The Life of Marie Antoinette

CHAPTER XXXIX. The Queen is refused Leave to see Clery.-Madame Royale is taken Ill.- Plans are formed for the Queen's Escape by MM. Jarjayes, Toulan, and by the Baron de Batz.-Marie Antoinette refuses to leave her Son.-Illness of the young King.-Overthrow of the Girondins.-Insanity of the Woman Tison.-Kindness of the Queen to her.-Her Son is taken from her, and intrusted to Simon.-His Ill-treatment.-The Queen is removed to the Conciergerie.-She is tried before the Revolutionary Tribunal.-She is condemned.-Her last Letter to the Princess Elizabeth.-Her Death and Character.

Shouts in the streets announced to her and those around her that all was over. All the morning she had alarmed the princesses by the speechless, tearless stupor into which she seemed plunged; but at last she roused herself, and begged to see Clery, who had been with Louis till he left the Temple, and who, therefore, she hoped, might have some last message for her, some last words of affection, some parting gift. And so indeed he had;[1] for the last act of Louis had been to give that faithful servant his seal for the dauphin, and his ring for the queen, with a little packet containing portions of her hair and those of his children which he had been in the habit of wearing. And he had bid him tell them all-"the queen, his dear children, and his sister-that he had promised to see them that morning, but that he had desired to save them the pain of so cruel a separation. How much," he continued, "does it cost me to go without receiving their last embraces! You must bear to them my last farewell."

But even the poor consolation of receiving these sad tokens of unchanged affection was refused to her. The Council refused Clery admittance to her, and seized the little trinkets and the packet of hair. The king's last words never reached her. But a few days afterward, Toulan, one of the commissioners of the Council, who sympathized with her bereavement, found means to send her the ring and seal.[2] Her sister and her daughter were the more anxious that she should see Clery, from the hope that conversation with him might bring on a flood of tears, which would have given her some relief. But her own fortitude was her best support. Miserable as she was, hopeless as she was, it was characteristic of her magnanimous courage that she did not long give way to womanly lamentations. She recollected that she had still duties to perform to the living, to her daughter and sister, and, above all, to her son, now her king, whom, if some happier change of fortune, when the nation should have recovered from its present madness, should replace him on his father's throne, it must be her care to render worthy of such a restoration. She began to apply herself diligently to the work of giving him lessons such as his father had given him, mingling them with the constant references to that father's example, which she never ceased to hold up to him, dwelling with the emphatic exaggeration of lasting affection on his gentleness, his benevolence, his love for his subjects; qualities which, in truth, he had possessed in sufficient abundance, had he but been gifted with the courage and firmness indispensable to secure to his people the benefits he wished them to enjoy.

She had too, for a time, another occupation. The princess royal was, as she had said not long before, of an age to feel keenly the miseries of her parents, and the agitation into which she had been thrown had its natural effect upon her health. Her own language on the subject affords a striking proof how well Marie Antoinette had succeeded in imbuing her with her own forgetfulness of self. As she has recorded the occurrence in her journal, "Fortunately her affliction increased her illness to so serious a degree as to cause a favorable diversion to her mother's despair.[3]"

Youth, however, and a strong constitution prevailed, and the little princess recovered; while other matters also for a time claimed a large share of her mother's attention. For herself, Marie Antoinette felt, as she well might feel, that, come what would, happiness and she were forever parted; and the death to which she never doubted that her enemies destined her could hardly have been anticipated by her as any thing but a relief, if she had thought only of her own feelings. But, again, she had others to think of besides herself-of her children. And she presently learned that others were thinking of her, and were willing (it should rather be said were eager and proud) to encounter any danger, if they might only have the happiness and honor of securing and saving her whom they still regarded as their queen. Two had long been attached to the royal household: the wife of M. de Jarjayes, a gentleman of ancient family in Dauphine, had been one of Marie Antoinette's waiting-women, and he himself, since the fatal expedition to Varennes, had been employed by Louis on several secret missions. From the moment that his royal master was brought before the Convention he had despaired of his life, and had, therefore, bent all his thoughts on the preservation of the queen. M. Turgy, the second, was in a humbler rank of life. He was, as we have seen, one of the officers of the kitchen; but in the household of a king of France even the cooks had pretensions to gentle blood. A third was a man named Toulan, who had originally been a music-seller in Paris, but had subsequently obtained employment under the Municipal Council, and was now a commissioner, with duties which brought him into constant contact with the imprisoned queen. Either he had never in his heart been her enemy, or he had been converted by the dignified fortitude with which she bore her miseries, and by the irresistible fascination which even in prison she still exercised over all whose hearts had not been hardened by fanatical wickedness against every manly or honest feeling; he won the queen's confidence by the most welcome service, which has been already mentioned, of conveying to her her husband's seal and ring. She gave him a letter to recommend him to the confidence of Jarjayes; and their combined ingenuity devised a plan for the escape of the whole family. It was in their favor that a man, who came daily to look to the lamps, usually brought with him his two sons, who nearly matched the size of the royal children. And Jarjayes and Toulan, aided by another of the municipal commissioners, named Lepitre, who had also learned to abhor the indignities practiced on fallen royalty, had prepared full suits of male attire for the queen and princess, with red scarfs and sashes as were worn by the different commissioners, of whom there were too many for all of them to be known to the sentinels; and also clothes for the two children, ill-fitting and shabby, to resemble the dress of the lamp-lighter's boys. Passports, too, by the aid of Lepitre, whose duties lay in the department which issued them, were provided for the whole family; and after careful discussion of the arrangements to be adopted when once the prisoners were clear of the Temple, it was settled that they should take the road to Normandy in three cabriolets, which would be less likely to attract notice than any larger and less ordinary carriage.

The end of February or the beginning of March was fixed for the attempt; but before that time the Government and the people had become greatly disquieted by the operations of the German armies, which were about to receive the powerful assistance of England. Prussia had gained decided advantages on the Rhine. An Austrian army, under the Archduke Charles, was making formidable progress in the Netherlands. Rumors, also, which soon proved to be well founded, of an approaching insurrection in the western departments of France, reached the capital. The vigilance with which the royal prisoners were watched was increased. Information, too, though of no precise character, that they had obtained means of communicating with their partisans who were at liberty, was conveyed to the magistrates. And at last Jarjayes and Toulan were forced to abandon the idea of effecting the escape of the whole family, though they were still confident that they could accomplish that of the queen, which they regarded as the most important, since it was plain that it was she who was in the most immediate danger. Elizabeth, as disinterested as herself, besought her to embrace their offers, and to let her and the children, as being less obnoxious to the Jacobins, take their chance of some subsequent means of escape, or perhaps even mercy.

But such a flight was forbidden alike by Marie Antoinette's sense of duty and by her sense of honor, if indeed the two were ever separated in her mind. Honor forbade her to desert her companions in misery, whose danger might even be increased by the rage of her jailers, exasperated at her escape. Duty to her boy forbade it still more emphatically. As his guardian, she ought not to leave him; as his mother, she could not. And her renunciation of the whole design was conveyed to M. Jarjayes in a letter which did honor alike to both by the noble gratitude which it expressed, and which was long cherished by his heirs as one of their most precious possessions, till it was destroyed, with many another valuable record, when Paris a second time fell under the rule of wretches scarcely less detestable than the Jacobins whom they imitated.[4] It was written by stealth, with a pencil; but no difficulties or hurry, as no acuteness of disappointment or depth of distress, could rob Marie Antoinette of her desire to confer pleasure on others, or of her inimitable gracefulness of expression. Thus she wrote:

"We have had a pleasant dream, that is all. I have gained much by still finding, on this occasion, a new proof of your entire devotion to me. My confidence in you is boundless. And on all occasions you will always find strength of mind and courage in me. But the interest of my son is my sole guide; and, whatever happiness I might find in being out of this place, I can not consent to separate myself from him. In what remains, I thoroughly recognize your attachment to me in all that you said to me yesterday. Rely upon it that I feel the kindness and the force of your arguments as far as my own interest is concerned, and that I feel that the opportunity can not recur. But I could enjoy nothing if I were to leave my children; and this idea prevents me from even regretting my decision.[5]"

And to Toulan she said that "her sole desire was to be reunited to her husband whenever Heaven should decide that her life was no longer necessary to her children." He was greatly afflicted, but he could no longer be of use to her. Her last commission to him was to convey to her eldest brother-in-law, the Count de Provence, her husband's ring and seal, that they might be in safer custody than her own, and that she or her son might reclaim them, if either should ever be at liberty. She gave Toulan also, as a memorial of her gratitude, a small gold box, one of the few trinkets which she still possessed, and which, unhappily, proved a fatal present. In the summer of the next year it was found in his possession, its history was ascertained, and he was sent to the scaffold for the sole offense of having and valuing a relic of his murdered sovereign.

Nor was this the only plan formed for the queen's rescue. The Baron de Batz was a noble of the purest blood in France, seneschal of the Duchy of Albret, and bound by ancient ties of hereditary friendship to the king, as the heir of Henry IV., whose most intimate confidence had been enjoyed by his ancestor. He was still animated by all the antique feelings of chivalrous loyalty, and from the first breaking-out of the troubles of the Revolution he had brought to the service of his sovereign the most absolute devotion, which was rendered doubly useful by an inexhaustible fertility of resource, and a presence of mind that nothing could daunt or perplex. On the fatal 21st of January, he had even formed a project of rescuing Louis on his way to the scaffold, which failed, partly from the timidity of some on whose co-operation he had reckoned, and partly, it is said, from the reluctance of Louis himself to countenance an enterprise which, whatever might be its result, must tend to fierce conflict and bloodshed. Since his sovereign's death he had bent all the energies of his mind to contrive the escape of the queen, and he had so far succeeded that he had enlisted in her cause two men whose posts enabled them to give must effectual resistance: Michonis, who, like Toulan, was one of the commissioners of the Council; and Cortey, a captain of the National Guard, whose company was one of those most frequently on duty at the Temple. It seemed as if all that was necessary to be done was to select a night for the escape when the chief outlets of the Temple should be guarded by Cortey's men; and De Batz, who was at home in every thing that required manoeuvre or contrivance, had provided dresses to disguise the persons of the whole family while in the Temple, and passports and conveyances to secure their escape the moment they were outside the gates. Every thing seemed to promise success, when at the last moment secret intelligence that some plan or other was in agitation was conveyed to the Council. It was not sufficient to enable them to know whom they were to guard against or to arrest, but it was enough to lead them to send down to the Temple another commissioner whose turn of duty did not require his presence there, but whose ferocious surliness of temper pointed him out as one not easily to be either tricked or overborne. He was a cobbler, named Simon, the very same to whose cruel superintendence the little king was presently intrusted.

He came down the very evening that every thing was arranged for the escape of the hapless family. De Batz saw that all was over if he staid, and hesitated for a moment whether he should blow out his brains, and try to accomplish the queen's deliverance by force; but a little reflection showed him that the noise of fire-arms would bring up a crowd of enemies beyond his ability to overpower, and it soon appeared that it would tax all his resources to secure his own escape. He achieved that, hoping still to find some other opportunity of being useful to his royal mistress; but none offered. The Assembly did him the honor to set a price on his head; and at last he thought himself fortunate in being able to save himself. Those who had co-operated with him had worse fortune. Those in authority had no proofs on which to condemn them; but in those days suspicion was a sufficient death-warrant. Michonis and Cortey were suspected, and in the course of the next year a belief that they had at least sympathized with the queen's sorrows sent them both to the scaffold.

With the failure of De Batz every project of escape was abandoned; and a few weeks later the queen congratulated herself that she had refused to flee without her boy, since in the course of May he was seized with illness which for some days threatened to assume a dangerous character. With a brutality which, even in such monsters as the Jacobin rulers of the city, seems almost inconceivable, they refused to allow him the attendance of M. Brunier, the physician who had had the charge of his infancy. It would be a breach of the principles of equality, they said, if any prisoner were permitted to consult any but the prison doctor. But the prison doctor was a man of sense and humanity, as well as of professional skill. He of his own accord sought the advice of Brunier; and the poor child recovered, to be reserved for a fate which, even in the next few weeks, was so foreshadowed, that his own mother must almost have begun to doubt whether his restoration to health had been a blessing to her or to himself.

The spring was marked by important events. Had one so high-minded been capable of exulting in the misfortunes of even her worst enemies, Marie Antoinette might have triumphed in the knowledge that the murderers of her husband were already beginning that work of mutual destruction which in little more than a year sent almost every one of them to the same scaffold on which he had perished. The jealousies which from the first had set the Jacobins and Girondins at variance had reached a height at which they could only be extinguished by the annihilation of one party or the other. They had been partners in crime, and so far were equal in infamy; but the Jacobins were the fiercer and the readier ruffians; and, after nearly two months of vehement debates in the Convention, in which Robespierre denounced the whole body of the Girondin leaders as plotters of treason against the State, and Vergniaud in reply reviled Robespierre as a coward, the Jacobins worked up the mob to rise in their support. The Convention, which hitherto had been divided in something like equality between the two factions, yielded to the terror of a new insurrection, and on the 2d of June ordered the arrest of the Girondin leaders. A very few escaped the search made for them by the officers-Roland, to commit suicide; Barbaroux, to attempt it; Petion and Buzot reached the forests to be devoured by congenial wolves. Lanjuinais,[6] whom the decree of the Convention had identified with them, but who, even in the moments of the greatest excitement, had kept himself clear of their wickedness and crimes, was the only one of the whole body who completely eluded the rage of his enemies. The rest, with Madame Roland, the first prompter of deeds of blood, languished in their well-deserved prisons till the close of autumn, when they all perished on the same scaffold to which they had sent their innocent sovereign.[7]

But it may be that Marie Antoinette never learned their fall; though that if she had, pity would at least have mingled with, if it had not predominated over, her natural exultation, she gave a striking proof in her conduct toward one from whom she had suffered great and constant indignities. From the time that her own attendants were dismissed, the only person appointed to assist Clery in his duties were a man and woman named Tison, chosen for that task on account of their surly and brutal tempers, in which the wife exceeded her husband. Both, and especially the woman, had taken a fiendish pleasure in heaping gratuitous insults on the whole family; but at last the dignity and resignation of the queen awakened remorse in the woman's heart, which presently worked upon her to such a degree that she became mad. In the first days of her frenzy she raved up and down the courtyard declaring herself guilty of the queen's murder. She threw herself at Marie Antoinette's feet, imploring her pardon; and Marie Antoinette not only raised her up with her own hand, and spoke gentle words of forgiveness and consolation to her, but, after she had been removed to a hospital, showed a kind interest in her condition, and amidst all her own troubles found time to write a note to express her anxiety that the invalid should have proper attention.[8]

But very soon a fresh blow was struck at the hapless queen which made her indifferent to all else that could happen, and even to her own fate, of which it may be regarded as the precursor. At ten o'clock on the 3d of July, when the little king was sleeping calmly, his mother having hung a shawl in front of his bed to screen his eyes from the light of the candle by which she and Elizabeth were mending their clothes, the door of their chamber was violently thrown open, and six commissioners entered to announce to the queen that the Convention had ordered the removal of her boy, that he might he committed to the care of a tutor-the tutor named being the cobbler, Simon, whose savageness of disposition was sufficiently attested by the fact of his having been chosen on the recommendation of Marat. At this unexpected blow, Marie Antoinette's fortitude and resignation at last gave way. She wept, she remonstrated, she humbled herself to entreat mercy. She threw her arms around her child, and declared that force itself should not tear him from her. The commissioners were not men likely to feel or show pity. They abused her; they threatened her. She begged them rather to kill her than take her son. They would not kill her, but they swore that they would murder both him and her daughter before her eyes if he were not at once surrendered. There was no more resistance. His aunt and sister took him from the bed and dressed him. His mother, with a voice choked by her sobs, addressed him the last words he was ever to hear from her. "My child, they are taking you from me; never forget the mother who loves you tenderly, and never forget God! Be good, gentle, and honest, and your father will look down on you from heaven and bless you!" "Have you done with this preaching?" said the chief commissioner. "You have abused our patience finely," another added; "the nation is generous, and will take care of his education." But she had fainted, and heard not these words of mocking cruelty. Nothing could touch her further.

If it be not also a mockery to speak of happiness in connection with this most afflicted queen, she was happy in at least not knowing the details of the education which was in store for the noble boy whose birth had apparently secured for him the most splendid of positions, and whose opening virtues seemed to give every promise that he would be worthy of his rank and of his mother. A few days afterward Simon received his instructions from a committee of the Convention, of which Drouet, the postmaster of Ste. Menehould, was the chief. "How was he to treat the wolf cub?" he asked (it was one of the mildest names he ever gave him). "Was he to kill him?" "No." "To poison him?" "No." "What then?" "He was to get rid of him,[9]" and Simon carried out this instruction by the most unremitting ill-treatment of his pupil. He imposed upon him the most menial offices; he made him clean his shoes; he reviled him; he beat him; he compelled him to wear the red cap and jacket which had been adopted as the Revolutionary dress; and one day, when his mother obtained a glimpse of him as he was walking on the leads of the tower to which he had been transferred, it caused her an additional pang to see that he had been stripped of the suit of mourning for his father, and had been clothed in the garments which, in her eyes, were the symbol, of all that was most impious and most loathsome.

All these outrages were but the prelude of the final blow which was to fall on herself; and it shows how great was the fear with which her lofty resolution had always had inspired the Jacobins-fear with such natures being always the greatest exasperation of hatred and the keenest incentive to cruelty-that, when they had resolved to consummate her injuries by her murder, they did not leave her in the Temple as they had left her husband, but removed her to the Conciergerie, which in those days, fitly denominated the Reign of Terror, rarely led but to the scaffold. On the night of the 1st of August (the darkest hours were appropriately chosen for deeds of such darkness) another body of commissioners entered her room, and woke her up to announce that they had come to conduct her to the common prison. Her sister and her daughter begged in vain to be allowed to accompany her. She herself scarcely spoke a word, but dressed herself in silence, made up a small bundle of clothes, and, after a few words of farewell and comfort to those dear ones who had hitherto been her companions, followed her jailers unresistingly, knowing, and for her own sake certainly not grieving, that she was going to meet her doom. As she passed through the outer door it was so low that she struck her head. One of the commissioners had so much decency left as to ask if she was hurt. "No," she replied, "nothing now can hurt me.[10]" Six weeks later, an English gentleman saw her in her dungeon. She was freely exhibited to any one who desired to behold her, on the sole condition-a condition worthy of the monsters who exacted it, and of them alone-that he should show no sign of sympathy or sorrow.[11] "She was sitting on an old worn-out chair made of straw which scarcely supported her weight. Dressed in a gown which had once been white, her attitude bespoke the immensity of her grief, which appeared to have created a kind of stupor, that fortunately rendered her less sensible to the injuries and reproaches which a number of inhuman wretches were continually vomiting forth against her."

Even after all the atrocities and horrors of the last twelve months, the news of the resolution to bring her to a trial, which, it was impossible to doubt, it was intended to follow up by her execution, was received as a shook by the great bulk of the nation, as indeed by all Europe. And Necker's daughter, Madame de Stael, who, as we have seen, had been formerly desirous to aid in her escape, now addressed an energetic and eloquent appeal to the entire people, calling on all persons of all parties, "Republicans, Constitutionalists, and Aristocrats alike, to unite for her preservation." She left unemployed no fervor of entreaty, no depth of argument. She reminded them of the universal admiration which the queen's beauty and grace had formerly excited, when "all France thought. itself laid under an obligation by her charms;[12]" of the affection that she had won by her ceaseless acts of beneficence and generosity. She showed the absurdity of denouncing her as "the Austrian"-her who had left Vienna while still little more than a child, and had ever since fixed her heart as well as her home in France. She argued truly that the vagueness, the ridiculousness, the notorious falsehood of the accusations brought against her were in themselves her all-sufficient defense. She showed how useless to every party and in every point of view must be her condemnation. What danger could any one apprehend from restoring to liberty a princess whose every thought was tenderness and pity? She reproached those who now held sway in France with the barbarity of their proscriptions, with governing by terror and by death, with having overthrown a throne only to erect a scaffold in its place; and she declared that the execution of the queen would exceed in foulness all the other crimes that they had yet committed. She was a foreigner, she was a woman; to put her to death would be a violation of all the laws of hospitality as well as of all the laws of nature. The whole universe was interesting itself in the queen's fate. Woe to the nation which knew neither justice nor generosity! Freedom would never be the destiny of such a people.[13]

It had not been from any feeling of compunction or hesitation that those who had her fate in their hands left her so long in her dungeon, but from the absolute impossibility of inventing an accusation against her that should not be utterly absurd and palpably groundless. So difficult did they find their task, that the jailer, a man named Richard, who, when alone, ventured to show sympathy for her miseries, sought to encourage her by the assurance that she would be replaced in the Temple. But Marie Antoinette indulged in no such illusion. She never doubted that her death was resolved on. "No," she replied to his well-meant words of hope, "they have murdered the king; they will kill me in the same way. Never again shall I see my unfortunate children, my tender and virtuous sister." And the tears which her own sufferings could not wring from her flowed freely when she thought of what they were still enduring.

But at last the eagerness for her destruction overcame all difficulties or scruples. The principal articles of the indictment charged her with helping to overthrow the republic and to effect the reestablishment of the throne; with having exerted her influence over her husband to mislead his judgment, to render him unjust to his people, and to induce him to put his veto on laws of which they desired the enactment; with having caused scarcity and famine; with having favored aristocrats; and with having kept up a constant correspondence with her brother, the emperor; and the preamble and the peroration compared her to Messalina, Agrippina, Brunehaut, and Catherine de' Medici-to all the wickedest women of whom ancient or modern history had preserved a record. Had she been guided by her own feelings alone, she would have probably disdained to defend herself against charges whose very absurdity proved that they were only put forward as a pretense for a judgment that had been previously decided on. But still, as ever, she thought of her child, her fair and good son, her "gentle infant," her king. While life lasted she could never wholly relinquish the hope that she might see him once again, perhaps even that some unlooked-for chance (none could be so unexpected as almost every occurrence of the last four years) might restore him and her to freedom, and him to his throne; and for his sake she resolved to exert herself to refute the charges, and at least to establish her right to acquittal and deliverance.

Louis had been tried before the Convention. Marie Antoinette was to be condemned by the, if possible, still more infamous court that had been established in the spring under the name of the Revolutionary Tribunal; and on the 13th of October she was at last conducted before a small sub-committee, and subjected to a private examination. To every question she gave firm and clear answers.[14] She declared that the French people had indeed been deceived, but not by her or by her husband. She affirmed "that the happiness of France always had been, and still was, the first wish of her heart;" and that "she should not even regret the loss of her son's throne, if it led to the real happiness of the country." She was taken back to her cell. The next day the four judges of the tribunal took their seats in the court. Fouquier-Tinville, the public prosecutor, a man whose greed of blood stamped him with an especial hideousness, even in those days of universal barbarity, took his seat before them; and eleven men, the greater part of whom had been carefully picked from the very dregs of the people-journeymen carpenters, tailors, blacksmiths, and discharged policemen-were constituted the jury.

Before this tribunal-we will not dignify it with the name of a court of justice-Marie Antoinette, the widow Capet, as she was called in the indictment, was now brought. Clad in deep mourning for her murdered husband, and aged beyond her years by her long series of sorrows, she still preserved the fearless dignity which became her race and rank and character. As she took her place at the bar and cast her eyes around the hall, even the women who thronged the court, debased as they were, were struck by her lofty demeanor. "How proud she is!" was the exclamation, the only sign of nervousness that she gave being that, as those who watched her closely remarked, she moved her fingers up and down on the arm of her chair, as if she had been playing on the harpsichord. The prosecutor brought up witness after witness; some whom it was believed that some ancient hatred, others whom it was expected that some hope of pardon for themselves, might induce to give evidence such as was required. The Count d'Estaing had always been connected with her enemies. Bailly, once Mayor of Paris, as has been seen, had sought a base popularity by the wantonness of the unprovoked insults which he had offered to the king. Michonis knew that his head was imperiled by suspicions of his recent desire to assist her. But one and all testified to her entire innocence of the different charges which they had been brought forward to support, and to the falsehood of the statements contained in the indictment. Her own replies, when any question was addressed to herself, were equally in her favor. When accused of having been the prompter of the political mesures of the king's government, her answer could not be denied to be in accordance with the law: "That she was the wife and subject of the king, and could not be made responsible for his resolutions and actions." When charged with general indifference or hostility to the happiness of the people, she affirmed with equal calmness, as she had previously declared at her private examination, that the welfare of the nation had been, and always was, the first of her wishes.

Once only did a question provoke an answer in any other tone than that of a lofty imperturbable equanimity. She had not known till that moment the depth of her enemies' wickedness, or the cruelty with which her son's mind had been dealt with, worse ten thousand times than the foulest tortures that could be applied to the body. Both her children had been subjected to an examination, in the hope that something might be found to incriminate her in the words of those who might hardly be able to estimate the exact value of their expressions. The princess bad been old enough to baffle the utmost malice of her questioners; and the boy had given short and plain replies from which nothing to suit their purpose could be extracted, till they forced him to drink brandy, and, when he was stupefied with drink, compelled him to sign depositions in which he accused both the queen and Elizabeth of having trained him in lessons of vice. At first, horror at so monstrous a charge had sealed the queen's lips; but when she gave no denial, a juryman questioned her on the subject, and insisted on an answer. Then at last Marie Antoinette spoke in sublime indignation. "If I have not answered, it was because nature itself rejects such an accusation made against a mother. I appeal from it to every mother who hears me."

Marie Antoinette had been allowed two counsel, who, perilous as was the duty imposed upon them, cheerfully accepted it as an honor; but it was not intended that their assistance should be more than nominal. She had only known their names on the evening preceding the trial; but when she addressed a letter to the President of the Convention, demanding a postponement of the trial for three days, as indispensable to enable them to master the case, since as yet they had not had time even to read the whole of the indictment, adding that "her duty to her children bound her to leave nothing undone which was requisite for the entire justification of their mother," the request was rudely refused; and all that the lawyers could do was to address eloquent appeals to the judges and jurymen, being utterly unable, on so short notice, to analyze as they deserved the arguments of the prosecutor or the testimony by which he had professed to support them. But before such a tribunal it signified little what was proved or disproved, or what was the strength or weakness of the arguments employed on either side. It was long after midnight of the second day that the trial concluded. The jury at once pronounced the prisoner guilty. The judges as instantly passed sentence of death, and ordered it to be executed the next morning.

It was nearly five in the morning of the 16th of October when the favorite daughter of the great Empress-queen, herself Queen of France, was led from the court, not even to the wretched room which she had occupied for the last ten weeks, but to the condemned cell, never tenanted before by any but the vilest felons. Though greatly exhausted by the length of the proceedings, she had heard the sentence without betraying the slightest emotion by any change of countenance or gesture. On reaching her cell she at once asked for writing materials. They had been withheld from her for more than a year, but they were now brought to her; and with them she wrote her last letter to that princess whom she had long learned to love as a sister of her own, who had shared her sorrows hitherto, and who, at no distant period, was to share the fate which was now awaiting herself.

"16th October, 4.30 A.M.

"It is to you, my sister, that I write for the last time. I have just been condemned, not to a shameful death, for such is only for criminals, but to go and rejoin your brother. Innocent like him, I hope to show the same firmness in my last moments. I am calm, as one is when one's conscience reproaches one with nothing. I feel profound sorrow in leaving my poor children: you know that I only lived for them and for you, my good and tender sister. You who out of love have sacrificed everything to be with us, in what a position do I leave you! I have learned from the proceedings at my trial that my daughter was separated from you. Alas! poor child; I do not venture to write to her; she would not receive my letter. I do not even know whether this will reach you. Do you receive my blessing for both of them. I hope that one day when they are older they may be able to rejoin you, and to enjoy to the full your tender care. Let them both think of the lesson which I have never ceased to impress upon them, that the principles and the exact performance of their duties are the chief foundation of life; and then mutual affection and confidence in one another will constitute its happiness. Let my daughter feel that at her age she ought always to aid her brother by the advice which her greater experience and her affection may inspire her to give him. And let my son in his turn render to his sister all the care and all the services which affection can inspire. Let them, in short, both feel that, in whatever positions they may be placed, they will never be truly happy but through their union. Let them follow our example. In our own misfortunes how much comfort has our affection for one another afforded us! And, in times of happiness, we have enjoyed that doubly from being able to share it with a friend; and where can one find friends more tender and more united than in one's own family? Let my son never forget the last words of his father, which I repeat emphatically; let him never seek to avenge our deaths. I have to speak to you of one thing which is very painful to my heart, I know how much pain the child must have caused you. Forgive him, my dear sister; think of his age, and how easy it is to make a child say whatever one wishes, especially when he does not understand it.[15] It will come to pass one day, I hope, that he will better feel the value of your kindness and of your tender affection for both of them. It remains to confide to you my last thoughts. I should have wished to write them at the beginning of my trial; but, besides that they did not leave me any means of writing, events have passed so rapidly that I really have not had time.

"I die in the Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion, that of my fathers, that in which I was brought up, and which I have always professed. Having no spiritual consolation to look for, not even knowing whether there are still in this place any priests of that religion[16] (and indeed the place where I am would expose them to too much danger if they were to enter it but once), I sincerely implore pardon of God for all the faults which I may have committed during my life. I trust that, in his goodness, he will mercifully accept my last prayers, as well as those which I have for a long time addressed to him, to receive my soul into his mercy. I beg pardon of all whom I know, and especially of you, my sister, for all the vexations which, without intending it, I may have caused you. I pardon all my enemies the evils that they have done me. I bid farewell to my aunts and to all my brothers and sisters. I had friends. The idea of being forever separated from them and from all their troubles is one of the greatest sorrows that I suffer in dying. Let them at least know that to my latest moment I thought of them.

"Farewell, my good and tender sister. May this letter reach you. Think always of me; I embrace you with all my heart, as I do my poor dear children. My God, how heart-rending it is to leave them forever! Farewell! farewell! I must now occupy myself with my spiritual duties, as I am not free in my actions. Perhaps they will bring me a priest; but I here protest that I will not say a word to him, but that I will treat him as a person absolutely unknown."

Her forebodings were realized; her letter never reached Elizabeth, but was carried to Fouquier, who placed it among his special records. Yet, if in those who had thus wrought the writer's destruction there had been one human feeling, it might have been awakened by the simple dignity and unaffected pathos of this sad farewell. No line that she ever wrote was more thoroughly characteristic of her. The innocence, purity, and benevolence of her soul shine through every sentence. Even in that awful moment she never lost her calm, resigned fortitude, nor her consideration for others. She speaks of and feels for her children, for her friends, but never for herself. And it is equally characteristic of her that, even in her own hopeless situation, she still can cherish hope for others, and can look forward to the prospect of those whom she loves being hereafter united in freedom and happiness. She thought, it may be, that her own death would be the last sacrifice that her enemies would require. And for even her enemies and murderers she had a word of pardon, and could address a message of mercy for them to her son, who, she trusted, might yet some day have power to show that mercy she enjoined, or to execute the vengeance which with her last breath she deprecated.

She threw herself on her bed and fell asleep. At seven she was roused by the executioner. The streets were already thronged with a fierce and sanguinary mob, whose shouts of triumph were so vociferous that she asked one of her jailers whether they would tear her to pieces. She was assured that, as he expressed it, they would do her no harm. And indeed the Jacobins themselves would have protected her from the populace, so anxious were they to heap on her every indignity that would render death more terrible. Louis had been allowed to quit the Temple in his carriage. Marie Antoinette was to be drawn from the prison to the scaffold in a common cart, seated on a bare plank; the executioner by her side, holding the cords with which her hands were already bound. With a refinement of barbarity, those who conducted the procession made it halt more than once, that the people might gaze upon her, pointing her out to the mob with words and gestures of the vilest insult. She heard them not; her thoughts were with God: her lips were uttering nothing but prayers. Once for a moment, as she passed in sight of the Tuileries, she was observed to cast an agonized look toward its towers, remembering, perhaps, how reluctantly she had quit it fourteen months before. It was midday before the cart reached the scaffold. As she descended, she trod on the executioner's foot. It might seem to have been ordained that her very last words might be words of courtesy. "Excuse me, sir," she said, "I did not do it on purpose;" and she added, "make haste." In a few moments all was over.

Her body was thrown into a pit in the common cemetery, and covered with quicklime to insure its entire destruction. When, more than twenty years afterward, her brother-in-law was restored to the throne, and with pious affection desired to remove her remains and those of her husband to the time-honored resting-place of their royal ancestors at St. Denis, no remains of her who had once been the admiration of all beholders could be found beyond some fragments of clothing, and one or two bones, among which the faithful memory of Chateaubriand believed that he recognized the mouth whose sweet smile had been impressed on his memory since the day on which it acknowledged his loyalty on his first presentation, while still a boy, at Versailles.

Thus miserably perished, by a death fit only for the vilest of criminals, Marie Antoinette, the daughter of one sovereign, the wife of another, who had never wronged or injured one human being. No one was ever more richly endowed with all the charms which render woman attractive, or with all the virtues that make her admirable. Even in her earliest years, her careless and occasionally undignified levity was but the joyous outpouring of a pure innocence of heart that, as it meant no evil, suspected none; while it was ever blended with a kindness and courtesy which sprung from a genuine benevolence. As queen, though still hardly beyond girlhood when she ascended the throne, she set herself resolutely to work by her admonitions, and still more effectually by her example, to purify a court of which for centuries the most shameless profligacy had been the rule and boast; discountenancing vice and impiety by her marked reprobation, and reserving all her favor and protection for genius and patriotism, and honor and virtue. Surrounded at a later period by unexampled dangers and calamities, she showed herself equal to every vicissitude of fortune, and superior to its worst frowns. If her judgment occasionally erred, it was in cases where alternatives of evil were alone offered to her choice, and in which it is even now scarcely possible to decide what course would have been wiser or safer than that which she adopted. And when at last the long conflict was terminated by the complete victory of her combined enemies- when she, with her husband and her children, was bereft not only of power, but even of freedom, and 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.

FOOTNOTES

PREFACE

[1] 0ne entitled "Marie-Antoinette, correspondance secrete entre Marie- Therese et le Comte Mercy d'Argenteau, avec des lettres de Marie-Therese et de Marie-Antoinette." (The edition referred to in this work is the greatly enlarged second edition in three volumes, published at Paris, 1875.) The second is entitled "Marie-Antoinette, Joseph II., and Leopold II," published at Leipsic, 1866.

[2] Entitled "Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, et Madame Elizabeth," in six volumes, published at intervals from 1864 to 1873.

[3] In his "Nouveau Lundi," March 5th, 1866, M. Sainte-Beuve challenged M. Feuillet de Conches to a more explicit defense of the authenticity of his collection than he had yet vouchsafed; complaining, with some reason, that his delay in answering the charges brought against it "was the more vexatious because his collection was only attacked in part, and in many points remained solid and valuable." And this challenge elicited from M.F. de Conches a very elaborate explanation of the sources from which he procured his documents, which he published in the Revue des Deux Mondes, July 15th, 1866, and afterward in the Preface to his fourth volume. That in a collection of nearly a thousand documents he may have occasionally been too credulous in accepting cleverly executed forgeries as genuine letters is possible, and even probable; in fact, the present writer regards it as certain. But the vast majority, including all those of the greatest value, can not be questioned without imputing to him a guilty knowledge that they were forgeries-a deliberate bad faith, of which no one, it is believed, has ever accused him.

It may be added that it is only from the letters of this later period that any quotations are made in the following work; and the greater part of the letters so cited exists in the archives at Vienna, while the others, such as those, addressed by the Queen, to Madame de Polignac, etc., are just such as were sure to be preserved as relics by the families of those to whom they were addressed, and can therefore hardly be considered as liable to the slightest suspicion.

CHAPTER I. [1] Sainte-Beuve, "Nouveaux Lundis," August 8th, 1864.

CHAPTER II. [1] "Histoire de Marie Antoinette," par E. and J. de Goncourt, p. 11.

[2] How popular masked halls were in London at this time may be learned from Walpole's "Letters," and especially from a passage in which he gives an account of one given by "sixteen or eighteen young Lords" just two months before this ball at Vienna.-Walpole to Mann, dated February 27th, 1770. Some one a few years later described the French nation as half tiger and half monkey; and it is a singular coincidence that Walpole's comment on this masquerading fashion should be, "It is very lucky, seeing how much of the tiger enters into the human composition, that there should be a good dose of the monkey too."

[3] "Memoires concernant Marie Antoinette," par Joseph Weber (her foster- brother), i., p. 6.

[4] "Goethe's Biography," p. 287.

[5] "Memoires de Bachaumont," January 30th, 1770.

[6] La maison du roi.

[7] Chevalier d'honneur. We have no corresponding office at the English court.

[8] The king said, "Vous etiez deja de la famille, car votre mere a l'ame de Louis le Grand."-SAINTE-BEUVE, Nouveaux Lundis, viii., p. 322.

[9] In the language of the French heralds, the title princes of the royal family was confined to the children or grandchildren of the reigning sovereign. His nephews and cousins were only princes of the blood.

CHAPTER III. [1] The word is Maria Teresa's own; "anti-francais" occurring in more than one of her letters.

[2] Quoted by Mme. du Deffand in a letter to Walpole, dated May 19th, 1770 ("Correspondance complete de Mme. du Deffand," ii., p.59).

[3] Mercy to Marie-Therese, August 4th, 1770; "Correspondance secrete entre Marie-Therese et la Comte de Mercy Argenteau, avec des Lettres de Marie-Therese et Marie Antoinette," par M. le Chevalier Alfred d'Arneth, i., p. 29. For the sake of brevity, this Collection will be hereafter referred to as "Arneth."

[4] "The King of France is both hated and despised, which seldom happens to the same man."-LORD CHESTERFIELD, Letter to Mr. Dayrolles, dated May 19th, 1752.

[5] Maria Teresa died in December, 1780.

[6] Mme. du Deffand, letter of May 19th, 1770.

[7] Chambier, i., p. 60.

[8] Mme. de Campan, i., p. 3.

[9] He told Mercy she was "'vive et un peu enfant, mais," ajouta-t-il, "cela est bien de son age.'"-ARNETH, i., p. 11.

[10] Arneth, i., p.9-16

CHAPTER IV. [1] Dates 9th and 12th., Arneth, i., pp. 16, 18.

[2] Marly was a palace belonging to the king, but little inferior in splendor to Versailles itself, and a favorite residence of Louis XV., because a less strict etiquette had been established there. Choisy and Bellevue, which will often be mentioned in the course of this narrative, were two others of the royal palaces on a somewhat smaller scale. They have both been destroyed. Marly, Choisy, and Bellevue were all between Versailles and Paris.

[3] Mem. de Goncourt, quoting a MS. diary of Hardy, p. 35.

[4] De Vermond, who had accompanied her from Vienna as her reader.

[5] See St. Simon's account of Dangeau, i., p. 392.

[6] The Duc de Noailles, brother-in-law of the countess, "l'homme de France qui a peut-etre le plus d'esprit et qui connait le mieux son souverain et la cour," told Mercy in August that "jugeant d'apres son experience et d'apres les qualites qu'il voyait dans cette princesse, il etait persuade qu'elle gouvernerait un jour l'esprit du roi."-ARNETH, i., p. 34.

[7] La petite rousse.

[8] "De monter a cheval gate le teint, et votre taille a la longue s'en ressentira."-Marie-Therese a Marie-Antoinette, Arneth, i., p. 104.

[9] "On fit chercher partout des anes fort doux et tranquilles. Le 21 on repeta la promenade sur les anes. Mesdames voulurent etre de la partie ainsi que le Comte de Provence et le Comte d'Artois."-Mercy a Marie- Therese, September 19, 1770, Arneth, i., p. 49.

[10] "Madame la Dauphine, a laquelle le tresor royal doit remettre 6000 frs. par mois, n'a reellement pas un ecu dont elle peut disposer elle-meme et sans le concours de personne" (Octobre 20).-ARNETH, i. p. 69.

[11] "Ses garcons de chambre recoivent cent louis [a louis was twenty-four francs, so that the hundred made 2100 francs out of her 6000] par mois pour la depense du jeu de S.A.R.; et soit qu'elle perde ou qu'elle gagne, on ne revoit rien de cette somme."-ARNETH, i.

[12] "Mme. Adelaide ajouta, 'On voit bien que vous n'etes pas de notre sang.'"-ARNETH, i., p. 94.

[13] Arneth, i., p. 95.

[14] "Finalement, Mme. la Dauphine se fait adorer de ses entours et du public; il n'est pas encore survenu un seul inconvenient grave dans sa conduite."-Mercy a Marie-Therese, Novembre 16, Arneth, i., p. 98.

[15] Prince de Ligne, "Mem." ii., p. 79.

[16] Mercy to Maria Teresa, dated November 17th, 1770, Arneth, i., p. 94.

[17] Mercy to Maria Teresa, dated February 25th, 1771, Arneth, i, p. 134.

CHAPTER V. [1] See the "Citizen of the World," Letter 55. Reference has often been made to Lord Chesterfield's prediction of the French Revolution. But I am not aware that any one has remarked on the equally acute foresight of Goldsmith.

[2] Letter of April 16th, 1771, Arneth, i., p. 148.

[3] Arneth, i., p. 186.

[4] Maria Teresa to Marie Antoinette, July 9th, and August 17th, Arneth, i., p. 196.

[5] "Ne soyez pas honteuse d'etre allemande jusqu'aux gaucheries.... Le Francais vous estimera plus et fera plus de compte sur vous s'il vous trouve la solidite et la franchise allemande."-Maria Teresa to Marie Antoinette. May 8th, 1771, Arneth, i., p. 159.

[6] Walpole's letter to Sir H. Mann, June 8th, 1771, v., p. 301.

[7] Mercy to Maria Teresa, January 23d, 1772, Arneth, i., p. 265.

[8] The Duc de la Vauguyon, who, after the dauphin's marriage, still retained his post with his younger brother.

CHAPTER VI. [1] Mercy's letter to the empress, August 14th, 1772, Arneth, i., p. 335.

[2] Mercy to Maria Teresa, November 14th, 1772, Arneth, i., p. 307.

[3] Marie Antoinette to Maria Teresa, December 15th, 1772, Arneth, i., p. 382.

[4] Her sister Caroline, Queen of Naples.

[5] Her brother Leopold, at present Grand Duke of Tuscany, afterward emperor. His wife, Marie Louise, was a daughter of Charles III. of Spain.

[6] They, with several of the princes of the blood and some of the peers, as already mentioned, had been banished for their opposition to the abolition of the Parliaments; but now, in the hopes of obtaining the king's consent to his marriage with Madame de Montessan, a widow of enormous wealth, the Due d'Orleans made overtures for forgiveness, accompanying them, however, with a letter so insolent that it might we be regarded as an aggravation of his original offense. According to Madame du Deffand (letter to Walpole, December 18th, 1772, vol. ii., p. 283), he was only prevented from reconciling himself to the king some months before by his son, the Due de Chartres (afterward the infamous Egalite), whom she describes as "a young man, very obstinate, and who hopes to play a great part by putting himself at the head of a faction." The princes, however, in the view of the shrewd old lady, had made the mistake of greatly overrating their own importance. "These great princes, since their protest, have been just citizens of the Rue St. Denis. No one at court ever perceived their absence, and no one in the city ever noticed their presence."

[7] Lord Stormont, the English Embassador at Vienna, from which city he was removed to Paris. In the preceding September Maria Teresa had complained to him of being "animated against her cabinet, from indignation at the partition of Poland."

[8] That is, sisters-in-law-the Princesses Clotilde and Elizabeth.

[9] The Hotel-Dieu was the most ancient hospital in Paris. It had already existed several hundred years when Philip Augustus enlarged it, and gave it the name of Maison de Dieu. Henry IV. and his successors had further enlarged it, and enriched it with monuments; and even the revolutionists respected it, though when they had disowned the existence of God they changed its name to that of L'Hospice de l'Humanite. It had been almost destroyed by fire a fortnight before the date of this letter, on the night of the 29th of December.

[10] St. Anthony's Day was June 14th, and her name of Antoinette was regarded as placing her under his especial protection.

CHAPTER VII. [1] They have not, however, been preserved.

[2] Mercy to Maria Teresa, June 16th, 1773, Arneth, i., p. 467.

[3] "Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI., et la Famille Royale", p. 23.

[4] Marie Antoinette to Maria Theresa, July 17th, Arneth, ii., p. 8.

[5] "Histoire de Marie Antoinette," par M. de Goncourt, p. 50. Quoting an unpublished journal by M.M. Hardy, in the Royal Library.

[6] It is the name by which she is more than once described in Madame du Deffand's letters. See her "Correspondence," ii., p. 357.

[7] Mercy to Maria Teresa, December 11th, 1773, Arneth, ii., p. 81.

[8] "Memoires de Besenval," i., p. 304.

CHAPTER VIII. [1] Mercy to Maria Teresa, August 14th, 1773, Arneth, ii., p. 31.

[2] The money was a joint gift from herself as well as from him. Great distress, arising from the extraordinarily high price of bread, was at this time prevailing in Paris.

[3] The term most commonly used by Marie Antoinette in her letters to her mother to describe Madame du Barri. She was ordered to retire to the Abbey of Pont-aux-Dames, near Meaux. Subsequently she was allowed to return to Luciennes, a villa which her royal lover had given her.

[4] Madame de Mazarin was the lady who, by the fulsomeness of her servility to Madame du Barri, provoked Madame du Deffand (herself a lady not altogether sans reproche) to say that it was not easy to carry "the heroism of baseness and absurdity farther."

[5] Lorraine had become a French province a few years before, on the death of Stanislaus Leczinsky, father of the queen of Louis XV.

[6] Maria Teresa to Marie Antoinette, May 18th, and to Mercy on the same day, Arneth, ii., p. 149.

[7] See his letter of 8th May to Maria Teresa. "Il faut que pour la suite de son bonheur, elle commence a s'emparer de l'autorite que M. le Dauphin n'exercera jamais que d'une facon convenable, et ... ce serait du dernier danger et pour l'etat et pour le systeme general que qui ce soit s'emparat de M. le Dauphin et qu'il fut conduit par autre que par Madame la Dauphine."-ARNETH, ii., p. 137.

[8] "Je parle a l'amie, a la confidente du roi."-Maria Teresa to Marie Antoinette, May 30th, 1770, Arneth, ii., p. 155.

[9] "Jusqu'a present l'etiquette de cette cour a toujours interdit aux reines et princesses royales de manger avec des hommes."-Mercy to Maria Teresa, June 7th, 1774, Arneth, ii, p. 164

[10] "Elle me traite, a mon arrivee, comme tous les jeunes gens qui composaient ses pages, qu'elle comblait de bontes, en leur montrant une bienveillance pleine de dignite, mais qu'on pouvait aussi appeler maternelle."-Marie Therese, Memoires de Tilly, i., p. 25.

[11] Le don, ou le droit, de joyeux avenement.

[12] La ceinture de la reine. It consisted of three pence (deniers) on each hogs-head of wine imported into the city, and was levied every three years in the capital.-ARNETH, ii, p. 179.

[13] The title "ceinture de la reine" had been given to it because in the old times queens and all other ladies had carried their purses at their girdles.

CHAPTER IX. [1] The title by which the count was usually known: that of the countess was madame.

[2] St. Simon, 1709, ch. v., and 1715, ch. i, vols. vii. and xiii., ed. 1829.

[3] Ibid., 1700, ch xxx., vol. ii., p. 469.

[4] Arneth, ii, p. 206.

[5] Madame de Campan, ch. iv.

[6] Madame de Campan, ch. v., p. 106.

[7] Id., p. 101.

[8] "Sir Peter. Ah, madam, true wit is more neatly allied to good- nature than your ladyship is aware of."-School for Scandal, act ii., sc. 2.

CHAPTER X. [1] "Elle avait entierement le defaut contraire [a la prodigalite], et je pouvais prouver qu'elle portait souvent l'economie jusqu'a des details d'une mesquinerie blamable, surtout dans une souveraine."-MADAME DE CAMPAN, ch. v., p. 106, ed. 1858.

[2] Arneth, ii., p. 307.

[3] See the author's "History of France under the Bourbons," iii., p. 418. Lacretelle, iv., p. 368, affirms that this outbreak, for which in his eyes "une pretendue disette" was only a pretext, was "evidemment fomente par des hommes puissans," and that "un salaire qui etait paye par des hommes qu'on ne pouvait nommer aujourd'hui avec assez de certitude, excitait leurs fureurs factices."

[4] La Guerre des Farines.

[5] Arneth, ii., p. 342.

[6] "Souvenirs de Vaublanc," i., p. 231.

[7] August 23d, 1775, No. 1524, in Cunningham's edition, vol. vi., p. 245.

[8] The Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, who were just at this time astonishing London with their riotous living.

CHAPTER XI. [1] "Gustave III. et la Cour de France," i. p. 279.

[2] The Duc d'Angouleme, afterward dauphin, when the Count d'Artois succeeded to the throne as Charles X.

[3] Marie Antoinette to Maria Teresa, August 12th, 1775, Arneth, ii., p. 366.

[4] "Le projet de la reine etait d'exiger du roi que le Sieur Turgot fut chasse, meme envoye a la Bastille ... et il a fallu les representations les plus fortes et les plus instantes pour arreter les effets de la colere de la Reine."-Mercy to Maria Teresa, May 16th, 1776, Arneth, ii., p. 446.

[5] The compiler of "Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI., et La Famille Royale" (date April 24th, 1776) has a story of a conversation between the king and queen which illustrates her feeling toward the minister. She had just come in from the opera. He asked her "how she had been received by the Parisians; if she had had the usual cheers." She made no reply; the king understood her silence. "Apparently, madame, you had not feathers enough." "I should have liked to have seen you there, sir, with your St. Germain and your Turgot; you would have been rudely hissed." St. Germain was the minister of war.

[6] Mercy to Maria Teresa, May 16th, 1776, Arneth, ii., p. 446.

[7] January 14th, 1776, Arneth, ii., p. 414.

[8] The ground-floor of the palace was occupied by the shops of jewelers and milliners, some of whom were great sufferers by the fire.

[9] In a letter written at the end of 1775, Mercy reports to the empress that some of Turgot's economical reforms had produced real discontent among those "qui trouvent leur interet dans le desordre," which they had vented in scandalous and seditious writings. Many songs of that character had come out, some of which were attributed to Beaumarchais, "le roi et la reine n'y ont point ete respectes."-December 17th, 1775. Arneth, ii, p. 410.

[10] Mercy to Maria Teresa, November 15th, 1776, Arneth, ii., p. 524.

CHAPTER XII. [1] "Le petit nombre de ceux que la Reine appelle 'sa societe'"-Mercy to Marie Teresa, February 15th, 1777, Arneth, iii., p. 18.

[2] "Il faut cependant convenir que dans ces circonstances si rapprochees de la familiarite, la Reine, par un maintien qui tient a son ame, a toujours su imprimer a ceux qui l'entouraient une contenance de respect qui contrebalancait un peu la liberte des propos."-Mercy to Maria Teresa, Arneth, ii, p.520.

[3] Brunoy is about fifteen miles from Paris.

[4] "Au reste il est temps pour la sante de la Reine que le carnaval finisse. On remarque qu'elle s'en altere, et que sa Majeste maigrit beaucoup."-Marie Therese a Louis XVI., la date Fevrier 1, 1777, p 101.

[5] Once when he had spoken to her with a severity which alarmed Mercy, who feared it might irritate the queen, "Il me dit en riant qu'il en avait agi ainsi pour sonder l'ame de la reine, et voir si par la force il n'y aurait pas moyen d'obtenir plus que par la douceur."-Mercy to Maria Teresa, Arneth, iii., p. 79.

[6] Arneth, iii., p. 73.

CHAPTER XIII. [1] When Mercy remonstrated with her on her relapse into some of her old habits from which at first she seemed to have weaned herself, "La seule reponse que j'aie obtenu a ete la crainte de s'ennuyer."-Mercy to Maria Teresa, November 19th, 1777, Arneth, iii., p. 13.

[2] See Marie Antoinette's account to her mother of his quarrel with the Duchess de Bourbon at a bal de l'opera, Arneth, iii., p. 174.

[3] "Il y a apparence que notre marine dont on s'occupe depuis longtemps va bientot etre en activite. Dieu veuille que tous ces mouvements n'amenent pas la guerre de terre."-Marie Antoinette to Maria Teresa, March 18th, 1777, Arneth, iii., p. 174.

[4] "Jamais les Anglais n'ont eu tant de superiorite sur mer; mais ils en eurent sur les Francais dans tous les temps."-Siecle de Louis, ch xxxv.

[5] The Comte de la Marck, who knew him well, says of him, "Il etait gauche dans toutes ses manieres; sa taille etait tres elevee, ses cheveux tres roux, il dansait sans grace, montait mal a cheval, et les jeunes gens avec lesquels il vivait se montraient plus adroits que lui dans les diverses exercices d'alors a la mode." He describes his income as "une fortune de 120,000 livres de rente," a little under L5000 a year.- Correspondance entre le Comte de Mirabeau et le Comte de la Marck, i. p. 47.

[6] "On a parle de moi dans tous les cercles, meme apres que la bonte de la reine m'eut valu le regiment du roi dragons."-Memoires de ma Main, Memoires de La Fayette, i., p 86.

[7] "La lettre ou Votre Majeste, parlant du Roi de Prusse, s'exprime ainsi .... 'cela ferait un changement dans notre alliance, ce qui me donnerait la mort,' j'ai vu la reine palir en me lisant cet article."-Mercy to Maria Teresa, February 18th, 1778, Arneth, iii., p. 170.

[8] See Coxe's "House of Austria," ch. cxxi. The war, which was marked by no action or event of importance, was terminated by the treaty of Teschen, May 10th, 1779.

[9] "Il n'a pas voulu y consentir, et a toujours ete attentif a exciter lui-meme la reine aux choses qu'il jugeait pouvoir lui etre agreables."- Mercy to Maria Teresa, March 29th, 1778, Arneth, iii., p. 177.

[10] Marie Antoinette to Joseph II, and Leopold II., p. 21, date January 16th, 1778.

[11] Louis.

[12] Marie Antoinette to Maria Teresa, May 16th, Arneth, iii., p. 200.

[13] Weber, i., p.40.

[14] One of his admirers, seeing his mortification, said to him: "You are very simple to have wished to go to court. Do you know what would have happened to you? I will tell you. The king, with his usual affability, would have laughed in your face, and talked to you of your converts at Ferney. The queen would have spoken of your plays. Monsieur would have asked you what your income was. Madame would have quoted some of your verses. The Countess of Artois would have said nothing at all; and the count would have conversed with you about 'the Maid of Orleans.'"-Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI. et la Famille Royale, p. 125, March 3d.

CHAPTER XIV. [1] "La cour se precipite pele-mele avec la foule, car l'etiquette de France veut que tous entrent a ce moment, que nul ne soit refuse, et que le spectacle soit public d'une reine qui va donner un heritier a la couronne, ou seulement un enfant au roi."-Mem. de Goncourt, p. 105.

[2] Arneth, iii., p. 270.

[3] Madame de Campan, ch. ix.

[4] Ibid., ch. ix.

[5] Chambrier, i., p. 394.

[6] "Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI., et la Famille Royale," p. 147, December 24th, 1778.

[7] Garde-malades was the name given to them.

[8] "Du moment qu'ils [les enfants] peuvent etre a l'air on les y accoutume petit a petit, et ils finissent par y etre presque toujours; je crois que c'est la maniere la plus saine et la meilleure des les elever."

[9] Letter of Marie Antoinette to Maria Teresa, May 15th, 1779, Arneth, iii., p. 311.

[10] Maria Teresa had offered the mediation of the empire to restore peace between England and France.

[11] Spain had recently entered into the alliance against England in the hope of recovering Gibraltar. And just at the date of this letter the combined fleet of sixty-six sail of the line sailed into the Channel, while a French army of 50,000 men was waiting at St. Malo to invade England so soon as the British Channel fleet should have been defeated; but, though Sir Charles Hardy had only forty sail under his orders, D'Orvilliers and his Spanish colleague retreated before him, and at the beginning of September, from fear of the equinoctial gales, of which the queen here speaks with such alarm, retired to their own harbors, without even venturing to come to action with a foe of scarcely two-thirds of their own strength. See the author's "History of the British Navy," ch. xiv.

[12] Letter of September 15th.

[13] Letter of October 14th.

[14] Letter of November 16th.

[15] Letter of November 17th.

[16] Kaunitz had been the prime minister of the empress, who negotiated the alliances with France and Russia, which were the preparations for the Seven Years' War.

CHAPTER XV. [1] "On assure que sa majeste ne joue pas bien; ce que personne, excepte le roi, n'a ose lui dire. Au contraire, on l'applaudit a tout rompre."- Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI. et la Famille Royale p. 203, date September 28th, 1780.

[2] In May, 1780, Sir Henry Clinton took Charleston, with a great number of prisoners, a great quantity of stores and four hundred guns.-LORD STANHOPE'S History of England, ch. lxii.

[3] "Cette disposition a ete faite deux ans plutot que ne le comporte l'usage etabli pour les enfants de France."-Mercy to Maria Teresa, October 14th, Arneth, iii. p. 476.

[4] Madame de Campan, ch. ix.

[5] "Gustave III. et la Cour de France," i., p. 349.

[6] An order known as that "du Merite" had been recently distributed for foreign Protestant officers, whose religion prevented them from taking the oath required of the Knights of the Grand Order of St. Louis.

[7] "Sa figure et son air convenaient parfaitement a un heros de roman, mais non pas d'un roman francais; il n'en avait ni le brillant ni legerete."-Souvenirs et Portraits, par M. de Levis, p. 130.

[8] "La Marck et Mirabeau," p. 32.

[9] See his letter to Lord North proposing peace, date December 1st, 1780. Lord Stanhope's "History of England," vol. vii., Appendix, p. 13.

CHAPTER XVI. [1] "Gustave III. et la Cour de France," i., p. 357.

[2] Chambrier, i., p. 430; "Gustave III.," etc., i., p. 353.

[3] "Gustave III.," etc., i., p. 353.

[4] "Memoires de Weber," i., p. 50.

[5] "On s'arretait dans les rues, on se parlait sans se connaitre."- Madame de Campan, ch. ix.

[6] L'Oeil de Boeuf.

[7] Madame de Campan, ch. ix.; "Marie Antoinette, Louis XII., et la Famille Royale," p. 238.

[8] "Un soleil d'ete"-Weber, i., p. 53.

[9] La Muette derived its name from les mues of the deer who were reared there. It had been enlarged by the Regent d'Orleans, who gave it to his daughter, the Duchess de Berri; and it, was the frequent scene of the orgies of that infamous father and daughter, while more recently it had been known as the Parc aux Cerfs, under which title it had acquired a still more infamous reputation.

[10] "Apres le diner il y eut appartement jeu, et la fete fut terminee par un feu d'artifice."-Weber, i., p. 57, from whom the greater part of those details are taken. For the etiquette of the "jeu," see Madame de Campan, ch. ix., p. 17, and 2 ed. 1858.

CHAPTER XVII. [1] Mercy to Maria Teresa, June 18th, 1780, Arneth iii., p. 440.

[2] Le tabouret. See St. Simon.

[3] See infra, the queen's letter to Madame de Tourzel, date July 25th, 1789.

[4] "Souvenirs de Quarante Ans," by Mademoiselle de Tourzel, p. 20.

[5] "Filia dolorosa."-Chateaubriand.

[6] Napoleon, in 1814, called her the only man of her family.

[7] Madame de Campan, ch. x.

[8] Memoires de Madame d'Oberkirch, i., p. 279

[9] The Marshal Prince de Soubise, whose incapacity and cowardice caused the disgraceful rout of Rosbach, was the head of this family; his sister, Madame Marsan, as governess of the "children of France", had brought up Louis XVI.

[10] "Il [Rohan] a meme menace, si on ne veut pas prendre le bon chemin qui lui indique, que ma fille s'en ressentira."-Marie-Therese a Mercy, August 28th, 1774, Arneth, ii., p. 226.

[11] "Ils paraissent si excedes du grand monde et des fetes, qu'avec d'autres petites difficultes qui se sont elevees, nous avons decide qu'il n'y aurait rien a Marly."-Marie Antoinette to Mercy; Marie Antoinette, Joseph II., and Leopold II., p. 27.

[12] "No fewer than five actions were fought in 1782, and the spring of 1783, by those unwearied foes. De Suffrein's force was materially the stronger of the two; it consisted of ten sail of the line, one fifty-gun ship, and four frigates; while Sir E. Hughes had but eight sail of the line, a fifty-gun ship, and one frigate," See the author's "History of the British Navy," i., p. 400.

[13] Weber, i., p. 77. For the importance at this time attached to a reception at court, see Chateaubriand, "Memoires d'Outre-tombe," i., p. 221.

CHAPTER XVIII. [1] Joseph to Marie Antoinette, date September 9th, 1783.-Marie Antoinette, Joseph II., and Leopold II., p.30, which, to save such a lengthened reference, will hereafter be referred to as "Arneth."

[2] She was again expecting a confinement; but, as had happened between the birth of Madame Royale and that of the dauphin, an accident disappointed her hope, and her third child was not born till 1785.

[3] Date September 29th, 1783, Arneth, p. 35.

[4] Ministre de la maison du roi.

[5] Arneth, p. 38.

CHAPTER XIX. [1] "Le roi signa une lettre de cachet qui defendait cette representation."-Madame de Campan, ch. xi.; see the whole chapter. Madame de Campan's account of the queen's inclinations on the subject differs from that given by M. de Lomenie, in his "Beaumarchais et son Temps," but seems more to be relied on, as she had certainly better means of information.

[2] See M. Gaillard's report to the lieutenant of police.-Beaumarchais et son Temps, ii., p. 313.

[3] "Il n'y a que les petits hommes qui redoutent les petits ecrits."- Act v., scene 3.

[4] "Avec Goddam en, Angleterre on ne manque de rien nulle part. Voulez- vous tater un bon poulet gras ... Goddam ... Aimez-vous a boire un coup d'excellent Bourgogne ou de clairet? rien que celui-ci Goddam. Les Anglais a la verite ajoutent par-ci par-la autres mots en conversant, mais il est bien aise de voir que Goddam est le fond de la langue."-Act iii., scene 5.

[5] "Gustave III. et la Cour de France," ii., p.22

[6] Ibid., p. 35.

CHAPTER XX. [1] "De par la reine."

[2] Madame de Campan, ch. xi.

[3] "'La legerete a tout croire et a tout dire des souverains,' ecrit tres justement M. Nisard (Moniteur du 22 Janvier, 1886), 'est un des travers de notre pays, et comme le defaut de notre qualite de nation monarchique. C'est ce travers qui a tue Marie Antoinette par la main des furieux qui eurent peut-etre des honnetes gens pour complices. Sa mort devait rendre a jamais impossible en France la calomnie politique.'"-Chambrier, i., p. 494.

[4] "Memoires de la Reine de France," par M. Lafont d'Aussonne, p. 42.

[5] See her letters to Mercy, December 26th, 1784, and to the emperor, December 31st, 1784, and February 4th, 1785, Arneth, p. 64, et seq.

[6] "J'ai ete reellement touchee, de la raison et de la fermete que le roi a mises dans cette rude seance."-Marie Antoinette to Joseph II., August 22d, 1785, Arneth, p. 93.

[7] "La calomnie s'est attachee a poursuivre la reine, meme avant cette epoque ou l'esprit de parti a fait disparaitre la verite de la terre."- Madame de Stael, Proces de la Reine, p. 2

[8] Madame de Campan, "Eclaircissements Historiques," p. 461; "Marie Antoinette et le Proces du Collier," par M. Emile Campardon, p. 144, seq.

[9] "Permet au Cardinal de Rohan et au dit de Cagliostro de faire imprimer et afficher le present arret partout ou bon leur semblera."-Campardon, p. 152.

[10] "Sans doute le cardinal avait les mains pures de toute fraude; sans doute il n'etait pour rien dans l'escroquerie commise par les epoux de La Mothe."-Campardon, p. 155.

[11] Campardon, p. 153, quoting Madame de Campan.

[12] The most recent French historian, M.H. Martin, sees in this trial a proof of the general demoralization of the whole French nation. "L'impression qui en resulte pour nous est l'impossibilite que la reine ait ete coupable. Mais plus les imputations dirigees contre elle etaient vraisemblables, plus la creance accordee a ces imputations etait caracteristique, et attestait la ruine morale de la monarchie. C'etait l'ombre du Parc aux Cerfs qui couvrait toujours Versailles."-Histoire de France, xvi., p. 559, ed. 1860.

[13] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 161.

[14] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. l62. Some of the critics of M.F. de Conches's collection have questioned without sufficient reason the probability of there having been any correspondence between the queen and her elder sister. But the genuineness of this letter is strongly corroborated by a mistake into which no forger would have fallen. The queen speaks as if the cardinal had alleged that he had given her a rose; while his statement really was that Oliva, personating the queen, had dropped a rose at his feet. A forger would have made the letter Correspond with the evidence and the fact. The queen, in her agitation, might easily make a mistake.

[15] "Il se retira dans son eveche de l'autre cote du Rhin. La sa noble conduite fit oublier les torts de sa vie passee," etc.-Campardon, p. 156.

[16] Campardon, p. 156.

[17] It was from Ettenheim that the Duke d'Enghien was carried off in March, 1804. The cardinal died in February, 1803.

CHAPTER XXI. [1] "Le duc declarait de son cote a Mr. Elliott que ... si la reine l'eut mieux traite il eut peut-etre mieux fait."-Chambrier, i., p.519

[2] Sophie Helene Beatrix, born July 9th, 1786, died June 9th, 1787, F. de Conches, i. p. 195.

[3] See her letter to her brother, February, 1788, Arneth, p. 112.

[4] "C'est un vrai enfant de paysan, grand frais et gros."-Arneth, pp. 113.

[5] Feuillet de Conches, i, p. 195.

[6] Apparently she means the Notables and the Parliament.

[7] The Duc de Guines.

[8] See ante, ch. xviii.

[9] "'Il faut,' dit-il, avec un mouvement d'impatience qui lui fit honneur, 'que, du moins, l'archeveque de Paris croie en Dieu.'"- Souvenirs par le Duc de Levis, p. 102.

[10] The continuer of Sismondi's history, A. Renee, however, attributes the archbishop's appointment to the influence of the Baron de Breteuil.

[11] "Son grand art consistait a parler a chacun des choses qu'il croyait qu'on ignorait."-De Levis, p. 100.

[12] The loan he proposed in June was eighty millions (of francs); in October, that which he demanded was four hundred and forty millions.

[13] It is worth noticing that the French people in general did not regard the power of arbitrary imprisonment exercised by their kings as a grievance. In their eyes it was one of his most natural prerogatives. A year or two before the time of which we are speaking, Dr. Moore, the author of "Zeluco," and father of Sir John Moore, who fell at Corunna, was traveling in France, and was present at a party of French merchants and others of the same rank, who asked him many questions about the English Constitution, When he said that the King of England could not impose a tax by his own authority, "they said, with some degree of satisfaction, 'Cependant c'est assez beau cela.'"... But when he informed them "that the king himself had not the power to encroach upon the liberty of the meanest of his subjects, and that if he or the minister did so, damages were recoverable in a court of law, a loud and prolonged 'Diable!' issued from every mouth. They forgot their own situation, and turned to their natural bias of sympathy with the king, who, they all seemed to think, must be the most oppressed and injured of manhood. One of them at last, addressing himself to the English politician, said, 'Tout ce que je puis vous dire, monsieur, c'est que votre pauvre roi est bien a plaindre.'"-A View of the Society and Manners in France, etc., by Dr. John Moore, vol. i., p. 47, ed. 1788.

CHAPTER XXII. [1] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 205.

[2] M. Foulon was about this time made paymaster of the army and navy, and was generally credited with ability as a financier; but he was unpopular, as a man of ardent and cruel temper, and was brutally murdered by the mob in one of the first riots of the Revolution.

[3] The king.

[4] Necker.

[5] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 214.

[6] Ibid., p. 217.

[7] On one occasion when the Marquis de Bouille pointed out to him the danger of some of his plans as placing the higher class at the mercy of the mob, "dirige par les deux passions les plus actives du coeur humain, l'interet et l'amour propre, ... il me repondit froidement, en levant les yeux au ciel, qu'il fallait bien compter sur les vertus morales des hommes."-Memoires de M. de Bouille, p. 70; and Madame de Stael admits of her father that he was "se fiant trop, il faut l'avouer, a l'empire de la raison," and adds that he "etudia constamment l'esprit public, comme la boussole a laquelle les decisions du roi devaient se conformer."- Considerations sur la Revolution Francaise, i., pp. 171, 172.

[8] Her exact words are "si ... il fasse reculer l'autorite du roi" (if he causes the king's authority to retreat before the populace or the Parliament).

[9] "Histoire de Marie Antoinette," par M. Montjoye, p. 202.

[10] Madame de Campan, p. 412.

[11] This edict was registered in the "Chambre Syndicate," September 13th, 1787.-La Reine Marie Antoinette et la Rev. Francaise, Recherches Historiques, par le Comte de Bel-Castel, p. 246.

[12] There is at the present moment so strong a pretension set up in many constituencies to dictate to the members whom they send to Parliament as if they were delegates, and not representatives, that it is worth while to refer to the opinion which the greatest of philosophical statesman, Edmund Burke, expressed on the subject a hundred years ago, in opposition to that at a rival candidate who admitted and supported the claim of constituents to furnish the member whom they returned to Parliament with "instructions" of "coercive authority." He tells the citizens of Bristol plainly that such a claim he ought not to admit, and never will. The "opinion" of constituents is "a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear, and which he ought most seriously to consider; but authoritative instruction, mandates issued which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and his conscience; these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution. Parliament is not a congress of embassadors from different and hostile interests...but Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole, where not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament."-General Election Speech at the Conclusion of the Poll at Bristol, November 3d, 1774, Burke's Works, vol. iii., pp. 19, 20, ed. 1803.

[13] De Tocqueville considers the feudal system in France in many points more oppressive than that of Germany.-Ancien Regime, p. 43.

[14] Silence des grenouilles. Arthur Young, "Travels in France during 1787, '88, '89," p. 537. It is singular proof how entirely research into the condition of the country and the people of France had been neglected both by its philosophers and its statesmen, that there does not seem to have been any publication in the language which gave information on these subjects. And this work of Mr. Young's is the one to which modern French writers, such as M. Alexis de Tocqueville, chiefly refer.

[15] "The lettres de cachet were carried to an excess hardly credible; to the length of being sold, with blanks, to be filled up with names at the pleasure of the purchaser, who was thus able, in the gratification of private revenge, to tear a man from the bosom of his family, and bury him in a dungeon, where he would exist forgotten and die unknown."-A. Young, p. 532. And in a note he gives an instance of an Englishman, named Gordon, who was imprisoned in the Bastile for thirty years without even knowing the reason of his arrest.

[16] Arthur Young, writing January 10th, 1790, identifies Les Enrages with the club afterward so infamous as the Jacobins. "The ardent democrats who have the reputation of being so much republican in principle that they do not admit any political necessity for having even the name of the king, are called the Enrages. They have a meeting at the Jacobins', the Revolution Club which assembles every night in the very room in which the famous League was formed in the reign of Henry III." (p. 267).

[17] M. Droz asserts that a collector of such publications bought two thousand five hundred in the last three months of 1788, and that his collection was far from complete.-Histoire de Louis XVI., ii., p. 180.

[18] "Tout auteur s'erige en legislateur."-Memorial of the Princes to the King, quoted in a note to the last chapter of Sismondi's History, p. 551, Brussels ed., 1849.

[19] In reality the numbers were even more in favor of the Commons: the representatives of the clergy were three hundred and eight, and those of the nobles two hundred and eighty-five, making only five hundred and ninety-three of the two superior orders, while the deputies of the Tiers- Etat were six hundred and twenty-one.-Souvenirs de la Marquise de Crequy, vii., p. 58.

[20] "Se levant alors, 'Non,' dit le roi, 'ce ne peut etre qu'a Versailles, a cause des chasses.'"-LOUIS BLANC, ii., p. 212, quoting Barante.

[21] "La reine adopta ce dernier avis [that the States should meet forty or sixty leagues from the capital], et elle insista aupres du roi que l'on s'eloignat de l'immense population de Paris. Elle craignait des lors que le peuple n'influencat les deliberations des deputes."-MADAME DE CAMPAN, ch 83.

[22] Chambrier, i., p. 562.

CHAPTER XXIII. [1] It was called "L'insurrection du Faubourg St. Antoine."

[2] The best account of this riot is to be found in Dr. Moore's "Views of the Causes and Progress of the French Revolution," i., p. 189.

[3] Madame de Campan specially remarks that the disloyal cry of "Vive le Duc d'Orleans" came from "les femmes du peuple" (ch. xiii.).

[4] Afterward Louis Philippe, King of the French.

[5] "View of the Causes and Progress of the French Revolution," by Dr. Moore, i., p. 144.

[6] The dauphin was too ill to be present. The children were Madame Royale and the Duc de Normandie, who became dauphin the next month by the death of his elder brother.

[7] "Aucun nom propre, excepte le sien, n'etait encore celebre dans les six cents deputes du Tiers."-Considerations sur la Revolution Francaise, pp. 186, 187

[8] In the first weeks of the session he told the Count de la Marck, "On ne sortira plus de la sans un gouvernement plus ou moins semblable a celui d'Angleterre."-Correspondance entre le comte de la Marck, i., p. 67.

[9] He employed M. Malouet, a very influential member of the Assembly, as his agent to open his views to Necker, saying to him, "Je m'adresse donc a votre probite. Vous etes lie avec MM. Necker et de Montmorin, vous devez savoir ce qu'ils veulent, et s'ils ont un plan; si ce plan est raisonnable je le defendrai."-Correspondance de Mirabeau et La Marck, i., p. 219.

[10] There is some uncertainty about Mirabeau's motives and connections at this time. M. de Bacourt, the very diligent and judicious editor of that correspondence with De la Marck which has been already quoted, denies that Mirabeau ever received money from the Duc d'Orleans, or that he had any connection with his party or his views. The evidence on the other side seems much stronger, and some of the statements of the Comte de la Marck contained in that volume go to exculpate Mirabeau from all complicity in the attack on Versailles on the 9th of October, which seems established by abundant testimony.

CHAPTER XXIV. [1] A letter of Madame Roland dated the 26th of this very month, July, 1789, declares that the people "are undone if the National Assembly does not proceed seriously and regularly to the trial of the illustrious heads [the king and queen], or if some generous Decius does not risk his life to take theirs."

[2] This story reached even distant province. On the 24th of July Arthur Young, being at Colmar, was assured at the table-d'hote "That the queen had a plot, nearly on the point of execution, to blow up the National Assembly by a mine, and to march the army instantly to massacre all Paris." A French officer presumed but to doubt of the truth of it, and was immediately overpowered with numbers of tongues. A deputy had written it; they had seen the letter. And at Dijon, a week later, he tells us that "the current report at present, to which all possible credit is given, is that the queen has been convicted of a plot to poison the king and monsieur, and give the regency to the Count d'Artois, to set fire to Paris, and blow up the Palais Royal by a mine."-ARTHUR YOUNG'S Travels, etc., in France, pp. 143, 151.

[3] "Car des ce moment on menacait Versailles d'une incursion de gens armes de Paris."-MADAME DE CAMPAN, ch. xiv.

[4] Lacretelle, vol. vii., p. 105.

[5] She meant to say, "Messieurs, je viens remettre entre vos mains l'epouse et la famille de votre souverain. Ne souffrez pas que l'on desunisse sur la terre ce qui a ete uni dans le ciel."-MADAME DE CAMPAN, ch. xiv.

[6] Napoleon seems to have formed this opinion of his political views: "Selon M. Gourgaud, Buonaparte, causant a Ste. Helene le traitait avec plus de mepris [que Madame de Stael]. 'La Fayette etait encore un autre niais. Il etait nullement taille pour le role qu'il avait a jouer.... C'etait un homme sans talents, ni civils, ni militaires; esprit borne, caractere dissimule, domine par des idees vagues de liberte mal digerees chez lui; mal concues.'"-Biographie Universelle.

[7] In his Memoirs he boasts of the "gaucherie de ses manieres qui ne se plierent jamais aux graces de la Cour," p. 7.

[8] See her letter to Mercy, without date, but, apparently written a day or two after the king's journey to Paris, Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 238.

[9] "Souvenirs de Quarante Ans" (by Madame de Tourzel's daughter), p. 30.

[10] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 240.

CHAPTER XXV. [1] "Memoires de la Princesse de Lamballe," i., p. 342.

[2] Les Gardes du Corps.

[3] Louis Blanc, iii., p. 156, quoting the Procedure du Chatelet.

[4] "Souvenirs de la Marquise de Crequy," vol. vii, p. 119.

[5] There is some uncertainty where La Fayette slept that night. Lacretelle says it was at the "Maison du Prince de Foix, fort eloignee du chateau." Count Dumas, meaning to be as favorable to him as possible, places him at the Hotel de Noailles, which is "not one hundred paces from the iron gates of the chapel" ("Memoirs of the Count Dumas," p. 159). However, the nearer he was to the palace, the more incomprehensible it is that he should not have reached the palace the next morning till nearly eight o'clock, two hours after the mob had forced their entrance into the Cour des Princes.

[6] Weber, i., p. 218.

[7] Le Boulanger (the king), la Boulangere (the queen), et le petit mitron (the dauphin).

[8] "Souvenirs de la Marquise de Crequy," vii., p. 123.

[9] Weber, ii, p. 226.

[10] "Souvenirs de Quarante Ans," p. 47.

CHAPTER XXVI. [1] Madame de Campan, ch. xv.

[2] F. de Conches, p. 264.

[3] Madam de Campan, ch. xv.

[4] See a letter from M. Huber to Lord Auckland, "Journal and Correspondence of Lord Auckland," ii, p. 365.

[5] La Marck et Mirabeau, ii., pp. 90-93, 254.

[6] "Arthur Young's Travels," etc., p. 264; date, Paris, January 4th, 1790.

[7] Feuillet de Conches, iii., p. 229.

[8] Joseph died February 20th.

[9] "Je me flatte que je la meriterai [l'amitie et confiance] de votre part lorsque ma facon de penser et mon tendre attachement pour vous, votre epoux, vos enfants, et tout ce qui peut vous interesser vous seront mieux connus."-ARNETH, p. 120. Leopold had been for many years absent from Germany, being at Florence as Grand Duke of Tuscany.

[10] Feuillet de Conches, iii., p. 260.

[11] As early as the second week in October (La Marck, p. 81, seems to place the conversation even before the outrages of October 5th and 6th; but this seems impossible, and may arise from his manifest desire to represent Mirabeau as unconnected with those horrors), Mirabeau said to La Marck, "Tout est perdu, le roi et la reine y periront et vous le verrez, la populace battra leurs cadavres."

[12] Lese-nation.

CHAPTER XXVII. [1] Arthur Young's "Journal," January 4th, 1790, p. 251.

[2] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 315.

[3] "Le mal deja fait est bien grave, et je doute que Mirabeau lui-meme puisse reparer celui qu'on lui a laisse faire."-Mirabeau et La Marck, i., p. 100.

[4] La Marck et Mirabeau, i., p. 315.

[5] Ibid., p. 111.

[6] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 345.

[7] Mirabeau et La Marck, i., p. 125.

[8] He alludes to Maria Teresa's appearance at Presburg at the beginning of the Silesian war.

[9] "Il lui [a l'Assemblee] importait de faire une epreuve sur toutes les Gardes Nationales de France, d'animer ce grand corps dont tous les membres etaient encore epars et incoherents, de leur donner une meme impulsion.... Enfin, de faire sous les yeux de l'Europe une imposante revue des force qu'elle pourrait un jour opposer a des rois inquiets ou courrouces."- LACRETELLE, vii., p. 359.

CHAPTER XXVIII. [1] We learn from Dr. Moore that there was a leader with five subaltern officers and one hundred and fifty rank and file in each gallery of the chamber; that the wages of the latter were from two to three francs a day; the subaltern had ten francs, the leaders fifty. The entire expense was about a thousand francs a day, a sum which strengthens the suspicion that the pay-master (originally, at least) was the Duc d'Orleans.-DR. MOORE'S View of the Causes, etc., of the French Revolution, i., p. 425.

[2] Mirabeau et La Marck, ii., p. 47.

[3] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 352.

[4] Marie Antoinette to Mercy, Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 355.

[5] Ibid., i., p. 365.

[6] Arneth, p. 140.

[7] It is remarkable that he, like one or two of the Girondin party, belonged by birth to the Huguenot persuasion, and Marat had studied medicine at Edinburgh.

[8] The Marquise de Brinvilliers had been executed for poisoning several of her own relations in the reign of Louis XIV.

[9] Madame de Campan, ch. xvii.; Chambrier, ii., p. 12.

[10] He said to La Marck, "Aucun homme seul ne sera capable de ramener les Francais an bon sens, le temps seul peut retablir l'ordre dans les esprits," etc., etc.- Mirabeau et La Marck, i., p. 147.

[11] Feuillet de Conches, i., p, 376.

[12] Marie Antoinette to Leopold, date December 11th, 1790, Arneth, p. 143.

CHAPTER XXIX. [1] The Marshal de Bouille, who was La Fayette's cousin, says, in October of this year, "L'eveque de Pamiers me fit le tableau de la situation malheureux de ce prince et de la famille royale ... que la rigueur et durete de La Fayette, devenu leur geolier, rendent de jour en jour plus insupportable."-Memories de De Bouille, pp. 175, 181. And in June he had remarked, "Que sa popularite (de La Fayette) dependait plutot de la captivite du roi, qu'il tenait prisonnier, et qui etait sous sa garde, que de sa force personnelle, qui n'avait plus d'autre appui que la milice Parisienne."

[2] Ibid., p. 130.

[3] The letter to the King of Prussia is given by Lamartine; its date is December 3d, 1790.-Histoire des Girondins, book v., Sec. 12.

[4] Mercy to Marie Antoinette, from The Hague, December 17th, 1790, Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 398.

[5] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 401.

[6] Ibid., p. 403, date December 27th, 1790.

[7] "Mirabeau et La Marck," ii., pp. 57-61.

[8] Letter to the queen, date February 19th, 1791; "Correspondance de Mirabeau et La Marck," ii., p. 229.

[9] "Mirabeau et La Marck," ii., pp. 153, 194, et passim.

[10] "Souvenirs de Quarante Ans," p. 54.

[11] "Mirabeau aurait prefere que Louis XVI. sortit publiquement, et en roi, M. de Bouille pensait de meme."-Mirabeau et La Marck, i., p. 172.

[12] 1789, see ante, p. 256.

[13] Date February 18th, 1791, Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 465.

[14] "Mirabeau et La Marck," ii., p., 216 date February 3d, 1791.

CHAPTER XXX. [1] Feuillet de Conches, ii., p. 14, date March 7th.

[2] Arneth, p. 146, letter of the queen to Leopold, February 27th, 1791.

[3] Feuillet de Conches, ii., p. 20, date March 20th, 1791.

[4] Letter of M. Simolin, the Russian embassador, April 4th, 1791, Feuillet de Conches, ii., p. 31.

[5] "Souvenirs sur Mirabeau," par Etienne Dumont, p. 201.

[6] In her letter to Mercy of August 16th, of which extracts are given in ch. xi., she takes credit for having encountered the dangers of the journey to Montmedy for the sake of "the public welfare."

[7] Arneth, p. 155.

[8] Letter of Leopold to Marie Antoinette, date May 2d, 1791, Arneth, p. 162.

[9] "Cette demarche est le terme extreme de reussir ou perir. Les choses en sont-elles au point de rendre ce risque indispensable?"-Mercy to Marie Antoinette, May 11th, 1791, Arneth, p. 163.

[10] The day on which the king and she had been prevented from going to St. Cloud.

[11] The king.

CHAPTER XXXI. [1] Chambrier, ii., p. 86-88.

[2] Lamartine's "Histoire des Girondins," ii., p. 15.

[3] Moore's "View," ii., p. 367.

[4] The Palais Royal had been named the Palais National. All signs with the portraits of the king or queen, all emblems of royalty, had been torn down. A shop-keeper was even obliged to erase his name from his shop because it was Louis.-MOORE'S View, etc., ii., p. 356.

CHAPTER XXXII. [1] A certain set of writers in this country at one time made La Fayette a subject for almost unmixed eulogy, with such earnestness that it may be worth while to reproduce the opinion expressed of him by the greatest of his contemporaries-a man as acute in his penetration into character as he was stainless in honor-the late Duke of Wellington. In the summer of 1815, he told Sir John Malcolm that "he had used La Fayette like a dog, as he merited. The old rascal," said he, "had made a false report of his mission to the Emperor of Russia, and I possessed complete evidence of his having done so. I told him, the moment he entered, of this fact; I did not even state it in the most delicate manner. I told him he must be sensible he had made a false report. He made no answer." And the duke bowed him out of the room with unconcealed scorn.-Kaye's Life of Sir J. Malcolm, ii., p. 109.

[2] Lamartine calls the Cordeliers the Club of Coups-de-main, as he calls the Jacobins the Club of Radical Theories.-Histoire des Girondins, xvi., p. 4.

[3] Dr. Moore, ii., p. 372; Chambrier, ii., p. 142.

[4] Mercy to Marie Antoinette, May 16th, Feuillet de Conches, ii., p. 60.

[5] Ibid., p. 140.

[6] A resolution, that is, to recognize the Constitution.

[7] Arneth, p. 188; Feuillet de Conches, ii, p. 186.

[8] The letter took several days to write, and was so interrupted that portions of it have three different dates affixed, August 16th, 21st, 26th. Mercy's letter, which incloses Burke's memorial, is dated the 20th, from London, so that the first portion of the queen's letter can not be regarded as an intentional answer to Burke's arguments, though it is so, as embodying all the reasons which influenced the queen.

[9] The manifesto which he left behind him when starting for Montmedy.

[10] The king.

[11] Feuillet de Conches, ii., p. 228; Arneth, p. 203.

[12] The Emperor Leopold died March 1st, 1792.

[13] The declaration of Pilnitz, drawn up by the emperor and the King of Prussia at a personal interview, August 21st, 1791, did not in express words denounce the new Constitution (which, in fact, they had not seen), but, after declaring "the situation of the King of France to be a matter of common interest to all European sovereigns," and expressing a hope that "the reality of that interest will be duly appreciated by the other powers whose assistance they invoke," they propose that those other powers "shall employ, in conjunction with their majesties, the most efficacious means, in order to enable the King of France to consolidate in the most perfect liberty the foundation of a monarchical government, conformable alike to the rights of sovereigns and the well-being of the French nation."- Alison, ch. ix., Section 90.

[14] Arneth, p. 208.

[15] Ibid, p. 210; Feuillet de Conches, ii., p. 325.

[16] Letter, date December 3d, 1791. Feuillet de Conches, iv., p. 278.

[17] Madame de Campan, ch xix.

[18] "Leurs touffes de cheveux noirs volaient dans la salle, eux seuls a cette epoque avaient quitte l'usage de poudrer les cheveux."-Note on the Passage by Madame de Campan, ch xix.

[19] This first Assembly, as having framed the Constitution, is often called the Constituent Assembly; the second, that which was about to meet, being distinguished as the Legislative Assembly.

CHAPTER XXXIII. [1] "Memoires Particuliers," etc., par A.F. Bertrand de Moleville, i., p. 355. Brissot, Isnard, Vergniaud, Gaudet, and an infamous ecclesiastic, the Abbe Fauchet, are those whom he particularly mentions, adding: "Mais M. de Lessart trouva que c'etait les payer trop cher, et comme ils ne voulurent rien rabattre de leur demande, cette negociation n'eut aucune suite, et ne produisit d'autre effet que d'aigrir davantage ces cinq deputes contre ce ministre."

[2] Feuillet de Conches, ii., p.414, date October 4th: "Je pense qu'au fond le bon bourgeois et le bon peuple ont toujours ete bien pour nous."

[3] "Memoires Particuliers," etc., par A.F. Bertrand de Moleville, i., p. 10-12. It furnishes a striking proof of the general accuracy of Dr. Moore's information, that he, in his "View" (ii., p. 439), gives the name account of this conversation, his work being published above twenty years before that of M. Bertrand de Moleville.

[4] "La reine lui repondit par un sourire de pitie, et lui demanda s'il etait fou.... C'est par la reine elle-meme que, le lendemain de cette etrange scene, je fus instruit de tous les details que je viens de rapporter."-BERTRAND DE MOLEVILLE, i., p. 126.

[5] She herself called him so on this occasion, and he belonged to the Jacobin Club; but he was also one of the Girondin party, of which, indeed, he was one of the founders, and it was as a Girondin that he was afterward pursued to death by Robespierre.

[6] Narrative of the Comte Valentin Esterhazy, Feuillet de Conches, iv., p. 40.

[7] The queen spoke plainly to her confidants: "M. de La Fayette will only be the Mayor of Paris that he may the sooner become Mayor of the Palace. Petion is a Jacobin, a republican; but he is a fool, incapable of ever becoming the leader of a party. He would be a nullity as mayor, and, besides, the very interest which he knows we take in his nomination may bind him to the king."-Lamartine's Histoire des Girondins vi., p.22.

[8] "Elle [Madame d'Ossun, dame d'atours de la reine] m'a dit, il y a trois semaines, que le roi et la reine avaiet ete neuf jours sans un sou." Letter of the Prince de Nassau-Siegen to the Russian Empress Catherine, Feuillet de Conches, iv., p. 316; of also Madame de Campan, ch. xxi.

[9] Letter of the Princess to Madame de Bombelles, Feuillet de Conches, v., p.267.

[10] "N'est-il pas bien gentil, mon enfant?"-Memoires Particuliers, p. 235.

[11] See two most insolent letters from the Count de Provence and Count d'Artois to Louis XVI, Feuillet de Conches, v., pp. 260, 261.

[12] Feuillet de Conches, iv., p. 291

CHAPTER XXXIV. [1] Letter to Madame de Polignac, March 17th, Feuillet de Conches, v., p. 337.

[2] The Monks of St. Bernard were known as Feuillants, from Feuillans, a village in Languedoc where their principal convent was situated.

[3] Lamartine, "Histoire des Girondins," xiii., p.18.

[4] The messenger was M. Goguelat: he took the name of M. Daumartin, and adhered to the cause of his sovereigns to the last moment of their lives.

[5] Letter of the Count de Fersen, who was at Brussels, to Gustavus (who, however, was dead before it could reach him), dated March 24th, 1792. In many respects the information De Fersen sends to his king tallies precisely with that sent by Breteuil to the emperor; he only adds a few circumstances which had not reached the baron.

[6] Afterward Louis Philippe, King of the French, who was himself driven from the throne by insurrection above half a century afterward.

[7] Madame de Campan, ch. xx.

[8] Ibid., ch. XIX.

[9] "Vie de Dumouriez," ii, p. 163, quoted by Marquis de Ferrieres, Feuillet de Conches, and several other writers.

[10] Even Lamartine condemns the letter, the greater part of which he inserts in his history as one in which "the threat is no less evident than the treachery."-Histoire des Girondins, xiii., p. 16.

CHAPTER XXXV. [1] "Gare la Lanterne," alluding to the use of the chains to which the street-lamps were suspended as gibbets.

[2] Madame de Campan, ch. xxi.

[3] Dumas, "Memoirs of his Own Time," i., p. 353.

CHAPTER XXXVI. [1] To be issued by the foreign powers.

[2] Feuillet de Conches, vi., p. 192, and Arneth, p. 265.

[3] The day is not mentioned. "Lettres de la Reine Marie Antoinette a la Landgravine Louise," etc. p. 47.

[4] The bearer was Prince George himself, but she does not venture to name him more explicitly.

[5] Lamourette might correspond to the English name Lovekin.

[6] Letter of the Princess Elizabeth, date July 16th, 1792, Feuillet de Conches, vi., p. 215.

[7] It is remarkable, however, that, if we are to take Lamartine as a guide in any respect, and he certainly was not in intention unfavorable to La Fayette, the marquis was even now playing a double game. Speaking of this very proposal, he says: "La Fayette himself did not disguise his ambition for a protectorate under Louis XVI. At the very moment when he seemed devoted to the preservation of the king he wrote thus to his confidante, La Colombe: 'In the matter of liberty I do not trust myself either to the king or any other person, and if he were to assume the sovereign, I would fight against him as I did in 1789.'"-Histoire des Girondins, xvii., p.7 (English translation). It deserves remark, too, if his words are accurately reported, that the only occasion 1789 on which he "fought against" Louis must have been October 5th and 6th, when he professed to be using every exertion for his safety.

[8] M. Bertrand expressly affirms the insurrection of August 10th to have been almost exclusively the work of the Girondin faction.-Memoires Particuliers, ii., p. 122.

[9] Memoires Particuliers, ii., p. 132.

[10] "Memoires Particuliers," p. 111.

CHAPTER XXXVII. [1] See ante.

[2] "Histoire de la Terreur," par Mortimer Ternaux, ii., p. 269. For the transactions of this day, and of the following months, he is by far the most trustworthy guide, as having had access to official documents of which earlier writers were ignorant. But he admits the extreme difficulty of ascertaining the precise details and time of each event. And it is not easy in every instance to reconcile his account with that of Madame de Campan, on whom for many particulars he greatly relies. He differs from her especially as to the hour at which the different occurrences of this day took place. For instance, he says (p. 268, note 2) that Mandat left the Tuileries a little after five, while Madame de Campan says it was four o'clock when the queen told her he had been murdered. Both, however, agree that it was soon after eight o'clock when the king left the palace.

[3] "A quatre heures la reine sortit de la chambre du roi, et vint nous dire qu'elle n'esperait plus rien; que M. Mandat venait d'etre assassine."-MADAME DE CAMPAN, ch. xxi.

[4] "La Terreur," viii., p. 4.

[5] It is clear that this is the opinion formed by M Mortimer Ternaux. He sums up the fourth chapter of his eighth book with the conclusion that "le palais de la royaute ne fut pas enleve de vive force, mais abandonne par ordre de Louis XVI." And in a note he affirms that the entire number of killed and wounded on the part of the rioters did not exceed one hundred and sixty "en chiffres ronds."

[6] Bertrand de Moleville, ch. xxvii.

[7] Madame de Campan, ch. xxi.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. [1] "Dernieres Annees du Regne et de la Vie de Louis XVI.," par Francois Hue, p. 336.

[2] For about a fortnight they had two, both men-Hue, the valet to the dauphin, as well as Clery; but Hue was removed on the 2d of September. He, as well as Clery, has left an account of the imprisonment till the day of his dismissal.

[3] "Journal de ce qui s'est passe a la tour du Temple," etc. p.28, seq.

[4] "Memoires Particuliers," par Madame la Duchesse d'Angouleme, p. 21.

[5] Decius was the hero whose example was especially invoked by Madame Roland. The historians of his own country had never accused him of murdering any one; but she, in the very first month of the Revolution, had called, with a very curious reading of history, for "some generous Decius to risk his life to take theirs" (the lives of the king and queen).

[6] The princess told Clery, "La reine et moi nous nous attendons a tout, et nous ne nous faisons aucune illusion sur le sort qu'on prepare au roi," etc.-CLERY, p. 106.

[7] "Memoires" de la Duchesse d'Angouleme, p. 53.

CHAPTER XXXIX. [1] Clery's "Journal," p. 169.

[2] In March, having an opportunity of communicating with the Count de Provence, she sent these precious memorials to him for safer custody, with a joint letter from herself and her three fellow-prisoners: "Having a faithful person on whom we can depend, I profit by the opportunity to send to my brother and friend this deposit, which may not be intrusted to any other hands. The bearer will tell you by what a miracle we were able to obtain these precious pledges. I reserve the name of him who is so useful to us, to tell it you some day myself. The impossibility which has hitherto existed of sending you any intelligence of us, and the excess of our misfortunes, make us feel more vividly our cruel separation. May it not lie long. Meanwhile I embrace you as I love you, and you know that that is with all my heart.-M.A." A line is added by the princess royal, and signed by her brother, as king, as well as by herself: "I am charged for my brother and myself to embrace you with all my heart.-M.T. [MARIA TERESA], LOUIS." And another by the Princess Elizabeth: "I enjoy beforehand the pleasure which you will feel in receiving this pledge of love and confidence. To be reunited to you and to see you happy is all that I desire. You know if I love you. I embrace you with all my heart.- E." The letters were shown by the Count de Provence to Clery, whom he allowed to take a copy of them.-CLERY'S Journal, p. 174.

[3] "Memoires" de la Duchesse d'Angouleme, p. 56.

[4] It was burned in 1871, in the time of the Commune.

[5] Feuillet de Conches, vi., p. 499. The letter is neither dated nor signed.

[6] Lanjuinais had subsequently the singular fortune of gaining the confidence of both Napoleon and Lounis XVIII. The decree against him was reversed in 1795, and he became a professor at Rennes. Though he had opposed the making of Napoleon consul for life, Napoleon gave him a place in his Senate; and at the first restoration, in 1814, Louis XVIII named him a peer of France. He died in 1827.

[7] Some of the apologists of the Girondins-nearly all the oldest criminals of the Revolution have found defenders, except perhaps Marat and Robespierre-have affirmed that the Girondins, though they had not courage to give their votes to save the life of Louis, yet hoped to save him by voting for an appeal to the people; but the order in which the different questions were put to the Convention is a complete disproof of this plea. The first question put was, Was Louis guilty? They all voted "Oui" (Lacretelle, x., p. 403). But though on the second question, whether this verdict should be submitted to the people for ratification, many of them did vote for such an appeal being made, yet after the appeal had been rejected by a majority of one hundred and forty-two, and the third question, "What penalty shall be inflicted on Louis?" (Lacretelle, x., p. 441) was put to the Convention, they all except Lanjuinais voted for "death." The majorities were, on their question, 683 to 66; on the second, 423 to 281; on the third, 387 to 334; so that on this last, the fatal question, it would have been easy for the Girondins to have turned the scale. And Lamartine himself expressly affirms (xxxv., p.5) that the king's life depended on the Girondin vote, and that his death was chiefly owing to Vergniaud.

[8] Goncourt, p. 370, quoting "Fragments de Turgy."

[9] "S'en defaire."-Louis XVII., sa Vie, son Agonie, sa Mort, par M. de Beauchesne, quoting Senart. See Croker's "Essays on the Revolution," p. 266.

[10] Duchesse d'Angouleme, p. 78.

[11] See a letter from Miss Chowne to Lord Aukland, September 23d, 1793, Journal, etc., of Lord Aukland, ii., p. 517.

[12] "Le peuple la recut non seulement comme une reine adoree, mais il semblait aussi qu'il lui savait gre d'etre charmante," p.5, ed. 1820.

[13] Great interest was felt for her in England. In October Horace Walpole writes: "While assemblies of friends calling themselves men are from day to day meditating torment and torture for his [Louis XVI.'s] heroic widow, on whom, with all their power and malice, and with every page, footman, and chamber-maid of hers in their reach, and with the rack in their hands, they have not been able to fix a speck. Nay, do they not talk of the inutility of evidence? What other virtue ever sustained such an ordeal?" Walpole's testimony in such a matter is particularly valuable, because he had not only been intimately acquainted with all the gossip of the French capital for many years, but also because his principal friends in France did not belong to the party which might have been expected to be most favorable to the queen. Had there been the very slightest foundation for the calumnies which had been propagated against her, we may be sure that such a person as Madame du Deffand would not only have heard them, but would have been but too willing to believe them. His denunciation of them is a proof that she knew their falsehood.

[14] Goncourt, p. 388, quoting La Quotidienne of October 17th, 18th.

[15] The depositions which the little king had been compelled to sign contained accusations of his aunt as well as of his mother.

[16] As we shall see in the close of the letter, she did not regard those priests who had taken the oath imposed by the Assembly, but which the Pope had condemned, as any longer priests.