Maria Antoinette

And now no one knew of the buried treasure but Madame du Barri herself. She, anxious to regain them, ventured, in disguise, to return to France to disinter her diamonds, and take them with her to England. A young negro servant, whom she had pampered with every indulgence, and had caressed with the fondness with which a mother fondles her child, whom she had caused to be painted by her side in her portraits, saw his mistress and betrayed her. She was immediately seized by the mob, and dragged before the revolutionary tribunal of Luciennes. She was condemned as a Royalist, and was hurried along in the cart of the condemned, amid the execrations and jeers of the delirious mob, to the guillotine. Her long hair was shorn, that the action of the knife might be unimpeded; but the clustering ringlets, in beautiful profusion, fell over her brow and temples, and veiled her voluptuous features and bare bosom, from which the executioner had torn the veil. The yells of the infuriated and deriding populace filled the air, as they danced exultingly around the aristocratic courtesan. But the shrieks of the unhappy victim pierced shrilly through them all. She was frantic with terror. Her whole soul was unnerved, and not one emotion of fortitude remained to sustain the woman of pleasure through her dreadful doom. With floods of tears, and gestures of despair, and beseeching, heart-rending cries, she incessantly exclaimed, "Life – life – life! O save me! save me!" The mob jeered, and derided, and insulted her in every conceivable way. They made themselves merry with her anguish and terror. They shouted witticisms in her ear respecting the pillow of the guillotine upon which she was to repose her head. Struggling and shrieking, she was bound to the plank. Suddenly her voice was hushed. The dissevered head, dripping with blood, fell into the basket, and her soul was in eternity. Poor woman! It is easy to condemn. It is better for the heart to pity. Endowed with almost celestial beauty, living in a corrupt age, and lured, when a child, by a monarch's love, she fell. It is well to weep over her sad fate, and to remember the prayer, "Lead us not into temptation."

Such were the characters and such the state of morals of the court into which this beautiful and artless princess, Maria Antoinette, but fifteen years of age, was to be introduced. As she left the palaces of Vienna to encounter the temptations of the Tuileries and Versailles, Maria Theresa wrote the following characteristic letter to the future husband of her daughter.

Letter from Maria Theresa

"Your bride, dear dauphin, is separated from me. As she has ever been my delight, so will she be your happiness. For this purpose have I educated her; for I have long been aware that she was to be the companion of your life. I have enjoined upon her, as among her highest duties, the most tender attachment to your person, the greatest attention to every thing that can please or make you happy. Above all, I have recommended to her humility toward God, because I am convinced that it is impossible for us to contribute to the happiness of the subjects confided to us without love to Him who breaks the scepters and crushes the thrones of kings according to his will."

Departure of Maria for Paris

Emotions of the populace

The great mass of the Austrian population, hating the French, with whom they had long been at war, were exceedingly averse to this marriage. As the train of royal carriages was drawn up, on the morning of her departure, to convey the bride to Paris, an immense assemblage of the populace of Vienna, men, women, and children, surrounded the cortège with weeping and lamentation. Loyalty was then an emotion existing in the popular mind with an intensity which now can hardly be conceived. At length, in the excitement of their feelings, to save the beloved princess from a doom which they deemed dreadful, they made a rush toward the carriages to cut the traces and thus to prevent the departure. The guard was compelled to interfere, and repel, with violence, the affectionate mob. As the long and splendid train, preceded and followed by squadrons of horse, disappeared through the gate of the city, a universal feeling of sadness oppressed the capital. The people returned to their homes silent and dejected, as if they had been witnessing the obsequies rather than the nuptials of the beloved princess.

Magnificent pavilion

Singular custom

The gorgeous cavalcade proceeded to Kell, on the frontiers of Austria and France. There a magnificent pavilion had been erected, consisting of a vast saloon, with an apartment at either end. One of these apartments was assigned to the lords and ladies of the court of Vienna; the other was appropriated to the brilliant train which had come from Paris to receive the bride. The two courts vied with each other in the exhibition of wealth and magnificence. It was an established law of French etiquette, always observed on such occasions, that the royal bride should receive her wedding dress from France, and should retain absolutely nothing belonging to a foreign court. The princess was, consequently, in the pavilion appropriated to the Austrian suite, unrobed of all her garments, excepting her body linen and stockings. The door was then thrown open, and in this plight the beautiful and blushing child advanced into the saloon. The French ladies rushed to meet her. Maria threw herself into the arms of the Countess de Noailles, and wept convulsively. The French were perfectly enchanted with her beauty; and the proud position of her head and shoulders betrayed to their eyes the daughter of the Cæsars. She was immediately conducted to the apartment appropriated to the French court. Here the few remaining articles of clothing were removed from her person, and she was re-dressed in the most brilliant attire which the wealth of the French monarchy could furnish.

Grand procession

The reception

And now, charioted in splendor, surrounded by the homage of lords and ladies, accompanied by all the pomp of civic and military parade, and enlivened by the most exultant strains of martial bands, Maria was conducted toward Paris, while her Austrian friends bade her adieu and returned to Vienna. The horizon, by night, was illumined by bonfires, flaming upon every hill; the church bells rang their merriest peals; cities blazed with illuminations and fire-works; and files of maidens lined her way, singing their songs of welcome, and carpeting her path with roses. It was a scene to dazzle the most firm and contemplative. No dream of romance could have been more bewildering to the ardent and romantic princess, just emerging from the cloistered seclusion of the palace nursery.

Young Louis's indifference

Louis, then a young man about twenty years of age, came from Paris with his grandfather, King Louis XV., and a splendid retinue of courtiers, as far as Compiègne, to meet his bride. Uninfluenced by any emotions of tenderness, apparently entirely unconscious of all those mysterious emotions which bind loving hearts, he saluted the stranger with cold and distant respect. He thought not of wounding her feelings; he had no aversion to the connection, but he seemed not even to think of any more intimacy with Maria than with any other lady who adorned the court. The ardent and warm-hearted princess was deeply hurt at this indifference; but instinctive pride forbade its manifestation, except in bosom converse to a few confiding friends.

The marriage

Insensibility of young Louis

The bride and her passive and unimpassioned bridegroom were conducted to Versailles. It was the 16th of May, 1770, when the marriage ceremony was performed, with all the splendor with which it could be invested. The gorgeous palaces of Versailles were thronged with the nobility of Europe, and filled with rejoicing. The old king was charmed with the beauty and affability of the young bride. All hearts were filled with happiness, except those of the newly-married couple. Louis was tranquil and contented. He was neither allured nor repelled by his bride He never sought her society alone, and ever approached her with the same distance and reserve with which he would approach any other young lady who was a visitor at the palace. He never intruded upon the privacy of her apartments, and she was his wife but in name. While all France was filled with the praises of her beauty, and all eyes were enchanted by her graceful demeanor, her husband alone was insensible to her charms. After a few days spent with the rejoicing court, amid the bowers and fountains of Versailles, the nuptial party departed for Paris, and entered the palace of the Tuileries, the scene of future sorrows such as few on earth have ever experienced.

Acclamations of the Parisians

Maria shows herself to the populace

She receives their homage

As Maria, in dazzling beauty, entered Paris, the whole city was in a delirium of pleasure. Triumphal arches greeted her progress. The acclamations of hundreds of thousands filled the air. The journals exhausted the French language in extolling her loveliness. Poets sang her charms, and painters vied with each other in transferring her features to canvas. As Maria sat in the dining saloon of the Tuileries at the marriage entertainment, the shouts of the immense assemblage thronging the gardens rendered it necessary for her to present herself to them upon the balcony. She stepped from the window, and looked out upon the vast sea of heads which filled the garden and the Place Louis XV. All eyes were riveted upon her as she stood before the throng upon the balcony in dazzling beauty, and the air resounded with applauses. She exclaimed, with astonishment, "What a concourse!" "Madame," said the governor of Paris, "I may tell you, without fear of offending the dauphin, that they are so many lovers." The heir apparent to the throne of France is called the dauphin; and, until the death of Louis XV., Louis and Maria Antoinette were called the dauphin and dauphiness. Louis seemed neither pleased nor displeased with the acclamations and homage which his bride received. His singularly passionless nature led him to retirement and his books, and he hardly heard even the acclamations with which Paris was filled.

The fire-works

Awful conflagration

Scene of horror

Consternation of Maria

Arrangements had been made for a very brilliant display of fire-works, in celebration of the marriage, at the Place Louis XV. The hundreds of thousands of that pleasure-loving metropolis thronged the Place and all its avenues. The dense mass was wedged as compactly as it was possible to crowd human beings together. Not a spot of ground was left vacant upon which a human foot could be planted. Every house top, every balcony, every embrasure of a window swarmed with the multitude. Long lines of omnibuses, coaches, and carriages of every description, filled with groups of young and old, were intermingled with the countless multitude – men and horses so crowded into contact that neither could move. It was an impervious ocean of throbbing life. In the center of this Place, the pride of Paris, the scene of its most triumphant festivities and its most unutterable woe, vast scaffolds had been reared, and they were burdened with fire-works, intended to surpass in brilliancy and sublimity any spectacle of the kind earth had ever before witnessed. Suddenly a bright flame was seen, a shriek was heard, and the whole scaffolding, by some accidental spark, was enveloped in a sheet of fire. Then ensued such a scene as no pen can describe and no imagination paint. The awful conflagration converted all the ministers of pleasure into messengers of death. Thousands of rockets filled the air, and, with almost the velocity of lightning, pierced their way through the shrieking, struggling, terror-stricken crowd. Fiery serpents, more terrible, more deadly than the fabled dragons of old, hissed through the air, clung to the dresses of the ladies, enveloping them in flames, and mercilessly burning the flesh to the bone. Mines exploded under the hoofs of the horses, scattering destruction and death on every side. Every species of fire was rained down, a horrible tempest, upon the immovable mass. Shrieks from the wounded and the dying filled the air; and the mighty multitude swayed to and fro, in Herculean, yet unavailing efforts to escape. The horses, maddened with terror, reared and plunged, crushing indiscriminately beneath their tread the limbs of the fallen. The young bride, in her carriage, with a brilliant retinue, and eager to witness the splendor of the anticipated fête, had just approached the Place, when she was struck with consternation at the shrieks of death which filled the air, and at the scene of tumult and terror which surrounded her. The horses were immediately turned, and driven back again with the utmost speed to the palace. But the awful cries of the dying followed her; and it was long ere she could efface from her distracted imagination the impression of that hour of horror. Fifty-three persons were killed outright by this sad casualty, and more than three hundred were dangerously wounded. The dauphin and dauphiness immediately sent their whole income for the year to the unfortunate relatives of those who had perished on that disastrous day.

Presents from Louis XV

Malice of Madame du Barri

Maria's difficulties

The old king was exceedingly pleased with the beauty and fascinating frankness and cordiality of Maria. He made her many magnificent presents, and, among others, with a magnificent collar of pearls, the smallest of which was nearly as large as a walnut, which had been brought into France by Anne of Austria. These praises and attentions on the part of the king excited the jealousy of the petted favorite, Madame du Barri. She consequently became, with the party under her influence, the relentless and unprincipled enemy of Maria. She lost no opportunity to traduce her character. She spread reports every where that Maria hated the French; that she was an Austrian in heart; that her frankness and freedom from the restraints of etiquette were the result of an immoral and depraved mind. She exaggerated her extravagance, and accused her, by whispers and insinuations spread far and near, of the most ignoble crimes of which woman can be guilty. The young and inexperienced dauphiness soon found herself involved in most embarrassing difficulties. She had no kind friend to council her. Louis still remained cold, distant, and reserved. Thus, week after week, month after month, year after year passed on, and for eight years Louis never approached his youthful spouse with any manifestation of confidence and affection but those with which he would regard a mother or a sister. Maria was a wife but in name. She did not share his apartment or his couch. Though deeply wounded by this inexplicable neglect, she seldom spoke of it even to her most intimate friends. The involuntary sigh, and the tear which often moistened her cheek, proclaimed her inward sufferings.

The Countess de Noailles

Laws of etiquette

An illustration

When Maria first arrived in France, the Countess de Noailles was assigned to her as her lady of honor. She was somewhat advanced in life, haughty and ceremonious, a perfect mistress of that art of etiquette so rigidly observed in the French court. Upon her devolved the duty of instructing the dauphiness in all the punctilios of form, then deemed far more important than the requisitions of morality. The following anecdote, related by Madame Campan, illustrates the ridiculous excess to which these points of etiquette were carried. One winter's day, it happened that Maria Antoinette, who was entirely disrobed in her dressing-room, was just going to put on her body linen. Madame, the lady in attendance, held it ready unfolded for her. The dame d'honneur came in. As she was of superior rank, etiquette required that she should enjoy the privilege of presenting the robe. She hastily slipped off her gloves, took the garment, and at that moment a rustling was heard at the door. It was opened, and in came the Duchess d'Orleans. She now must be the bearer of the garment. But the laws of etiquette would not allow the dame d'honneur to hand the linen directly to the Duchess d'Orleans. It must pass down the various grades of rank to the lowest, and be presented by her to the highest. The linen was consequently passed back again from one to another, till it was placed in the hands of the duchess. She was just on the point of conveying it to its proper destination, when suddenly the door opened, and the Countess of Provence entered. Again the linen passed from hand to hand, till it reached the hands of the countess. She, perceiving the uncomfortable position of Maria, who sat shivering with cold, with her hands crossed upon her bosom, without stopping to remove her gloves, placed the linen upon the shoulders of the dauphiness. She, however, was quite unable to restrain her impatience, and exclaimed, "How disagreeable, how tiresome!"

Countess de Noailles's ideas of etiquette

An anecdote

Another anecdote illustrates the character of Madame de Noailles, who exerted so powerful an influence upon the destiny of Maria Antoinette. She was a woman of severe manners, but etiquette was the very atmosphere she breathed; it was the soul of her existence. The slightest infringement of the rules of etiquette annoyed her almost beyond endurance. "One day," says Madame Campan, "I unintentionally threw the poor lady into a terrible agony. The queen was receiving, I know not whom – some persons just presented, I believe. The ladies of the bed-chamber were behind the queen. I was near the throne, with the two ladies on duty. All was right; at least I thought so. Suddenly I perceived the eyes of Madame de Noailles fixed on mine. She made a sign with her head, and then raised her eyebrows to the top of her forehead, lowered them, raised them again, and then began to make little signs with her hand. From all this pantomime, I could easily perceive that something was not as it should be; and as I looked about on all sides to find out what it was, the agitation of the countess kept increasing. Maria Antoinette, who perceived all this, looked at me with a smile. I found means to approach her, and she said to me, in a whisper, 'Let down your lappets, or the countess will expire.' All this bustle rose from two unlucky pins, which fastened up my lappets, while the etiquette of costume said lappets hanging down."

Maria's contempt for etiquette

The Countess de Noailles nicknamed

One can easily imagine the contempt with which Maria, reared in the freedom of the Austrian court, would regard these punctilios. She did not refrain from treating them with good-natured but unsparing ridicule, and thus she often deeply offended those stiff elderly ladies, who regarded these trifles, which they had been studying all their lives, with almost religious awe. She gave Madame de Noailles the nickname of Madame Etiquette, to the great merriment of some of the courtiers and the great indignation of others. The more grave and stately matrons were greatly shocked by these indiscretions on the part of the mirth-loving queen.

Ludicrous scene

Rage of the old ladies

On one occasion, when a number of noble ladies were presented to Maria, the ludicrous appearance of the venerable dowagers, with their little black bonnets with great wings, and the entire of their grotesque dress and evolutions, appealed so impressively to Maria's sense of the ridiculous, that she, with the utmost difficulty, refrained from open laughter. But when a young marchioness, full of fun and frolic, whose office required that she should continue standing behind the queen, being tired of the ceremony, seated herself upon the floor, and, concealed behind the fence of the enormous hoops of the attendant ladies, began to play off all imaginable pranks with the ladies' hoops, and with the muscles of her own face, the contrast between these childish frolics and the stately dignity of the old dowagers so disconcerted the fun-loving Maria, that, notwithstanding all her efforts at self-control, she could not conceal an occasional smile. The old ladies were shocked and enraged. They declared that she had treated them with derision, that she had no sense of decorum, and that not one of them would ever attend her court again. The next morning a song appeared, full of bitterness which was spread through Paris. The following was the chorus:

"Little queen! you must not be
So saucy with your twenty years
Your ill-used courtiers soon will see
You pass once more the barriers."

Habits of Maria Theresa

The dauphiness becomes unpopular

While Madame de Noailles was thus torturing Maria Antoinette with her exactions, the Abbé de Vermond, on the contrary, was exerting all the strong influence he had acquired over her mind to induce her to despise these requirements of etiquette, and to treat them with open contempt. Maria Theresa, in the spirit of independence which ever characterizes a strong mind, ordinarily lived like any other lady, attending energetically to her duties without any ostentation. She would ride through the streets of Vienna unaccompanied by any retinue; and the other members of the royal family, on all ordinary occasions, dispensed with the pomp and splendors of royalty. Maria Antoinette's education and natural disposition led her to adhere to the customs of the court of her ancestors. Thus was she incessantly annoyed by the diverse influences crowding upon her. Following, however, the bent of her own inclinations, she daily made herself more and more unpopular with the haughty dames who surrounded her.