IN the grand salon of Trianon stood King Louis XV., and near him, on a gold and crimson sofa, sat the Marchioness of Pompadour. In his hand the king held a letter which vividly depicted—far too vividly for royal ears—the desolation of the kingdom and the ruinous state of the finances; and his Majesty frowned gloomily as he gazed upon it, for it was not the habit of King Louis the Well-Beloved to concern himself with the interests or the wishes of his subjects, or with what took place within his wide domain of France. Turning suddenly to Madame de Pompadour, the king read aloud the missive: “Sire,—Your finances are in the greatest disorder, and the great majority of states have perished through this cause; your ministers are without capacity. Open war is waged against religion. Lose no time in restoring order to the state of the finances. Embarrassments necessitate fresh taxes, which grind the people and induce toward revolt. A time will come, sire, when the people will be enlightened, and that time is probably near at hand”; then, turning upon his heel, he added angrily, “I wish to hear no more about it. Things will last as they are as long as I shall.” And Madame la Marquise de Pompadour, rising from her gold and crimson sofa, cried gayly, “Right, mon roi! Things will last as long as we shall, and aprÈs nous le deluge!” Madame la Marquise de Pompadour spoke truly, and when at last the storm burst in all its fury, and the Duc de Liancourt announced to Louis XVI. that the Bastile had fallen, and upon its smouldering ruins a people bid defiance to their king, his Majesty, astonished and alarmed, exclaimed, “It is a revolt, then!”

“Nay, sire,” replied Liancourt, “it is a revolution!”

A revolution! Aye, a revolution truly. And King Louis leaves his splendid, proud Versailles, and Queen Marie Antoinette bids sad adieu to Trianon. The royal diadem of France, torn from a kingly brow, is trampled in the dust, and the blood-red emblem of the Jacobins appears upon the gilded portals of the Tuileries Palace. Anarchy! confusion! chaos! Government, Philosophy, Religion,—all are hurled headlong in the dark abyss, and fury reigns supreme. But amid this overthrow of men and things, a daring soul arises who grasps the helm of state, and stands erect beneath the weight; who chains revolution in France, and unchains it in the rest of Europe; and who, having added to his name the brilliant synonymes of Rivoli, Jena, and Marengo, picks up the royal crown, and, burnishing it into imperial splendor, places it triumphantly upon his head, to found for a time a kind of Roman Empire,—himself the CÆsar of the nineteenth century.

All the palace, all Vienna, was full of excitement. The loyal affection and sentimental lamentation of the inhabitants gave vent to themselves in cries of grief. For the fair young daughter of their empress, in whose coming exaltation they took the utmost pride, who was to do them such honor and service at the court of France, she whose bright face ever beamed with smiles, was, on this 21st of April, 1770, departing on her long journey, and, as many without much prophetic insight might have perceived, her difficult career. When the great coach rolled from the palace courtyard, the girl-bride covered her face with her hands, which yet could not conceal the tears that streamed through her slender fingers. Again and again she turned for a farewell look at the mother, the home, and the early friends, which she was never to see again. The carriage rolled away, and Marie Antoinette Jeanne JosÈphe de Lorraine turned her back forever on the Prater and the Danube, SchÖnbrunn and the moated Laxenburg.

Spring-time in sunny France; the birds are singing merrily, the trees are putting forth their leaves, and all nature wears a look of happiness and joy. The ChÂteau de CompiÈgne is filled with guests,—a brilliant assemblage of the haute noblesse composing the court of Louis XV. Upon the terrace stands the king, and with him his three grandsons,—the Dauphin (Louis XVI.), Monsieur le Comte de Provence (Louis XVIII.), and the Comte d’ Artois (Charles X.),—and an eager, anxious crowd surrounds them. All gaze in one direction, for Louis, the Dauphin, awaits his bride,—she who is to be the future queen of France. But little like a bridegroom looks the timid, fat Louis, upon this bright spring morning. He wears an air of resigned indifference, contrasting strongly with the eagerness of his Majesty, King Louis XV., who, notwithstanding his sixty years, makes a far more gallant knight than he. There is a cloud of dust upon the horizon; the avant-couriers arrive; the king and the Dauphin mount their horses, and with a numerous retinue ride forth to meet and welcome the approaching bride. And now the old state travelling carriage is in sight. Putting spurs to his horse, the king leads the way, and, hat in hand, rides up to the side of the cumbrous vehicle. The door flies open, and before him in all the freshness of her fifteen summers is Marie Antoinette Jeanne JosÈphe de Lorraine, Archduchess of Austria. The introductions follow, and the young bride and her bashful fiancÉe are conducted back to Versailles, where, on the 16th of May, 1770, the nuptial benediction is pronounced by the Archbishop of Paris, in the chapel of the palace.

Then followed the fÊtes, and notwithstanding the exchequer was in the usual chronic state of exhaustion, twenty millions of francs—a mighty sum for that period—was spent upon them.

“FÊtes magnifiques” they were termed, from their surpassing in splendor anything witnessed in France since the days of Louis le Grand. For weeks the public rejoicings continued.

On the 30th of May, they were to close with the fÊte of the Ville de Paris, and in the evening a display of illuminations and fireworks on the Place Louis XV. (now the Place de la Concorde) which were to surpass all that had preceded them. Thousands of people filled the square and all the approaching avenues. Most unfortunately, through some mismanagement, the scaffolding supporting the fireworks took fire and burned rapidly. No means were at hand for extinguishing the flames, and the terror-stricken multitude rushed in all directions. Crushing upon each other, hundreds were suffocated by the pressure. Those that fell were trampled to death. Groans and screams, and frantic cries for help that none could render, filled the air. Nothing, in fact, could be done until the fire had burnt itself out, and the extent of the calamity was ascertained. The Dauphin and Dauphiness, distressed at so sad a disaster, gave their entire year’s allowance towards mitigating the misery that had fallen upon many poor people; and the “fÊtes magnifiques,” with all their splendor and rejoicing, ending thus in “lamentation, mourning, and woe,” seem to have been, as it were, a foreshadowing of the career of her for whom they had been given,—the unfortunate Marie Antoinette.

“It is the 10th of May, 1774,—a lovely evening following a bright spring day. The sun has sunk below the horizon; the brilliant hues of the western sky have faded into the dark shades of the advancing night, and the ChÂteau of Versailles, in its sombre grandeur, looms larger in the increasing gloom. On the terrace are saunterers in earnest conversation; carriages and horses and a throng of attendants in the marble court. A group of impatient pages, Écuyers booted and spurred, an escort of the household troops, eager for an order to mount,—all are watching, with anxious eyes, the flickering glare of a candle that faintly illumines the window of a chamber in the chÂteau.”

In that chamber lies Louis, once the “well-beloved,” in the last stages of confluent small-pox. As the clock of Versailles tolls the hour of twelve, at midnight, the flame is extinguished; the king is dead! Louis XV. has breathed his last! Instantly all is movement and animation in the courtyard, while through the gilded galleries of Versailles resounds the cry, destined to be heard never again within its walls, “The king is dead! Long live the king!” as, with a noise like thunder, the courtiers rush from the antechamber of the dead monarch to the apartments of the Dauphin, to hail him king of France. This extraordinary tumult, in the silence of midnight, conveyed to Louis and Marie Antoinette the first intelligence that the crown of France had fallen upon their brows; and, overcome by the violence of their emotions, they fell upon their knees exclaiming, “O God! guide us, protect us; we are too young to govern!”

Preparations had been made for an immediate flight; for all alike were anxious to escape the infectious air of the petits appartements and grande galerie, whose deadly atmosphere claimed yet a hecatomb of victims. Three hours after the king’s death Versailles was a desert; for the young king and the queen, with the whole court in retinue, had set out in their carriages for Choisy. A few under-servants and priests of the “inferior clergy” remained to pray beside the body, which was ultimately placed in a coffin filled with lime, thrust into a hunting-carriage, and, followed by a few attendants, with no signs of mourning, the cortÈge set out, “au grand trot” for St. Denis.

There were none to mourn the departed monarch; and in an hour Louis the Well-Beloved was forgotten, or remembered but to be despised. But a single Fontenoy veteran, inspired by the memories of other days, rushed forward and presented arms as the scanty funeral cortÈge of the once vaunted hero of a brilliant fight passed through the gates of Versailles, in the dead of night, on the 13th of May, 1774. “What matters it,” murmured the old soldier, regretfully; “he was at Fontenoy!”

“It was a momentous crisis in the history of the nation when Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette ascended the throne of France. The time had arrived when the abuses of the Old RÉgime could no longer be tolerated, and sweeping reforms were demanded. The nation, hitherto politically a nullity, had awakened to a sense of its rights; while absolute sovereignty, with its arbitrary dictum, ‘L’État c’est moi,’ and its right divine to govern wrong, had lost its prestige, and had apparently no prospect of regaining it.”

The people, indeed, regarded the young monarch as the “hope of the nation,” and named him “Louis le Desire,”—a testimony to the ardor with which they had looked forward to his accession. And it is probable that, had a more able pilot—“a king more a king” than that feeblest of monarchs, Louis XVI.—been called to the helm at that period, “the vessel of state might have been safely guided through the shoals and quicksands surrounding her, and escaped the eddies of that devastating whirlpool in which she was eventually engulfed.” Indeed, if sincerely wishing to see his people prosperous and happy could have made them so, France would have had no more beneficent ruler than Louis XVI. But his good wishes and intentions were rendered of no avail by his utter want of energy and ability to carry them out. Infirm of purpose at the first, he remained so to the end. The decree, “Let there be light,” unfortunately, never went forth to quicken his mental faculties. The queen, on the other hand, possessed all the courage and resolution of her imperial mother, Maria Theresa; and, had she been able to control affairs, the revolution would have been crushed in its infancy with an iron hand. Again, had the king been able to hold to his milder measures, to maintain on the following day that which he had declared the day before, it is possible that France might have passed quietly from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy. But the self-will and determination of the one, and the weakness and instability of the other, rendered a union of ideas impossible and the revolution inevitable.

Little was known by the nation at large of the mental qualities of the young king. He was now in his twentieth year; and it had been noised among the people that he had inherited all the virtues of his father, “Le Grand Dauphin” to which were added the frugal tastes, the genial temper, and the air of bonhomie to which the gallant Henry IV. owed so much of his popularity.

“No wonder, then, that the accession of Louis XVI. was hailed throughout France with general delight, or that the enthusiastic people—their many expected reforms already conceded in imagination—should have written in conspicuous characters, ‘RESURREXIT,’ beneath the statue of the gallant Henry, whose jovial humor and pliant conscience enabled him to gratify his Catholic subjects with his presence at a Te Deum.”

When the king made his public entry into the capital, the joyous demonstrations of the Parisians affected him deeply. “What have I done,” he exclaimed, “that they should love me so much?” Ah, Louis! you have as yet done nothing; but much, very much, is expected from you!

But Louis XVI. possessed no energy; and the torpid action of his mind was but too plainly evinced by the sluggish inactivity of his heavy frame, as, stolid in his immense corpulence, he sat lolling in his chariot.

Perhaps, in their eagerness for reforms, the Parisians displayed unreasonable impatience. But when, a few weeks later, the young monarch again passed through Paris, he remarked—though unfortunately the lesson was lost on him—that the acclamations of the people were far less frequent and fervid than on the former occasion. And his eyes were filled with tears when he perceived that the conspicuously displayed “RESURREXIT” was transferred from the statue of the gallant Henry to that of the slothful Louis XV. Still, with all his vices, Louis the Well-Beloved, on those rare occasions when he appeared in public, had always commanded the respectful homage of his subjects, simply by the dignity of his bearing. By the same means he imposed silence on his courtiers, when, in license of speech, they infringed the limits within which it was sometimes his bon plaisir to restrain them. Occasionally, too, when the parliament opposed his edicts, or the dissentient opinion of a minister roused him from his habitual indolence, he could at once assume the arbitrary tone, the “je le veux” of the absolute monarch, and carry out his purposes with all the hauteur of his royal ancestor, the Grand Monarque. “And it is probable that his handsome person and majestic air—for, whatever may have been his shortcomings in other and more essential qualities, in appearance he was every inch a king—may have gone far in preventing the utter extinction of the enthusiastic affection which on several occasions during his reign the people so singularly, yet so generally, expressed towards the royal dÉbauchÉ. A lingering spark of that once ardent feeling must have smouldered on in their hearts to the end; for, grievously oppressed though they were, and vicious as they knew him to be, they still toiled on under their burdens, not exactly uncomplainingly, yet in a spirit of toleration towards him; while the yearned-for relief was, as if by the tacit consent of his subjects, to be claimed only from his successor.” Truly, indications were not wanting of the approaching storm. But “AprÈs nous le deluge!” cried Madame de Pompadour, gayly; and the king and the court echoed the cry. Madame la Marquise was right. The deluge came; and the royal authority which Richelieu, Mazarin, and Louis XIV. had raised to such gigantic heights, and which Louis XV. had so shamefully abused, was hurled prostrate in the dust.

Bright shines the sun on this 10th day of June, 1775; and, heavy in its massive architecture, the grand old cathedral of Rheims looms up against the clear blue sky. The interior is hung with crimson cloth of gold. On the right of the altar, arrayed in their red and violet robes, point lace, gold crosses, chains, and mitres, sit the great grandees of the church. On the left, in their mantles of state, stand the temporal peers of the realm, and a brilliant crowd of gold-embroidered naval and military uniforms surrounds them; while above, in the lofty galleries of the nave, in the midst of pearls and diamonds, gold, and precious stones, and lofty, waving plumes, is Marie Antoinette, proud and radiant, surrounded by the ladies of her retinue.

For on this 10th day of June, “good Louis XVI.,” as the country people say, is to be crowned. Maria Theresa was anxious that Marie Antoinette should be crowned with the king; but she evinced not the slightest inclination, and, indeed, it was only at Vienna that such an event seems to have been expected or desired. But among the glittering throng which fills the cathedral, one sees not the king. He waits in the sacristy, whither two of the dignitaries of the church proceed to lead him to the front of the altar. The door forthwith flies open, and Louis XVI. appears in all the insignia of royalty. The mantle of state is placed upon his shoulders, and anointing him with the seven unctions of the sacre, the archbishop cries aloud, “Vivat rex in aeternum!” The grand old organ peals forth as he approaches the altar, and the fresh young voices of the choristers swell through the aisles and naves as they sing the choral service. How startling is the effect when, during a sotto voce passage of the service, the archbishop places the crown upon the king’s head, and he, suddenly raising his hand, thrusts it aside, exclaiming, “Elle me gÊne!” Poor Louis! Truly he was destined to find it gÊnant in every sense. Henry III. had said, “Elle me pique!” All knew what had been his end. “The queen, who had been a deeply interested spectator of the scene, exhibited so much agitation at the moment of the king’s exclamation, that she was near fainting, and was conducted from the cathedral.” The ceremony is concluded; and the clanging of bells, the roaring of cannon, the lively chirping of thousands of birds, freed from their cages, to symbolize the “vieilles franchises” of France, and the tumultuous shouts of “Vive le roi!” proclaim to the multitude that “Louis le Desire,” is crowned king of France.

Marie Antoinette had been reared in all the freedom of the Austrian court, and it was some time before she could habituate herself to the etiquette-laden atmosphere of Versailles, where every look, every motion, every gesture, were governed alike by the inexorable rules of la grande politesse, laid down with such precision and exactitude by King Louis XIV. From the cradle to the tomb, in sickness and in health, at table, at council, in the chase, in the army, in the midst of their court, and in their private apartments, kings and princes, in France, were governed by ceremonial rules. The pomp and glitter at Versailles dazzled the beholder. There all breathed of greatness, of exaltation, and of unapproachableness; and the people, awestruck at the splendor and gorgeous trappings of royalty, fell prostrate before the throne.

Madame Campan thus describes her feelings upon first entering this charmed spot:—

“The queen, Marie Leckzinska, wife of Louis XV., died just before I was presented at court. The grand apartments hung with black, the great chairs of state raised on several steps and surmounted by a canopy adorned with plumes, the caparisoned horses, the immense retinue in court mourning, the enormous shoulder-knots embroidered with gold and silver spangles which decorated the coats of the pages and footmen,—all this magnificence had such an effect upon my senses, that I could scarcely support myself when introduced to the princesses.

“How well was the potent magic of grandeur and dignity, which ought to surround sovereigns, understood at Versailles!

“Marie Antoinette, dressed in white, with a plain straw hat, and a little switch in her hand, walking on foot, and followed by a single servant, through the walks leading to the Petit Trianon, would never have thus disconcerted me. And I believe this extreme simplicity was the first and only real fault of all those with which she is reproached.”

The illusions of etiquette were necessary to Louis XV. Louis XIV. might have dispensed with them. His throne, resplendent with the triumph of arms, literature, and the fine arts, was glorious enough without them. But he would be more than a great king, this mighty Louis! And so this demi-god, when age and calamity had taught him that he was but human, endeavored to conceal the ravages of time and of disease beneath the vain pomp of ceremony. He, Louis “the Magnificent,” the most accomplished of gentlemen, habitually exacted and received from the noblest of his realm adulations and menial services better becoming the palace of Ispahan than the ChÂteau of Versailles.

“All service to the king and queen, and, in a lower degree, to the Dauphin and Dauphiness, was regarded as an honor to the persons serving,—an honor to be keenly contended for by persons of the highest rank, no matter what delay, or inconvenience, or unutterable weariness of spirit was experienced by the individuals thus served.” Her Majesty the queen could not pass from one apartment to the other, without being followed by the lords and ladies of her retinue. The ceremonies of rising and dressing were accompanied by laws and rites as irrevocable as the decrees of the Medes and Persians.

The petites entrÉes and the grandes entrÉes had each their appropriate ceremonies. At the former, none but the physicians, reader, and secretary had the privilege of being present, whether her Majesty breakfasted in bed or out of it. At the grande toilette, the toilet table, which was always the most splendid piece of furniture in the apartment, was brought forward, and the queen surrendered herself to the hands of her hairdresser. Then followed the grande entrÉe; sofas were ranged in circles for the ladies of the household. The members of the royal family, the princes of the blood, and all the great officers, having the privilege, paid their court. Only grandes dames of the haute noblesse could occupy the tabouret in the royal presence. There were well-defined degrees of royal salutation,—a smile, a nod, a bending of the body, or leaning forward as if to rise, which was the highest form of acknowledgment. If her Majesty wished her gloves, or a glass of water, what she desired was brought by a page upon a gold salver, and the salver was presented in turn with solemn precision, according to the rank of the persons present, by the femme de chambre to the lady-in-waiting; but if the chief dame d’honneur, or a princess of the blood, or any member of the royal family entered at the time, the salver was returned to the femme de chambre, and by her offered again to the dame d’honneur, or to the princess, that she might have the privilege of presentation, till, at last, the article reached its destination.

One winter’s morning, Marie Antoinette, who was partially disrobed, was just about to put on her body linen. The lady-in-waiting held it ready unfolded for her. The dame d’honneur entered. Etiquette demanded that she should present the robe. Hastily slipping off her gloves, she took the garment, but at that moment a rustling was heard at the door. It was opened, and in came Madame la Duchesse d’Orleans. She must now be the bearer of the garment. But the laws of etiquette would not allow the dame d’honneur to hand the linen directly to Madame la Duchesse. It must pass down the various grades of rank to the lowest, and by her be presented to the highest. The linen was consequently passed back again from one to another, till it was finally placed in the hands of the duchess. She was just upon the point of conveying it to its proper destination, when suddenly the door opened, and the Comtesse de Provence entered. Again the linen passed from hand to hand until it reached Madame la Comtesse. She, perceiving the uncomfortable position of the queen, who sat shivering with cold, without stopping to remove her gloves, placed the linen upon her shoulders. Her Majesty, however, was quite unable to restrain her impatience, and exclaimed, “How disagreeable, how tiresome!” Such was the etiquette of the court of Versailles, and its inexorable rules governed alike every action in the lives of the king and queen, while the cavaliers and grandes dames observed with the greatest minuteness every punctilio of la grande politesse et la grande galanterie, that by so doing they might widen the gulf already existing between them and the new ideas of libertÉ and ÉgalitÉ which were beginning to pervade the realm.

“You love flowers; I give you a bouquet of them by offering you Le Petit Trianon entirely for your own private use. There you may reign sole mistress; for the Trianons, by right, belong to you, having always been the residence of the favorites of the kings of France.” For Louis XVI. this speech was a great effort of gallantry. It delighted Marie Antoinette. Here, then, was that for which she had so often longed; a place to which she could retire from the cares of state, and throw aside the pomps and punctilios of etiquette. She loved not the grand old gardens of Versailles, with their terraces and clipped yews. She would have an English garden of the day, with its thickets, waterfalls, and rustic bridges, such as the Prince de Ligny had made at Bel-oeil and the Marquis de Caraman at Roissy. Le grand simple is to take the place of le grand magnifique, and attired in white muslin, with a a plain straw hat, and followed by a single attendant, the queen roams through the gardens and groves of the Petit Trianon. Through the lanes and byways she chases the butterfly, picks flowers free as a peasant girl, and leaning over the fences, chats with the country maids as they milk the cows.

This freedom from restraint was etiquette at the court of Vienna; it was barbarism at the court of Versailles. The courtiers were amazed, the ceremony-stricken dowagers were shocked; and Paris, France, and Europe, were filled with stories of the waywardness and eccentricities of Marie Antoinette. And Mesdames, the king’s aunts, from their retreat at Bellevue, and Madame du Barry, from her domain of Luviciennes, lost no opportunity to gather reports unfavorable to the reputation of the queen, and spread them far and wide.

Still another surprise was in store for the nobility, for upon one occasion, at Trianon, when the queen seated herself, she requested in a lively, nonchalant manner the whole of the ladies, without distinction, who formed her intimate circle, to seat themselves also! What a blow to those who held so dear the privileges they derived from distinction of office and superiority of rank! La haute and la petite noblesse, in spite of their cherished distinctions, all are to sit down together! It is terrible! How many enemies are made, and allies added to the circles at Bellevue and Luviciennes, by that little act! Poor thoughtless Marie Antoinette!

But she proposed to reign at Trianon, not as queen of France, but simply as a lady of the manor, surrounded by her friends. And so she built the Swiss cottages, with their thatched roofs and rustic balconies; for it was her good pleasure that she, her king, and her friends, should be country people for the nonce. The queen’s cottage stood in the centre, and she was the fermiÈre. The king was the miller, and occupied the mill, with its joyous tick-tack. Monsieur le Comte de Provence, figured as schoolmaster, while the Comte d’Artois was in his element as gamekeeper. However, one may be sure that these simple country folk had no want of retainers to do their behests. In the dairy, where the cream was put in the blue and white porcelain of Trianon, on marble tables, diligent dairymaids skimmed and churned, and displayed fresh butter and eggs. Down by the lake were more masqueraders,—washerwomen this time; and Madame la Comtesse de Chalons beat the clothes with ebony beaters. In the stable, the sheep, unconscious of the honor to be done them, stood ready for clipping with golden shears. “The Duc de Guines might not assist at this, because he was so stout and so desperately bent on resorting to art to restrain his bulk, that his valet, in selecting his master’s garments every morning, was fain to ask, ‘Does my lord the Duke sit down to-day?’ But there were other helpers,—the big, jovial Duc de Coigny, and the rough-voiced, stiff-jointed Comte d’AdhÉmar, who could, at least, hoist sacks of corn up the mahogany steps to the granary.” Madame la FermiÈre distributed refreshments as she overlooked and encouraged her workers. And so the dainty work, which was the idlest pastime, went on to the accompaniment of gay jests and rippling laughter.

This descent from the throne, which was so congenial to the queen, was loudly condemned. In their first efforts for reform the people had no wish to detract from the hereditary splendor of the crown, or the “divinity,” which for so many centuries had hedged the kings of France. It was the king and queen who took the first steps. Winter comes, and with it a heavy fall of snow, and Marie Antoinette longs again for the merry sleigh rides of Vienna. “The old court sledges are brought forth—these being professedly economical times—for examination as to their possibly serviceable condition. A glance, however, suffices to show that disuse and neglect have put them completely hors de service.” So new ones of great magnificence are prepared, with “abundance of painting and gilding, trappings of embroidered crimson leather and velvet, with innumerable tinkling bells of gold or silver.” The horses, with nodding plumes and gorgeous caparisons, dazzled the eyes of the Parisians as they swept through the Champs ÉlysÉes, drawing their loads of lords and ladies enveloped in furs. The people frowned disapprovingly. It was a new amusement—an innovation; and angry, envious tongues declared that the “Autrichienne had taken advantage of the rigor of the season which had caused such widespread misery to introduce her Austrian pastimes into the capital of France.”

Marie Antoinette was imprudent, very imprudent; that was her only crime. But much allowance must be made for one, who, at the age of fifteen years, was made la premiere dame in a court the most gorgeous, and, after that of Catherine II. of Russia, the most dissolute, in Europe.

The people had already begun to compute the cost of equipages, palaces, crown jewels, and courtiers. And some few of the grands seigneurs, even, had begun to recognize the growing power of the vox populi; but Marie Antoinette did not yet know that public opinion was of any importance to her. “The slanderous tongues of Mesdames and the pious circle of Bellevue, the innuendoes of Luviciennes, and the insidious attacks of Monsieur le Comte de Provence,—all this she understood, and resented. It seemed a matter of course that it should be thus; but the right of the people to interfere with her amusements and to call in question their propriety, was something she could not understand.” Alas! poor queen; the dreadful significancy of that expression “THE PEOPLE,” and the vengeful acts to which an infuriated populace could be driven, were two terrible lessons she had yet to learn.

On the 22d of October, 1781, a child is born at Versailles. The king advances towards the queen’s couch; with a profound bow, and in a voice that falters with emotion, he exclaims, “Madame, you have fulfilled the dearest wishes of my heart and the anxious hopes of the nation; you are the mother of a Dauphin.” Nothing could exceed the public rejoicings; the triumph became well-nigh frantic. For it is recorded that their superabundant joy found expression in a sort of delirium,—people of all grades, and who had no previous acquaintance with each other, indulging in fraternal embraces in the street. The king himself went through a similar display of excessive joy. He laughed, he wept, the tears streaming down his fat face. He ran in and out of the antechamber, presenting his hand to kiss or to shake—or both, if they pleased—to all and each indiscriminately, from the solemn grandees, who were there to attest the birth, to the humblest lackey in attendance. “The royal infant, splendidly arrayed and with the grand cross of St. Louis on his breast, was placed in his satin and point-lace bassinet to receive the homage of the great officers of state. It is recorded that he replied in a most suitable manner to the many flattering speeches addressed to him; and this being the first opportunity he had had of exhibiting the power of his lungs, he availed himself of it freely.” Madame Royale had been born three years before; two other children were subsequently added,—the Duc de Normandie, and the Princess Sophie; but only Madame Royale and the Duc de Normandie were destined to survive to endure those woes which eventually overwhelmed the royal family.

Marie Antoinette was now in the flower of her beauty, on which French biographers love to dwell. Tilly said, “Her eyes recalled all the changes of the waves of the sea, and seemed made to reveal and reflect the blue of the sky.” Her fine throat and the lofty carriage of her head were remarkable; and she once said, laughingly, to Madame Le Brun, “If I were not a queen, should not I look insolent?”

“As one would have offered a chair to another woman, one would have offered a throne to her; and when she descended the marble staircase at Versailles, preceded by the officers who announced her approach, saluted in the great court by the beating of drums and the presentation of arms, all heads were uncovered respectfully, all hearts were filled with admiration of the woman, as well as with loyalty to the queen.”

Who shall tell the true story of the diamond necklace? It will probably never be told. The papers of the Cardinal de Rohan, which might have thrown much light upon the subject, were unfortunately destroyed. Little did Marie Antoinette think, as she entered Strasburg in triumph on her marriage journey, that she would encounter, in the magnificent robes of a cardinal’s coadjutor, a man who was to prove her deadly foe,—the insolent and profligate Prince Louis de Rohan. He had been ambassador at Vienna, where he had disgusted Maria Theresa by his profligacy and arrogance. She had procured his withdrawal. He had not been allowed to appear at the court of Versailles; and now for ten long years he had fretted and fumed under a sense of the royal displeasure. Boehmer, the crown jeweller, had, for a period of years, been collecting and assorting the stones which should form an incomparable necklace, in row upon row, pendants and tassels of lustrous diamonds, till the price had reached the royal pitch of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. This costly “collar” he offered to the king, who would willingly have bought it for the queen had she desired it; but Marie Antoinette replied, that if the money were to be spent, it had better be used in fitting a frigate for the royal navy. His Most Christian Majesty concurred exactly in this sentiment, and, returning the necklace to Boehmer with the words, “We have more need of ships than of diamonds,” thought no more about the matter. Not so did the Cardinal de Rohan, and the intrigante Madame de Lamotte. They had made up their minds to possess the three hundred and fifty thousand dollars represented by the glittering gems. So they laid their clever heads together, and, by forging notes of the queen and sundry other little plots which were wonderfully successful, obtained the necklace, leaving Boehmer to look to the queen for payment. Of course payment was not forthcoming, and in his distress the jeweller related the affair to Madame Campan, telling her he feared he had been duped. Madame Campan proceeded at once to Versailles, and laid the matter before the queen. It was the 15th of August, 1784, Assumption day, and Prince Louis de Rohan, in full pontificals, and wearing the Grand Cross of St. Louis, arrived at Versailles to perform mass in the royal chapel; but he had scarcely entered the Œil de Boeuf, when he was summoned to the cabinet of the king. As he entered, Louis XVI. turned upon him suddenly, inquiring, “You have purchased diamonds of Boehmer?” “Yes, sire,” was the trembling reply. “What have you done with them?” the king added. “I thought,” replied the cardinal, “that they had been delivered to the queen.” “Who commissioned you to make this purchase?” “The Comtesse de Lamotte,” was the reply; “she handed me a letter from her Majesty, requesting me to obtain the necklace for her. Indeed, I thought I was obeying her Majesty’s wishes by taking this business upon myself.”

“How could you imagine, sir,” indignantly interrupted Marie Antoinette, “that I should have selected you for such a purpose, when I have not addressed you for eight years, and how could you suppose that I should have acted through the mediation of such a character as Madame la Comtesse de Lamotte?”

The cardinal was in the most violent agitation; he drew from his pocket a letter, directed to the Comtesse de Lamotte, and signed with the queen’s name. Her Majesty glanced at it, and instantly pronounced it a forgery, and the king added, “How could you, a prince of the church and grand almoner of my household, not have detected it? This letter is signed Marie Antoinette de France. Queens sign their names short; it is not even the queen’s handwriting.” Then drawing a letter from his pocket, and handing it to De Rohan, he said, “Are you the author of that letter?”

The cardinal turned pale, and, leaning upon a table, appeared as though he would fall to the floor.

“I have no wish, Monsieur le Cardinal,” the king added, “to find you guilty; explain to me this enigma; account for all these manoeuvres with Boehmer. Where did you obtain these securities and these promissory notes, signed in the queen’s name?”

The cardinal was trembling in every nerve: “Sire, I am too much agitated now to answer your Majesty; give me a little time to collect my thoughts.” “Go into my cabinet,” replied the king; “you will there find papers, pens, and ink. At your leisure, write what you desire to to say to me.”

But the written statements of M. de Rohan were as unsatisfactory as his verbal ones. In half an hour he returned with a paper covered with blottings, alterations, and erasures. Louis’ anger was aroused, and, throwing open the folding doors, he cried out in imperious tones,—very unusual for him,—which resounded through the Œil de Boeuf and grande galerie: “Arrest the Cardinal de Rohan!” The Baron de Bretuil approached through the crowd of astonished courtiers, and, summoning the officer on guard, he indicated the cardinal with the words, “De par le roi, Monseigneur, you are arrested; at your risk, officer.” But, before the cardinal could be removed, he had spoken three words in German to one of his officials, and given him a slip of paper. The horse on which the man rode post haste to the cardinal’s palace in Paris, fell dead in the courtyard; but the red portfolio, containing the supposed autographs of the queen’s letters, lay in ashes before it could be sealed up in the name of justice and of the king. The cardinal was taken to the Bastile. More arrests followed, including that of the Comtesse de Lamotte. For nine months the trial lasted before the Council of the Grand Chambre. The Pope protested against a prince of the church being made accountable for his acts to any but the highest ecclesiastical tribunal (an assembly of the cardinals at Rome); while the haute noblesse looked on the cause of the Prince de Rohan as their own, considering the rights and privileges of their rank intrenched upon, when a near relative of the princes of the blood was put on his trial before the Council of the Grand Chambre. So the cardinal was eventually acquitted, and Madame de Lamotte alone was severely punished by flogging and branding on both shoulders.

Their Majesties were chagrined at the acquittal of M. de Rohan and shocked at the punishment of the countess. The former was an insult to the king, the latter to the queen; for Madame de Lamotte boasted a descent from the House of Valois and royal blood within her veins. Such was the affair of the Diamond Necklace, which, though apparently trivial in itself, involved consequences of the most momentous importance.

“Mind that miserable affair of the necklace,” said Talleyrand; “I should be in nowise surprised if it should overturn the French monarchy.”

Whoever were the guilty ones, Marie Antoinette was entirely innocent. She, however, experienced all the ignominy she could have encountered had she been involved in the deepest guilt, and the affair furnished a fine theme for the malevolence of Bellevue and Luviciennes.

Respect for royalty was on the wane. The king, of course, had shared with the queen in the disrespect which Mesdames, his aunts, were desirous should rest on her alone; and the insulting conduct towards him of his brothers, Monsieur le Comte de Provence and the libertine, the Comte d’Artois, who, according to an eye-witness, “on occasions of great state or solemnity, will pass before the king twenty times, push him aside, tread on his feet, and this, apparently, without any thought of apology or excuse,” together with the affair of the Diamond Necklace, were well calculated to debase him further in the eyes of his courtiers and in public opinion. Nowhere was this more evident than when the court assembled in the Grand Gallery of Versailles, where once the Grand Monarque held his rÉunions called “Appartements.” At such times, “a stranger would have found it difficult to recognize the king by any particular attention or any deference paid to him.” What, then, must have been the agonized sensations of the perturbed spirit of the superb Louis Quatorze, if ever, to look on his degenerate posterity, he revisited the scene of his former greatness and grandeur, where once he sat enthroned like Jupiter among the inferior gods, and where all around him were but too willing to fall down in the dust at his royal feet, had it been his “bon plaisir” that they should do so! Ah, those were palmy days for church and state!

Brightly dawned the 5th of May, 1789, and Versailles, with its tapestries, its garlands, and its throngs of gayly dressed visitors, wore a festive, smiling air. To many it was indeed a joyous day,—a day of hope; for the king had granted the States General. Such an assemblage France had not witnessed for more than a hundred and fifty years. No wonder, then, it was looked forward to as the dawn of national liberty. But as the procession winds its way along the vast streets of Versailles, the people see, with pain, how marked are the distinctions of rank and costume which divide their representatives from the nobles and the clergy. To the episcopal purple, the croziers, and grand mantles of the dignitaries of the church succeed the long black robes of the “inferior clergy.” Then in all the splendor of velvet and cloth of gold, lace ruffles and cravats, floating plumes and mantles of state, come the haute noblesse. Then follow the modest Third Estate of the realm; the absence of finery in their humble garb is atoned for in the eyes of the populace who receive them with hearty cheers, which they have refused the nobles who have preceded them. One only is generally known. It is the “plebian count” de Mirabeau. The cortÈge of the princes, who are surrounded by courtiers, is allowed to pass in silence. Louis XVI. appears; as usual, he moves without dignity, simple, in spite of his Cross of St. Louis and his cordon bleu. Marie Antoinette moves with her accustomed majesty, but her face wears an anxious look. Her lips are closely pressed, as if in a vain effort to dissemble her trouble, for not only is her Dauphin, whose birth had been so proudly hailed, at the point of death, but she is this day greeted, not with the old loyal shouts of “Vive la reine!” but with new insulting cries of “Vive d’Orleans!” Monsieur le Comte de Provence is grave and pensive, and apparently impressed with the importance of the occasion. He walks with difficulty, owing to his extreme corpulency. The Comte d’Artois shows evident signs of ennui and bad temper, and casts disdainful glances to the right and left upon the crowd that lines the streets, and so, although they little think it, those high-born men and women march onward to their fate. “For although no really hostile sentiments can be said to have then animated that vast throng, nevertheless, alike among those who formed the procession and those who were only its spectators, there was a lurking latent feeling that something strange, something hitherto unknown, coming from the past and pressing on to the future, was moving onwards towards France.”

It was the revolution to be decreed by the ÉtÂts GÉnÉraux. On the 23d of June, the king held a sÉance royale at Versailles. It was attended with all the appareil and state of the “bed of justice” of the old rÉgime. The noblesse had determined, if possible, to crush the Third Estate; but the king hardly knew how to utter the arrogant and defiant words which had been put into his mouth. It was the lamb attempting to imitate the roar of the lion. “Je veux, j’ordonne, je commande” was the burden of the king’s speech, which was read by the keeper of the seals, upon his knees. One may imagine how it was received by the Tiers État.

The address closed with the following words: “I command you, gentlemen, immediately to disperse, and to repair to-morrow morning to the chambers appropriate to your order.”

The king and his attendant court left the hall. The noblesse and the clergy followed him. Exultation beamed upon their faces, for they thought that the Tiers État was now effectually crushed. The Commons remained in their seats. The crisis had arrived. There was now no alternative but resistance or submission, rebellion or servitude. The Marquis de BrÉzÉ, grand master of ceremonies, perceiving that the assembly did not retire, advanced to the centre of the hall, and in a loud, authoritative voice,—a voice at whose command nearly fifty thousand troops were ready to march,—demanded, “Did you hear the command of the king?”

“Yes, sir,” responded Mirabeau, with a glaring eye and a thunder tone; “we have heard the king’s command, and you who have neither seat nor voice in this house are not the one to remind us of his speech. Go, tell those who sent you, that we are here by the power of the people, and that nothing shall drive us hence but the power of the bayonet.”

And the grand master of ceremonies went out backwards from the presence of the orator of the people, as it was etiquette to go from the presence of the king.

The noblesse, in the meantime, were in exultation. They deemed the popular movement effectually crushed, and hastened with their congratulations to the queen. Marie Antoinette was much elated, and presenting to them the Dauphin, she exclaimed, “I intrust him to the nobility.”

The Marquis de BrÉzÉ now entered the council-chamber, to inform the king that the deputies still continued their sitting, and asked for orders. The king walked impatiently once or twice up and down the floor, and then replied hastily, “Very well! leave them alone.” Louis XIV. would have sent every man of them to the Bastile or the scaffold; but the days of Louis XIV. were no more. It was the 14th of July, 1789. All Paris was in confusion. Mobs ransacked the city in pursuit of arms. Every sword, pistol, and musket from private residences were brought forward. The royal arsenal, containing mainly curiosities and suits of ancient armor, was sacked, and while all the costly objects of interest were left untouched, every available weapon was taken away. But why all this turmoil, terror, and excitement? Out at Versailles was Marshal Broglie, proud and self-confident, in conference with the court, and having at his command fifty thousand troops abundantly armed and equipped, all of whom could in a few hours be concentrated in the streets of Paris. Upon the Champ de Mars, Benseval had assembled his force of several thousand Swiss and German troops, cavalry and artillery, and at any moment this combined force might be expected to pour, in the king’s name, upon his “good city of Paris,” and chastise his rebellious subjects with terrible severity; while the enormous fortress of the Bastile, with its walls forty feet thick at the base and fifteen at the top, rising with its gloomy towers one hundred and twenty feet in the air, with its cannon charged with grapeshot, already run out at every embrasure, commanded the city; while that remained in the hands of the enemy there was no safety. Could the Bastile be taken? Preposterous! It was as unassailable as the rock of Gibraltar. The mob surged around the Hotel de Ville demanding arms and the immediate establishment of a citizen’s guard. But arms were not to be had. It was well known that there were large stores of them somewhere in the city, but no one knew where to find them. What is this? A rumor runs through the crowd: “There are arms at the Hotel des Invalides; muskets, thirty thousand and more;” and now the discordant cries resolve into one long and steadfast shout, “Les Invalides! Les Invalides!” and in the bright sunshine of this July morning, upon the esplanade of the Invalides, thirty thousand men stand grim and menacing. But there is no resistance. The gates are thrown open and the mob rush in. They find in the armory thirty thousand muskets and six pieces of cannon; and now, as by common instinct, resounds the cry, “La Bastile! La Bastile!” The crowds across the Seine take up the shout, while from the Champs ÉlysÉes, the Tuileries Gardens, and the Palais Royal, comes back, as it were, the echo, indistinct at first, but in ever-increasing volume, “La Bastile! La Bastile!” as one hundred thousand men, shouting, swearing, and brandishing their pikes and guns, rush forward, a living torrent, to assail with these feeble means, that fortress par excellence of France,—a fortress which the army of Monsieur le Prince, le grand CondÉ, had besieged in vain for three and twenty days.

Enormous, massive, blackened with age, the gloomy emblem of royal prerogative, exciting by its mysterious power and menace the terror and execration of every one who passed beneath its shadow; its eight great towers darkening the air in gloomy grandeur, the world-renowned prison of the Bastile, the fortress par excellence, loomed lofty at the entrance of Paris, in the very heart of the Faubourg St. Antoine.

De Launey, the governor, from the summit of his towers had, for many hours, heard the roar of the insurgent city; and now, as he saw the black mass of countless thousands approaching, he turned pale and trembled. M. Thuriot was sent by the electors of the Hotel de Ville to summon the Bastile to surrender. The drawbridge was lowered and he was admitted. De Launey received him at the head of his staff. “I summon you,” said Thuriot, “in the name of the people.” But De Launey, who was every moment expecting the arrival of troops from Versailles, refused to surrender the fortress, but added that he would not fire upon the people if they did not fire upon him. Thuriot, perceiving the cannon, and knowing that the governor had received an order from the Hotel de Ville to dismount them, exclaimed:—

“You have not had the cannon dismounted.”

“I have had them drawn in; that is all.”

“You will not have them dismounted, then?”

“No! the king’s cannon are here by the king’s order, sir; they can only be dismounted by an order from the king.”

“Monsieur De Launey,” said Thuriot, “the real king, whom I counsel you to obey, is yonder”; and he showed to the governor the vast crowd filling the square before the fortress, and whose weapons glittered in the sunshine.

“Sir,” replied De Launey haughtily, “you may, perhaps acknowledge two kings; but I, the governor of the Bastile,—I know but one, and he is Louis XVI. who has affixed his name to a commission by virtue of which I command here both men and things”; and, stamping his foot, he added angrily: “In the name of the king, sir, leave this place at once.” Thuriot withdrew, but he had hardly emerged from the massive portals and crossed the drawbridge of the moat, which was immediately raised behind him, ere the people commenced the attack. Uproar and confusion ensued. One hundred thousand men, filling all the streets and alleys, all the windows and house-tops of the adjacent buildings, opened upon the Bastile an incessant fire, harmlessly flattening their bullets against the massive stone walls. Priests, nobles, wealthy citizens, ragged and emaciate mendicants, men, women, boys, and girls, were mingled in the assault, pressing side by side; apparently the whole of Paris, with one united will, combined against the great bulwark of tyranny. For five hours the attack continued; at five in the afternoon, the French soldiers raised a flag of truce upon the towers. This movement plunged De Launey into despair. One hundred thousand men were beleaguering his fortress. The troops from Versailles had not arrived, and three-fourths of his garrison had already abandoned him, and gone over to his assailants. Death was his inevitable doom. Seizing a match he rushed toward the magazine, determined to blow up the citadel. There were one hundred and thirty-five barrels of gunpowder in the vaults. Two subaltern officers crossed their bayonets before him, and the lives of one hundred thousand people were saved. Gradually the flag of truce was seen through the smoke; the firing ceased, and the cry resounded through the crowd, and was echoed along the streets of Paris, “La Bastile surrenders!” “The fortress which Louis XIV. and Turenne had pronounced impregnable, surrendered not to the arms of its assailants, for they had produced no impression upon it; it was conquered by the public opinion which pervaded Paris, and which vanquished its garrison.” While these scenes were transpiring at Paris, Versailles was in excitement. Courier after courier arrived, breathless, announcing that the Bastile was taken, that the troops in Paris refused to fire upon the crowd, that De Launey was slain, and that the cavalry of Lambese were flying before the people.

No eye was closed at Versailles that night, unless, perchance, it was that of the king, Louis XVI.; for all felt the counter-shock of that terrible concussion with which Paris was still trembling. The French guards, the bodyguards, and the Swiss, drawn up in platoons and grouped near the openings of all the principal streets, were conversing among themselves, or with those of the citizens whose fidelity to the monarchy inspired them with confidence; for Versailles has at all times been a royalist city. Religious respect for the monarchy and for the monarch was ingrafted in the hearts of its inhabitants as if it were a quality of its soil. Having always lived near kings, fostered by their bounty, beneath the shade of their wonders, having always inhaled the intoxicating perfume of the fleur-de-lys, and seen the brilliant gold of the garments, and the smiles upon the august lips of royalty, the inhabitants of Versailles, for whom kings had built a city of marble and porphyry, felt almost kings themselves; and, even at the present day,—even now, when the splendid palace of Louis Quatorze stands silent in its grandeur; when no longer the marble court is thronged with gorgeous equipages, and

when the vast gardens where once Louis, the Grand Monarque, surrounded by his train of lords and ladies, moved majestic, “monarch of all he surveyed and of all who surveyed him,” are silent and deserted;—even now, Versailles must either belie its origin, or, considering itself as a fragment of the fallen monarchy, and no longer feeling the pride of power and wealth, must at least retain the poetical associations of regret and the sovereign charms of melancholy. By his answer to the Marquis de BrÉzÉ, Mirabeau had struck the very face of royalty.

By the taking of the Bastile, the people had struck it to the heart, paralyzed its nerves of action, and given it a death-blow. “But the monarch of France, from his palace at Versailles, heard the thunders of the distant cannonade, and yet inscribed upon his puerile journal, ‘Nothing!’”

“Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad;” and the adage applies fitly to the French court during the six months preceding the overthrow. Never had the nobles been so haughty and domineering. Never had they looked upon the people with such supreme contempt. Their arrogance passed all bounds. Even Marie Antoinette exclaimed in terror, “This noblesse will ruin us!”

The Flanders regiment had been stationed at Versailles; and on the 1st of October a banquet was given to the officers at the palace. Wine was liberally supplied from the royal cellars, and was so liberally partaken of that the banquet became a scene of riot and disorder. The revolutionary movement was cursed intensely, and the national cockade trampled under foot. The tidings of this fÊte spread rapidly through Paris, exciting great indignation. The court was feasting; the people starving. Versailles was filled with rejoicing; Paris with mourning.

The morning of the 5th of October dawns dark, cold, and dreary. The people of Paris are starving. About a baker’s shop is a crowd of women and children, crying for bread. Bread is not to be had. “À Versailles, bonnes femmes!” cries a man passing by. “À Versailles! there is bread enough there, and to spare. À Versailles! the land of plenty, feasting, and revelry! À Versailles!” A young girl seizes a drum, and cries aloud, “Bread! bread!”

Soon a mob is collected; three or four hundred women presently increased to as many thousands. They follow their leader, echoing her cry, “Bread! bread!” On to the HÔtel de Ville they rush. But there is no bread there; and their cry is now, “À Versailles! À Versailles!” “We will give the men,” they exclaim, “a lesson in courage. If they cannot support and protect us, we will do it for ourselves.”

And so along beside the Tuileries, and through the Elysian Fields, rushes on this mighty mass, headlong towards Versailles. Couriers have been sent forward to warn the king and queen of the approaching peril. His Majesty, King Louis XVI., for want of something better to do, has gone to chase hares at Meudon. He is sent for, post haste, and returns to Versailles. “About seven hundred gentlemen were then in the palace, all in full dress, chapeau sous le bras, and armed only with dress swords. Some few had found pistols; and in that unmilitary fashion they declared themselves determined to defend the chÂteau if attacked.”

Five minutes after the king’s return, the women arrived, singing, “Vive Henri IV.!” and more like furies than suppliants. All the shops were instantly closed; drums beat to arms, the tocsin sounded, and the troops were drawn up on the Place d’Armes. Entrance to the courts of the palace was refused; but finally the women sent a deputation of fifteen to the king. He received them very graciously, and promised what they desired, so that they came out of the palace shouting, “Vive le roi!” and praising the goodness of the king to such an extent that their fellow-Amazons, in rage, would have strung them to the nearest lamp-posts had not the soldiers interfered.

At nine o’clock, news was brought that General de Lafayette, at the head of the National Guards and the Gardes FranÇaise, and followed by a crowd of the Parisian people, was on his way to Versailles. M. de Saint-Priest immediately sought the king, and urged him to leave the palace before their arrival. “The road is open,” he said; “a picket of the household troops is at the gate of the Orangery, and your Majesty, on horseback, at the head of an escort, can freely pass whithersoever you wish.”

Poor Louis! He would wait the course of events; not from courage to face whatever might happen, but from want of resolution to depart. Rightly had the queen called him “le pauvre homme.” In this hour of menacing danger she found no protector in her poor, miserably weak husband and king. But she needed none; for “she alone, among all women and all men, wore a face of courage, of lofty calmness and resolve this day. She alone saw clearly what she meant to do; and Theresa’s daughter dares do what she means, were all France threatening her: abide where her children are, where her husband is.”

Near midnight Lafayette arrived at the chÂteau, pale as death, wet through, and splashed with mud. He had ridden hard and fast in advance of his troops, that he might check any alarm felt by the royal family at the sudden incursion of the mixed multitudes of National Guards, Gardes FranÇaise, and volunteers of all sorts, whom he had unwillingly been made to lead. Assuming the guarding of the chÂteau, he prevailed upon the queen and her ladies to retire to their apartments and seek sleep without fear.

Gradually quiet was restored, and tired, tempest-tossed Versailles lay down to rest. Alas, for peaceful dreams! All know the story of that dreadful night. How the mob, prowling round the palace, found a door unguarded; how they rushed in, and, pressing blindly on, came to the queen’s door; how they fought; how the good guard who defended it poured out their life-blood upon the marble floor; how the queen had barely time to escape through the Œil de Boeuf, when the howling mob rushed in, and stabbed her bed, again and again, with bloody pikes and swords; and how at last the guards of Lafayette arrived and drove them from the palace. It was a night of horror. The queen was saved; but better for Marie Antoinette would it have been, if in that short agony she could have died. It was not to be. A mysterious Providence reserved her, after years of unutterable suffering, for a death more awful.

The morning of the 6th was now dawning, and the whole multitude, swarming around the palace, demanded as with one voice that the king should go to Paris. As he could not very well do otherwise, the king decided to comply. Loud shouts now rose of “Vive le roi!” But threatening voices were raised against the queen; “À bas l’Autrichienne!” “À bas l’Autrichienne!” they cried.

“Madame,” said Lafayette, “the king goes to Paris; what will you do?”

“Accompany the king,” replied Marie Antoinette.

“Come with me, then,” rejoined the general. He led the queen upon the balcony, from whence she looked upon the multitude, agitated like the ocean in a storm. Proudly she stood, a true daughter of her imperial mother, Maria Theresa, and calmly she gazed upon the mighty throng. The murmurs of the crowd were hushed. At the sight of this fearless woman standing thus exposed to all their fury, those who would have torn in pieces the daughter of the CÆsars were compelled to render homage. Lafayette, bending, took her hand and kissed it, while the marble court resounded with the shouts of “Vive la reine!”

A little after noon the royal family entered their carriage, and slowly the melancholy cortÈge set out for Paris.

As they passed through the gates of Versailles, the queen glanced backward for a moment upon that splendid palace, the scene of so much happiness and grandeur, which she was to see no more. And the carriage rolled on, bearing its occupants to a dungeon and the scaffold. Adieu to Versailles! Royalty was vanquished; and Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette at the Tuileries were but the captive slaves of their subjects.

Months rolled by, months of insult and humiliation, until even the king was aroused, and seriously contemplated flight; that, escaping from the scenes of violence and danger to which he was exposed in Paris, he might draw around him his loyal subjects upon the frontiers of France, and there endeavor amicably to adjust the difficulties which desolated the kingdom.

Gabriel HonorÉ de Mirabeau, the son of thunder, was the mightiest and most terrible product of the Revolution. He was the ugliest man and the grandest orator in chaotic France. He swayed the multitude; and it seemed, as he himself believed, that if he would, he, and he only, might yet save the monarchy.

It was at St. Cloud that Marie Antoinette held her famous interview with Mirabeau. As she felt the spell of his genius, so he rendered homage to her majesty. The interview lasted an hour, and Mirabeau closed it with the words: “Madame, when the empress, your mother, admitted one of her subjects to the honor of her presence, she did not take leave of him without allowing him to kiss her hand.” Marie Antoinette held out her hand. “Madame,” exclaimed Mirabeau, “the monarchy is saved!” But opportunity was not given him to keep or break his pledge. Under the sweet April sunshine of 1791, Mirabeau breathed his last. His death paralyzed the hopes of the king, and he now resolved to spare no endeavors to secure his escape; and so in the darkness of midnight, on the 20th of June, 1791, the king, the queen, Madame Elizabeth, the two royal children, and Madame Tourzel, their governess, escaped silently from the palace of Tuileries, and entering their carriages, which stood ready, drove rapidly away. Alas for fond hopes! Through the king’s want of caution, the royal family were recognized at Varennes, arrested, and brought back to Paris. Ah, the humiliations of that long and weary, crowd-encompassed, dust-enveloped journey back to Paris! Threats, imprecations, and torrents of abuse were hurled upon the royal family from all sides. More than this they could not do, for a forest of glittering bayonets surrounded the royal carriage. It was by the glaring light of the torches that the sorrowful cortÈge entered Paris, and under a canopy of glistening steel the royal family ascended once more the marble staircase of the Tuileries Palace.

A year has rolled away. The 20th of June, 1792, has passed,—that day of horrors on which the mob, with shouts of “Vive la nation!” broke into and rushed through the palace of the Tuileries; that day on which the queen was exposed for hours to insults, abuses, and derisive jests; that day on which the king was made to place upon his royal brow the red cap of the Jacobins, while the mob, exulting in their victory, cried loudly: “Vive le roi!” Poor Louis! As he entered the apartment of the queen, after the rabble had been cleared from the palace, he saw, in the reflection of a mirror, the bonnet rouge upon his head, and flinging it upon the ground, he turned to the queen, exclaiming, with a burst of tears: “Ah! madame, it was not to see me thus insulted that I brought you from Vienna.”

How different were the days when the boy and girl met on that bright spring morning at CompiÈgne, and hunted, danced, quarrelled, and kissed again, in the old, luxurious times at Versailles and Marly, Fontainebleau and Choisy-le-Roi!

The 10th of August has arrived. The streets are swarming with a frenzied multitude. All Paris is marching toward the Tuileries, for the mob have declared that unless the dethronement of the king is procured, they will sack the palace. The peal of bells, the clangor of drums, the rumbling of artillery wheels, and the shouts of the advancing bands fill the air.

From every direction, east, west, north and south, the portentous booming of the tocsin is heard, and the infuriated insurgents, in numbers which cannot be counted, through all the streets and avenues are pouring toward the palace.

The spectacle aroused the energies of Marie Antoinette, and as she entered the apartment where her “pauvre homme” stood bewildered and submissive to his lot, she approached a grenadier, and drawing a pistol from his belt, presented it to the king, exclaiming, “Now, sire, now is the time to show yourself a king!”

But there was nothing imperial in the nature of Louis XVI. With a passive meekness, which it is difficult to understand, he took the pistol and quietly handed it back to the grenadier.

It was five o’clock of one of the most brilliant of summer mornings as the king, followed by the queen, and accompanied by six staff officers, descended the marble stairs and entered the courtyard to review the troops and ascertain the spirit with which they were animated. The music of martial bands greeted him, the polished weapons of the soldiers glittered in the sun as they presented arms, and a few voices rather languidly shouted: “Vive le roi!” Others, however, shouted defiantly: “Vive la nation!” thus showing that many of those who were marshalled for his defence were ready to unite with his assailants. Had the king been a spirited man, in uniform, mounted on horseback, he would have roused their enthusiasm, for the French have always loved the vrai chevalier. But fat, awkward Louis was well calculated to excite no other emotion than that of compassion blended with contempt.

“The appearance of the queen in this terrible hour riveted every eye, and excited even the enthusiasm of her foes. Her flushed cheek, dilated nostril, compressed lip, and flashing eye invested her with an imperial beauty almost more than human. Her head was erect, her carriage proud, her step dignified, and she looked around her upon applauding friends and assailing foes with a majesty of courage which touched every heart. Even the most ardent patriots forgot, for the moment, their devotion to liberty, in the enthusiasm excited by the heroism of the queen.”

On entering the palace Marie Antoinette exclaimed in despair, “All is lost! The king has shown no energy. A review like this has done us more harm than good.”

The king had now passed into the garden to ascertain the disposition of the troops stationed there. With his small retinue he traversed the whole length of the line. Some of the battalions received him with applause, others were silent, while here and there voices, in continually increasing numbers, cried, “À bas le veto! À bas le tyran!” As the king turned to retrace his steps, menaces and insults were multiplied. Some of the gunners even left their places and thrust their fists in his face, assailing him with the most brutal abuse. The clamor penetrated to the interior of the palace, and the queen, turning pale as death, sank into a chair, exclaiming, “Great God! they are hooting the king. We are all lost.” The king returned to the palace, pale, exhausted, perspiring at every pore, and overwhelmed with shame and confusion. He retired to his cabinet. M. Roederer, chief magistrate of the Department of the Seine, entered immediately.

“Sire,” said he, “you have not a moment to lose. Neither the number nor the disposition of the men here assembled can guarantee your life nor the lives of your family. There is no safety for you but in the National Assembly.” Such a refuge to the high-spirited queen was more dreadful than death. It was draining the cup of humiliation to the dregs.

“Go to the Assembly!” exclaimed Marie Antoinette; “never! never will I take refuge there. Rather than submit to such infamy, I would prefer to be nailed to the walls of the palace.”

“It is there only,” replied M. Roederer, “that the royal family can be in safety, and it is necessary to escape immediately. In another quarter of an hour, perhaps, I shall not be able to command a retreat.”

“What!” rejoined the queen, “have we then no defenders? Are we alone?”

“Yes, madam,” M. Roederer replied, “we are alone. The troops in the garden and in the court are fraternizing with your assailants, and turning their guns against the palace. All Paris is on the march. Action is useless; resistance impossible.”

A gentleman present, who had been active in promoting reform, ventured to add his voice in favor of an immediate retreat to the Assembly. The queen turned upon him sternly, exclaiming: “Silence, sir, silence! It becomes you to be silent here. When the mischief is done, those who did it should not pretend to wish to remedy it.”

M. Roederer resumed, saying: “Madam, you endanger the lives of your husband and your children. Think of the responsibility which you take upon yourself!” The queen cast a glance upon her daughter, and a mother’s fears prevailed. The crimson blood mounted to her temples. Rising from her seat, she said proudly, “Let us go.”

A guard of soldiers was instantly called in, and the royal family descended the stairs, entered the garden, and crossed it unopposed. The leaves of autumn strewed the paths, and the young Dauphin kicked them before him as he walked along. It is characteristic of the weak mental qualities of the king, that in such an hour he should have remarked, “There are a great many leaves. They fall early this year.” Some writers have found in this expression the evidence of a deep and solemn mind reflecting upon the calamities which had fallen upon France. Reflections! What had Louis XVI. to do with reflections at a time like this? His affairs demanded actions, not reflections.

At the hall of the Assembly they found an immense crowd blocking up the entrance. “They shall not enter here,” was the cry; “they shall no longer deceive the nation. They are the cause of all our misfortunes. À bas le veto! À bas l’Autrichienne! Abdication ou mort!” But the soldiers forced their way through, and the royal family entered the Assembly. The king approached the president. “I have come hither,” he said, “to prevent a great crime. I thought I could not be safer than with you.”

“You may rely, sire,” the president replied, “on the firmness of the Assembly.”

But few of the excited thousands who crowded all the approaches to the Tuileries were conscious that the royal family had escaped from the palace. The clamor rapidly increased to a scene of terrific uproar. The volleys of musketry, the deep booming of artillery, the cries of fury, and the shrieks of the wounded and dying filled the air.

The hall of the Assembly was already crowded to suffocation, and the deputies stood powerless and appalled, for all now felt that a storm was beating against the throne which no human power could allay. Suddenly the king beckoned to an attendant, and spoke a few words to him in an undertone. The man started to leave the hall, but the terror-stricken deputies crowded around him.

“What has the king said?” they anxiously inquired; “what new order has he given? Quick! quick! speak out!”

“Why! my friends,” replied the messenger, laughing, “do you not know that you are dealing with a Bourbon? The king has simply ordered his dinner.”

And so in the midst of the National Assembly, while outside a raging, howling mob was storming his palace of the Tuileries, and his good Swiss guard were pouring out their life-blood upon the marble stairs, and while the throne of his ancestors hung tottering in the balance, King Louis munched his bread and drank his wine. Thus low had fallen the descendant of the Grand Monarque.

The king munched on; the mob took and sacked the palace; thousands lay dead in the Place du Carrousel, around the Tuileries, and in the Champs ÉlysÉes. The throne was demolished, and the last vestiges of the old court rÉgime and the monarchy of the superb Louis Quatorze disappeared forever.

And now followed those long months of imprisonment in the Temple,—months of unutterable suffering, while the king was on trial for his life. And then that sorrowful night of the 20th of January, when for the last time the king was permitted to behold his family. Ah! what prayers, what groans, what tears were heard and seen that night. Then came that awful morning of the 21st of January, 1793, and while the king was suffering upon the guillotine, the queen, with Madame Elizabeth and the children, remained in their prison, in the endurance of anguish as severe as could be laid on human hearts. As the deep booming of the artillery announced that the fatal axe had fallen, poor Marie Antoinette swooned dead away.

But haste we on to the last act of the dreadful tragedy.

On the 2d of August, 1793, Marie Antoinette Jeanne JosÈphe de Lorraine, Queen of France and Navarre and Archduchess of Austria, the once brilliant sovereign of Versailles, now a prisoner and a widow, torn from her children and treated like a common felon, was removed from the prison of the Temple to that of the Conciergerie, there to linger until her release from human barbarity on the 16th of October. In one of the vast halls of this edifice, when occupied by the Parliament, Louis XIV. had entered during a sitting, booted and spurred, and declared that he was the state. “It was a strange fate that this building, once the dwelling-place of the sovereigns of the House of Capet, when holding their state in the capital, should see a captive within its walls, the widow of their descendant,—the ‘widow Capet,’ as the Jacobins described her in their blood-stained edicts.” The damp, foul dungeons were the most gloomy tombs imagination can conceive. Down the dripping and slimy steps the queen was led by the light of a tallow candle, until, through a labyrinth of corridors, she approached her iron door. The rusty hinges grated as the door was opened, and entering, she struck her forehead against the low beam.

“Did you hurt yourself?” inquired the gendarme.

“No, nothing can further harm me.” Poor Marie Antoinette!

“The candle gave just light enough to reveal the horrors of her cell. The floor was covered with mud, and streams of water trickled down the stone walls. A miserable pallet, with a dirty covering of coarse and tattered cloth, a small pine table, and a chair, constituted the only furniture.” So deep was the fall from the salons of Versailles!

Here for two long, weary months the poor queen lingered; her misery being slightly alleviated by the kind-heartedness of Madame Richard, the wife of the jailer, and Rosalie LamorliÈre, an inmate of the prison, who did all the rigorous rules allowed them to mitigate her woes. “The night of her arrival at the Conciergerie the queen had not so much as a change of linen. For days she begged to be allowed some, but it was not till the tenth day that her prayer was granted, when Michonis went to the Temple and brought back with him a parcel of linen and some clothes; among others, the white gown which the queen wore on the day of her execution. Little by little everything was taken from the queen. The souvenirs of her happy past, to which she clung, were taken from her; first her watch, a gift of her mother’s, and which had never left her since she left Vienna,—the watch which had counted the happy hours of her youth and womanhood was taken from her. Bitterly she wept at having to part with it, as if it had been a friend. There was not a moment that the queen could be out of sight of her gens d’armes; a little screen, four feet high, was the only separation between the space in which she changed her dress and those men.” Imagine the misery of this state for a woman so delicately nurtured, so luxuriously brought up, having at her command a household of over four hundred persons, and accustomed to the refinements of the most polished court in Europe.

In the old days of splendor at Versailles, when her attendants were unable to find some article of dress or toilet, she had exclaimed pettishly: “How terrible it is not to be able to find what one wants!” But now, in these last days of her life, when surrounded by every aggravation that could wound a proud spirit, treated like the worst of offenders, insulted as mother, wife, queen, and woman, she never uttered one word that could be construed into petulance, or gave one angry look.

“With threads taken from her bedding, she worked a kind of garter, and not being allowed any knitting-needles, used a pair of toothpicks. When finished, she dropped it, with a significant look, when her jailer entered the prison. It reached—thanks to one of her loyalest followers, M. Hue, a faithful servant of Louis XVI.—its destination, for he gave it to Madame Royale when he accompanied her, two years later, to Vienna.” This was the richest legacy the daughter of Maria Theresa and the queen of France could bequeath to her child. The queen was not so fortunate with another little relic that she hoped her daughter would receive. This consisted of a pair of gloves and a lock of her hair, which she slipped into the jailer’s hand; but the action was observed by one of the gens d’armes, and the little parcel was confiscated. “The damp of the queen’s underground prison was such that her black gown began to fall into rags. She had another,—a white one; but this she wore only on the day of her death.

“The few other clothes she had were in a deplorable state, and required constant repair. She was only permitted three shirts, but the revolutionary tribunal decided that but one of these should be given to the queen, and worn ten days before another was allowed her; even her handkerchiefs were only allowed one by one, and a strict account was kept of every article as it came from or entered her prison.” Not being allowed a chest of drawers she placed her clothes in a paper box that Rosalie brought her, “and which she received,” says Rosalie, “as if it had been the most beautiful piece of furniture in the world.” Rosalie also procured her a little looking-glass, bordered with red, with little Chinese figures painted on the sides. This too seemed much to please the queen; and doubtless it gave her more satisfaction than had done all the miles of gorgeous, gilded mirrors at Versailles.

And now the 14th of October has come, and Marie Antoinette is summoned to appear before her judges. There are wretches present who cry as she enters, “À bas l’Autrichienne!” Yet even the fear of the guillotine is not able to check the visible signs of pity and deep-felt sympathy her appearance elicits in others.

How startlingly the sorrowful present contrasts with the gay and brilliant past, when, in her bridal dress of satin, pearls, and diamonds, the Duc de CossÉ-Brissac led her to the balcony of the Tuileries to gratify the eager desire of the dense multitude to see her, and bade her behold in them two hundred thousand adorers, while shouts of “Vive la Dauphine!” rent the air. Marie Antoinette was then a youthful bride. Twenty-three years have passed away, and she is now a widow. In a faded black dress, she stands in the theatre of that same palace of the Tuileries, amidst a throng of canaille, to be tried for her life by men whose own lives would be the forfeit, if either compassion or justice should move them to find her innocent. Alas! the daughter of the CÆsars, she whom Edmund Burke had seen, “glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendor, and joy,” is hurled low indeed. And yet, to me, as she stands there in her frayed and patched black gown, with her widow’s cap upon her almost white hair, before her judges, and her jury, and the crowded tribunes, Marie Antoinette is a far nobler, far grander figure, than when a blooming bride she stood upon the Tuileries balcony, surrounded by the acclamations of the multitude, or when, as queen of France, blazing with diamonds, and in all the pomp and splendor of regality, she received the homage of her courtiers in the gilded galleries of Versailles.

The tribunal which judged the queen was composed of a president and four judges, the public prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville,—a man who even at that time was notorious as being amongst the most inhuman of the monsters who then governed revolutionary France,—the chief registrar, and fifteen jurymen. Fouquier-Tinville had himself drawn out at great length the act of accusation. He looked upon it as his chef d’oeuvre, and Chauveau-Lagarde, the queen’s counsel, did not exaggerate when he called it a “work of the devil.” In it the queen was compared to Messalina, Brunehild, FrÉdÉgond, and the Medici. He declared that “since her arrival in France she had been the curse and leech of the French nation; that she had maintained a secret correspondence with the king of Bohemia and Hungary; that her aim was the ruin of the country; that by her instigation, and in concert with the brothers of Louis XVI. and the infamous Calonne, formerly minister of finance, she had lavished the wealth of the nation, the spoils of the sweat of the people, in maintaining her criminal expenditure and in paying the agents of her treasonable intrigues; that she had sent millions out of the country to the emperor, in order to maintain the war against the republic, and that she had thus exhausted the revenues of the country. Further, that since the commencement of the Revolution she had not ceased an instant from maintaining a treasonable correspondence with the enemy, and, by every means in her power, aided and abetted a counter revolution.” He then went back and harped, at great length, upon the affair of the Gardes du Corps at Versailles in 1789, and also on the flight to Varennes; accused her of the loss of life on the 17th of July, 1792, at the Champs de Mars, and declared that owing to her, and her alone, the massacre occurred at Nancy and elsewhere. “Thus this man raved on in an endless series of accusations, which seem more as if they came from the disordered brain of a homicidal maniac than from a man in his senses.”

Indeed, one can only believe that some of the writings and actions of the actors in the year of terror, 1793, were owing to a state of madness. It is said, and on good authority, that Fouquier-Tinville ultimately confessed to being pursued by horrible visions, saying that he saw the spirits of those he had condemned to death menacing him, not in his dreams, like Richard III., but in broad daylight. And well he might; for between the 10th of March, 1793, and the 27th of July of the following year, two thousand six hundred and sixty-nine victims were sent from that tribunal to the guillotine.

Then followed the second day. “What is your name?” inquired one of the judges.

“Marie Antoinette de Lorraine d’Autriche,” answered the queen.

“What is your condition?” was the next question.

“Widow of Louis, king of France.”

“What is your age?”

“Thirty-eight.”

The act of accusation was then read, and the witnesses appeared. Of these there were forty-one,—men of all sorts and conditions of life, and who were ready to swear anything, however improbable, however atrocious, against the queen. All through the long hours of that awful day the different witnesses were questioned and cross-questioned. She saw again faces familiar to her in past years, faces that must have recalled Versailles and the Trianon; and with what feelings of horror must she have recognized Simon, her son’s jailer and persecutor, among that crowd of witnesses! When the charges relative to the queen’s treatment of her son were again alluded to, the queen deigned no reply. Seeing this, one of the jurors called the attention of the president to her silence. One can imagine what a hush must at that moment have fallen on that great crowd, eager to hear what the queen would answer to such an infamy. But Marie Antoinette was equal, aye, more than equal, to the occasion. She rose proudly from her chair, and in a majestic voice exclaimed: “If I have not answered, it is because nature herself refuses to answer such an accusation made to a mother. I appeal to all that may be present.”

“A thrill ran through that vast hall—a thrill that has not ceased to be felt by all who can enter into what the feelings of that mother were at such a moment. No wonder that when Robespierre heard what a sensation had been made by the sublime manner in which the queen had met that charge, and the effect it had upon the audience, he, being then at dinner, should have broken his plate with rage, and cursed the folly of Fouquier-Tinville in preferring it.” At last all was over, and the queen was asked if she had anything to say. “I was a queen, and you took away my crown; a wife, and you killed my husband; a mother, and you deprived me of my children. My blood alone remains. Take it, but do not make me suffer long.” Then in the dignity of silence, and without the moving of a muscle, she listened to the sentence condemning her to die. It was ten minutes past four in the morning of the 16th of October. The queen had, with hardly an interval, endured this trial more than twenty hours. “Rising from her seat, she walked away calmly and serenely, leaving her judges, or rather murderers, without one look of reproach or shade of anger. But on nearing the portion of the hall where, beyond the barriers, the mob was collected, she raised somewhat her noble head. A great French painter has left a picture of this scene. The queen faces the spectator, as she walks along the side of the barriers, above which the crowd are eagerly scanning her; behind follow the gens d’armes with shouldered muskets; beyond, under the dim light of a lamp, appear the faces of the judges, a lurid background. Delaroche has introduced the thin, handsome face of a youth who seems to feel the iniquity of the transaction keenly: we recognize the features of Bonaparte. Next to the almost angelic sublimity of the figure of the queen, the most touching thing in the picture is the face of a young girl, who gazes, with a look of ineffable pity, through her tears, at the queen as she walks by.”

Truly writes Sainte-Beuve. “I do not believe,” he says, “that a monument of more atrocious stupidity, of greater ignominy for our species, can exist, than this trial of Marie Antoinette. When one reflects that a century which considered itself enlightened and of the most refined civilization, ends with public acts of such barbarity, one begins to doubt of human nature itself, and to fear that the brute, which is always in human nature, has the ascendency.”

All Paris was under arms on this morning of the 16th of October. The roll of the drum was heard through all the sections; thirty thousand troops lined the streets along which lay the route of the queen’s passage. The bridges were guarded with cannon, by which stood the gunners with lighted matches. Artillery was placed also upon the squares and points of junction. At ten o’clock no carriage was allowed in any of the streets that lie between the Conciergerie and the Place de la Revolution. All Paris was patrolled, and all this martial pomp, which sounds as though the army of the enemy were at the very gates of Paris, had been brought out to see a woman die!

Before the Conciergerie, before those beautiful iron gates on which the royal arms of France and the golden lilies are conspicuous, the crowd was thickest; every window had its groups of spectators, every housetop had its crowd of people.

There stands the wretched open cart, with its single horse, its plank the only seat. There is a stir among the crowd, and the queen ascends the prison steps. On seeing the cart, she makes an involuntary pause. It is but an instant. Then, with proud step and undaunted mien, Marie Antoinette advances. A moment more, and she is sealed in the cart. Sanson takes his place behind her.

Both he and his assistant have their three-cornered hats under their arms. “On that occasion the only people who behaved with decency were the executioners.”

Slowly the cart winds its way through the Rue Saint-HonorÉ. The rabble yell, shout, and mouth at her, while for the last time falls on her ear that hateful cry, “À bas l’Autrichienne! À bas l’Autrichienne!”

Yet as much a queen is she,—this silent white-robed figure, so simple, yet so grand in its forlornness,—as when in her gilded coach, surrounded by a brilliant body-guard of cavalry, she swept through the Avenue des Champs ÉlysÉes, to the echoing shouts of “Vive la reine!”

Ah! what a sight was this mighty Place de la Concorde, then the Place de la Revolution, on that bright October morning, filled with a vast and silent throng, while the splendid palace and gardens of the Tuileries, where so often the queen had been hailed with acclamations, the spacious Elysian Fields, the pride of Paris, were all spread around, as if in mockery of the sacrifice which was there to be offered; and in the centre, sublime in its terrific grandeur, towered the blood-red posts of the guillotine. Slowly the cart made its way between the noble buildings of the “Garde Meuble” and the Admiralty, and finally reached the foot of the scaffold.

As the queen mounted the slippery steps, she trod upon the foot of the executioner. “Pardon me,” said Marie Antoinette, with as much courtesy as if she were addressing a grand seigneur in the palace of Versailles. Kneeling, she uttered a brief prayer, and then turning her eyes to the distant towers of the Temple, exclaimed, “Adieu, my children; I go to rejoin your father.”

She was bound to the plank. The gleaming axe slid through the groove, and the long and dreadful tragedy of the life of Marie Antoinette was closed.

That night, upon the records of the cemetery of the Madeline, was made this entry:—

“For the coffin of the Widow Capet,—six livres.”

“The Revolution,” says De Tocqueville, “will ever remain in darkness to those who do not look beyond it. It can only be comprehended by the light of the ages which preceded it. Without a clear view of society in the olden time, of its laws, its faults, its prejudices, its sufferings, and its greatness, it is impossible to understand the conduct of the French during the sixty years which have followed its fall.”

If absolute power could ever be fitly confided to mortal man, where could nobler depositaries of that high trust have been found than in the succession of great men who fill up the interval in the history of France from the accession of Henry IV. to the death of Louis XIV.?

“What ruler of mankind was ever gifted with a spirit more genial, or with views more comprehensive, than those of Henry IV.? or with an integrity and a patriotism more noble than that of Sully? or with an energy of will superior to that of Richelieu? or with subtlety more profound than that of Mazarin? or with a zeal and activity surpassing that of Colbert? or with greater decision of character than Louvois? or with a majesty transcending that of Louis XIV?” And yet, what were the results of so much genius and intellectual power when intrusted with political powers so vast and unrestricted? The favorable results were to add to the greatness of France, and to give birth to some undying traditions, pointing to her still more extensive aggrandizement. The unfavorable results were to produce every possible variety of internal and external misgovernment; to promote wars more sanguinary than had ever before been waged between Christian nations; to produce a waste of treasure so vast, that the simple truth seems fabulous; to kindle persecutions which altogether eclipse, in their enormity, those to which the early Christians were subjected by the emperors of Rome; and to corrupt the moral sense of the people by an exhibition, at the court of their sovereigns, of a profligacy of manners better befitting a prince of the barbarians than a king of France.

According to the doctrine of M. Thomas, there is a general law which regulates the progress of political society. “Emerging from chaos, where its elements battle with each other in wild confusion, it makes a steadfast, though it may be a tardy, progress toward that perfect symmetry and order in which its ultimate perfection consists.”

Thus the anarchy of the tenth and eleventh centuries was the chaotic period of France. Out of that abyss first rose the feudal oligarchy,—a state of orderly disorder. Then succeeded the Capetian despotism, destined to crush, one by one, the countless feudal privileges, whether legislative, administrative, or judicial. When the iron grasp of “royalty” had subdued and conquered them all, then “royalty,” in the midst of the triumphs she had won, presented herself to the nation in the person of Louis XIV., the king par excellence, the one gigantic privilege, the conqueror and survivor of all the rest. This was the golden age of kings. The crown was everything; the people, nothing. Robbed under the name of custom and of law, the peasants toiled joylessly from the cradle to the grave. Their sons were sent to strew Europe with their bodies, in wars undertaken at the nod of a courtesan. Their wives and daughters were torn from them; and for the purpose of supporting lascivious, and riotous splendor, of building Parcs aux Cerfs, of pensioning discarded favorites, and of enriching corrupt minions of every stamp, they were taxed,—so taxed that the light and air of heaven hardly came to them free; and, sunk in the dregs of indigence, a short crop compelled them to live on food that the hounds of their taskmasters would reject; and, finally, when in their agony they asked some mitigation of their hard fate, they were answered by the bayonets of foreign mercenaries.

“And a people,—stout manhood, gentle womanhood, gray-haired age, and tender infancy, might turn their pale faces upward and shriek for food, while fierce, licentious nobles would scornfully bid them eat grass.”

Such was the condition of the greater part of the French people during the reign of that vilest of monarchs, King Louis XV.

“Royalty” had sinned right royally. Right royally must “royalty” atone for it. And the guillotine upon the Place de la Concorde was but the expiation of St. Bartholomew, of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and of the Parc aux Cerfs.

And though we know that a people, crushed and downtrodden, are striving to free themselves from lawless oppression, we cannot but sympathize with Marie Antoinette, through no fault of her own made queen of France, to reap the whirlwind of wicked deeds sown by her husband’s royal ancestors.

Frederick the Great, amid the battle-smoke at Sohr, or Napoleon, upon the ensanguined field of Waterloo, never struggled harder in support of their respective causes, than did she, in the salons of Versailles and the Tuileries, to sustain the falling monarchy.

“And when, at last, the long conflict was terminated, and her combined enemies were victorious, when bereft of her throne, of her husband, of her children, and of her liberty, she was a prisoner in the hands of those whose unalterable object was her destruction, she bore her accumulated miseries with a serene resignation, an intrepid fortitude, a true heroism of soul, of which the history of the world does not afford a brighter example.”

In the royal burying-vault of the Bourbons, at the Cathedral of St. Denis, now rest the remains of her,—once the pride and joy of France,—the beautiful, unfortunate Queen Marie Antoinette.

Grandeur, triumphs, sorrows, all are over.