Marie Antoinette and Her Son Part 36

Marie Antoinette had to be the offering to the lion! Her blood had to flow for the sins of the Bourbons! On her all the anger, the exasperation, the rage of the people must concentrate! She must bear the blame of all the miseries and the needs of France! She must satisfy the hunger for vengeance, in order that when the lion is appeased it can be made placable and patient again, the chains put on which he has broken in his rage--the chains, however, to which, when his rage is past, he must again submit.

The queen, the queen is to blame for all! Marie Antoinette has brought royalty into discredit; the Austrian woman has brought the hatred of the French nation upon herself, and she must atone for it, she alone!

Libels and calumnies are forged against the queen by those who were once the friends and cavaliers of the queen--cavaliers no longer, but cavillers now; the poisoned arrows are sent to France to be directed against the head of the queen, to destroy first her honor and good name, and then to make her a prey for scorn and contempt.

If the lion stills his rage and cools his hate with Marie Antoinette as his victim, he will relax again and bow to his king, for it is time for these royal princes to return to France and their loved Paris once more.

The Count do Provence is the implacable enemy of the queen; he can never forgive her for gaining the heart of the king her husband, and leaving no influence for his wise, clever brother. The Count de Provence is avaricious and crafty. He sees that an abyss has opened before the throne of the lilies, and that it will not close again!

It must, therefore, be filled up! A reconciliation will not be possible in a natural way, and artificial methods must be found to accomplish it. Louis XVI. will not be saved, and Marie Antoinette shall not be! The two, perhaps, can fill up the abyss that yawns between the throne of the lilies and the French people. They, perhaps, may fill it up, and then a way may be made for the Count de Provence, the successor of his brother.

The Count d'Artois was once the friend of the queen, the only one of the royal family who wished her well, and who defended her sometimes against the hatred of the royal aunts and sisters-in-law, and the crafty brother. But while living in Coblentz, the Count d'Artois had become the embittered enemy of Marie Antoinette. He had heard it so often said on all sides that the queen by her levity, her extravagance, and her intrigues, was the cause of all, that she alone had brought about the revolution, that he at last believed it, and turned angrily against the royal woman, whose worst offence in the eyes of the prince lay in this, that she had been the occasion of his enforced exile to Coblentz.

And Marie Antoinette knew all these intrigues which were forged by the prince in Coblentz against herself--knew about all the calumnies that were set in circulation there; she read the libels and pamphlets which the storm-wind of revolution shook from the dry tree of monarchy like withered autumn leaves, and scattered through all France, that they might be everywhere found and read.

"They will kill me," she would often say, with a sigh, after reading these pamphlets steeped with hate, and written in blood--" yes, they will kill me, but with me they will kill the king and the monarchy too. The revolution will triumph over us all, and hurl us all together down into the grave."

But still she would make efforts to control the revolution and restore the monarchy again out of its humiliations. The Emperor Joseph II., brother of the queen, once said of himself, "I am a royalist, because that is my business." Marie Antoinette was a royalist not because it was her business; she was a royalist by conviction, a royalist in her soul, her mind, and her inmost nature.

For this she would defend the monarchy; for this she would contend against the revolution, until she should either constrain it to terms or be swallowed up in it.

All her efforts, all her cares, were directed only to this, to kindle in the king the same courage that animated her, to stir him with the same fire that burned in her soul. But alas! Louis XVI. was no doubt a good man and a kind father, but he was no king. He had no doubt the wish to restore the monarchy, but he lacked the requisite energy and strong will. Instead of controlling the revolution with a fiery spirit, he sought to conciliate it by concession and mild measures; and instead of checking it, he himself went down before it.

But Marie Antoinette could not and would not give up hope. As the king would not act, she would act for him; as he would not take part in politics, she would do so for him. With glowing zeal she plunged into business, spent many hours each day with the ministers and dependants of the court, corresponded with foreign lands, with her brother the Emperor Leopold, and her sister, Queen Caroline of Naples, wrote to them in a cipher intelligible only to them, and sent the letters through the hands of secret agents, imploring of them a.s.sistance and help for the monarchy.

In earnest labor, in unrelieved care and business, the queen's days now pa.s.sed; she sang, she laughed no more; dress had no longer charms for her; she had no more conferences with Mademoiselle Bertin, her milliner; her hairdresser, M. Leonard, had no more calls upon his genius for new coiffures for her fair hair; a simple, dark dress, that was the toilet of the queen, a lace handkerchief round the neck, and a feather was her only head-dress.

Once she had rejoiced in her beauty, and smiled at the flatteries which her mirror told her when it reflected her face; now she looked with indifference at her pale, worn face, with its sharp grave features, and it awoke no wonder within her when the mirror told her that the queen of France, in spite of her thirty-six years, was old; that the roses on her cheeks had withered, and that care had drawn upon her brow those lines which age could not yet have done. She did not grieve over her lost beauty; she looked with complacency at that matron of six-and-thirty years whose beautiful hair showed the traces of that dreadful night in October. She had her picture painted, in order to send it to London, to the truest of her friends, the Princess Lamballe, and with her own hands she wrote beneath it the words: "Your sorrows have whitened your hair."

And yet in this life full of cares, full of work, full of pain and humiliation--in these sad days of trouble and resignation, there were single gleams of sunshine, scattered moments of happiness.

It was a ray of sunshine when this sad winter in the Tuileries was past, and the States-General allowed the royal family to go to St.

Cloud and spend the summer there. Certainly it was a new humiliation for the king to receive permission to reside in his own summer palace of St. Cloud. But the States-General called themselves the pillars of the throne, and the king who sat upon this shaking throne was very dependent upon its support.

In St. Cloud there was at least a little freedom, a little solitude and stillness. The birds sang in the foliage, the sun lighted up the broad halls of the palace, in which a few faithful ones gathered around the queen and recalled at least a touch of the past happiness to her brow. In St. Cloud she was again the queen, she held her court there. But how different was this from the court of former days.

No merry laughter, no cheerful singing resounded through these s.p.a.cious halls; no pleasant ladies, in light, airy, summer costume swept through the fragrant apartments; M. d'Adhemar no longer sits at the spinet, and sings with his rich voice the beautiful arias from the opera "Richard of the Lion Heart," in which royalty had its apotheosis, and in which the singer Garat had excited all Paris to the wildest demonstrations of delight! And not all Paris, but Versailles as well, and in Versailles the royal court!

Louis XVI. himself had been in rapture at the aria which Garat sang with his flexible tenor voice in so enchanting a manner--"Oh, Richard! oh, mon roi!"--an aria which had once procured him a triumph in the very theatre. For when Garat began this air with his full voice, and every countenance was directed to the box where the royal family were sitting, the whole theatre rose, and the hundreds upon hundreds present had joined in the loud, jubilant strains--"Oh, Richard! oh, mon roi!" Louis XVI. was grateful to the spirited singer, who, in that stormy time, had the courage to publicly offer him homage, and he had therefore acceded to the request of the queen, that Garat should be invited to the private concerts of the queen at Versailles, and give her instruction on those occasions in the art of singing.

Marie Antoinette thought of those pleasant days of the past, as she sat in the still, deserted music-room, where the instruments stood silent by the wall--where there were no hands to entice the cheerful melodies from the strings, as there had once been.

"I wish that I had never sung duets with Garat," whispered the queen to herself. "The king allowed me, but yet I ought not to have done it. A queen has no right to be free, merry, and happy. A queen can practise the fine arts only alone, and in the silence of her own apartments. I would I had never sung with Garat." [Footnote: The queen's own words.--See "Memoires de Madame de Campan," vol. ii.]

She sat down before the spinet and opened it. Her fingers glided softly over the keys, and for the first time, in long months of silence, the room resounded with the tones of music.

But, alas! it was no cheerful music which the fingers of the queen drew from the keys; it was only the notes of pain, only cries of grief; and yet they recalled the happy by-gone times--those golden, blessed days, when the Queen of France was the friend of the arts, and when she received her early teacher, the great maestro and chevalier, Gluck, in Versailles; when she took sides for him against the Italian maestro Lully, and when all Paris divided into two parties, the Gluckists and Lullyists, waging a bloodless war against each other. Happy Paris! At that time the interests of art alone busied all spirits, and the battle of opinions was conducted only with the pen. Gluck owed it to the mighty influence of the queen that his opera "Alcestes" was brought upon the stage; but at its first representation the Lullyists gained the victory, and condemned it. In despair, Gluck left the opera-house, driven by hisses into the dark street. A friend followed him and detained him, as he was hurrying away, and spoke in the gentlest tones. But Gluck interrupted him with wild violence: "Oh, my friend!" cried he, falling on the neck of him who was expressing his kindly sympathy, "'Alcestes' has fallen!" But his friend pressed his hand, and said, "Fallen? Yes, 'Alcestes' has fallen! It has fallen from heaven!"

The queen thought of this as she sat before the spinet--thought how moved Gluck was when he related this answer of his friend, and that he, who had been so kind, was the Duke d'Adhemar.

She had thanked him for this gracious word by giving him her hand to kiss, and Adhemar, kneeling, had pressed his lips to her hand. And that was the same Baron Adhemar who was now at Coblentz a.s.sisting the prince to forge libels against herself, and who was himself the author of that shameless lampoon which ridiculed the musical studies of the queen, and even the duet which she had sung with Garat!

Softly glided her fingers over the keys, softly flowed over her pale, sunken cheeks two great tears--tears which she shed as she thought of the past--tears full of bitterness and pain! But no, no, she would not weep; she shook the tears from her eyes, and struck the keys with a more vigorous touch. Away, away, those recollections of ingrat.i.tude and faithlessness! Art shall engage her thoughts in the music-room, and to Gluck and "Alcestes" the hour belongs!

The queen struck the keys more firmly, and began to play the n.o.ble "Love's Complaint," of Gluck's opera. Unconsciously her lips opened, and with loud voice and intense pa.s.sionate expression, she sang the words, "Oh, crudel, non posso in vere, tu lo sui, senza dite!"

At the first notes of this fine voice the door in the rear of the room had lightly opened--the one leading to the garden--and the curly head of the dauphin was thrust in. Behind him were Madame de Tourzel and Madame Elizabeth, who, like the prince, were listening in breathless silence to the singing of the queen.

As she ended, and when the voice of Marie Antoinette was choked in a sigh, the dauphin flew with, extended arms across the hall to his mother, "Mamma queen," cried he, beaming with joy, "are you singing again? I thought my dear mamma had forgotten how to sing. But she has begun to sing again, and we are all happy once more."

Marie Antoinette folded the little fellow in her arms, and did not contradict him, and nodded smilingly to the two ladies, who now approached and begged the queen's pardon for yielding to the pressing desires of the dauphin, and entering without permission.

"Oh, mamma, my dear mamma queen," said the prince, in the most caressing way, "I have been very industrious to-day; the abbe was satisfied with me, and praised me, because I wrote well and learned my arithmetic well. Won't you give me a reward for that, mamma queen?"

"What sort of a reward do you want, my child?" asked the queen, smiling.

"Say, first, that you will give it."

"Well, yes, I will give it, my little Louis; now tell me what it is."

"Mamma queen, I want you to sing your little Louis a song; and," he added, nodding at the two ladies, "that you allow these friends of mine to hear it."

"Well, my child, I will sing for you," answered Marie Antoinette, "and our good friends shall hear it."

The countenance of the boy beamed with pleasure; with alacrity he rolled an easy-chair up to the piano, and took his seat in it in the most dignified manner.

Madame Elizabeth seated herself near him on a tabouret, and Madame de Tourzel leaned on the back of the dauphin's chair.

"Now sing, mamma, now sing," asked the dauphin.

Marie Antoinette played a prelude, and as her eyes fell upon the group they lighted up with joy, and then turned upward to G.o.d with a look of thankfulness.

A few minutes before she had felt alone and sad: she had thought of absent friends in bitter pain, and now, as if fate would remind her of the happiness which still remained to her, it sent her the son and the sister-in-law, both of whom loved her so tenderly, and the gentle and affectionate Madame de Tourzel, whom Marie Antoinette knew to be faithful and constant unto death.

The flatterers and courtiers, the court ladies and cavaliers, are no longer in the music-room; the enraptured praises no longer accompany the songs of the queen; but, out of the easy-chair, in which the d.u.c.h.ess de Polignac had sat so often, now looks the beautiful blond face of her son, and his beaming countenance speaks more eloquently to her than the flatteries of friends. On the tabouret, now occupied by her sister-in-law, Madame Elizabeth, De Dillon has often sat--the handsome Dillon, and his glowing, admiring looks have often, perhaps, in spite of his own will, said more to the queen than she allowed herself to understand, as her heart thrilled in sweet pain and secret raptures under those glances! How pure and innocent is the face which now looks out from this chair--the face of an angel who bears G.o.d in his heart and on his countenance.

"Pray for me; pray that G.o.d may let me drink of Lethe, that I may forget all that has ever been! Pray that I may be satisfied with what remains, and that my heart may how in humility and patience!"

Thus thought the queen as she began to sing, not one of her great arias which she had studied with Garat, and which the court used to applaud, but one of those lovely little songs, full of feeling and melody, which did not carry one away in admiration, but which filled the heart with joy and deep emotion.

With suspended breath, and great eyes directed fixedly to Marie Antoinette, the dauphin listened, but gradually his eyes fell, and motionless and with grave face the child sat in his arm-chair.

Marie Antoinette saw it, and began to sing one of those cradle-songs of the "Children's Friend," which Berquin had written, and Gretry had set to music so charmingly.

How still was it in the music-room, how full and touching was the voice of the queen as she began the last verse:

"Oh, sleep, my child, now so to sleep. Thy crying grieves my heart; Thy mother, child, has cause to weep, But sleep and feel no smart."

[Footnote: "Dors, mon enfant, clos ta paupiere, Tes cris me dechirent la coeur; Dors, mon enfant, ta pauvre more A bien a.s.sez de sa douleur."]

All was still in the music-room when the last words were sung; motionless, with downcast eyes, sat the dauphin long after the sad voice of the queen had ceased.