Marie Antoinette and Her Son Part 42

Marie Antoinette trembled and reached out her hand for the bell which stood by her on the table.

"Be still, for G.o.d's sake, be still!" whispered the officer. "Make no noise, your majesty. Look at my face." And, kneeling before the queen, he raised his head and looked at her with an expression almost of supplication. "I am Toulan," he whispered, "the faithful servant of my queen. Will your majesty have the goodness to recall me? Here is a letter from my patroness, Madame de Campan, who speaks well for me. Will your majesty read it?"

The queen ran over the paper quickly and turned with a gentle smile to the officer, who was still kneeling before her, and who, in all her humiliation and misfortune, still paid her the homage due to majesty.

"Stand up, sir," she said, mildly. "The throne lies in dust, and my crown is so sadly broken, that it is no longer worth the trouble to kneel before it."

"Madame, I see two crowns upon your n.o.ble head," whispered Toulan-- "the crown of the queen, and the crown of misfortune. To these two crowns I dedicate my service and my fidelity, and for them I am prepared to die. It is true, I can do but little for your majesty, but that little shall be faithfully done. Thanks to my bitter hatred of royalty, and my rampant Jacobinism, I have carried matters so far, that I have been put upon the list of officers to keep watch, and, therefore, once every week I shall keep guard before your majesty's sleeping-room."

"And will you do me the favor to so put your chair that I shall not see you--that during the night I may not always have the feeling of being watched?" asked the queen, in supplicant tones.

"No, your majesty," said Toulan, moved. "I will remain in my chair, but your majesty will prefer, perhaps, to turn the night into day, and remain up; as during my nights you will not be disturbed."

"What do you mean by that?" asked Marie Antoinette, joyfully.

"I mean, that, as during the day your majesty can never speak with the king without witnesses, we must call the night to our a.s.sistance, if you wish to speak confidentially to his majesty. Your majesty has heard, that during the night the watch is withdrawn from the corridor, and your majesty is free to leave your room and go to the chamber of the king."

A flash of joy pa.s.sed over the countenance of the queen. "I thank you, sir--I thank you to-day as a wife; perhaps the day may come when I can thank you as a queen; I accept your magnanimous kindness.

Yes, I will turn the night into day, and, thanks to you, I shall be able to spend several hours undisturbed with my husband and my children. And do you say that you shall be here quite often?"

"Yes, your majesty, I shall be here once every week at your majesty's order."

"Oh! I have lost the habit of ordering," said Marie Antoinette, with a pained look. "You see that the Queen of France is powerless, but she is not wholly unfortunate, for she has friends still. You belong to these friends, sir; and that we may both retain the memory of this day, I will always call you my faithful one."

No, the queen is not wholly unfortunate; she has friends who are ready, with her, to suffer; with her, if it must be, to die. The Polignacs are gone, but Princess Lamballe, whom the queen had sent to London, to negotiate with Pitt, has returned, in spite of the warnings and pleadings of the queen. Marie Antoinette, when she learned that the princess was on the point of leaving England, had written to her: "Do not come back at a moment so critical. You would have to weep too much for us. I feel deeply, believe me, how good you are, and what a true friend you are. But, with all my love, I enjoin you not to come here. Believe me, my tender friends.h.i.+p for you will cease only with death."

The warning of her royal friend had, meanwhile, not restrained Princess Lamballe from doing what friends.h.i.+p commanded. She had returned to France, and Marie Antoinette had, at least, the comfort of having a tender friend at her side.

No, the queen was not wholly unfortunate. Besides this friend, she had her children, too--her sweet, blooming little daughter, and the dauphin, the pride and joy of her heart.

The dauphin had no suspicion of the woes and misfortunes which were threatening them. Like flowers that grow luxuriantly and blossom upon graves, so grew and blossomed this beautiful boy in the Tuileries, which was nothing more than the grave of the old kingly glory. But the dauphin was like suns.h.i.+ne in this dark, sad palace, and Marie Antoinette's countenance lightened when her eye fell upon her son, looking up to her with his tender, beaming face. From the fresh, merry smile of her darling, she herself learned to smile again, and be happy.

Gradually, after the first rage of the people was appeased, the chains with which she was bound were relaxed. The royal family was at least permitted to leave the close, hot rooms, and go down into the gardens, although still watched and accompanied by the National Guard. They were permitted to close the doors of their rooms again, although armed sentries still stood before them.

There were even some weeks and months in this year 1791, when it appeared as if the exasperated spirits would be pacified, and the throne be reestablished with a portion of its old dignity. The king had, in a certain manner, received forgiveness from the National a.s.sembly, while accepting the const.i.tution and swearing--as indeed he could but swear, all power having been taken from him, and he being a mere lay-figure--that would control all his actions, and govern according to the expressed will of the National a.s.sembly.

But the king, in order to make peace with his people, had even made this sacrifice, and accepted the const.i.tution. The people seemed grateful to him for this, and appeared to be willing to return to more friendly relations. The queen was no longer insulted with contemptuous cries when she appeared in the garden of the Tuileries, or in the Bois de Boulogne, and it even began to be the fas.h.i.+on to speak about the dauphin as a miracle of loveliness and beauty, and to go to the Tuileries to see him working in his garden.

This garden of the dauphin was in the immediate neighborhood of the palace, at the end of the terrace on the river-side; it was surrounded with a high wire fence, and close by stood the little pavilion where dwelt Abbe Davout, the teacher of the dauphin. The dauphin had had in Versailles a little garden of his own, which he himself worked, planted, and digged, and from whose flowers he picked a bouquet every morning, to bring it with beaming countenance to his mamma queen.

For this painfully-missed garden of Versailles, the little garden on the terrace had to compensate. The child was delighted with it; and every morning, when his study-hours were over, the dauphin hastened to his little parterre, to dig and to water his flowers. The garden has, since that day, much changed; it is enlarged, laid out on a different plan, and surrounded with a higher fence, but it still remains the garden of the Dauphin Louis Charles, the same garden that Napoleon subsequently gave to the little King of Borne; the same that Charles X. gave to the Duke de Bordeaux, and that Louis Philippe gave to the Count de Paris. How many recollections cl.u.s.ter around this little bit of earth, which has always been prematurely left by its young possessors! One died in prison scarcely ten years old; another, hurried away by the tempest, still younger, into a foreign land, only lived to hear the name of his father, and see his dagger before he died. The third and fourth were hurled out by the storm-wind like the first two, and still wear the mantle of exile in Austria and England. And many as are the tears with which these children regard their own fate, there must be many which they must bestow upon the fate of their fathers. One died upon the scaffold, another from the knife of an a.s.sa.s.sin, a third from a fall upon the pavement of a highway; and the last, the greatest of them all, was bound, like Prometheus, to a rock, and fed on bitter recollections till he met his death.

This little garden, on the river-side terrace of the Tuileries park, which has come to have a world-wide interest, was then the Eldorado of the little Dauphin of Prance; and to see him behind the fence was the delight of the Parisians who used to visit there, and long for the moment when the glance of his blue eye fell upon them, and for some days and months had again become enthusiastic royalists.

When the prince went into his little garden, he was usually accompanied by a detachment of the National Guard, who were on duty in the Tuileries; and the dauphin, who was now receiving instruction in the use of weapons, generally wore himself the uniform of a member of the National Guard. The Parisians were delighted with this little guard of six years. His picture hung in all stores, it was painted on fans and rings, and it was the fas.h.i.+on, among the most elegant ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain, and among the market- women as well, to decorate themselves with the likeness of the dauphin. How his brow beamed, how his eye brightened, when, accompanied by his escort, of which he was proud, he entered his garden! When the retinue was not large, the prince took his place in the ranks. One day, when all the National Guards on duty were very desirous of accompanying him, several of them were compelled to stand outside of the garden. "Pardon me, gentlemen," said the dauphin; "it is a great pity that my garden is so small that it deprives me of the pleasure of receiving you all." Then he hastened to give flowers to every one who was near the fence, and received their thanks with great pleasure.

The enthusiasm for the dauphin was so great, that the boys of Paris envied their elders the honor of being in his service, and longed to become soldiers, that they might be in his retinue. There was, in fact, a regiment of boys formed, which took the name of the Dauphin's Regiment. The citizens of Paris were anxious to enroll the names of their sons in the lists of this regiment, and to pay the expenses of an equipment. And when this miniature regiment was formed, with the king's permission, it marched to the Tuileries, in order to parade before the dauphin.

The prince was delighted with the little regiment, and invited its officers to visit his garden, that they might see his flowers, his finest treasures. "Would you do us the pleasure to be the colonel of our regiment?" one of the officers asked the dauphin.

"Oh! certainly," he answered.

"Then you must give up getting flowers and bouquets for your mamma!"

said one of the boys.

"Oh!" answered the dauphin, with a smile, "that will not hinder my taking care of my flowers. Many of these gentlemen have little gardens, too, as they have told me. Very well, they can follow the example of their colonel, and love the queen, and then mamma will receive whole regiments of flowers every day."

The majority of this regiment consisted, at the outset, of children of the highest ranks of society, and it was therefore natural that they, practiced in the most finished courtesy, should pay some deference to their young colonel.

But they were expressly forbidden showing any thing of this feeling toward their comrade. "For," said the king, "I want him to have companions who will stimulate his ambition; but I do not want him to have flatterers, who shall lead him to live to himself alone." Soon the number of little soldiers increased, for every family longed for the honor of having its sons in the regiment of the royal dauphin.

The people used always to throng in great ma.s.ses when this regiment went through its exercises in the Place de la Carrousel. It was a miniature representation of the French guards, with their three- cornered hats and white jackets; and nothing could be more charming than this regiment of blooming boys in their tasteful uniforms, and their little chief, the dauphin, looking at his regiment with beaming eyes and smiling lips.

The enthusiasm of the little soldiers of the Royal Dauphin Regiment for their colonel was so great, that they longed to give him a proof of their love. One day the officers of the regiment came into the Tuileries and begged the king's permission to make a present to the dauphin, in the name of the whole regiment. The king gladly acceded to their request--, and he himself conducted the little officers into the reception-room, where was the dauphin, standing at the side of his mother.

The little colonel hastened to greet them. "Welcome, my comrades, welcome!" cried he, extending his hand to them. "My mamma queen tells me that you have brought me something which will give me pleasure. But it gives me pleasure to see you, and nothing more is needed."

"But, colonel, you will not refuse our present?"

"Oh, certainly not, for my papa king says that a colonel is not forbidden taking a gift from his regiment. What is it?"

"Colonel, we bring you a set of dominoes," said a little officer, named Palloy, who was the speaker of the delegation--" a set of dominoes entirely made out of the ruins of the Bastile."

And taking the wrapper from the white marble box, bound with gold, he extended it to the dauphin, and repeated with a solemn face the following lines:

"Those gloomy walls that once awoke our fear Are changed into the toy we offer here: And when with joyful race the gift you view, Think what the people's mighty love can do." [Footnote: "De ces aff reux cachota, la terreur des Francais, Vous voyez les debris transformes en hoohets; Puissent-ils, en servant aux jeux de votre enfance, Du peuple vous prouver 1'amour et la puissance."

Beauchesne, "Louis XVD. Sa Vie, sou Agonie," etc., vol. iv., p.

396.]

Poor little dauphin! Even when they wanted to do him homage, they were threatening him; and the present which affection offered to the royal child was at the same time a bequest of Revolution, which even then lifted her warning finger, and pointed at the past, when the hate of the people destroyed those "gloomy walls," which had been erected by kingly power.

In his innocence and childish simplicity, the dauphin saw nothing of the sting which, unknown even to the givers, lurked within this gift. He enjoyed like a child the beautiful present, and listened with eagerness while the manner of playing the game was described to him. All the stones were taken from the mantel of black marble in the reception-room of Delaunay, the governor of the Bastile, who had been murdered by the people. On the back of each of these stones was a letter set in gold, and when the whole were arranged in regular order, they formed the sentence: "Vive le Roi, vive la Reine, et M.

le Dauphin." The marble of the box was taken from the altar-slab in the chapel. In the middle was a golden relief, representing a face.

"That is my papa king," cried the dauphin, joyfully, looking at the representation.

"Yes," replied Palloy, the speaker of the little company, "every one of us bears him in his heart. And like the king, you will live for the happiness of all, and like him you will be the idol of Prance.

We, who shall one day be French soldiers and citizens, bring to you, who will then be our commander-in-chief and king, our homage as the future supporters of the throne which is destined for you, and which the wisdom of your father has placed under the unshakable power of law. The gift which we offer you is but small, but each one of us adds his heart to it." [Footnote: The very words of the little officer.]

"And I give all of you my heart in return for it," cried the dauphin, with a joyful eagerness, "and I shall take great pains to be good, and to learn well, that I may be allowed to amuse myself with playing dominoes."

And the little fellow fixed his large, blue eyes upon the queen with a tender look, took her hand and pressed it to his lips.

"My dear mamma queen," he said, caressingly, "if I am real good, and study hard, we can both play dominoes together, can't we?"

A sad smile played around the lips of the queen, and no one saw the distrustful, timid look which she cast at the box, which to her was merely the memorial of a dreadful day.

"Yes, my child," she replied, mildly, "we will play dominoes often together, for you certainly will be good and industrious."

She controlled herself sufficiently to thank the boys with friendly words for the present which they had made to the dauphin, and then the deputation, accompanied by the king and the little prince, withdrew. But as soon as they had gone, the smile died away upon her lips, and with an expression of horror she pointed to the box.