The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, Charles Duke Yonge [e book reader android txt] 📗

so far that she actually tried to induce Louis not to be content with dismissing him from office, but to send him as a prisoner to the Bastille.[4] That she could not avoid feeling some shame at the part which she had acted may be inferred from the pains which she took to conceal it from her mother, whom she assured that, though she was not sorry for his dismissal, she had in no degree interfered in the matter; but "her conduct and even her intentions were well known, and known to be far removed from all manoeuvres and intrigues.[5]"

Unfortunately the ambassador's letters tell a different story. As a sincere friend as well as a loyal servant of Marie Antoinette, he expresses to the empress his deep feeling that, "as the comptroller- general enjoyed a great reputation for integrity, and was beloved by the people, it was a melancholy thing that his dismissal should be in part the queen's work,[6]" and his fear that her conduct in the affair may "hereafter bring upon her the reproaches of the king her husband, and even of the entire nation." The foreboding thus uttered was but too sadly realized. She had driven from her husband's councils the only man who combined with the penetration to perceive the absolute necessity of a large reform and the character of the changes required, the genius to devise them and the firmness to carry them out.

Thirteen years later, a variety of causes, some of which will be unfolded in the course of this narrative, had contributed to irritate the impatience of the nation, while the unskillfulness of the existing minister had disarmed the royal authority. And the very same reforms which would now have been accepted with general thankfulness were then only used by demagogues as a pretext for further inflaming the minds of the multitude against every thing which bore the slightest appearance of authority, even against the very sovereign who had granted them. France and all Europe to this day feel the sad effects of Marie Antoinette's interference.

She had given fatal proof of the truth of the words wrung from her by nervous excitement at the moment of the late king's death, when she declared that Louis and she were too young to reign; and the best excuse that can be found for her is that she was not yet one-and-twenty. It was not, however, wholly from submission to the interested malevolence of others that she had shown herself the enemy of the great financier and statesman. She had a spontaneous dislike to the retrenchments which necessarily formed a great portion of his economical measures; not as interfering with the indulgence of any extravagant tastes of her own, but as restraining her power of gratifying her friends. For she was entirely impressed with the idea that no person or body could have any right to call in question the king's disposal of the national revenue; and that there was no prerogative of the crown of which the exercise was more becoming to the royal dignity than that of granting pensions or creating sinecures with no limitations but such as might be imposed by his own will or discretion. And on this point her husband fully shared her feelings. "What," said he, on one occasion to Turgot, who was urging him to refuse an utterly unwarrantable application for a pension. "What are a thousand crowns a year?" "Sire," replied the minister, "they are the taxation of a village." The king acquiesced for the moment, but probably not without some secret wincing at the control to which he seemed to be subjected; and we may, perhaps, suppose that even the queen's disapproval of the minister would have been less effectual had it not been re-enforced by the king's own feelings.

In fact, that the part which she took against the great minister was the fruit of mere inconsiderateness and ignorance of the feelings and necessities of the nation, and that, if she had known the depth of the people's distress, and the degree in which it was caused by the viciousness of the whole existing system of government, she would gladly have promoted every measure which could tend to their relief, we may find abundant proof in a letter which she had written to her mother, a few weeks earlier. Maria Teresa had spoken with some harshness of the French fickleness. Marie Antoinette replies:[7]

"You are quite right in all you say about French levity, but I am truly grieved that on that account you should conceive an aversion for the nation. The disposition of the people is very inconsistent, but it is not bad. Pens and tongues utter a great many things which are not in their heart. The proof that they do not cherish hatred is that on the very slightest occasion they speak well of one, and even praise one much more than one deserves. I have just this moment myself had experience of this. There had been a terrible fire in Paris in the Palace of Justice, and the same day I was to have gone to the opera, so I did not go, but sent two hundred louis to relieve the most pressing cases of distress;[8] and ever since the fire, the very same people who had been circulating libels and songs against me[9] have been extolling me to the skies."

These revelations of her inmost thoughts to her mother show how real and warm was her affection for the French as a nation, as well as how little she claimed any merit for her endeavors to benefit them; though a subsequent passage in the same letter also shows that she had been so much annoyed by some pasquinades and libels, of which she had been the subject, that she had become careful not to furnish fresh opportunities to her enemies: "We have had here such a quantity of snow as has not been seen for many years, so that people are going about in sledges, as they do at Vienna. We were out in them yesterday about this place; and to-day there is to be a grand procession of them through Paris. I should greatly have liked to be able to go; but, as a queen has never been seen at such things, people might have made up stories if I had gone, and I preferred giving up the pleasure to being worried by fresh libels."

She was still as eager as ever in the pursuit of amusement, and especially of novelties in that way, when not restrained by considerations such as those which she here mentions. When at Choisy, she gave water parties on the river in boats with awnings, which she called gondolas, rowing down as far as the very entrance to the city. It was not quite a prudent diversion for her, for at this time her health was not very strong. She easily caught cold, and the reports of such attacks often caused great uneasiness at Vienna; but the watermen were highly delighted, looking on her act in putting herself under their care as a compliment to their craft; and some of them, to increase her pleasure, jumped overboard and swam about. Their well-meant gallantry, however, was nearly having an unfavorable effect; unaware that it was not an accident, she thought that their lives were in danger, and the fear for them turned her sick, while Madame de Lamballe fainted away. But when she perceived the truth, the qualm passed away, and she rewarded them handsomely for their ducking; begging, however, that it might not be repeated, and assuring them that she needed no such proof to convince her of their dutiful and faithful loyalty.

But the craving for excitement which was bred and nourished by the continuance of her unnatural position with respect to her husband in some parts of his treatment of her, was threatening to produce a very pernicious effect by leading her to become a gambler. Some of those ladies whom she admitted to her intimacy were deeply infected with this fatal passion; and one of the most mischievous and intriguing of the whole company, the Princess de Guimenee, introduced a play-table at some of her balls, which she induced Marie Antoinette to attend. At first the queen took no share in the play; as she had hitherto borne none, or only a formal part, in the gaming which, as we have seen, had long been a recognized feature in court entertainments; but gradually the hope of banishing vexation, if only by the substitution of a heavier care, got dominion over her, and in the autumn of 1776 we find Mercy commenting on her losses at lansquenet and faro, at that time the two most fashionable round games, the stakes at which often rose to a very considerable amount. Though she continued to indulge in this unhealthy pastime for some time, in Mercy's opinion she never took any real interest in it. She practiced it only because she wished to pass the time, and to drive away thought; and because the one accomplishment she wanted was the art of refusing. She even carried her complaisance so far as to allow professed gaming-table keepers to be brought from Paris to manage a faro-bank in her apartments, where the play was often continued long after midnight. It was not the least evil of this habit that it unavoidably left the king, who never quit his own apartments in the evening, to pass a great deal of time by himself; but, as if to make up for his coldness in one way, he was most indulgent in every other, and seemed to have made it a rule never to discountenance any thing which could amuse her. His behavior to her, in Mercy's eyes, seemed to resemble servility; "it was that of the most attentive courtier," and was carried so far as to treat with marked distinction persons whose character he was known to disapprove, solely because she regarded them with favor.[10]

In cases such as these the defects in the king's character contributed very injuriously to aggravate those in hers. She required control, and he was too young to exercise it. He had too little liveliness to enter into her amusements; too little penetration to see that, though many of them-- it may be said all, except the gaming-table--were innocent if he partook of them, indulgence in them, when he did not share them, could hardly fail to lead to unfriendly comments and misconstruction; though even his presence could hardly have saved his queen's dignity from some humiliation when wrangles took place, and accusations of cheating were made in her presence. The gaming-table is a notorious leveler of distinctions, and the worst-behaved of the guests were too frequently the king's own brothers; they were rude, overbearing, and ill-tempered. The Count de Provence on one occasion so wholly forgot the respect due to her, that he assaulted a gentleman in her presence; and the Count d'Artois, who played for very high stakes, invariably lost his temper when he lost his money. Indeed, the queen seems to have felt the discredit of such scenes; and it is probable that it was their frequent occurrence which led to a temporary suspension of the faro-bank; as a violent quarrel on the race-course between d'Artois and his cousin, the Duke de Chartres, whom he openly accused of cheating him, for a while disgusted her with horse-races, and led her to propose a substitution of some of the old exercises of chivalry, such as running at the ring; a proposal which had a great element of popularity in it, as being calculated to lead to a renewal of the old French pastimes, which seemed greatly preferable to the existing rage for copying, and copying badly, the fashions and pursuits of England.


CHAPTER XII.

Marie Antoinette finds herself