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

dread for her husband's life (to her own danger she never gave a thought), but she felt also that the cause and principle of royalty had been degraded by the shameful scenes through which she had lately passed; and we shall fail to do justice to the patience, fortitude, and energy of her conduct during the remainder of her life, if we allow ourselves to forget that these high qualities were maintained and exerted in spite of the most depressing circumstances and the most discouraging convictions; that she was struggling because it was her duty to struggle for her husband's honor and her child's inheritance; but that she was never long sustained by that incentive which, with so many, is absolutely indispensable to steady and useful exertion--the anticipation of eventual success.

A letter which the very next morning she wrote to Mercy, who fortunately still retained his old post as embassador, shows the courage with which she still caught at every circumstance which seemed in the least hopeful; and with what unfaltering tact she sought every opportunity of acting on the impulsiveness which she regarded as one chief characteristic of the French people.

"October 7th, 1789.

"I am quite well. You may be easy about me. If we could only forget where we are and how we came here, we ought to be satisfied with the feelings of the people, especially this morning. I hope, if bread does not fall short, that many things will return to their proper order. I speak to the people, militia, fish-women, and all: all offer me their hands; I give them mine. In the Hotel de Ville I was personally well received. The people this morning begged us to remain here. I answered them, speaking for the king, who was by my side, that it depended on themselves whether we remained; that we desired nothing better; that all animosities must be laid aside; that the slightest renewal of bloodshed would make us flee, with horror. Those who were nearest to me swore that all that was over. I told the fish-women to go and tell others all that we had just said to one another.[2]"

And a day or two later, on the 10th, even while giving fuller expression to her feelings of unhappiness, and of disgust at the events of the past week, as to which she assures Mercy that "no description could be exaggerated; on the contrary, that any account must fall far short of what the king and she had seen and experienced," she yet repeats that "she hopes to bring back to a right feeling the honest and sound portion of the citizens and people. Unhappily, however," as she adds, "they are not the most numerous body. Still, with gentleness and unwearied patience, she may hope that at least she shall succeed in doing away with the horrible distrust which occupies every mind, and which has dragged the king and herself into the gulf in which they are at present." So keen at this time was her feeling that one principal cause of their miseries was the unjust distrust which the citizens in general conceived of the views and designs of the court, that she desires Mercy not to try to see her; and, while she describes the scantiness of the accommodation which her attendants had as yet been able to provide for her, so that Madame Royale had a bed in her dressing-room, and the little dauphin was in her own room, she finds advantage in these arrangements, inconvenient as they were, since they prevented any suspicion from arising that she was giving audiences which she desired to keep secret.

She did not overrate the impression which she had made on the people; and her faithful attendant, Madame Campan, has preserved more minute details of the events of the 7th than she herself reported to the embassador. She was hardly dressed when a huge crowd collected on the terrace under her window, shouting for her to show herself; and, when she came forward, they began to accost her in a mingled tone of expostulation and menace. "She must drive away the courtiers who were the ruin of kings. She must love the inhabitants of her good city." She replied "that she had always felt so toward them; she had loved them while at Versailles; she should continue to love them at Paris." "Ah," interrupted a virago, hardier than her companions, "but on the 14th of July you would have besieged and bombarded the city; and on the 6th of October you wanted to flee to the frontier." She answered, in the gentlest tone, that "these were idle stories, which they were wrong to believe; tales like these were what caused at once the misery of the people and that of the best of kings." Another woman addressed her in German. Marie Antoinette declared that "she did not understand what she said; that she had become so completely French that she had forgotten her native language;" and the compliment to their country fairly vanquished them. They received it with shouts of "Bravo," and with loud clapping of their hands. They begged the ribbons and flowers of her bonnet. She took them off with her own hand and distributed them among them; and they divided the spoils with thankful exultation, smiling, waving their hands, and crying out, "Long live Marie Antoinette! Long live our good queen![3]"

For a time it seemed as if the fortunes of the king and country were being weighed in an uncertain balance. One day some circumstances seemed to hold out a prospect of the re-establishment of tranquillity, and of the return of the masses to a better feeling. The next day these favorable appearances were more than counterbalanced by fresh evidences of the increasing power of the factious and unscrupulous demagogues. It was greatly in favor of the crown that the triumph of the mob on the 6th of October had led to violent quarrels between the Duc d'Orleans, La Fayette, and Mirabeau. La Fayette had charged the duke with having entered into a plot to assassinate him, and threatened to impeach him formally if he did not at once quit the kingdom.[4] The duke trembled and consented, easily procuring from the ministers, who were glad to get rid of him, a diplomatic mission to England as a pretext for his departure; and Mirabeau, who despised both the duke and the marquis, full of contempt for the pusillanimity which the former had shown in the quarrel, abandoned all idea of placing him on his cousin's throne. "Make him my king!" he exclaimed; "I would not have him for my valet."

Emboldened by his success with the duke, La Fayette, who had great confidence in his own address, next tried to win over or to get rid of Mirabeau himself. He proposed to obtain an embassy for him also. The suggestion of what was clearly an honorable exile in disguise was at once declined.[5] He then offered him a large sum of money, for at that moment he had the entire disposal of the civil list; but he found that the great orator was disinclined to connect himself with him in any way, much more to lay himself under any obligation to him. In fact, Mirabeau was at this moment hoping to obtain a post in the home administration, where, if he could once succeed in procuring a footing, he had no doubt of soon obtaining the entire mastery; and the royal family was hardly settled at the Tuileries before he applied to his friend, the Count de la Marck, whom he rightly believed to enjoy the queen's good opinion, begging him to express to her his ardent wish to serve her. He even drew up a long memorial on the existing state of affairs, indicating the line of conduct which, in his opinion, the king ought to pursue; the leading feature of which was an early departure from Paris to some city at no great distance, that he might be safe and free; while in the capital it was evident that he was neither. And the step which he thus recommended at the outset deserves attention as being also that on which a year later he still insisted as the indispensable preliminary to whatever line of conduct might be decided on.

But at this moment his advice never reached those for whom it was intended. La Marck, with all his good-will both to his friend and to the court, could not venture to bring before the queen's notice the name of one who, only a few days before, had denounced her in the foulest manner in the Assembly for having appeared at the soldiers' banquet, and whom she with her own eyes had beheld uniting with the assailants of the palace. He thought it more politic, even for the eventual attainment of his friend's objects, to content himself for the time with giving the memorial and stating the views of the writer to the Count de Provence; and that prince declared that it would be useless to bring it to the knowledge of either king or queen: "that the queen had not sufficient influence over her husband to induce him to adopt such a plan;" and he even hinted that at times Louis was disposed to be jealous of her appearing to influence him.

But if these circumstances--the quarrel between the enemies of the court, and the conversion of one more able and formidable than either--were in the king's favor, other events which took place in the same few weeks were full of mischief and danger. Before the end of the month fresh riots broke out in Paris. Bread, the supply of which Marie Antoinette, as we have seen, rightly regarded as a matter of the first importance to the tranquillity of the city, continued scarce and dear; and the mob broke open the bakers' shops, and murdered one baker, a man named Francois, with a ferocity more terrible than they had even shown toward De Launay, or the guards at Versailles. They tore his body to pieces, and, having cut off his head, compelled his wife to kiss the scarcely cold lips, and then left her fainting on the pavement still covered with his blood. Even La Fayette was horror-stricken at such brutality. It was the only occasion on which he did his duty during the whole progress of the Revolution. He came down with a company of the National Guard, dispersed the rioters, seized the ruffian who was bearing aloft, the head of the murdered man on a pole, and caused him to be hanged the next day. And during the next few weeks he more than once brought his soldiers to the support of the civil power, and inflicted summary punishment on gangs of miscreants, whose idea of reform was a state of things which should afford impunity to crime.

But in the next month the Assembly dealt a heavier blow on the king's authority than could be inflicted by the worst excesses of an informal mob--they passed a resolution prohibiting any of its members from accepting any office in the administration: it was an imitation of the self-denying ordinance into which Cromwell had tricked the English Parliament; and, though bearing an appearance of disinterestedness in closing the access to official emoluments and honors against themselves, was in reality an injury to the king, as depriving him of his right to select his ministers from the entire body of the nation; and to the nation itself, as preventing it from obtaining the services of those who might be presumed to be its ablest citizens, as having been already selected as its representatives.

But a far more irreparable injury than any that could be inflicted on the court by either populace or Assembly came from its friends. We have seen that the Count