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

of the extent to which, his character and prejudices cripple my resources and means of influencing him. He is by nature very taciturn; and it often happens that he does not speak to me about matters of importance even when he has not the least wish to conceal them from me. He answers me when I speak to him about them, but he scarcely ever opens the subject; and when I have learned a quarter of the business, I am then forced to use some address to make the ministers tell me the rest, by letting them think that the king has told me every thing. When I reproach him for not having spoken to me of such and such matters, he is not annoyed, but only seems a little embarrassed, and sometimes answers, in an off-hand way, that he had never thought of it. This distrust, which is natural to him, was at first strengthened by his govern--or before my marriage. M. de Vauguyon had alarmed him about the authority which his wife would desire to assume over him, and the duke's black disposition delighted in terrifying his pupil with all the phantom stories invented against the house of Austria. M. de Maurepas, though less obstinate and less malicious, still thought it advantageous to his own credit to keep up the same notions in the king's mind. M. de Vergennes follows the same plan, and perhaps avails himself of his correspondence on foreign affairs to propagate falsehoods. I have spoken plainly about this to the king more than once. He has sometimes answered me rather peevishly, and, as he is never fond of discussion, I have not been able to persuade him that his minister was deceived, or was deceiving him. I do not blind myself as to the extent of my own influence. I know that I have no great ascendency over the king's mind, especially in politics; and would it be prudent in me to have scenes with his ministers on such subjects, on which it is almost certain that the king would not support me? Without ever boasting or saying a word that is not true, I, however, let the public believe that I have more influence than I really have, because, if they did not think so, I should have still less. The avowals which I am making to you, my dear brother, are not very flattering to my self-love; but I do not like to hide any thing from you, in order that you may be able to judge of my conduct as correctly as is possible at this terrible distance from you, at which my destiny has placed me.[5]"

A melancholy interest attunes to sentences such as these, from the influence which the defects in her husband's character, when joined to those of his minister, had on the future destinies of both, and of the nation over which he ruled. It was natural that she should explain them to a brother; and though, as a general rule, it is clearly undesirable for queens consort to interfere in politics, it is clear that with such a husband, and with the nation and court in such a condition as then existed in France, it was indispensable that Marie Antoinette should covet, and, so far as she was able, exert, influence over the king, if she were not prepared to see him the victim or the tool of caballers and intriguers who cared far more for their own interests than for those of either king or kingdom. But as yet, though, as we see, these deficiencies of Louis occasionally caused her annoyance, she had no foreboding of evil. Her general feeling was one of entire happiness; her children were growing and thriving, her own health was far stronger than it had been, and she entered with as keen a relish as ever into the excitements and amusements becoming her position, and what we may still call her youth, since she was even now only eight-and-twenty.


CHAPTER XIX.

"The Marriage of Figaro"--Previous History and Character of Beaumarchais. --The Performance of the Play is forbidden.--It is said to be a little altered.--It is licensed.--Displeasure of the Queen.--Visit of Gustavus III. of Sweden.--Fete at the Trianon.--Balloon Ascent.

In the spring of 1784, the court and capital wore wrought up to a high pitch of excitement by an incident which was in reality of so ordinary and trivial a character, that it would be hard to find a more striking proof how thoroughly unhealthy the whole condition and feeling of the nation must have been, when such a matter could have been regarded as important. It was simply a question whether a play, which had been recently accepted by the manager of the principal theatre in Paris, should receive the license from the theatrical censor which was necessary to its being performed.

The play was entitled "The Marriage of Figaro." The history of the author, M. Beaumarchais, is curious, as that of a rare specimen of the literary adventurer of his time. He was born in the year 1732. His father was a watch-maker named Caron, and he himself followed that trade till he was three or four and twenty, and attained considerable skill in it. But he was ambitious. He was conscious of a handsome face and figure, and knew their value in such a court as that of Louis XV. He gave up his trade as a watch-maker, and bought successively different places about the court, the last of which was sold at a price sufficient to entitle him to claim gentility; so that, in one of his subsequent railings against the nobles, he declared that his nobility was more incontestable than that of most of the body, since he could produce the stamped receipt for it. Following the example of Moliere and Voltaire, he changed his name, and called himself Beaumarchais. He married two rich widows. He formed a connection with the celebrated financier, Paris Duverney, who initiated him in the mysteries of stock-jobbing. Being a good musician, he obtained the protection of the king's daughters, taught them the harp, and conducted the weekly concerts which, during the life of Marie Leczinska, they gave to the king and the royal family. He wrote two or three plays, none of which had any great success, while one was a decided failure. He became involved in lawsuits, one of which he conducted himself against the best ability of the Parisian bar, and displayed such wit and readiness that he not only gained his cause, but established a notoriety which throughout life was apparently his dearest object. He crossed over to England, where he made the acquaintance of Wilkes, and one or two agents of the American colonies, then just commencing their insurrection; and, partly from political sympathy with their views of freedom, partly, as he declared, to retaliate on England for the injuries which France had suffered at her hands in the Seven Years' War, he became a political agent himself, procuring arms and ships to be sent across the Atlantic, and also a great quantity of stores of a more peaceful character, out of which he had hoped to make a handsome profit. But the Americans gave him credit for greater disinterestedness; the President of Congress wrote him a letter thanking him for his zeal, but refused to pay for his stores, for which he demanded nearly a hundred and fifty thousand francs. He commenced an action for the money in the American courts, but, as he could not conduct it himself, he did not obtain an early decision; indeed, the matter imbittered all his closing days, and was not settled when he died.

But while he was in the full flush of self-congratulation at the degree in which, as he flattered himself, he had contributed to the downfall of England, the exuberance of his spirits prompted him to try his hand at a fourth play, a sort of sequel to one of his earlier performances--"The Barber of Seville." He finished it about the end of the year 1781, and, as the manager of the theatre was willing to act it, he at once applied for the necessary license. But it had already been talked about: if one party had pronounced it lively, witty, and the cleverest play that had been seen since the death of Moliere, another set of readers declared it full of immoral and dangerous satire on the institutions of the country. It is almost inseparable from the very nature of comedy that it should be to some extent satirical. The offense which those who complained of "The Marriage of Figaro" on that account really found in it was, that it satirized classes and institutions which could not bear such attacks, and had not been used to them. Moliere had ridiculed the lower middle class; the newly rich; the tradesman who, because he had made a fortune, thought himself a gentleman; but, as one whose father was in the employ of royalty, he laid no hand on any pillar of the throne. But Beaumarchais, in "The Marriage of Figaro," singled out especially what were called the privileged classes; he attacked the licentiousness of the nobles; the pretentious imbecility of ministers and diplomatists; the cruel injustice of wanton arrests and imprisonments of protracted severity against which there was no appeal nor remedy; and the privileged classes in consequence denounced his work, and their complaints of its character and tendency made such an impression that the court resolved that the license should not he granted.

The refusal, however, was not at first pronounced in a straightforward way; but was deferred, as if those who had resolved on it feared to pronounce it. For a long time the censor gave no reply at all, till Beaumarchais complained of the delay as more injurious to him than a direct denial. When at last his application was formally rejected, he induced his friends to raise such a clamor in his favor, that Louis determined to judge for himself, and caused Madame de Campan to read it to himself and the queen. He fully agreed with the censor. Many passages he pronounced to be in extremely bad taste. When the reader came to the allusions to secret arrests, protracted imprisonments, and the tedious formalities of the law and lawyers, he declared that it would be necessary to pull down the Bastile before it could be acted with safety, as Beaumarchais was ridiculing every thing which ought to be respected. "It is not to be performed, then?" said the queen. "No," replied the king, "you may depend upon that."

Similar refusals of a license had been common enough, so that there was no reason in the world why this decision should have attracted any notice whatever. But Beaumarchais was the fashion. He had influential patrons even in the palace: the Count d'Artois and Madame de Polignac, with the coterie which met in her apartments, being among them; and the mere idea that the court or the Government was afraid to let the play be acted caused thousands to desire to see it, who, without such a temptation, would have been wholly indifferent to its fate. The censor could not prevent its being read at private parties, and such readings became so popular that, in 1782, one was got up for the amusement of the Russian prince, who was greatly pleased by the liveliness of the dramatic situations, and, probably, not sufficiently aware of the prevalence of discontent in many circles of French society to sympathize with those who saw danger in its satire.

The praises lavished on it gave the author greater boldness, which was quite unnecessary. He even meditated an evasion of the law by getting it acted in a place which was not a theatre, and tickets were actually issued for the performance in a saloon which was often used