Zigzag Journeys in Europe Part 34

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLACE DE LA CONCORDE.]

Here stood the guillotine, or rather the guillotines, on which Louis XIV. and Marie Antoinette and nearly three thousand persons perished.

Here revolutionists cut off the heads of the royal family, and the people the heads of the revolutionists.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ENTRANCE TO THE LOUVRE.]

Two beautiful fountains were playing on the afternoon when the Cla.s.s made their visit. The sky was all rose and gold; the Seine flowed calmly along; the aspect of every thing seemed as foreign to any past a.s.sociation of war, tragedy, and pangs of human suffering as the figures of the Tritons and Nereids that were spouting water from the fishes in their hands.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FOUNTAIN, PLACE DE LA CONCORDE.]

Leaving the Place de la Concorde, which Master Lewis said he believed was constructed in part of stones of the old Bastile, the Cla.s.s went to the public square where the Bastile had stood.

"The Place of the Bastile," said Master Lewis, "now adorned by the Column of Liberty, is the site of the old Castle of Paris, which was built as a defence against the English. The castle became a prison for people who offended the French kings. The Man of the Iron Mask was confined here. It was regarded as an obstacle to liberty, and it was stormed by the people during the Revolution, and destroyed."

"Who was the Man of the Iron Mask?" asked Tommy Toby.

"That is a question that used to be asked by all the statesmen of Europe, and that has been repeated and always will be by every reader of history. It has been answered in many different ways. Books, pamphlets, and essays have been written upon the subject. It is still a secret, and seems destined always to remain so. I will give you briefly the strange history of this State prisoner."

THE MAN OF THE IRON MASK.

"During the reign of that voluptuous old monarch, Louis XIV. of France, there appeared on one of the Marguerite Islands, in the Mediterranean, a prisoner of State closely guarded, and entrusted to the especial care of a French governmental officer, De Saint Mars.

"Although confined in this obscure spot in the sea, where but little was seen or heard save a distant sail and the dashing of waters, he became a marked man among the few who chanced to meet him, and the circ.u.mstance of his concealment was in danger of being noised abroad.

He was consequently removed to Paris, and immured in the cells of the Bastile.

"From the time that he began to attract attention on the island in the Mediterranean to the close of his protracted life, no one but his appointed attendants is known to have seen his face.

"His head was enveloped in a black-velvet mask, confined by springs of steel, and so arranged that he could not reveal his features without immediate detection.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAN OF THE IRON MASK.]

"His guardian, De Saint Mars, had been instructed by a royal order, or by an order from certain of the king's favorites, to take his life immediately, should he attempt to reveal his ident.i.ty.

"During his confinement on the Marguerite island, De Saint Mars ate and slept in the same room with him, and was always provided with weapons with which to despatch him, should he attempt to discover the secret of his history. If report is true, De Saint Mars might well exercise caution, for it is a.s.serted that he was to forfeit his own life if by any want of watchfulness he allowed the prisoner to reveal his ident.i.ty.

"The prisoner himself seemed anxious to make the forbidden discovery.

He once wrote a word on some linen, and succeeded in communicating what he wished to an individual not in the secret of the mystery. But the _ruse_ was discovered, and the person that received the linen died suddenly, being taken off, it was supposed, by poison. He once engraved something, probably his name, on a piece of silver plate. The person to whom it was conveyed was detected in his knowledge of the secret, and soon after died, as suddenly and mysteriously as the one who had received the linen.

"These incidents indicate that the prisoner was a man of shrewdness and learning.

"He was attended, during his imprisonment in the Bastile, by the governor of the fortress, who alone administered to his wants; and when he attended ma.s.s he was always followed by a detachment of invalides (French soldiers), who were instructed to fire upon him in case he should speak or attempt to uncover his face.

"These circ.u.mstances, and many others of like character, show that he was a person of very eminent rank, and that those who thus shut him out from mankind were conscious that they were committing a crime of no ordinary magnitude.

"Who, then, was this person of mystery, familiarly known as the Man of the Iron Mask?

"He is supposed by many to have been a son of Anne of Austria and the Duke of Buckingham, and consequently a half-brother of Louis XIV., and a co-heir to the throne of France. If so, it would appear, that, while Louis XIV. was luxuriating amid the splendors of the palace of Versailles, his brother was suffering the miseries of exile, or languishing in a dungeon, shut out not only from the outward world, but from all intercourse with mankind. But other writers think him to have been some less remarkable person.

"The iron mask, of which frequent mention has been made in sensational books, was a very simple contrivance of velvet and springs of steel."

The Cla.s.s made two excursions from Paris, one to Versailles and the other to Fontainebleau.

Versailles, a town of 30,000 inhabitants, which has grown up around one of the finest palaces and parks of Europe, was originally the hunting-lodge of Louis XIII. Louis XIV. chose the place for a palace, and employed almost an army of men for eleven years upon the structure. He spent upon this palace nearly 40,000,000 sterling.

Thither in 1680 he removed his gay court, and here he pa.s.sed in gloomy grandeur his melancholy old age.

It is a place of beautiful gardens, wonderful fountains, fine statues, and walks a.s.sociated with the history of kings, queens, statesmen, and scholars. The palace to the visitor seems a vast picture gallery, wherein is shown the conquests of France. It is a long journey through the glittering rooms. Here you see the representation of a king in his moment of triumph, adored as a G.o.d, and there you see the same king overthrown or stretched upon his bed of death. The fountains murmur, the orange trees fill the air with perfume, and you turn from the exhibition of the glowing and faded pomps of history to the gardens, feeling that after all man's only n.o.bility and kingship and hope of a crown lies in his soul, and it is virtue alone that makes one royal.

Two small palaces or villas in the Park of Versailles, called Great Trianon and Little Trianon, recalled to Master Lewis the happy days of the life of Marie Antoinette, which she spent here while the unseen cloud of the Revolution was gathering, and the calm settled down on Paris before the storm.

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

"We have seen the places where Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette lived and were beheaded. What became of their children?" asked Frank Gray.

"The oldest son of Louis XVI. died at the beginning of the Revolution.

As it may give you a picture of the stormy times of the period, let me tell you

THE STORY OF THE DAUPHIN.

"He was born at Versailles in 1785. He was a most affectionate child, and was ardently attached to his mother. He used to sport about the gardens of the palace; the very place where we are now was his play-ground.

"He would sometimes rise early in the morning to gather flowers from the gardens to lay on his mother's pillow.

"'Ah!' he would say, when weary of play, 'I have not earned the first kiss from mother to-day.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: LITTLE TRIANON.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DAUPHIN WITH THE ROYAL FAMILY IN THE a.s.sEMBLY.]

"The Revolution came and cast a shadow over Versailles, with all its glory. The royal family was surrounded with enemies, and was in constant terror, and the little dauphin was made unhappy by the sight of his mother's tears.

"One day a serving-woman told him that if he would procure some favor for her she would be happy as a queen.

"'As happy as a queen!' he answered: 'I know of one queen who does nothing but weep.'

"The Revolutionists overthrew the Bastile and the throne, and the members of the royal family were obliged to seek protection in the National a.s.sembly. They were then confined in an old French prison, called the Temple.

"The king was tried by the a.s.sembly, was condemned and executed. He deeply loved the dauphin, and parted from him with bitter grief.

"After the king's death the dauphin was the princ.i.p.al solace of the queen in her imprisonment. He was at last removed from the queen's apartment by an order of the Committee of Public Safety. It is related that when the guards came to take him away, his mother fought for him until her strength was exhausted, and she fell senseless upon the floor.

"After the execution of his mother he was given over to the care of a brutal shoemaker, named Simon, who endeavored to cause his death without committing palpable murder. He was ill-fed, beaten and abused, and received the name of the 'She-wolf's Whelp,' referring to Marie Antoinette.

"At this period the police were in the habit of distributing in the streets songs against 'Madame Veto,' as the queen had been called. One of the most infamous of these, as vulgar as it was brutal, had been preserved by Simon.

"One day, for the want of a new torture for the child, Simon resolved to make him sing this obscene song against his mother.