Memoirs of the Courts of Louis XV and XVI Part 24

"Oh, yes, I have," said he; "it was I who repaired the Queen's boxes in this very room."

Knowing I had never received anything of the sort from Her Majesty, and utterly unaware that the boxes the Princess sent to my apartments had been the Queen's, I was greatly surprised. Seeing my confusion, he said, "I know the boxes as well as I know myself. I am the King's locksmith, my dear, and I and the King worked together many years. Why, I know every creek and corner of the palace, aye, and I know everything that's going on in them, too--queer doings! Lord, my pretty damsel, I made a secret place in the palace to hide the King's papers, where the devil himself would never find them out, if I or the King didn't tell!"

Though I wished him at the devil every moment he detained me from disclosing his information at the palace, yet I played off the soubrette upon him till he became so interested I thought he never would have gone.

At last, however, he took his departure, and the moment he disappeared, out of the house I flew.

The agitation and surprise of the Princess at what I related were extreme. "Wait," cried she; "I must go and inform the Queen instantly."

In going out of the room, "Great G.o.d, what a discovery!" exclaimed Her Highness.

It was not long before she returned. Luckily, I was dressed for dinner.

She took me by the hand and, unable to speak, led me to the private closet of the Queen.

Her Majesty graciously condescended to thank me for the letter I had taken charge of. She told me that for the future all letters to her would be without any superscription; and desired me, if any should be given to me by persons I had not before seen, and the cipher were shown at the same time, to receive and deliver them myself into her hands, as the production of the cipher would be a sufficient pledge of their authenticity.

Being desired to repeat the conversation with Gamin, "There, Princess!"

exclaimed Her Majesty, "Am I not the crow of evil forebodings? I trust the King will never again be credulous enough to employ this man. I have long had an extreme aversion to His Majesty's familiarity with him; but he shall hear his impudence himself from your own lips, my good little Englishwoman; and then he will not think it is prepossession or prejudice."

A few evenings elapsed, and I thought no more of the subject, till one night I was ordered to the palace by the Princess, which never happened but on very particular occasions, as she was fearful of exciting suspicion by any appearance of close intimacy with one so much about Paris upon the secret emba.s.sies of the Court.

When I entered the apartment, the King, the Queen, and the Princesse Elizabeth were, as if by accident, in an adjoining room; but, from what followed, I am certain they all came purposely to hear my deposition. I was presently commanded to present myself to the august party.

The King was in deep conversation with the Princesse Elizabeth. I must confess I felt rather embarra.s.sed. I could not form an idea why I was thus honoured. The Princesse de Lamballe graciously took me by the hand.

"Now tell His Majesty, yourself, what Gamin said to you."

I began to revive, perceiving now wherefore I was summoned. I accordingly related, in the presence of the royal guests a.s.sembled, as I had done before Her Majesty and the Princesse de Lamballe, the scene as it occurred.

When I came to that part where he said, "where the devil himself could never find them out," His Majesty approached from the balcony, at which he had been talking with the Princesse Elizabeth, and said, "Well! he is very right--but neither he nor the devil shall find them out, for they shall be removed this very night."

[Which was done; and these are, therefore, no doubt, the papers and portfolio of which Madame Campan speaks, vol. ii., p. 142, as having been entrusted to her care after being taken from their hiding-place by the King himself.]

The King, the Queen, and the Princesse Elizabeth most graciously said, "Nous sommes bien obligis, ma pet.i.te anglaise!" and Her Majesty added, "Now, my dear, tell me all the rest about this man, whom I have long suspected for his wickedness."

I said he had been guilty of no hostile indications, and that the chief fault I had to find with him was his exceeding familiarity in mentioning himself before the King, saying, "I and the King."

"Go on," said Her Majesty; "give us the whole as it occurred, and let us form our own conclusions."

"Yes," cried the Princess, "parlate sciolto."--"Si Si," rejoined the Queen, "parlate tutto--yes, yes, speak out and tell us all."

I then related the remainder of the conversation, which very much alarmed the royal party, and it was agreed that, to avoid suspicion, I should next day send for the locksmith and desire him, as an excuse, to look at the locks of my trunks and travelling carriage, and set off in his presence to take up my pretended mistress on the road to Calais, that he might not suspect I had any connection with any one about the Court. I was strictly enjoined by Her Majesty to tell him that the man servant had had the boxes from some one to get them repaired, without either my knowledge or that of my mistress, and, by her pretended orders, to give him a discharge upon the spot for having dared to use her apartments as a workshop for the business of other people.

"Now," said the Princesse de Lamballe, "now play the comic part you acted between your servant and Gamin:" which I did, as well as I could recollect it, and the royal audience were so much amused, that I had the honour to remain in the room and see them play at cards. At length, however, there came three gentle taps at the outer door. "Ora a tempo perche vene andata," exclaimed Her Highness at the sound, having ordered a person to call with this signal to see me out of the palace to the Rue Nicaise, where my carriage was in waiting to conduct me home.

It is not possible for me to describe the gracious condescension of the Queen and the Princesse Elizabeth, in expressing their sentiments for the accidental discovery I had made. Amid their a.s.surances of tender interest and concern, they both reproved me mildly for my imprudence in having, when I went to Brussels, hurried from Paris without my pa.s.sport.

They gave me prudential cautions with regard to my future conduct and residence at Paris; and it was princ.i.p.ally owing to the united persuasions and remonstrances of these three angels in human form that I took six or seven different lodgings, where the Princesse de Lamballe used to meet me by turns; because had I gone often to the palace, as many others did, or waited for Her Highness regularly in any one spot, I should, infallibly, have been discovered.

"Gracious G.o.d!" exclaimed Her Majesty in the course of this conversation, "am I born to be the misfortune of every one who shows an interest in serving me? Tell my sister, when you return to Brussels again--and do not forget to say I desired you to tell her--our cruel situation! She does not believe that we are surrounded by enemies, even in our most private seclusions! in our prison! that we are even thrown exclusively upon foreigners in our most confidential affairs; that in France there is scarcely an individual to whom we can look! They betray us for their own safety, which is endangered by any exertions in our favour. Tell her this," repeated the Queen three or four times.

The next day I punctually obeyed my orders. Gamin was sent for to look at the locks, and received six francs for his opinion. The man servant was reproved by me on behalf of my supposed mistress, and, in the presence of Gamin, discharged for having brought suspicious things into the house.

The man being tutored in his part, begged Gamin to plead for my intercession with our mistress. I remained inexorable, as he knew I should. While Gamin was still by I discharged the bill at the house, got into my carriage, and took the road towards Calais.

At Saint Denis, however, I feigned to be taken ill, and in two days returned to Paris.

Even this simple act required management. I contrived it in the following manner. I walked out on the high road leading to the capital for the purpose of meeting my servant at a place which had been fixed for the meeting before I left Paris. I found him on horseback at his post, with a carriage prepared for my return. As soon as I was out of sight he made the best of his way forward, went to the inn with a note from me, and returned with my carriage and baggage I had to lodgings at Pa.s.sy.

The joy of the Princess on seeing me safe again brought tears into her eyes; and, when I related the scene I played off before Gamin against my servant, she laughed most heavily. "But surely," said she, "you have not really discharged the poor man?"--"Oh, no," replied I; "he acted his part so well before the locksmith, that I should be very sorry to lose such an apt scholar."

"You must perform this 'buffa scena'," observed Her Highness, "to the Queen. She has been very anxious to know the result; but her spirits are so depressed that I fear she will not come to my party this evening.

However, if she do not, I will see her to-morrow, and you shall make her laugh. It would be a charity, for she has not done so from the heart for many a day!"

SECTION IX.

Editor in continuation:

Every one who has read at all is familiar with the immortal panegyric of the great Edmund Burke upon Marie Antoinette. It is known that this ill.u.s.trious man was not mean enough to flatter; yet his eloquent praises of her as a Princess, a woman, and a beauty, inspiring something beyond what any other woman could excite, have been called flattery by those who never knew her; those who did, must feel them to be, if possible, even below the truth. But the admiration of Mr. Burke was set down even to a baser motive, and, like everything else, converted into a source of slander for political purposes, long before that worthy palladium of British liberty had even thought of interesting himself for the welfare of France, which his prophetic eye saw plainly was the common cause of all Europe.

But, keenly as that great statesman looked into futurity, little did he think, when he visited the Queen in all her splendour at Trianon, and spoke so warmly of the cordial reception he had met with at Versailles from the Duc and d.u.c.h.esse de Polignac, that he should have so soon to deplore their tragic fate!

Could his suggestions to Her Majesty, when he was in France, have been put in force, there is scarcely a doubt that the Revolution might have been averted, or crushed. But he did not limit his friendship to personal advice. It is not generally known that the Queen carried on, through the medium of the Princesse de Lamballe, a very extensive correspondence with Mr. Burke. He recommended wise and vast plans; and these, if possible, would have been adopted. The substance of some of the leading ones I can recall from the journal of Her Highness and letters which I have myself frequently deciphered. I shall endeavour, succinctly, to detail such of them as I remember.

Mr. Burke recommended the suppression of all superfluous religious inst.i.tutions, which had not public seminaries to support. Their lands, he advised, should be divided, without regard to any distinction but that of merit, among such members of the army and other useful cla.s.ses of society, as, after having served the specified time, should have risen, through their good conduct, to either civil or military preferment. By calculations upon the landed interest, it appeared that every individual under the operation of this bounty would, in the course of twenty years, possess a yearly income of from five to seven hundred francs.

Another of the schemes suggested by Mr. Burke was to purge the kingdom of all the troops which had been corrupted from their allegiance by the intrigues growing out of the first meeting of the Notables. He proposed that they should sail at the same time, or nearly so, to be colonized in the different French islands and Madagascar; and, in their place, a new national guard created, who should be bound to the interest of the legitimate Government by receiving the waste crown lands to be shared among them, from the common soldier to its generals and Field-marshals.

Thus would the whole ma.s.s of rebellious blood have been reformed. To ensure an effectual change, Mr. Burke advised the enrolment, in rotation, of sixty thousand Irish troops, twenty thousand always to remain in France, and forty thousand in reversion for the same service. The lynx-eyed statesman saw clearly, from the murders of the Marquis de Launay and M. Flesselles, and from the destruction of the Bastille, and of the ramparts of Paris, that party had not armed itself against Louis, but against the throne. It was therefore necessary to produce a permanent revolution in the army.

[Mr. Burke was too great a statesman not to be the friend of his country's interest. He also saw that, from the destruction of the monarchy in France, England had more to fear than to gain. He well knew that the French Revolution was not, like that of the Americans, founded on grievances and urged in support of a great and disinterested principle. He was aware that so restless a people, when they had overthrown the monarchy, would not limit the overthrow to their own country. After Mr. Burke's death, Mr. Fox was applied to, and was decidedly of the same opinion. Mr. Sheridan was interrogated, and, at the request of the Princesse de Lamballe, he presented, for the Queen's inspection, plans nearly equal to those of the above two great statesmen; and what is most singular and scarcely credible is that one and all of the opposition party in England strenuously exerted themselves for the upholding of the monarchy in France. Many circ.u.mstances which came to my knowledge before and after the death of Louis XVI. prove that Mr. Pitt himself was averse to the republican principles being organized so near a const.i.tutional monarchy as France was to Great Britain. Though the conduct of the Duc d'Orleans was generally reprobated, I firmly believe that if he had possessed sufficient courage to have usurped the crown and re-established the monarchy, he would have been treated with in preference to the republicans. I am the more confirmed in this opinion by a conversation between the Princesse de Lamballe and Mirabeau, in which he said a republic in France would never thrive.]

There was another suggestion to secure troops around the throne of a more loyal temper. It was planned to incorporate all the French soldiers, who had not voluntarily deserted the royal standard, with two-thirds of Swiss, German, and Low Country forces, among whom were to be divided, after ten years' service, certain portions of the crown lands, which were to be held by presenting every year a flag of acknowledgment to the King and Queen; with the preference of serving in the civil or military departments, according to the merit or capacity of the respective individuals. Messieurs de Broglie, de Bouille, de Luxembourg, and others, were to have been commanders. But this plan, like many others, was foiled in its birth, and, it is said, through the intrigues of Mirabeau.

However, all concurred in the necessity of ridding France, upon the most plausible pretexts, of the fomenters of its ruin. Now arose a fresh difficulty. Transports were wanted, and in considerable numbers.

A navy agent in England was applied to for the supply of these transports. So great was the number required, and so peculiar the circ.u.mstances, that the agent declined interfering without the sanction of his Government.

A new dilemma succeeded. Might not the King of England place improper constructions on this extensive shipment of troops from the different ports of France for her West India possessions? Might it not be fancied that it involved secret designs on the British settlements in that quarter?

All these circ.u.mstances required that some communication should be opened with the Court of St. James; and the critical posture of affairs exacted that such communication should be less diplomatic than confidential.

It will be recollected that, at the very commencement of the reign of Louis XVI., there were troubles in Britanny, which the severe governorship of the Duc d'Aiguillon augmented. The Bretons took privileges with them, when they became blended with the kingdom of France, by the marriage of Anne of Brittany with Charles VIII., beyond those of any other of its provinces. These privileges they seemed rather disposed to extend than relinquish, and were by no means reserved in the expression of their resolution. It was considered expedient to place a firm, but conciliatory, Governor over them, and the Duc de Penthievre was appointed to this difficult trust. The Duke was accompanied to his vice-royalty by his daughter-in-law, the Princesse de Lamballe, who, by her extremely judicious management of the female part of the province, did more for the restoration of order than could have been achieved by armies. The remembrance of this circ.u.mstance induced the Queen to regard Her Highness as a fit person to send secretly to England at this very important crisis; and the purpose was greatly encouraged by a wish to remove her from a scene of such daily increasing peril.

For privacy, it was deemed expedient that Her Highness should withdraw to Aumale, under the plea of ill-health, and thence proceed to England; and it was also by way of Aumale that she as secretly returned, after the fatal disaster of the stoppage, to discourage the impression of her ever having been out of France.

The mission was even unknown to the French Minister at the Court of St.

James.