls, the study of none but sacred literature would be permitted.
Then came an April morning when Louise, who had kept her intention
secret from all save her father, left the Palace never to return.
France, in a state of joyous excitement, was eagerly anticipating the
arrival of Marie Antoinette, who was setting forth on the first stage of
that triumphal journey which had so tragic an ending. Already the gay
clamour of wedding-bells filled the air; and Louise may have feared
that, did she linger at Versailles, the enticing vanities of the world
might change the current of her thoughts.
Chief among the impalpable throng that people the state galleries is
Marie Antoinette, and her spirit shows us many faces. It is charming,
haughty, considerate, headstrong, frivolous, thoughtful, degraded,
dignified, in quick succession. We see her arrive at the Palace amid the
tumultuous adoration of the crowd, and leave amidst its execrations.
Sometimes she is richly apparelled, as befits a queen; anon she sports
the motley trappings of a mountebank. The courtyard that saw the
departure of Madame Louise witnesses Marie Antoinette, returning at
daybreak in company with her brother-in-law from some festivity
unbecoming a queen, refused admittance by the King's express command.
[Illustration: Louis Quatorze]
Many of the attendant spirits who haunt Marie Antoinette's ghostly
footsteps as they haunted her earthly ones are malefic. Most are women,
and all are young and fair. There is Madame Roland, who, taken as a
young girl to the Palace to peep at the Royalties, became imbued by that
jealous hatred which only the Queen's death could appease.
"If I stay here much longer," she told that kindly mother who sought to
give her a treat by showing her Court life, "I shall detest these people
so much that I shall be unable to hide my hatred."
It is easy to fancy the girl's evil face scowling at the unconscious
Queen, before she leaves to pen those inflammatory pamphlets which are
to prove the Sovereign's undoing and her own. For by some whim of fate
Madame Roland was executed on the very scaffold to which her envenomed
writings had driven Marie Antoinette.
A spectre that impresses as wearing rags under a gorgeous robe, lurks
among the foliage of the quiet _bosquet_ beyond the orangerie. It is the
infamous Madame de la Motte, chief of adventuresses, and it was in that
secluded grove that her tool, Cardinal de Rohan, had his pretended
interview with the Queen. Poor, perfidious Contesse! what an existence
of alternate beggarly poverty and beggarly riches was hers before that
last scene of all when she lay broken and bruised almost beyond human
semblance in that dingy London courtyard beneath the window from which,
in a mad attempt to escape arrest, she had thrown herself.
Through the Royal salons flits a presence whereat the shades of the
Royal Princesses look askance: that of the frolicsome, good-natured,
irresponsible Du Barry. A soulless ephemera she, with no ambitions or
aspirations, save that, having quitted the grub stage, she desires to be
as brilliant a butterfly as possible. Close in attendance on her moves
an ebon shadow--Zamora, the ingrate foundling who, reared by the
Duchesse, swore that he would make his benefactress ascend the scaffold,
and kept his oath. For our last sight of the prodigal, warm-hearted Du
Barry, plaything of the aged King, is on the guillotine, where in
agonies of terror she fruitlessly appeals to her executioner's clemency.
But of all the bygone dames who haunt the grand Château, the only one I
detest is probably the most irreproachable of all--Madame de Maintenon.
There is something so repulsively sanctimonious in her aspect, something
so crafty in the method wherewith, under the cloak of religion, she
wormed her way into high places, ousting--always in the name of
propriety--those who had helped her. Her stepping-stone to Royal favour
was handsome, impetuous Madame de Montespan, who, taking compassion on
her widowed poverty, appointed Madame Scarron, as she then was,
governess of her children, only to find her _protégée_ usurp her place
both in the honours of the King and in the affections of their children.
The natural heart rebels against the "unco guid," and Madame de
Maintenon, with her smooth expression, double chin, sober garments and
ever-present symbols of piety, revolts me. I know it is wrong. I know
that historians laud her for the wholesome influence she exercised upon
the mind of a king who had grown timorous with years; that the dying
Queen declared that she owed the King's kindness to her during the last
twenty years of her life entirely to Madame de Maintenon. But we know
also that six months after the Queen's death an unwonted light showed at
midnight in the Chapel Royal, where Madame de Maintenon--the child of a
prison cell--was becoming the legal though unacknowledged wife of Louis
XIV. The impassioned, uncalculating de Montespan had given the handsome
Monarch her all without stipulation. Truly the career of Madame de
Maintenon was a triumph of virtue over vice; and yet of all that
heedless, wanton throng, my soul detests only her.
[Illustration: Where the Queen Played]