Maria Antoinette Part 9

Three more months pa.s.sed slowly away, when, early in August, the queen was aroused from her sleep at midnight by armed men, with lanterns, bursting into her room. With unfeeling barbarity, they ordered her to accompany them to the prison of the Conciergerie, the most dismal prison in Paris, where those doomed to die awaited their execution. The queen listened, unmoved, to the order, for her heart had now become callous even to woe. Her daughter and Madame Elizabeth threw themselves at the feet of the officers, and most pathetically, but unavailingly, implored them not to deprive them of their only remaining solace. The queen was compelled to rise and dress in the presence of the wretches who exulted over her abas.e.m.e.nt. She clasped her daughter for one frantic moment convulsively to her heart, covered her with embraces and kisses, spoke a few words of impa.s.sioned tenderness to her sister, and then, as if striving by violence to throw herself from the room, she inadvertently struck her forehead a severe blow against the low portal of the door.

"Did you hurt you?" inquired one of the men. "Oh no!" was the despairing reply, "nothing now can further harm me."

A few lights glimmered dimly from the street lamps as the queen entered the carriage, guarded by soldiers, and was conveyed through the somber streets to her last earthly abode. The prison of the Conciergerie consists of a series of subterranean dungeons beneath the floor of the Palais de Justice. More damp, dark, gloomy dens of stone and iron the imagination can not conceive. Down the dripping and slippery steps she was led, groping her way by the feeble light of a tallow candle, until she approached, through a labyrinth of corridors, an iron door.

It grated upon its hinges, and she was thrust in, two soldiers accompanying her, and the door was closed. It was midnight. The lantern gave just light enough to show her the horrors of her cell. The floor was covered with mud and water, while little streams trickled down the stone walls. A miserable pallet in one corner, an old pine table and one chair, were all the comforts the kingdom of France could afford its queen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARIA ANTOINETTE IN THE CONCIERGERIE.]

The heart of the wife of the jailer was touched with compa.s.sion in view of this unmitigated misery. She did not dare to speak words of kindness, for they would be reported by the guard. She, however, prepared for her some food, ventured to loan her some needles, and a ball of worsted, and communicated intelligence of her daughter and son. The Committee of Public Safety heard of these acts of mercy, and the jailer and his wife were immediately arrested, and plunged into those dungeons into which they would have allowed the spirit of humanity to enter. The shoes of the queen, saturated with water, soon fell from her feet. Her stockings and her dress, from the humidity of the air, were in tatters. Two soldiers, with drawn swords, were stationed by her side night and day, with the command never, even for one moment, to turn their eyes from her. The daughter of the new jailer, touched with compa.s.sion, and regardless of the fate of the predecessors of her parents, entered her cell every morning to dress her whitened locks, which sorrow had bleached. The queen ventured one day to solicit an additional counterpane for her bed. "How dare you make such a request?" replied the solicitor general of the commune; "you deserve to be sent to the guillotine!" The queen succeeded secretly, by means of a tooth-pick, which she converted into a tapestry needle, in plaiting a garter from thread which she plucked from an old woollen coverlet. This memorial of a mother's love she contrived, by stratagem, to transmit to her daughter. This was the richest legacy the daughter of Maria Theresa and the Queen of France could bequeath to her child. That garter is still preserved as a sacred relic by those who revere the memory and commiserate the misfortunes of Maria Antoinette.

Two months of this all but insupportable imprisonment pa.s.sed away, when, early in October, she was brought from her dungeon below to the court-room above for her trial. Her accusation was that she abhorred the revolution which had beheaded her husband, and plunged her and her whole family into woes, the remembrance of which it would seem that even eternity could hardly efface. The queen condescended to no defense. She appeared before her accusers in the calm dignity of despair, and yet with a spirit as unbroken and queenly as when she moved in the gilded saloons of Versailles. The queen was called to hear her sentence. It was death within twenty-four hours. Not the tremor of a muscle showed the slightest agitation as the mob, with clappings and shoutings, manifested their hatred for their victim, and their exultation at her doom. Insults and execrations followed her to the stair-case as she descended again to her dungeon. It was four o'clock in the morning. A few rays of the dawning day struggled through the bars of her prison window, and she seemed to smile with a faint expression of pleasure at the thought that her last day of earthly woe had dawned. She called for pen and ink, and wrote a very affecting letter to her sister and children. Having finished the letter, she repeatedly and pa.s.sionately kissed it, as if it were the last link which bound her to the loved ones from whom she was so soon to be separated by death. She then, as if done with earth, kneeled down and prayed, and with a tranquillized spirit, threw herself upon her bed, and fell into a profound slumber.

An hour or two pa.s.sed away, when the kind daughter of the jailer came, with weeping eyes and a throbbing heart, into the cell to dress the queen for the guillotine. It was the 14th of October, 1793. Maria Antoinette arose with alacrity, and, laying aside her prison-worn garments of mourning, put on her only remaining dress, a white robe, emblematic of the joy with which she bade adieu to earth. A white handkerchief was spread over her shoulders, and a white cap, bound to her head by a black ribbon, covered her hair. It was a cold and foggy morning, and the moaning wind drove clouds of mist through the streets.

But the day had hardly dawned before crowds of people thronged the prison, and all Paris seemed in motion to enjoy the spectacle of the sufferings of their queen. At eleven o'clock the executioners entered her cell, bound her hands behind her, and led her out from the prison.

The queen had nerved her heart to die in the spirit of defiance to her foes. She thought, perhaps, too much of man, too little of G.o.d. Queenly pride rather than Christian resignation inspired her soul. Expecting to be conducted to the scaffold, as the king had been, in a close carriage, she, for a moment, recoiled with horror when she was led to the ignominious car of the condemned, and was commanded to enter it. This car was much like a common hay cart, entirely open, and guarded by a rude but strong railing. The female furies who surrounded her shouted with laughter, and cried out incessantly, "Down with the Austrian!"

"Down with the Austrian!" The queen was alone in the cart. Her hands were tied behind her. She could not sit down. She could not support herself against the jolting of the cart upon the rough pavement. The car started. The queen was thrown from her equilibrium. She fell this way and that way. Her bonnet was crowded over her eyes. Her gray locks floated in the damp morning air. Her coa.r.s.e dress, disarranged, excited derision. As she was violently pitched to and fro, notwithstanding her desperate endeavors to retain the dignity of her appearance, the wretches shouted, "These are not your cushions of Trianon." It was a long ride, through the infuriated mob, to the scaffold, which was reared directly in front of the garden of the Tuileries. As the car arrived at the entrance of the gardens of the palace where Maria had pa.s.sed through so many vicissitudes of joy and woe, it stopped for a moment, apparently that the queen might experience a few more emotions of torture as she contemplated the abode of her past grandeur. Maria leaned back upon the railing, utterly regardless of the clamor around her, and fixed her eyes long and steadfastly upon the theater of all her former happiness. The thought of her husband, her children, her home, for a moment overcame her, and a few tears trickled down her cheeks and fell upon the floor of the cart. But, instantly regaining her composure, she looked around again upon the mult.i.tude, waving like an ocean over the whole amphitheater, with an air of majesty expressive of her superiority over all earthly ills. A few turns more of the wheels brought her to the foot of the guillotine. It was upon the same spot where her husband had fallen. She calmly, firmly looked at the dreadful instrument of death, scrutinizing all its arrangements, and contemplating, almost with an air of satisfaction, the sharp and glittering knife, which was so soon to terminate all her earthly sufferings. Two of the executioners a.s.sisted her by the elbows as she endeavored to descend from the cart. She waited for no directions, but with a firm and yet not hurried tread, ascended the steps of the scaffold. By accident, she trod upon the foot of one of the executioners. "Pardon me!" she exclaimed, with all the affability and grace with which she would have apologized to a courtier in the midst of the social festivities of the Little Trianon. She kneeled down, raised her eyes to heaven, and in a low but heart-rending prayer, all forgetful of herself, implored G.o.d to protect her sister and her helpless children. She was deaf to the clamor of the infuriate mob around her. She was insensible to the dishonor of her own appearance, with disheveled locks blinding her eyes, and with her faded garments crumpled and disarranged by the rough jostling of the cart. She forgot the scaffold on which she stood, the cords which bound her hands, the blood-thirsty executioners by her side, the fatal knife gleaming above her head. Her thoughts, true to the irrepressible instincts of maternal love, wandered back to the dungeons from whence she had emerged, and lingered with anguish around the pallets where her orphan, friendless, persecuted children were entombed. Her last prayer was the prayer of agony. She rose from her knees, and, turning her eyes toward the tower of the Temple, and speaking in tones which would have pierced any hearts but those which surrounded her, exclaimed, "Adieu! adieu! once again, my dear children. I go to rejoin your father."

She was bound to the plank. Slowly it descended till the neck of the queen was brought under the groove down which the fatal ax was to glide.

The executioner, hardened by deeds of daily butchery, could not look upon this spectacle of the misery of the Queen of France unmoved. His hand trembled as he endeavored to disengage the ax, and there was a moment's delay. The ax fell. The dissevered head dropped into the basket placed to receive it. The executioner seized it by the hair, gushing with blood, raised it high above his head, and walked around the elevated platform of the guillotine, exhibiting the b.l.o.o.d.y trophy to the a.s.sembled mult.i.tude. One long shout of "Vive la Republique!" rent the air, and the long and dreadful tragedy of the life of Maria Antoinette was closed.

The remains of the queen were thrown into a pine coffin and hurried to an obscure burial. Upon the records of the Church of La Madeleine we now read the charge, "_For the coffin of the Widow Capet, seven francs._"

CHAPTER XII.

THE PRINCESS ELIZABETH, THE DAUPHIN, AND THE PRINCESS ROYAL.

1793-1795

The dauphin and the princesses.--Painful uncertainty.--Sufferings of the princesses.--Their dismal cell.--Painful thoughts.--Unwelcome visitors.--The princesses separated.--Brutality of the soldiers.--Elizabeth taken before the tribunal.--A group of n.o.ble captives.--Trial of Madame Elizabeth.--Her condemnation.--Sad reverses.--Character of Madame Elizabeth.--Madame Elizabeth at the guillotine.--Execution of her companions.--Death of Madame Elizabeth.--Her faith and piety.--Situation of the dauphin.--The brute Simon.--Inhuman treatment of the dauphin.--He becomes insane.--The reaction.--Change in the dauphin's treatment.--Death of the dauphin.--Sympathy awakened by it.--Situation of the princess royal.--Her deep sufferings.--Sympathy for the princess royal.--She is released.--Arrival of the princess royal in Vienna.--Her settled melancholy.--Love felt for Maria.--She recovers her cheerfulness.--Maria's marriage.--Her present residence.--Advanced age of Maria.--Still retains traces of her early sorrows.

When Maria Antoinette was taken from the Temple and consigned to the dungeons of the Conciergerie, there to await her trial for her life, the dauphin was imprisoned by himself, though but a child seven years of age, in a gloomy cell, where he was entirely excluded from any communication with his aunt and sister. The two latter princesses remained in the room from which the queen had been taken. They were, however, in the most painful uncertainty respecting her fate. Their jailers were commanded to give them no information whatever respecting the external world. Their prison was a living tomb, in which they were allowed to breathe, and that was all. The Princess Elizabeth had surmised, from various little incidents, what had been the fate of the queen, but she tried to cheer the young, and affectionate, and still beautiful child with the hope that her mother yet lived, and that they might meet again. Eight months of the most dreary captivity rolled slowly away. It was winter, and yet they were allowed no fire to dispel the gloom and the chill of their cell. They were deprived of all books.

They were not allowed the use of pens or paper. The long winter nights came. In their cell there was but a few hours during which the rays of the sun struggled faintly through the barred windows. Night, long, dismal, impenetrable, like that of Egypt, enveloped them for fifteen hours. They counted the strokes of the clocks in the distant churches.

They listened to the hum of the vast and mighty metropolis, like the roar of the surf upon the sh.o.r.e. Reflections full of horror crowded upon them. The king was beheaded. The queen was, they knew not where, either dead or in the endurance of the most fearful sufferings. The young dauphin was imprisoned by himself, and they knew only that the gentle, affectionate, idolized child was exposed to every cruelty which barbarism could inflict upon him. What was to be their own fate? Were they to linger out the remnant of their days in this wretched captivity?

Would their inhuman jailers envy them the consolation they found in each other's arms, and separate them? Were they also to perish upon the guillotine, where nearly all whom they had loved had already perished?

Were they ever to be released? If so, what joy could there remain on earth for them after their awful sufferings and bereavements? Woes, such as they had endured, were too deep ever to be effaced from the mind.

Nearly eight months thus lingered slowly along, in which they saw only brutal and insulting jailers, ate the coa.r.s.est food, and were clothed in the unwashed and tattered garb of the prison. Time seemed to have stopped its flight, and to have changed into a weary, woeful eternity.

On the 9th of May, the Princess Elizabeth and her niece, who had received the name of Maria Theresa in memory of her grandmother, were retiring to bed. They were enveloped in midnight darkness. With their arms around each other's necks, they were kneeling at the foot of the bed in prayer. Suddenly a great noise was heard at the door, accompanied with repeated and violent blows, almost heavy enough to shiver the door from its hinges. Madame Elizabeth hastened to withdraw a bolt, which const.i.tuted an inner fastening, when some soldiers rushed in with their lanterns, and said to Madame Elizabeth, "You must immediately follow us." "And my niece," replied the princess, ever forgetful of herself in her thoughtfulness for others, "can she go too?" "We want you only now!"

was the answer; "we will take care of her by-and-by." The aunt foresaw that the hour for the long-dreaded separation had come. She threw her arms around the neck of the trembling maiden, and wept in uncontrollable grief. The brutal soldiers, unmoved by these tears, loaded them both with reproaches and insults, as belonging to the detested race of kings, and imperiously commanded the Princess Elizabeth immediately to depart.

She endeavored to whisper a word of hope into the ear of her despairing niece. "I shall probably soon return again, my dear Maria." "No, citoyenne, you won't," rudely interrupted one of the jailers; "you will never ascend these stairs again. So take your bonnet and come down."

Bathing the face of the young girl with her tears, invoking the blessing of heaven upon her, turning again and again to enfold her in a last embrace, she was led out by the soldiers, and conducted down the dark and damp stairs to the gate. Here the soldiers rudely searched her person anew, and then thrust her into a carriage. It was midnight. The carriage was driven violently through the deserted streets to the Conciergerie. The Tribunal was, even at that hour, in session, for in those days of blood, when the slide of the guillotine had no repose from morning till night, the day did not contain hours enough for the work of condemnation. The princess was conducted immediately into the presence of the Revolutionary Tribunal. A few questions were asked her, and then she was led into a hall, and left to catch such repose as she could upon the bench where Maria Antoinette but a few months before had awaited her condemnation.

The morning had hardly dawned when she was again conducted to the Tribunal, in company with twenty-four others, of every age and of both s.e.xes, whose crime was that they were n.o.bles. Ladies were there, ill.u.s.trious in virtue and rank, who had formerly graced the brilliant a.s.semblies of the Tuileries and of Versailles. Young men, whose family names had been renowned for ages, stood there to answer for the crime of possessing a distinguished name. While looking upon this group of n.o.bles, gathered before that merciless tribunal, where judgment was almost certain condemnation, the public accuser, with cruel irony remarked, "Of what can Madame Elizabeth complain, when she sees herself at the foot of the guillotine, surrounded by her faithful n.o.bility? She can now fancy herself back again in the gay festivities of Versailles."

The charges against Elizabeth were, that she was the sister of a tyrant, and that she loved that royal family whom the nation had adjudged not fit to live. "If my brother had been the tyrant you declare him to have been," the princess remarked, "you would not be where you now are, nor I before you." But it is vain for the lamb to plead with the wolf. She was condemned to die. She listened to her sentence with the most perfect composure, and almost with satisfaction. The only favor she asked was, that she might see a priest, and receive the consolations of religion, according to the faith she professed. Even this request was denied her.

The crime of loyalty was of too deep a dye to allow of any, the slightest, mitigation of punishment. From the judgment hall she was led down into one of the dungeons of the Conciergerie, where, with the rest of her companions, she awaited the execution of their doom. It was, indeed, a melancholy meeting. These ill.u.s.trious captives had formerly dwelt in the highest splendor which earth allows. They had met in regal palaces, surrounded by all the pomp and grandeur of courts. Now, after months of the most cruel imprisonment, after pa.s.sing through scenes of the most protracted woe, having been deprived of all their possessions, of all their ancestral honors, having surrendered one after another of those most dear to them to the guillotine, they were collected in a dark and foul dungeon, cold and wet, hungry and exhausted, to be conveyed in a few hours, in the cart of the condemned, to the scaffold. The character of Elizabeth was such, her weanedness from the world, her mild and heavenly spirit, as to have secured almost the idolatrous veneration of those who knew her. The companions of her misfortunes now cl.u.s.tered around her, as the one to whom they must look for support and strength in this awful hour. The princess, more calm and peaceful even than when surrounded by all the splendors of royalty, looked forward joyfully to the guillotine as the couch of sweet and lasting repose. Faith enabled her to leave the children, now the only tie which bound her to earth, in the hands of G.o.d, and, conscious that she had done with all things earthly, her thoughts were directed to those mansions of rest which, she doubted not, were in reserve for her. She bowed her head with a smile to the executioner as he cut off her long tresses in preparation for the knife. The locks fell at her feet, and even the executioners divided them among them as memorials of her loveliness and virtue.

Her hands were bound behind her, and she was placed in the cart with twenty-two companions of n.o.ble birth, and she was doomed to wait at the foot of the scaffold till all those heads had fallen, before her turn could come. The youth, the beauty, the innocence, the spotless life of the princess seemed to disarm the populace of their rage, and they gazed upon her in silence and almost with admiration. Her name had ever been connected with every thing that was pure and kind. And even a feeling of remorse seemed to pervade the concourse surrounding the scaffold in view of the sacrifice of so blameless a victim.

One by one, as the condemned ascended the steps of the guillotine to submit to the dreadful execution, they approached Elizabeth and encircled her in an affectionate embrace. At last every head had fallen beneath the ax but that of Elizabeth. The mutilated bodies were before her. The gory heads of those she loved were in a pile by her side. It was a sight to shock the stoutest nerves. But the princess, sustained by that Christian faith which had supported her through her almost unparalleled woes, apparently without a tremor ascended the steps, looked calmly and benignantly around upon the vast mult.i.tude, as if in her heart she was imploring G.o.d's blessing upon them, and surrendered herself to the executioner. Probably not a purer spirit nor one more attuned for heaven existed in France than the one which then ascended from the scaffold, we trust, to the bosom of G.o.d. Maria Antoinette died with the pride and the firmness of the invincible queen. Elizabeth yielded herself to the spirit of submissive piety, and fell asleep upon the bosom of her Savior. Our thoughts would more willingly follow her to those mansions of rest, where faith instructs us that she winged her flight, than turn again to the prison where the orphan children lingered in solitude and woe.

Young Louis was left in one of the apartments of the Temple, under the care of the brutal Simon, whose commission it was to _get quit of him_.

To send a child of seven years of age to the guillotine because his father was a king, was a step which the Revolutionary Tribunal _then_ was hardly willing to take, out of regard to the opinions of the world.

It would be hardly consistent with the character of the great nation to _poison_ the child; and yet, while he lived, there was a rallying point around which the sympathies of royalty could congregate. _Louis must die!_ Simon must not _kill_ him; he must not _poison_ him; he must _get quit of him_. The public safety demands it. Patriotism demands it. In the accomplishment of this undertaking, the young prince was shut up alone, entirely alone, like a caged beast, in one of the upper rooms of a tower of the Temple. There he was left, day and night, week after week, and month after month, with no companion, with no employment, with no food for thought, with no opportunity for exercise or to breathe the fresh air. A flagon of water, seldom replenished, was placed at his bedside. The door was occasionally half opened, and some coa.r.s.e food thrown in to the poor child. He never washed himself. For more than a year, his clothes, his shirt, and his shoes had never been changed. For six months his bed was not made, and the unhappy child, consigned to this living burial, remained silent and immovable upon the impure pallet, breathing his own infection. By long inactivity his limbs became rigid. His mind, by the dead inaction which succeeded terror, lost its energy, and became, not only brutalized, but depraved. The n.o.ble child of warm affections, polished manners, and active intellect, was thus degraded far below the ordinary condition of the brute.

Thus eighteen months rolled away, and the poor boy became insane through mental exhaustion and debility. But even then he retained a lively sense of grat.i.tude for every word or act of kindness. At one time, the inhuman wretch who was endeavoring by slow torture to conduct this child to the grave, seized him by the hair, and threatened to dash out his brains against the wall. A surgeon, M. Naulin, who chanced to be near by, interfered in behalf of the unhappy victim, and rescued him from the rage of the tyrant. Two pears that evening were given to the half-famished child for his supper. He hid them under his pillow, and went supperless to sleep. The next day he presented the two pears to his benefactor, very politely expressing his regret that he had no other means of manifesting his grat.i.tude.

Torrents of blood were daily flowing from the guillotine. Ill.u.s.trious wealth, or rank, or virtue, condemned the possessor to the scaffold.

Terror held its reign in every bosom. No one was safe. The public became weary of these scenes of horror. A reaction commenced. Many of the firmest Republicans, overawed by the tyranny of the mob, began secretly to long for the repose which kingly power had given the nation. Sympathy was excited for the woes of the imprisoned prince. It is difficult to record, without pleasure, that one of the first acts of this returning sense of humanity consisted in leading the barbarous Simon to the guillotine. History does not inform us whether he shuddered in view of his crimes under the ax. But his crimes were almost too great for humanity to forgive. Louis was placed under the care of more merciful keepers. His wasted frame and delirious mind, generous and affectionate even in its delirium, moved their sympathy and their tears. They washed and dressed their little prisoner; spoke to him in tones of kindness; soothed and comforted him. Louis gazed upon them with a vacant air, hardly knowing, after more than two years of hatred, execration, and abuse, what to make of expressions of gentleness and mercy. But it was too late. Simon had faithfully executed his task. The const.i.tution of the young prince was hopelessly undermined. He was seized with a fever.

The Convention, ashamed of the past, sent the celebrated physician Dessault to visit him. The patient, inured to suffering, with blighted hopes and a crushed heart, lingered in silence and patience for a few days upon his bed, and died on the 9th of June, 1795, in the tenth year of his age.

The change which had commenced in the public mind, preparing the way for Napoleon to quell these revolutionary horrors, was so great, that a very general feeling of sympathy was awakened by the death of the young prince, and a feeling of remorse pervaded the conscience of the nation.

History contains few stories more sorrowful than the death of this child. To the limited vision of mortals, it is indeed inexplicable why he should have been left by that G.o.d, who rules in infinite wisdom and love, to so dreadful a fate. For the solution of this and all other inexplicable mysteries of the divine government, we must look forward to our immortality.

But we must return to Maria Theresa. We left her at midnight, delirious with grief and terror, upon the pallet of her cell, her aunt having just been torn from her embrace. Even the ravages of captivity had not destroyed the exceeding beauty of the princess, now sixteen years of age. The slow hours of that night of anguish lingered away, and the morning, cheerless and companionless, dawned through the grated window of her prison upon her woe. Thus days and nights went and came. She knew not what had been the fate of her mother. She knew not what doom awaited her aunt. She could have no intercourse with her brother, who she only knew was suffering every conceivable outrage in another part of the prison. Her food was brought to her by those who loved to show their brutal power over the daughter of a long line of kings. Weeks and months thus rolled on without any alleviation--without the slightest gleam of joy or hope penetrating the midnight gloom of her cell. It is impossible for the imagination to paint the anguish endured by this beautiful, intellectual, affectionate, and highly-accomplished princess during these weary months of solitude and captivity. Every indulgence was withheld from her, and conscious existence became the most weighty woe.

Thus a year and a half lingered slowly away, while the reign of terror was holding its high carnival in the streets of blood-deluged Paris, and every friend of royalty, of whatever s.e.x or age, all over the empire, was hunted down without mercy.

When the reaction awakened by these horrors commenced in the public mind, the rigor of her captivity was somewhat abated. The death of her brother roused in her behalf, as the only remaining child of the wrecked and ruined family, such a feeling of sympathy, that the a.s.sembly consented to regard her as a prisoner of war, and to exchange her with the Austrian government for four French officers whom they held as prisoners. Maria Theresa was led, pale, pensive, heart-broken, hopeless, from her cell, and placed in the hands of the relatives of her mother.

But her griefs had been so deep, her bereavements so utter and heart-rending, that this change seemed to her only a mitigation of misery, and not an accession of joy. She was informed of the death of her mother and her aunt, and, weeping over her desolation, she emerged from her prison cell and entered the carriage to return to the palaces of Austria, where her unhappy mother had pa.s.sed the hours of her childhood. As she rode along through the green fields and looked out upon the blue sky, through which the summer's sun was shedding its beams--as she felt the pure air, from which she had so long been excluded, fanning her cheeks, and realized that she was safe from insults and once more free, anguish gave place to a calm and settled melancholy. She arrived in Vienna. Love and admiration encircled her.

Every heart vied in endeavors to lavish soothing words and delicate attentions upon this stricken child of grief. She buried her face in the bosoms of those thus soliciting her love, her eyes were flooded with tears, and she sobbed with almost a bursting heart. After her arrival in Vienna, one full year pa.s.sed away before a smile could ever be won to visit her cheek. Woes such as she had endured pa.s.s not away like the mists of the morning. The hideous dream haunted her by day and by night.

The headless trunks of her father, her mother, and her aunt were ever before her eyes. Her beloved brother, suffering and dying upon a beggar's bed, was ever present in her dreams while reposing under the imperial canopy of the Austrian kings. The past had been so long and so awful that it seemed an ever-living reality. The sudden change she could hardly credit but as the delirium of a dream.

Time, however, will diminish the poignancy of every sorrow save those of remorse. Maria was now again in a regal palace, surrounded with every luxury which earth could confer. She was young and beautiful. She was beloved, and almost adored. Every monarch, every prince, every emba.s.sador from a foreign court, delighted to pay her especial honor. No heart throbbed near her but with the desire to render her some compensation for the wrongs and the woes which had fallen upon her youthful and guileless heart. Wherever she appeared, she was greeted with love and homage. Those who had never seen her would willingly peril their lives in any way to serve her. Thus was she raised to consideration, and enshrined in the affections of every soul retaining one spark of n.o.ble feeling. The past receded farther and farther from her view, the present arose more and more vividly before the eye. Joy gradually returned to that bosom from which it had so long been a stranger. The flowers bloomed beautifully before her eyes, the birds sung melodiously in her ears. The fair face of creation, with mountain, vale, and river, beguiled her thoughts, and introduced images of peace and beauty to dispel the hideous phantoms of dungeons and misery. The morning drive around the beautiful metropolis; the evening serenade; the moonlight sail; and, above all, the voice of _love_, reanimated her heart, and roused her affections from the tomb in which they so long had slumbered. The smile of youth, though still pensive and melancholy, began to illumine her saddened features. Hope of future joy rose to cheer her. The Duc d'Angouleme, son of Charles X., sought her as his bride, and she was led in tranquil happiness to the altar, feeling as few can feel the luxury of being tenderly beloved.

Upon the fall of Napoleon she returned to France with the Bourbon family, and again moved, with smiles of sadness, among the brilliant throng crowding the palaces of her ancestors. The Revolution of 1830, which drove the Bourbons again from the throne of France, drove Maria Theresa, now d.u.c.h.esse d'Angouleme, again into exile. She resided for a time with her husband in the Castle of Holyrood, in Scotland, under the name of the Count and Countess of Main; but the climate being too severe for her const.i.tution, she left that region for Vienna. There she was received with every possible demonstration of respect and affection. She now resides in the imperial castle of Prague, a venerated widow, having pa.s.sed through three-score years and ten of a more varied life than is often experienced by mortals. Even to the present hour, her furrowed cheeks retain the traces, in their pensive expression, of the sorrow which darkened her early years.