A Versailles Christmas Tide - Mary Stuart Boyd
[Illustration: Snow in the Park]
After a few days of thought-congealing cold--a cold so intense that
sundry country people who had left their homes before dawn to drive into
Paris with farm produce were taken dead from their market-carts at the
end of the journey--the weather mercifully changed. A heavy snowfall now
tempered the inclement air, and turned the leafless park into a fairy
vision.
The nights were still cold, but during the day the sun glinted warmly on
the frozen waters of the gilded fountains and sparkled on the facets of
the crisp snow. The marble benches in the sheltered nooks of the snug
Chateau gardens were occupied by little groups, which usually consisted
of a _bonne_ and a baby, or of a chevalier and a hopelessly unclassable
dog; for the dogs of Versailles belong to breeds that no man living
could classify, the most prevalent type in clumsiness of contour and
astonishing shagginess of coat resembling nothing more natural than
those human travesties of the canine race familiar to us in pantomime.
Along the snow-covered paths under the leafless trees, on whose branches
close-wreathed mistletoe hangs like rooks' nests, the statues stood like
guardian angels of the scene. They had lost their air of aloofness and
were at one with the white earth, just as the forest trees in their
autumn dress of brown and russet appear more in unison with their parent
soil than when decked in their bravery of summer greenery.
CHAPTER VII
THE HAUNTED CHATEAU
[Illustration: A Veteran of the Chateau]
The Chateau of Versailles, like the town, dozes through the winter, only
half awakening on Sunday afternoons when the townsfolk make it their
meeting-place. Then conscripts, in clumsy, ill-fitting uniforms, tread
noisily over the shining _parqueterie_ floors, and burgesses gossip
amicably in the dazzling _Galerie des Glaces_, where each morning
courtiers were wont to await the uprising of their king. But on the
weekdays visitors are of the rarest. Sometimes a few half-frozen people
who have rashly automobiled thither from Paris alight at the Chateau
gates, and take a hurried walk through the empty galleries to restore
the circulation to their stiffened limbs before venturing to set forth
on the return journey.
Every weekday in the Place d'Armes, squads of conscripts are busily
drilling, running hither and thither with unflagging energy, and the air
resounds with the hoarse staccato cries of "Un! Deux! Trois!" wherewith
they accompany their movements, cries that, heard from a short distance,
exactly resemble the harsh barking of a legion of dogs.
[Illustration: Un--Deux--Trois]
Within the gates there is a sense of leisure: even the officials have
ceased to anticipate visitors. In the _Cour Royale_ two little girls
have cajoled an old guide into playing a game of ball. A custodian dozes
by the great log fire in the bedroom of Louis XIV., where the warm
firelight playing on the rich trappings lends such an air of occupation
to the chamber, that--forgetting how time has turned to grey the once
white ostrich plumes adorning the canopy of the bed, and that the
priceless lace coverlet would probably fall to pieces at a touch--one
almost expects the door to open for the entrance of Louis le Grand
himself.
To this room he came when he built the Palace wherein to hide from that
grim summons with which the tower of the Royal sepulture of St. Denis,
visible from his former residence, seemed to threaten him. And here it
was that Death, after long seeking, found him. We can see the little
great-grandson who was to succeed, lifted on to the bed of the dying
monarch.
[Illustration: The Bedchamber of Louis XIV]
"What is your name, my child?" asks the King.
"Louis XV;" replies the infant, taking brevet-rank. And nearly sixty
years later we see the child, his wasted life at an end, dying of
virulent smallpox under the same roof, deserted by all save his devoted
daughters.
To me the Palace of Versailles is peopled by the ghosts of many women. A
few of them are dowdy and good, but by far the greater number are
graceful and wicked. How infinitely easier it is to make a good bad
reputation than to achieve even a bad good one! "Tell us stories about
naughty children," we used to beseech our nurses. And as our years
increase we still yawn over the doings of the righteous, while our
interest in the ways of transgressors only strengthens.
We all know by heart the romantic lives of the shrinking La Valliere, of
Madame de Montespan the impassioned, of sleek Madame de Maintenon--the
trio of beauties honoured by the admiration of Louis le Grand; and of
the bevy of favourites of Louis XV, the three fair and short-lived
sisters de Mailly-Nesle, the frail Pompadour who mingled scheming with
debauchery, and the fascinating but irresponsible Du Barry. Even the most
minute details of Marie Antoinette's tragic career are fresh in our
memories, but which of us can remember the part in the history of France
played by Marie Leczinska? Yet, apart from her claim to notability as
having been the last queen who ended her days on the French throne, her
story is full of romantic interest.
Thrusting aside the flimsy veil of Time, we find Marie Leczinska the
penniless daughter of an exiled Polish king who is living in retirement
in a dilapidated commandatory at a little town in Alsace. It is easy to
picture the shabby room wherein the unforeseeing Marie sits content
between her mother and grandmother, all three diligently broidering
altar cloths. Upon the peaceful scene the father enters, overcome by
emotion, trembling. His face announces great news, before he can school
his voice to speak.
"Why, father! Have you been recalled to the throne of Poland?" asks
Marie, and the naive question reveals that many years of banishment have
not quenched in the hearts of the exiles the hope of a return to their
beloved Poland.
"No, my daughter, but you are to be Queen of France," replies the
father. "Let us thank God."
[Illustration: Marie Leczinska]
Knowing the sequel, one wonders if it was for a blessing or a curse that
the refugees, kneeling in that meagre room in the old house at
Wissenberg, returned thanks.
Certain it is that the ministers of the boy-monarch were actuated more
by a craving to further their own ends than either by the desire to
please God or to honour their King, in selecting this obscure maiden
from the list of ninety-nine marriageable princesses that had been drawn
up at Versailles. A dowerless damsel possessed of no influential
relatives is not in a position to be exacting, and, whate'er befell,
poor outlawed Stanislas Poniatowski could not have taken up arms in
defence of his daughter.
Having a sincere regard for unaffected Marie Leczinska, I regret being
obliged to admit that, even in youth, "comely" was the most effusive
adjective that could veraciously be awarded her. And it is only in the
lowest of whispers that I will admit that she was seven years older than
her handsome husband, whose years did not then number seventeen. Yet is
there indubitable charm in the simple grace wherewith Marie accepted her
marvellous transformation from pauper to queen. She disarmed criticism
by refusing to conceal her former poverty. "This is the first time in my
life I have been able to make presents," she frankly told the ladies of
the Court, as she distributed among them her newly got trinkets.
It is pleasant to remember that the early years of her wedded life
passed harmoniously. Louis, though never passionately enamoured of his
wife, yet loved her with the warm affection a young man bestows on the
first woman he has possessed. And that Marie was wholly content there is
little doubt. She was no gadabout. Versailles satisfied her. Three years
passed before she visited Paris, and then the visit was more of the
nature of a pilgrimage than of a State progress. Twin daughters had
blessed the union, and the Queen journeyed to the churches of Notre Dame
and Saint Genevieve to crave from Heaven the boon of a Dauphin: a prayer
which a year later was answered.
But clouds were gathering apace. As he grew into manhood the domestic
virtues palled upon Louis. He tired of the needlework which, doubtless,
Marie's skilled hands had taught him. We recall how, sitting between her
mother and grandmother, the future Queen had broidered altar cloths.
Marie Leczinska was an adoring mother; possibly her devotion to their
rapidly increasing family wearied him. Being little more than a child
himself, the King is scarcely likely to have found the infantile society
so engaging as did the mother. Thus began that series of foolish
infidelities that, characterised by extreme timidity and secrecy at
first, was latterly flaunted in the face of the world.
Marie's life was not a smooth one, but it was happier than that of her
Royal spouse. To me there is nothing sadder, nothing more sordid in
history, than the feeble, useless existence of Louis XV., whose early
years promised so well. It is pitiful to look at the magnificent
portrait, still hanging in the palace where he reigned, of the
child-king seated in his robes of State, the sceptre in his hand,
looking with eyes of innocent wonder into the future, then to think upon
the depth of degradation reached by the once revered Monarch before his
body was dragged in dishonour and darkness to its last resting-place.
[Illustration: Madame Adelaide]
Pleasanter figures that haunt the Chateau are those of the six pretty
daughters of Louis and Marie Leczinska. There are the ill-starred twins,
Elizabeth and Henrietta: Madame Elizabeth, who never lost the love of
her old home, and, though married, before entering her teens, to the
Infanta of Spain, retired, after a life of disappointment, to her
beloved Versailles to die; and the gentle Henrietta who, cherishing an
unlucky passion for the young Duc de Chartres, pined quietly away after
witnessing her lover wed to another.
Then there is Adelaide, whom Nattier loved to paint, portraying her
sometimes as a lightly clad goddess, sometimes sitting demurely in a
pretty frock. Good Nattier! there is a later portrait of himself in
complacent middle age surrounded by his wife and children; but I like to
think that, when he spent so many days at the Palace painting the young
Princess, some tenderer influence than mere artistic skill lent cunning
to his brush.
When the daughters of Louis XV. were sent to be educated at a convent,
Adelaide it was who, by tearful protest to her royal father, gained
permission to remain at the Palace while her sisters meekly endured
their banishment. From this instance of childish character one would
have anticipated a career for Madame Adelaide, and I hate being obliged
to think of her merely developing into one of the three spinster aunts
of Louis XVI. who, residing under the same roof, turned coldly
disapproving eyes upon the manifold frailties of their niece, Marie
Antoinette.
The sisters Victoire and Sophie are faint shades leaving no impression
on the memory; but there is another spirit, clad in the sombre garb of a
Carmelite nun, who, standing aloof, looks with the calm eyes of peace on
the motley throng. It is Louise, the youngest sister of all, who, deeply
grieved by her father's infatuation for the Du Barry--an infatuation
which, beginning within a month of Marie Leczinska's decease, ended only
when on his deathbed the dying Monarch prepared to receive absolution by
bidding his inamorata farewell--resolved to flee her profligate
surroundings and devote her life to holiness.
It is affecting to think of the gentle Louise, secretly anticipating the
rigours of convent life, torturing her delicate skin by wearing coarse
serge, and burning tallow candles in her chamber to accustom herself to
their detestable odour.
Her father's consent gained, Louise still tarried at Versailles. Perhaps
the King's daughter shrank from voluntarily beginning a life of
imprisoned drudgery. We know that at this period she passed many hours
reading contemporary history, knowing that, once within the convent
walls, the study of none but sacred literature would be permitted.
Then came an April morning when Louise, who had kept her intention
secret from all save her father, left the Palace never to return.
France, in a state of joyous excitement, was eagerly anticipating the
arrival of Marie Antoinette, who was setting forth on the first stage of
that triumphal journey which had so tragic an ending. Already the gay
clamour of wedding-bells filled the air; and Louise may have feared
that, did she linger at Versailles, the enticing vanities of the world
might change the current of her thoughts.
Chief among the impalpable throng that people the state galleries is
Marie Antoinette, and her spirit shows us many faces. It is charming,
haughty, considerate, headstrong, frivolous, thoughtful, degraded,
dignified, in quick succession. We see her arrive at the Palace amid the
tumultuous adoration of the crowd, and leave amidst its execrations.
Sometimes she is richly apparelled, as befits a queen; anon she sports
the motley trappings of a mountebank. The courtyard that saw the
departure of Madame Louise witnesses Marie Antoinette, returning at
daybreak in company with her brother-in-law from some festivity
unbecoming a queen, refused admittance by the King's express command.
[Illustration: Louis Quatorze]
Many of the attendant spirits who haunt Marie Antoinette's ghostly
footsteps as they haunted her earthly ones are malefic. Most are women,
and all are young and fair. There is Madame Roland, who, taken as a
young girl to the Palace to peep at the Royalties, became imbued by that
jealous hatred which only the Queen's death could appease.
"If I stay here much longer," she told that kindly mother who sought to
give her a treat by showing her Court life, "I shall detest these people
so much that I shall be unable to hide my hatred."
It is easy to fancy the girl's evil face scowling at the unconscious
Queen, before she leaves to pen those inflammatory pamphlets which are
to prove the Sovereign's undoing and her own. For by some whim of fate
Madame Roland was executed on the very scaffold to which her envenomed
writings had driven Marie Antoinette.
A spectre that impresses as wearing rags under a gorgeous robe, lurks
among the foliage of the quiet _bosquet_ beyond the orangerie. It is the
infamous Madame de la Motte, chief of adventuresses, and it was in that
secluded grove that her tool, Cardinal de Rohan, had his pretended
interview with the Queen. Poor, perfidious Contesse! what an existence
of alternate beggarly poverty and beggarly riches was hers before that
last scene of all when she lay broken and bruised almost beyond human
semblance in that dingy London courtyard beneath the window from which,
in a mad attempt to escape arrest, she had thrown herself.
Through the Royal salons flits a presence whereat the shades of the
Royal Princesses look askance: that of the frolicsome, good-natured,
irresponsible Du Barry. A soulless ephemera she, with no ambitions or
aspirations, save that, having quitted the grub stage, she desires to be
as brilliant a butterfly as possible. Close in attendance on her moves
an ebon shadow--Zamora, the ingrate foundling who, reared by the
Duchesse, swore that he would make his benefactress ascend the scaffold,
and kept his oath. For our last sight of the prodigal, warm-hearted Du
Barry, plaything of the aged King, is on the guillotine, where in
agonies of terror she fruitlessly appeals to her executioner's clemency.
But of all the bygone dames who haunt the grand Chateau, the only one I
detest is probably the most irreproachable of all--Madame de Maintenon.
There is something so repulsively sanctimonious in her aspect, something
so crafty in the method wherewith, under the cloak of religion, she
wormed her way into high places, ousting--always in the name of
propriety--those who had helped her. Her stepping-stone to Royal favour
was handsome, impetuous Madame de Montespan, who, taking compassion on
her widowed poverty, appointed Madame Scarron, as she then was,
governess of her children, only to find her _protegee_ usurp her place
both in the honours of the King and in the affections of their children.
The natural heart rebels against the "unco guid," and Madame de
Maintenon, with her smooth expression, double chin, sober garments and
ever-present symbols of piety, revolts me. I know it is wrong. I know
that historians laud her for the wholesome influence she exercised upon
the mind of a king who had grown timorous with years; that the dying
Queen declared that she owed the King's kindness to her during the last
twenty years of her life entirely to Madame de Maintenon. But we know
also that six months after the Queen's death an unwonted light showed at
midnight in the Chapel Royal, where Madame de Maintenon--the child of a
prison cell--was becoming the legal though unacknowledged wife of Louis
XIV. The impassioned, uncalculating de Montespan had given the handsome
Monarch her all without stipulation. Truly the career of Madame de
Maintenon was a triumph of virtue over vice; and yet of all that
heedless, wanton throng, my soul detests only her.
[Illustration: Where the Queen Played]
CHAPTER VIII
MARIE ANTOINETTE
Stereotyped sights are rarely the most engrossing. At the Palace of
Versailles the _petits appartements de la Reine_, those tiny rooms whose
grey old-world furniture might have been in use yesterday, to me hold
more actuality than all the regal salons in whose vast emptiness
footsteps reverberate like echoes from the past.
In the pretty sitting-room the coverings to-day are a reproduction of
the same pale blue satin that draped the furniture in the days when
queens preferred the snug seclusion of those dainty rooms overlooking
the dank inner courtyard to the frigid grandeur of their State chambers.
Therein it was that Marie Leczinska was wont to instruct her young
daughters in the virtues as she had known them in her girlhood's
thread-bare home, not as her residence at the profligate French Court
had taught her to understand them.
[Illustration: Marie Antoinette]
The heavy gilt bolts bearing the interlaced initials M.A. remind us that
these, too, were the favourite rooms of Marie Antoinette, and that in
all probability the cunningly entwined bolts were the handiwork of her
honest spouse, who wrought at his blacksmith forge below while his wife
flirted above. But in truth the _petits appartements_ are instinct with
memories of Marie Antoinette, and it is difficult to think of any save
only her occupying them. The beautiful _coffre_ presented to her with
the layette of the Dauphin still stands on a table in an adjoining
chamber, and the paintings on its white silk casing are scarcely faded
yet, though the decorative ruching of green silk leaves has long ago
fallen into decay.
A step farther is the little white and gold boudoir which still holds
the mirror that gave the haughty Queen her first premonition of the
catastrophe that awaited her. Viewed casually the triple mirror, lining
an alcove wherein stands a couch garlanded with flowers, betrays no
sinister qualities. But any visitor who approaches looking at his
reflection where at the left the side panels meet the angle of the wall,
will be greeted by a sight similar to that whose tragic suggestion made
even the haughty Queen pause a moment in her reckless career. For in the
innocent appearing mirrors the gazer is reflected without a head.
It was through this liliputian suite, this strip of homeliness so
artfully introduced into a palace, that Marie Antoinette fled on that
fateful August morning when the mob of infuriated women invaded the
Chateau.
Knowing this, I was puzzling over the transparent fact that either of
the apparent exits would have led her directly into the hands of the
enemy, when the idea of a secret staircase suggested itself. A little
judicious inquiry elicited the information that one did exist. "But it
is not seen. It is locked. To view it, an order from the
Commissary--that is necessary," explained the old guide.
To know that a secret staircase, and one of such vivid historical
importance, was at hand, and not to have seen it would have been too
tantalising. The "Commissary" was an unknown quantity, and for a space
it seemed as though our desire would be ungratified. Happily the
knowledge of our interest awoke a kindly reciprocity in our guide, who,
hurrying off, quickly returned with the venerable custodian of the key.
A moment later, the unobtrusive panel that concealed the exit flew open
at its touch, and the secret staircase, dark, narrow, and hoary with the
dust of years, lay before us.
[Illustration: The Secret Stair]
Many must have been the romantic meetings aided by those diminutive
steps, but, peering into their shadows, we saw nothing but a vision of
Marie Antoinette, half clad in dishevelled wrappings of petticoat and
shawl, flying distracted from the vengeance of the furies through the
refuge of the low-roofed stairway.
In my ingenuous youth, when studying French history, I evolved a theory
which seemed, to myself at least, to account satisfactorily for the
radical differences distinguishing Louis XVI. from his brothers and
antecedents. Finding that, when a delicate infant, he had been sent to
the country to nurse, I rushed to the conclusion that the royal infant
had died, and that his foster-mother, fearful of the consequences, had
substituted a child of her own in his place. The literature of the
nursery is full of instances that seemed to suggest the probability of
my conjecture being correct.
As a youth, Louis had proved himself both awkward and clumsy. He was
loutish, silent in company, ill at ease in his princely surroundings,
and in all respects unlike his younger brothers. He was honest, sincere,
pious, a faithful husband, a devoted father; amply endowed, indeed, with
the middle-class virtues which at that period were but rarely found in
palaces. To my childish reasoning the most convincing proof lay in his
innate craving for physical labour; a craving that no ridicule could
dispel.
With the romantic enthusiasm of youth, I used to fancy the peasant
mother stealing into the Palace among the spectators who daily were
permitted to view the royal couple at dinner, and imagine her, having
seen the King, depart glorying secretly in the strategy that had raised
her son to so high an estate. There was another picture, in whose
dramatic misery I used to revel. It showed the unknown mother, who had
discovered that by her own act she had condemned her innocent son to
suffer for the sins of past generations of royal profligates, journeying
to Paris (in my dreams she always wore sabots and walked the entire
distance in a state of extreme physical exhaustion) with the intention
of preventing his execution by declaring his lowly parentage to the mob.
The final tableau revealed her, footsore and weary, reaching within
sight of the guillotine just in time to see the executioner holding up
her son's severed head. I think my imaginary heroine died of a broken
heart at this juncture, a catastrophe that would naturally account for
her secret dying with her.
[Illustration: Madame Sans Tete]
During our winter stay at Versailles, my childish phantasies recurred to
me, and I almost found them feasible. What an amazing irony of fate it
would have shown had a son of the soil expired to expiate the crimes of
sovereigns!
But more pitiful by far than the saddest of illusions is the sordid
reality of a scene indelibly imprinted on my mental vision. Memory takes
me back to the twilight of a spring Sunday several years ago, when in
the wake of a cluster of market folks we wandered into the old Cathedral
of St. Denis. Deep in the sombre shadows of the crypt a light gleamed
faintly through a narrow slit in the stone wall. Approaching, we looked
into a gloomy vault wherein, just visible by the ray of a solitary
candle, lay two zinc coffins.
Earth holds no more dismal sepulchre than that dark vault, through the
crevice in whose wall the blue-bloused marketers cast curious glances.
Yet within these grim coffins lie two bodies with their severed heads,
all that remains mortal of the haughty Marie Antoinette and other humble
spouse.
[Illustration: Illumination]
CHAPTER IX
THE PRISONERS RELEASED
The first dread days, when the Boy, heavy with fever, seemed scarcely to
realise our presence, were swiftly followed by placid hours when he lay
and smiled in blissful content, craving nothing, now that we were all
together again. But this state of beatitude was quickly ousted by a
period of discontent, when the hunger fiend reigned supreme in the
little room.
"_Manger, manger, manger, tout le temps!"_ Thus the nurse epitomised the
converse of her charges. And indeed she was right, for, from morning
till night, the prisoners' solitary topic of conversation was food.
During the first ten days their diet consisted solely of boiled milk,
and as that time wore to a close the number of quarts consumed increased
daily, until Paul, the chief porter, seemed ever ascending the little
outside stair carrying full bottles of milk, or descending laden with
empty ones.