MARIE ANTOINETTE
Stereotyped sights are rarely the most engrossing. At the Palace of
Versailles the _petits appartements de la Reine_, those tiny rooms whose
grey old-world furniture might have been in use yesterday, to me hold
more actuality than all the regal salons in whose vast emptiness
footsteps reverberate like echoes from the past.
In the pretty sitting-room the coverings to-day are a reproduction of
the same pale blue satin that draped the furniture in the days when
queens preferred the snug seclusion of those dainty rooms overlooking
the dank inner courtyard to the frigid grandeur of their State chambers.
Therein it was that Marie Leczinska was wont to instruct her young
daughters in the virtues as she had known them in her girlhood's
thread-bare home, not as her residence at the profligate French Court
had taught her to understand them.
[Illustration: Marie Antoinette]
The heavy gilt bolts bearing the interlaced initials M.A. remind us that
these, too, were the favourite rooms of Marie Antoinette, and that in
all probability the cunningly entwined bolts were the handiwork of her
honest spouse, who wrought at his blacksmith forge below while his wife
flirted above. But in truth the _petits appartements_ are instinct with
memories of Marie Antoinette, and it is difficult to think of any save
only her occupying them. The beautiful _coffre_ presented to her with
the layette of the Dauphin still stands on a table in an adjoining
chamber, and the paintings on its white silk casing are scarcely faded
yet, though the decorative ruching of green silk leaves has long ago
fallen into decay.
A step farther is the little white and gold boudoir which still holds
the mirror that gave the haughty Queen her first premonition of the
catastrophe that awaited her. Viewed casually the triple mirror, lining
an alcove wherein stands a couch garlanded with flowers, betrays no
sinister qualities. But any visitor who approaches looking at his
reflection where at the left the side panels meet the angle of the wall,
will be greeted by a sight similar to that whose tragic suggestion made
even the haughty Queen pause a moment in her reckless career. For in the
innocent appearing mirrors the gazer is reflected without a head.
It was through this liliputian suite, this strip of homeliness so
artfully introduced into a palace, that Marie Antoinette fled on that
fateful August morning when the mob of infuriated women invaded the
Château.
Knowing this, I was puzzling over the transparent fact that either of
the apparent exits would have led her directly into the hands of the
enemy, when the idea of a secret staircase suggested itself. A little
judicious inquiry elicited the information that one did exist. "But it
is not seen. It is locked. To view it, an order from the
Commissary--that is necessary," explained the old guide.
To know that a secret staircase, and one of such vivid historical
importance, was at hand, and not to have seen it would have been too
tantalising. The "Commissary" was an unknown quantity, and for a space
it seemed as though our desire would be ungratified. Happily the
knowledge of our interest awoke a kindly reciprocity in our guide, who,
hurrying off, quickly returned with the venerable custodian of the key.
A moment later, the unobtrusive panel that concealed the exit flew open
at its touch, and the secret staircase, dark, narrow, and hoary with the
dust of years, lay before us.
[Illustration: The Secret Stair]
Many must have been the romantic meetings aided by those diminutive
steps, but, peering into their shadows, we saw nothing but a vision of
Marie Antoinette, half clad in dishevelled wrappings of petticoat and
shawl, flying distracted from the vengeance of the furies through the
refuge of the low-roofed stairway.
In my ingenuous youth, when studying French history, I evolved a theory
which seemed, to myself at least, to account satisfactorily for the
radical differences distinguishing Louis XVI. from his brothers and
antecedents. Finding that, when a delicate infant, he had been sent to
the country to nurse, I rushed to the conclusion that the royal infant
had died, and that his foster-mother, fearful of the consequences, had
substituted a child of her own in his place. The literature of the
nursery is full of instances that seemed to suggest the probability of
my conjecture being correct.
As a youth, Louis had proved himself both awkward and clumsy. He was
loutish, silent in company, ill at ease in his princely surroundings,
and in all respects unlike his younger brothers. He was honest, sincere,
pious, a faithful husband, a devoted father; amply endowed, indeed, with
the middle-class virtues which at that period were but rarely found in
palaces. To my childish reasoning the most convincing proof lay in his
innate craving for physical labour; a craving that no ridicule could
dispel.
With the romantic enthusiasm of youth, I used to fancy the peasant
mother stealing into the Palace among the spectators who daily were
permitted to view the royal couple at dinner, and imagine her, having
seen the King, depart glorying secretly in the strategy that had raised
her son to so high an estate. There was another picture, in whose
dramatic misery I used to revel. It showed the unknown mother, who had
discovered that by her own act she had condemned her innocent son to
suffer for the sins of past generations of royal profligates, journeying
to Paris (in my dreams she always wore sabots and walked the entire
distance in a state of extreme physical exhaustion) with the intention
of preventing his execution by declaring his lowly parentage to the mob.
The final tableau revealed her, footsore and weary, reaching within
sight of the guillotine just in time to see the executioner holding up
her son's severed head. I think my imaginary heroine died of a broken
heart at this juncture, a catastrophe that would naturally account for
her secret dying with her.
[Illustration: Madame Sans Tête]
During our winter stay at Versailles, my childish phantasies recurred to
me, and I almost found them feasible. What an amazing irony of fate it
would have shown had a son of the soil expired to expiate the crimes of
sovereigns!
But more pitiful by far than the saddest of illusions is the sordid
reality of a scene indelibly imprinted on my mental vision. Memory takes
me back to the twilight of a spring Sunday several years ago, when in
the wake of a cluster of market folks we wandered into the old Cathedral
of St. Denis. Deep in the sombre shadows of the crypt a light gleamed
faintly through a narrow slit in the stone wall. Approaching, we looked
into a gloomy vault wherein, just visible by the ray of a solitary
candle, lay two zinc coffins.
Earth holds no more dismal sepulchre than that dark vault, through the
crevice in whose wall the blue-bloused marketers cast curious glances.
Yet within these grim coffins lie two bodies with their severed heads,
all that remains mortal of the haughty Marie Antoinette and other humble
spouse.
[Illustration: Illumination]