Maria Antoinette Part 4

"Who commissioned you to make this purchase?"

"The Countess Lamotte," was the reply. "She handed me a letter from the queen requesting me to obtain the necklace for her. I truly thought that I was obeying her majesty's wishes, and doing her a favor, by taking this business upon myself."

"How could you imagine, sir," indignantly interrupted the queen, "that I should have selected _you_ for such a purpose, when I have not even spoken to you for eight years? and how could you suppose that I should have acted through the mediation of such a character as the Countess Lamotte?"

The cardinal was in the most violent agitation, and, apparently hardly knowing what he said, replied, "I see plainly that I have been duped. I will pay for the necklace myself. I suspected no trick in the affair, and am extremely sorry that I have had any thing to do with it."

He then took a letter from his pocket directed to the Countess Lamotte, and signed with the queen's name, requesting her to secure the purchase of the necklace. The king and queen looked at the letter, and instantly p.r.o.nounced it a forgery. The king then took from his own pocket a letter addressed to the jeweler Boehmer, and, handing it to de Rohan, said,

"Are you the author of that letter?"

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

"I have no wish, cardinal," the king kindly replied, "to find you guilty. Explain to me this enigma. Account for all those maneuvers with Boehmer. Where did you obtain these securities and these promissory notes, signed in the queen's name, which have been given to Boehmer?"

The cardinal, trembling in every nerve, faintly replied, "Sire, I am too much agitated now to answer your majesty. Give me a little time to collect my thoughts."

"Compose yourself, then, cardinal," the king added. "Go into my cabinet.

You will there find papers, pens, and ink. At your leisure, _write_ what you have to say to me."

In about half an hour the cardinal returned with a paper, covered with erasures, and alterations, and blottings, as confused and unsatisfactory as his verbal statements had been. An officer was then summoned into the royal presence, and commanded to take the cardinal into custody and conduct him to the Bastile. He was, however, permitted to visit his home. The cardinal contrived, by the way, to scribble a line upon a sc.r.a.p of paper, and, catching the eye of a trusty servant, he, un.o.bserved, slipped it into his hand. It was a direction to the servant to hasten to the palace, with the utmost possible speed, and commit to the flames all of his private papers. The king had also sent officers to the cardinal's palace to seize his papers and seal them for examination. By almost superhuman exertions, the cardinal's servant first arrived at the palace, which was at the distance of several miles.

His horse dropped dead in the court-yard. The important doc.u.ments, which might, perhaps, have shed light upon this mysterious affair, were all consumed.

The Countess Lamotte was also arrested, and held in close confinement to await her trial. She had just commenced living in a style of extraordinary splendor, and had vast sums at her disposal, acquired no one knew how. It is difficult to imagine the excitement which this story produced all over Europe. It was represented that the queen was found engaged in a swindling transaction with a profligate woman to cheat the crown jeweler out of gems of inestimable value, and that, being detected, she was employing all the influence of the crown to shield her own reputation by consigning the innocent cardinal to infamy. The enemies of the queen, sustained by the ecclesiastics generally, rallied around the cardinal. The king and queen, feeling that his acquittal would be the virtual condemnation of Maria Antoinette, and firmly convinced of his guilt, exerted their utmost influence, in self-defense, to bring him to punishment. Rumors and counter rumors floated through Versailles, Paris, and all the courts of the Continent. The tale was rehea.r.s.ed in saloon and cafe with every conceivable addition and exaggeration, and the queen hardly knew which way to turn from the invectives which were so mercilessly showered upon her. Her lofty spirit, conscious of rect.i.tude, sustained her in public, and there she nerved herself to appear with firmness and equanimity. But in the retirement of her boudoir she was unable to repel the most melancholy imaginings, and often wept with almost the anguish of a bursting heart.

The sunshine of her life had now disappeared. Each succeeding day grew darker and darker with enveloping glooms.

The trial of the cardinal continued, with various interruptions, for more than a year. Very powerful parties were formed for and against him.

All France was agitated by the protracted contest. The cardinal appeared before his judges in mourning robes, but with all the pageantry of the most imposing ecclesiastical costume. He was conducted into court with much ceremony, and treated with the greatest deference. In the trying moment in which he first appeared before his judges, his courage seemed utterly to fail him. Pale and trembling with emotion, his knees bent under him, and he had to cling to a support to prevent himself from falling to the floor. Five or six voices immediately addressed him in tones of sympathy, and the president said, "His eminence the cardinal is at liberty to sit down, if he wishes it." The distinguished prisoner immediately took his seat with the members of the court. Having soon recovered in some degree his composure, he arose, and for half an hour addressed his judges, with much feeling and dignity, repeating his protestations of entire innocence in the whole affair.

At the close of this protracted trial, the cardinal was fully acquitted of all guilt by a majority of three voices. The king and queen were extremely chagrined at this result. During the trial, many insulting insinuations were thrown out against the queen which could not easily be repelled. A friend who called upon her immediately after the decision, found her in her closet weeping bitterly. "Come," said Maria, "come and weep for your queen, insulted and sacrificed by cabal and injustice."

The king came in at the same moment, and said, "You find the queen much afflicted; she has great reason to be so. They were determined through out this affair to see only an ecclesiastical prince, a Prince de Rohan, while he is, in fact, a needy fellow, and all this was but a scheme to put money into his pockets. It is not necessary to be an Alexander to cut this Gordian knot." The cardinal subsequently emigrated to Germany, where he lived in comparative obscurity till 1803, when he died.

The Countess Lamotte was brought to trial, but with a painfully different result. Dressed in the richest and most costly robes, the dissolute beauty appeared before her judges, and astonished them all by her imperturbable self-possession, her talents, and her cool effrontery.

It was clearly proved that she had received the necklace; that she had sold here and there the diamonds of which it was composed, and had thus come into possession of large sums of money. She told all kinds of stories, contradicting herself in a thousand ways, accusing now one and again another as an accomplice, and unblushingly declaring that she had no intention to tell the truth, for that neither she nor the cardinal had uttered one single word before the court which had not been false.

She was found guilty, and the following horrible sentence was p.r.o.nounced against her: that she should be whipped upon the bare back in the court-yard of the prison; that the letter V should be burned into the flesh on each shoulder with a hot iron; and that she should be imprisoned for life. The king and queen were as much displeased with the terrible barbarity of the punishment of the countess as they were chagrined at the acquittal of the cardinal. As the countess was a descendant of the royal family, they felt that the ignominious character of the punishment was intended as a stigma upon them.

As the countess was sitting one morning in the s.p.a.cious room provided for her in the prison, in a loose robe, conversing gayly with some friends, and surrounded by all the appliances of wealth, an attendant appeared to conduct her into the presence of the judges. Totally unprepared for the awful doom impending over her, she rose with careless alacrity and entered the court. The terrible sentence was p.r.o.nounced.

Immediately terror, rage, and despair seized upon her, and a scene of horror ensued which no pen can describe. Before the sentence was finished, she threw herself upon the floor, and uttered the most piercing shrieks and screams. The tumult of agitation into which she was thrown, dreadful as it was, relaxed not the stern rigor of the law. The executioner immediately seized her, and dragged her, shrieking and struggling in a delirium of phrensy, into the court-yard of the prison.

As her eye fell upon the instruments of her ignominious and brutal punishment, she seized upon one of her executioners with her teeth, and tore a mouthful of flesh from his arm. She was thrown upon the ground, her garments, with relentless violence, were stripped from her back, and the lash mercilessly cut its way into her quivering nerves, while her awful screams pierced the damp, chill air of the morning. The hot irons were brought, and simmered upon her recoiling flesh. The unhappy creature was then carried, mangled and bleeding, and half dead with torture, and terror, and madness, to the prison hospital. After nine months of imprisonment she was permitted to escape. She fled to England, and was found one morning dead upon the pavements of London, having been thrown from a third story window in a midnight carousal.

Such was the story of the Diamond Necklace. Though no one can now doubt that Maria Antoinette was perfectly innocent in the whole affair, it, at the time, furnished her enemies with weapons against her, which they used with fatal efficiency. It was then represented that the Countess Lamotte was an accomplice of the queen in the fraudulent acquisition of the necklace, and that the Cardinal de Rohan was their deluded but innocent victim. The horrible punishment of Madame Lamotte, who boasted that royal blood circulated in her veins, was understood to be in contempt of royalty, and as the expression of venomous feeling toward the queen. Both Maria Antoinette and Louis felt it as such, and were equally aggrieved by the acquittal of the cardinal and the barbarous punishment of the countess.

Whether the cardinal was a victim or an accomplice is a question which never has been, and now never can be, decided. The mystery in which the affair is involved must remain a mystery until the secrets of all hearts are revealed at the great day of judgment. If he was the guilty instigator, and the poor countess but his tool and victim, how much has he yet to be accountable for in the just retributions of eternity! There were three suppositions adopted by the community in the attempt to solve the mystery of this transaction:

1. The first was, that the queen had really employed the Countess Lamotte to obtain the necklace by deceiving the cardinal. That it was a trick by which the queen and the countess were to obtain the necklace, and, by selling it piecemeal, to share the spoil, leaving the cardinal responsible for the payment. This was the view the enemies of Maria Antoinette, almost without exception, took of the case; and the sentence of acquittal of the cardinal, and the horrible condemnation of the countess, were intended to sustain this view. This opinion, spread through Paris and France, was very influential in rousing that animosity which conducted Maria Antoinette to sufferings more poignant and to a doom more awful than the Countess Lamotte could by any possibility endure.

2. The second supposition was, that the cardinal and the countess forged the signature of the queen to defraud the jeweler; that they thus obtained the rich prize of three hundred and twenty thousand dollars, intending to divide the spoil between them, and throw the obloquy of the transaction upon the queen. The king and queen were both fully convinced that this was the true explanation of the fraud, and they retained this belief undoubted until they died.

3. The third supposition, and that which now is almost universally entertained, was, that the crafty woman Lamotte, by forgery, and by means of an accomplice, who very much, in figure, resembled Maria Antoinette, completely duped the cardinal. His anxiety was such to be restored to the royal favor, that he eagerly caught at the bait which the wily countess presented to him. But, whoever may have been the guilty ones, no one now doubts that Maria Antoinette was entirely innocent. She, however, experienced all the ignominy she could have encountered had she been involved in the deepest guilt.

CHAPTER V.

THE MOB AT VERSAILLES.

1789

A gathering storm.--Condition of the French people.--Forces a.s.sembled at Versailles.--The populace rise upon the troops.--Terror and confusion.--Attack on the Bastile.--The Bastile taken.--Awful tumult.--Energy of the queen.--Resolution of the king.--The king visits Paris.--Strange cavalcade.--Painful suspense of the queen.--Return of the king.--The banquet at Versailles.--Enthusiastic loyalty.--News of the banquet.--Famine in Paris.--The mob marches to Versailles.--Heroic reply of the queen.--Violence of the mob.--The queen retires to rest.--Peril of the queen.--Her narrow escape.--The mob in the palace.--Heroic conduct of the queen.--The queen appears on the balcony.--Her composure.--The queen applauded.--The royal family taken to Paris.--An army of vagabonds.--The royal family grossly insulted.--The royal family in the Tuileries.--The queen's self-sacrificing spirit.--Rioting and violence.--The dauphin's question.--The king's explanation to his son.--Flight of the n.o.bility.--Inflammatory placards.--The Duke of Orleans.--The Duke of Orlean's plans frustrated.--Rumors of an invasion.--The leaders of the populace.--The queen urged to attend the theater.--Dignified reply of the queen.--Her unpopularity increases.--The queen's vigorous action.--Ultimate cause of the popular fury.--Transgressors visited in their children.

The year 1789 opened upon France lowering with darkness and portentous storms. The events to which we have alluded in the preceding chapters, and various others of a similar nature, conspired to foment troubles between the French monarch and his subjects, which were steadily and irresistibly increasing. The great ma.s.s of the people, ignorant, degraded, and maddened by centuries of oppression, were rising, with delirious energy, to batter down a corrupt church and a despotic throne, and to overwhelm the guilty and the innocent alike in indiscriminate ruin. The storm had been gathering for ages, but those who had been mainly instrumental in raising it were now slumbering in their graves.

Mobs began to sweep the streets of Paris, phrensied with rum and rage, and all law was set at defiance. The king, mild in temperament, and with no force of character, was extremely averse to any measures of violence.

The queen, far more energetic, with the spirit of her heroic mother, would have quelled these insurrections with the strong arm of military power.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIEW OF THE BASTILE.]

The king at last was compelled, in order to protect the royal family from insult, to encamp his army around his palaces; and long trains of artillery and of cavalry incessantly traversed the streets of Versailles, to prop the tottering monarchy. As Maria Antoinette, from the windows, looked down upon these formidable bands, and saw the crowd of generals and colonels who filled the saloons of the palace, her fainting courage was revived. The sight of these soldiers, called to quell the insurgent people, roused the Parisians to the intensest fury. "To arms! to arms! the king's troops are coming to ma.s.sacre us,"

resounded through the streets of Paris in the gloom of night, in tones which caused the heart of every peaceful citizen to quake with terror.

The infuriated populace hurled themselves upon the few troops who were in Paris. Many of the soldiers of the king threw down their arms and fraternized with the people. Others were withdrawn, by order of Louis, to add to the forces which were surrounding his person at Versailles.

Paris was thus left at the mercy of the mob. The a.r.s.enals were ransacked, the powder magazines were broken open, pikes were forged, and in a day, as it were, all Paris was in arms. Thousands of the n.o.ble and the wealthy fled in consternation from these scenes of ever-acc.u.mulating peril, and bands of ferocious men and women, from all the abodes of infamy, with the aspect and the energy of demons, ravaged the streets.

When the morning of the 14th of March, 1789, dawned upon the city, a scene of terror and confusion was witnessed which baffles all description. In the heart of Paris there was a prison of terrible celebrity, in whose dark dungeons many victims of oppression and crime had perished. The Bastile, in its gloomy strength of rock and iron, was the great instrument of terror with which the kings of France had, for centuries, held all restless spirits in subjection. Now, the whole population of Paris seemed to be rolling like an inundation toward this apparently impregnable fortress, resolved to batter down its execrated walls. "To the Bastile! to the Bastile!" was the cry which resounded along the banks of the Seine, and through every street of the insurgent metropolis; and men, women, and boys poured on and poured on, an interminable host, choking every avenue with the agitated ma.s.s, armed with guns, knives, swords, pikes--dragging artillery bestrode by amazons, and filling the air with the clamor of Pandemonium. A conflict, fierce, short, b.l.o.o.d.y, ensued, and the exasperated mult.i.tude, many of them bleeding and maddened by wounds, clambered over the walls and rushed through the shattered gateways, and, with yells of triumph, became masters of the Bastile. The heads of its defenders were stuck upon poles upon the battlements, and the mob, intoxicated with the discovery of their resistless power, were beginning to inquire in what scenes of violence they should next engage. At midnight, couriers arrived at Versailles, informing the king and queen of the terrible insurrections triumphant in the capital, and that the royal troops every where, instead of being enthusiastic for the defense of the king, manifested the strongest disposition to fraternize with the populace.

The tumult in Paris that night was awful. The rumor had entered every ear that the king was coming with forty thousand troops to take dreadful vengeance in the indiscriminate ma.s.sacre of the populace. It was a night of sleeplessness and terror--the carnival of all the monsters of crime who thronged that depraved metropolis. The streets were filled with intoxication and blasphemy. No dwelling was secure from pillage. The streets were barricaded; pavements torn up, and the roofs of houses loaded with the stones.

All the energies of the queen were aroused for a vigorous and heroic resistance. She strove to inspire the king with firmness and courage.

He, however, thought only of concessions. He wished to win back the love of his people by favors. He declared openly that never should one drop of blood be shed at his command; and, with the heroism of endurance, which he abundantly possessed, and to prove that he had been grossly calumniated, he left Versailles in his carriage to go unprotected to Paris, into the midst of the infuriated populace. Just as he was entering his carriage on this dangerous expedition, he received intelligence that a plot was formed to a.s.sa.s.sinate him on the way. This, however, did not in the slightest degree shake his resolution. The agony of the queen was irrepressible as she bade him adieu, never expecting to see him again.

The National a.s.sembly, consisting of nearly twelve hundred persons, was then in session at Versailles, the great majority of them sympathizing with the populace, and yet were alarmed in view of the lawless violence which their own acts had awakened, and which was every where desolating the land. As, on the morning of the 17th of July, the king entered his carriage with a slender retinue, and with no military protection, to expose himself to the dangers of his tumultuous capital, this whole body formed in procession on foot and followed him. A countless throng of artisans and peasants flocked from all the streets of Versailles, and poured in from the surrounding country, armed with scythes and bludgeons, and joined the strange cavalcade. Every moment the mult.i.tude increased, and the road, both before and behind the king, was so clogged with the acc.u.mulating ma.s.s, that seven hours pa.s.sed before the king arrived at the gates of the city. During all this time he was exposed to every conceivable insult. As Louis was conducted to the Hotel de Ville, a hundred thousand armed men lined the way, and he pa.s.sed along under the arch of their sabers crossed over his head. The cup of degradation he was compelled to drain to its dregs.

While the king was absent from Versailles on this dreadful visit, silence and the deepest gloom pervaded the palace. The queen, apprehensive that the king would be either ma.s.sacred or retained a prisoner in Paris, was overwhelmed with the anguish of suspense. She retired to her chamber, and, with continually gushing tears, prepared an appeal to the National a.s.sembly, commencing with these words: "Gentlemen, I come to place in your hands the wife and family of your sovereign. Do not suffer those who have been united in heaven to be put asunder on earth." Late in the evening the king returned, to the inexpressible joy of his household. But the narrative he gave of the day's adventure plunged them all again into the most profound grief.

The visit of the king had no influence in diminishing the horrors of the scenes now hourly enacted in the French capital. His friends were openly ma.s.sacred in the streets, hung up at the lamp-posts, and roasted at slow fires, while their dying agonies were but the subjects of derision. The contagion of crime and cruelty spread to every other city in the empire.

The higher n.o.bility and the more wealthy citizens began very generally to abandon their homes, seeing no escape from these dangers but by precipitate flight to foreign lands. Such was the state of affairs, when the officers of some of the regiments a.s.sembled at Versailles for the protection of the king had a public banquet in the saloon of the opera. All the rank and elegance which had ventured yet to linger around the court graced the feast with their presence in the surrounding boxes.

In the midst of their festivities, their chivalrous enthusiasm was excited in behalf of the king and queen. They drank their health--they vowed to defend them even unto death. Wine had given fervor to their loyalty. The ladies showered upon them bouquets, waved their handkerchiefs, and tossed to them white c.o.c.kades, the emblem of Bourbon power. And now the cry arose, loud, and long, and enthusiastic, for the king and queen to come and show themselves to their defenders. The door suddenly opened, and the king and queen appeared. Enthusiasm immediately rose almost to phrensy. The hall resounded with acclamations, and the king, entirely unmanned by these expressions of attachment, burst into tears. The band struck up the pathetic air, "O Richard! O my king! the world abandons you." There was no longer any bounds to the transport.

The officers and the ladies mingled together in a scene of indescribable enthusiasm.

The tidings of this banquet spread like wildfire through Paris, magnified by the grossest exaggerations. It was universally believed that the officers had contemptuously trampled the tri-colored c.o.c.kade, the adopted emblem of popular power, under their feet; that they had sharpened their sabers, and sworn to exterminate the National a.s.sembly and the people of Paris. All business was at a stand. No laborer was employed. The provisions in the city were nearly all consumed. No baker dared to appear with his cart, or farmer to send in his corn, for pillage was the order of the day. The exasperated and starving people hung a few bakers before their own ovens, but that did not make bread any more plenty. The populace of Paris were now starving, literally and truly starving. A gaunt and haggard woman seized a drum and strode through the streets, beating it violently, and mingling with its din her shrieks of "Bread! bread!" A few boys follow her--then a score of female furies--and then thousands of desperate men. The swelling inundation rolls from street to street; the alarm bells are rung; all Paris composes one mighty, resistless mob, motiveless, aimless, but ripe for any deed of desperation. The cry goes from mouth to mouth "To Versailles! to Versailles!" Why, no one knows, only that the king and queen are there. Impetuously, as by a blind instinct, the monster ma.s.s moves on. La Fayette, at the head of the National Guard, knows not what to do, for all the troops under his command sympathize with the people, and will obey no orders to resist them. He therefore merely follows on with his thirty-five thousand troops to watch the issue of events. The king and queen are warned of the approaching danger, and Louis entreats Maria Antoinette to take the children in the carriages and flee to some distant place of safety. Others join most earnestly in the entreaty.

"Nothing," replies the queen, "shall induce me, in such an extremity, to be separated from my husband. I know that they seek my life. But I am the daughter of Maria Theresa, and have learned not to fear death."

[Ill.u.s.tration: GARDENS AT VERSAILLES.]

From the windows of their mansion the disorderly mult.i.tude were soon descried, in a dense and apparently interminable ma.s.s, pouring along through the broad avenues toward the palaces of Versailles. It was in the evening twilight of a dark and rainy day. Like ocean tides, the frantic mob rolled in from every direction. Their shouts and revels swelled upon the night air. The rain began to fall in torrents. They broke into the houses for shelter; insulted maids and matrons; tore down every thing combustible for their watch fires; ma.s.sacred a few of the body-guard of the queen, and, with baccha.n.a.lian songs, roasted their horses for food. And thus pa.s.sed the hours of this long and dreary night, in hideous outrages for which one can hardly find a parallel in the annals of New Zealand cannibalism. The immense gardens of Versailles were filled with a tumultuous ocean of half-frantic men and women, tossed to and fro in the wildest and most reckless excitement.

Toward morning, the queen, worn out with excitement and sleeplessness, having received from La Fayette the a.s.surance that he had so posted the guard that she need be in no apprehension of personal danger, had retired to her chamber for rest. The king had also retired to his apartment, which was connected with that of the queen by a hall, through which they could mutually pa.s.s. Two faithful soldiers were stationed at the door of the queen's chamber for her defense. Hardly had the queen placed her head upon her pillow before she heard a dreadful clamor upon the stairs--the discharge of fire-arms, the clashing of swords, and the shouts of the mob rushing upon her door. The faithful guard, bleeding beneath the blows of the a.s.sailants, had only time to cry to the queen, "Fly! fly for your life!" when they were stricken down. The queen sprang from her bed, rushed to the door leading to the king's apartments, when, to her dismay, she found that it was locked, and that the key was upon the other side. With the energy of despair, she knocked and called for help. Fortunately, some one rushed to her rescue from the king's chamber and opened the door. The queen had just time to slip through and again turn the key, when the whole raging mob, with oaths and imprecations, burst into the room, and pierced her bed through and through with their sabers and bayonets. Happy would it have been for Maria if in that short agony she might have died. But she was reserved by a mysterious Providence for more prolonged tortures and for a more dreadful doom.

A few of the National Guard, faithful to the king, rallied around the royal family, and La Fayette soon appeared, and was barely able to protect the king and queen from ma.s.sacre. He had no power to effectually resist the tempest of human pa.s.sion which was raging, but was swept along by its violence. Nearly all of the interior of the palace was ransacked and defiled by the mob. The b.l.o.o.d.y heads of the ma.s.sacred guards, stuck upon pikes, were raised up to the windows of the king, to insult and to terrify the royal family with these hideous trophies of the triumph of their foes.