The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France Part 10

For the queen's name had been forged. The cardinal did not deny that he had represented himself to Boehmer as employed by her for the purchase of the jewel which, as he said, she secretly coveted, and for the payment of its price by installments. But, as his justification, he produced a letter desiring him to undertake the business, and signed "Marie Antoinette de France." He declared that he had never suspected the genuineness of this letter, though it was notorious that such an addition to their Christian names was used by none but the sons and daughters of the reigning sovereign, and never by a queen. And eventually his whole story was found to be that Madame La Mothe had induced him to believe that she was in the queen's confidence, and also that the queen coveted the necklace and was resolved to obtain it; but that she was unable at once to pay for it; and that, being desirous to make amends to the cardinal for the neglect with which she had hitherto treated him, she had resolved on employing him to make arrangements with Boehmer for the instant delivery of the ornament, and for her payment of the price by installments.

This was strange enough to have excited the suspicions of most men. What followed was stranger still. Not content with forging the queen's handwriting, Madame La Mothe had even, if one may say so, forged the queen herself. She had a.s.sured the cardinal that Marie Antoinette had consented to grant him a secret interview; and at midnight, in the gardens of Versailles, had introduced him to a woman of notoriously bad character named Oliva, who in height resembled the queen, and who, in a conference of half a minute, gave him a letter and a rose with the words, "You know what this means." She had hardly uttered the words when Madame La Mothe interrupted the pair with the warning the Countesses of Provence and Artois were approaching. The mock queen retired in haste. The cardinal pressed the rose to his heart; acted on the letter; and protested that he had never doubted that he had seen the queen, and had been acting on her commands in obtaining the necklace from Boehmer and delivering it to Madame La Mothe, though he now acknowledged that he had been imposed upon, and offered to pay the jeweler for his property.

There were not wanting those who advised that this offer should be accepted, and that the matter should be hushed up, rather than that a prince of the Church should be publicly disgraced by a prosecution for fraud. But Louis and Marie Antoinette both rightly judged that their duty as sovereigns of the kingdom forbade them to compromise justice by screening dishonesty. It was but two years before that a great n.o.ble, the most eloquent of all French orators, had singled out Marie Antoinette's love of justice as one of her most conspicuous, as it was one of her most n.o.ble, qualities; and the words deserve especially to be remembered from the melancholy contrast which his subsequent conduct presents to the voluntary tribute which he now paid to her excellence. In 1783, the young Count de Mirabeau, pleading for the rest.i.tution of his conjugal rights, put the question to the judges at Aix before whom he was arguing, "Which of you, if he desired to consecrate a living personification of justice, and to embellish it with all the charms of beauty, would not set up the august image of our queen?"

She and her husband might well have felt they were bound to act up to such a eulogy. Some of their advisers also, and especially the Baron de Breteuil and the Abbe de Yermond, fortified their decision with their advice; being, in truth, greatly influenced by a reason which they forbore to mention, namely, by their suspicion that the untiring malice of the queen's enemies would not have failed to represent that the suppression of the slightest particle of the truth could only have been dictated by a guilty consciousness which felt that it could not bear the light; and that the queen had forborne to bring the cardinal into court solely because she knew that he was in a situation to prove facts which would deservedly damage her reputation.

It is impossible to doubt that the resolution which was adopted was the only one consistent with either propriety or common sense. However plausible may be the arguments which in this or that case may be adduced for concealment, the common instinct of mankind, which rarely errs in such matters, always conceives a suspicion that it is dictated by secret and discreditable motives; and that he who screens manifest guilt from exposure and punishment makes himself an accomplice in the wrong-doing, if he was not so before. But, though Louis judged rightly for his own and his queen's character in bringing those who were guilty of forgery and robbery to a public trial, the result inflicted an irremediable wound on one great inst.i.tution, furnis.h.i.+ng an additional proof how incurably rotten the whole system of the Government must have been, when corruption without shame or disguise was allowed to sway the highest judicial tribunal in the country.

The Parliament of Paris, constantly endeavoring throughout its whole history to encroach upon the royal prerogative, had always founded its pretensions on its purity and disinterestedness. Since its re-establishment at the beginning of the present reign, it had advanced its claim to the possession of those virtues more loudly than ever; yet now, in the very first case which came before it in which a n.o.ble of the highest rank was concerned, it was made apparent not only that it was wholly dest.i.tute of every quality which ought to belong to a judicial bench, of a regard for truth and justice, and even of a knowledge of the law; but that no one gave it credit for them, and that every one regarded the decision to be given as one which would depend, not on the merits of the case, but on the interest which the culprits might be able to make with the judges.[8]

The trial took place in May of the following year. We need not enter into its details; the denials, the admissions, the mutual recriminations of the persons accused. In the fate of the La Mothes and Mademoiselle Oliva no one professed to be concerned; but the friends of the cardinal were numerous, rich, and powerful; and for months had been and still were indefatigable in his cause. Some days before the trial, the attorney- general had become aware that nearly the whole of the Parliament had been gained by them; he even furnished the queen with a list of the names of those judges who had promised their verdict beforehand, and of the means by which they had been won over. And on the decisive morning the cardinal and his friends made a theatrical display which was evidently intended to overawe those members of the Parliament who were yet unconvinced, and to enlist the sympathies of the public in general. He himself appeared at the bar in a long violet cloak, the mourning robe of cardinals; and all the pa.s.sages leading to the hall of justice were lined by his partisans, also in deep mourning; and they were not solely his own relations, the n.o.bles of the different branches of his family, the Soubises, the Rohans, the Guimenees; but though, as princes of the blood, the Condes were nearly allied to the king and queen, they also were not ashamed to swell the company a.s.sembled, and to solicit the judges as they pa.s.sed into the court to disregard alike justice and their own oaths, and to acquit the cardinal, whatever the evidence might be which had been, or was to be, produced against him. They were only asking what they had already a.s.sured themselves of obtaining. The queen's signature was indeed declared to be a forgery, and the La Mothes, Mademoiselle Oliva, and a man named Retaux de Villette, who had been the actual writer of the forged letters, were convicted and sentenced to the punishment which the counsel for the crown had demanded. But the cardinal was acquitted, as well as a notorious juggler and impostor of the day, called Cagliostro, who had apparently been so entirely unconnected with the transaction that it is not easy to see how he became included in the prosecution; and permission was given to the cardinal to make his acquittal public in any manner and to any extent which he might desire.[9]

The subsequent history of the La Mothes was singular and characteristic.

The countess, who had been sentenced to be flogged, branded, and imprisoned for life, after a time contrived, it is believed by the aid of some of the Rohan family, to escape from prison. She fled to London, where for some time she and her husband lived on the proceeds of the necklace, which they had broken up and sold piecemeal to jewelers in London and other cities; but they were soon reduced to great distress. After the Revolution had broken out in Paris, they tried to make money by publis.h.i.+ng libels on the queen, in which they are believed to have obtained the aid of some who in former times had been under great personal obligations to Marie Antoinette. But the scheme failed: they were overwhelmed with debt; writs were issued against them, and in trying to escape from the sheriff's officers, the countess fell from a window at the top of a house, and received injuries which proved fatal.

A most accomplished writer of the present day, who has devoted much care and ability to the examination of the case, has p.r.o.nounced an opinion that the cardinal was innocent of dishonesty,[10] and limits his offense to that of insulting the queen by the mere suspicion that she could place her confidence in such an unworthy agent as Madame La Mothe, or that he himself could be allowed to recover her favor by such means as he had employed. But his absolute ignorance of the countess's schemes is not entirely consistent with the admitted fact that, when he was arrested, his first act was to send orders to his secretary to burn all the letters which he had received from her on the subject; and unquestionably neither Louis nor Marie Antoinette doubted his full complicity in the conspiracy.

Louis at once deprived him of his office of grand almoner, and banished him from the court, declaring that "he knew too well the usages of the court to have believed that Madame La Mothe had really been admitted to the queen's presence and intrusted with such a commission.[11]" And Marie Antoinette gave open expression to her indignation at the acquittal "of an intriguer who had sought to ruin her, or to procure money for himself, by abusing her name and forging her signature," adding, with undeniable truth, that still more to be pitied than herself was a "nation which had for its supreme tribunal a body of men who consulted nothing but their pa.s.sions; and of whom some were full of corruption, and others were inspired with a boldness which always vented itself in opposition to those who were clothed with lawful authority.[12]"

But her magnanimity and her sincere affection for the whole people were never more manifest than now even in her first moments of indignation.

Even while writing to Madame de Polignac that she is "bathed in tears of grief and despair," and that she can "hope for nothing good when perverseness is so busy in seeking means to chill her very soul," she yet adds that "she shall triumph over her enemies by doing more good than ever, and that it will be easier for them to afflict her than to drive her to avenging herself on them.[13]" And she uses the same language to her sister Christine, even while expressing still more strongly her indignation at being "sacrificed to a perjured priest and a shameless intriguer." She demands her sister's "pity, as one who had never deserved such injurious treatment;[14] but who had only recollected that she was the daughter of Maria Teresa--to fulfill her mother's exhortations, always to show herself French to the very bottom of her heart;" but she concludes by repeating the declaration that "nothing shall tempt her to any conduct unworthy of herself, and that the only revenge that she will take shall he to redouble her acts of kindness."

It is pleasing to be able to close so odious a subject by the statement that the disgrace which the cardinal had thus brought upon himself may be supposed in some respects to have served as a lesson to him, and that his conduct in the latter days of his life was such as to do no discredit to the n.o.ble race from which he sprung.

A great part of his diocese as Bishop of Strasburg lay on the German side of the Rhine; and thither,[15] when the French Revolution began to a.s.sume the blood-thirsty character which has made it a warning to all future ages, he was fortunate to escape in safety from the fury of the a.s.sa.s.sins who ruled France. And though he was no longer rich, his less fortunate countrymen, and especially his clerical brethren, found in him a liberal protector and supporter.[16] He even levied a body of troops to re-enforce the royalist army. But, when the First Consul wrung from the Pope a concordat of which he disapproved, he resigned his bishopric, and shortly afterward died at Ettenheim,[17] where, had he remained but a short time longer, he, like the Duke d'Enghien, might have found that a residence in a foreign land was no protection against the ever-suspicious enmity of Bonaparte.

CHAPTER XXI.

The King visits Cherbourg.--Rarity of Royal Journeys.--The Princess Christine visits the Queen--Hostility of the Duc d'Orleans to the Queen.-- Libels on her.--She is called Madame Deficit.--She has a Second Daughter, who dies.--Ill Health of the Dauphin.--Unskillfulness and Extravagance of Calonne's System of Finance.--Distress of the Kingdom.--He a.s.sembles the Notables.--They oppose his Plans.--Letters of Marie Antoinette on the Subject.--Her Ideas of the English Parliament.--Dismissal of Calonne.-- Character of Archbishop Lomenie de Brienne.--Obstinacy of Necker.--The Archbishop is appointed Minister.--The Distress increases.--The Notables are dissolved.--Violent Opposition of the Parliament--Resemblance of the French Revolution to the English Rebellion of 1642.--Arrest of d'Espremesnil and Montsabert.

It was owing to Marie Antoinette's influence that Louis himself in the following year began to enter on a line of conduct which, if circ.u.mstances had not prevented him from persevering in it, might have tended, more perhaps than any thing else that he could have done, to make him also popular with the main body of the people. The emperor, while at Versailles, had strongly pressed upon him that it was his duty, as king of the nation, to make himself personally acquainted with every part of his kingdom, to visit the agricultural districts, the manufacturing towns, the fortresses, a.r.s.enals, and harbors of the country. Joseph himself had practiced what he preached. No corner of his dominions was unknown to him; and it is plain that there can be no nation which must not be benefited by its sovereign thus obtaining a personal knowledge of all the various interests and resources of his subjects. But such personal investigations were not yet understood to be a part of a monarch's duties. Louis's contemporary, our own sovereign, George III., than whom, if rect.i.tude of intention and benevolence of heart be the princ.i.p.al standards by which princes should be judged, no one ever better deserved to be called the father of his country, scarcely ever went a hundred miles from Windsor, and never once visited even those Midland Counties which before the end of his reign had begun to give undeniable tokens of the contribution which their industry was to furnish to the growing greatness of his empire; and the last two kings of France, though in the course of their long reigns they had once or twice visited their armies while waging war on the Flemish or German frontier, had never seen their western or southern provinces.

But now Marie Antoinette suggested to her husband that it was time that he should extend his travels, which, except when he had gone to Rheims for his coronation, had never yet carried him beyond Compiegne in one direction and Fontainebleau in another; and, as of all the departments of Government, that which was concerned with the marine of the nation interested her most (we fear that she was secretly looking forward to a renewal of war with England), she persuaded him to select for the object of his first visit the fort of Cherbourg in Normandy, where those great works had been recently begun which have since been constantly augmented and improved, till they have made it a worthy rival to our own harbors on the opposite side of the Channel. He was received in all the towns through which he pa.s.sed with real joy. The Normans had never seen their king since Henry IV. had made their province his battle-field; and the queen, who would gladly have accompanied him, had it not been that such a journey undertaken by both would have resembled a state procession, and therefore have been tedious and comparatively useless, exulted in the reception which he had met with, and began to plan other expeditions of the same kind for him, feeling a.s.sured that his presence would be equally welcomed in other provinces--at Bourdeaux, at Lyons, or at Toulon. And a series of such visits would undoubtedly have been calculated to strengthen the attachment of the people everywhere to the royal authority; which, already, to some far-seeing judges, seemed likely soon to need all the re-enforcement which it could obtain in any quarter.

In the summer of 1786 she had a visit from her sister Christine, the Princess of Teschen, who, with her husband, had been joint governor of Hungary, and since the death of her uncle, Charles of Lorraine, had been removed to the Netherlands. She had never seen her sister since her own marriage, and the month which they spent together at Versailles may be almost described as the last month of perfect enjoyment that Marie Antoinette ever knew; for troubles were thickening fast around the Government, and were being taken wicked advantage of by her enemies, at the head of whom the Duc d'Orleans now began openly to range himself. He was a man notorious, as has been already seen, for every kind of infamy; and though he well knew the disapproval with which Marie Antoinette regarded his way of life and his character, it is believed that he had had the insolence to approach her with the language of gallantry; that he had been rejected with merited indignation; and that he ever afterward regarded her n.o.ble disdain as a provocation which it should be the chief object of his life to revenge. In fact, on one occasion he did not scruple to avow his resentment at the way in which, as he said, she had treated him; though he did not mention the reason.[1]

Calumny was the only weapon which could be employed against her; but in that he and his partisans had long been adept. Every old libel and pretext for detraction was diligently revived. The old nickname of "The Austrian"

was repeated with pertinacity as spiteful as causeless; even the king's aunts lending their aid to swell the clamor on that ground, and often saying, with all the malice of their inveterate jealousy, that it was not to be expected that she should have the same feelings as their father or Louis XIV., since she was not of their blood, though it was plain that the same remark would have applied to every Queen of France since Anne of Brittany. Even the embarra.s.sments of the revenue were imputed to her; and she, who had curtailed her private expenses, even those which seemed almost necessary to her position, that she might minister more largely to the necessities of the poor--who had declined to buy jewels that the money might be applied to the service of the State--was now held up to the populace as being by her extravagance the prime cause of the national distress. Pamphlets and caricatures gave her a new nickname of "Madame Deficit;" and such an impression to her disfavor was thus made on the minds of the lower cla.s.ses, that a painter, who had just finished an engaging portrait of her surrounded by her children, feared to send it to the exhibition, lest it should be made a pretext for insult and violence.

Her unpopularity did not, indeed, last long at this time, but was superseded, as we shall presently see, by fresh feelings of grat.i.tude for fresh labors of charity; nevertheless, the outcry now raised left its seed behind it, to grow hereafter into a more enduring harvest of distrust and hatred.

She had troubles, too, of another kind which touched her more nearly. A second daughter, Sophie[2], had been born to her in the summer of 1786; but she was a sickly child, and died, before she was a year old, of one of the illnesses to which children are subject, and for some months the mother mourned bitterly over her "little angel," as she called her. Her eldest boy, too, was getting rapidly and visibly weaker in health: his spine seemed to diseased, Marie Antoinette's only hope of saving him rested on the fact that his father had also been delicate at the same age.

Luckily his brother gave her no cause for uneasiness; as she wrote to the emperor[3]--"he had all that his elder wanted; he was a thorough peasant's child, tall, stout, and ruddy.[4]" She had also another comfort, which, as her troubles thickened, became more and more precious to her, in the warm affection that had sprung up between her and her sister-in-law, the Princess Elizabeth. A letter[5] has been preserved in which the princess describes the death of the little Sophie to one of her friends, which it is impossible to read without being struck by the sincerity of the sympathy with which she enters into the grief of the bereaved mother. In these moments of anguish she showed herself indeed a true sister, and, the two clinging to one another the more the greater their dangers and distresses became, a true sister she continued to the end.

Meanwhile the embarra.s.sments of the Government were daily a.s.suming a more formidable appearance. Calonne had for some time endeavored to meet the deficiency of the revenue by raising fresh loans, till he had completely exhausted the national credit; and at last had been forced to admit that the scheme originally propounded by Turgot, and subsequently in a more modified degree by Necker, of abolis.h.i.+ng the exemptions from taxation which were enjoyed by the n.o.bles--the privileged cla.s.ses, as they were often called--was the only expedient to save the nation from the disgrace and ruin of total bankruptcy. But, as it seemed probable that the n.o.bles would resist such a measure, and that their resistance would prove too strong for him, as it had already been found to be for his predecessors, he proposed to the king to revive an old a.s.sembly which had been known by the t.i.tle of the Notables; trusting that, if he succeeded in obtaining the sanction of that body to his plans, the n.o.bles would hardly venture to insist on maintaining their privileges in defiance of the recorded judgment of so respectable a council. His hopes were disappointed. He might fairly have reckoned on obtaining their concurrence, since it was the unquestioned prerogative of the king to nominate all the members; but, even when he was most deliberate and resolute, his rashness and carelessness were incurable. He took no pains whatever to select members favorable to his views; and the consequence was that, in March, 1787, in the very first month of the session of the Notables, the whole body protested against one of the taxes which he desired to impose; and his enemies at once urged the king to dismiss him, basing their recommendation on the practice of England, where, as they affirmed, a minister who found himself in a minority on an important question immediately retired from office.

Marie Antoinette, who, as we have seen, had been a diligent reader of Hume, had also been led to compare the proceedings of the refractory Notables with the conduct of our English parliamentary parties, and to an English reader some of her comments can not fail to be as interesting as they are curious. The d.u.c.h.ess de Polignac was drinking the waters at Bath, which at that time was a favorite resort of French valetudinarians, and, while she was still in that most beautiful of English cities, the queen kept up an occasional correspondence with her. We have two letters which Marie Antoinette wrote to her in April; one on the 9th, the very day on which Calonne was dismissed; the second, two days latter; and even the pa.s.sages which do not relate to politics have their interest as specimens of the writer's character, and of the sincere frankness with which she laid aside her rank and believed in the possibility of a friends.h.i.+p of complete equality.

"April 9th, 1787.

"I thank you, my dear heart, for your letter, which has done me good. I was anxious about you. It is true, then, that you have not suffered much from your journey. Take care of yourself, I insist on it, I beg of you; and be sure and derive benefit from the waters, else I should repent of the privation I have inflicted on myself without your health being benefited. When you are near I feel how much I love you; and I feel it much more when you are far away. I am greatly taken up with you and yours, and you would be very ungrateful if you did not love me, for I can not change toward you.

"Where you are you can at least enjoy the comfort of never hearing of business. Although you are in the country of an Upper and a Lower House, you can stop your ears and let people talk. But here it is a noise that deafens one in spite of all I can do. The words 'opposition' and 'motions'

are established here as in the English Parliament, with this difference, that in London, when people go into opposition, they begin by denuding themselves of the favors of the king; instead of which, here numbers oppose all the wise and beneficent views of the most virtuous of masters, and still keep all he has given them. It may be a cleverer way of managing, but it is not so gentleman-like. The time of illusion is past, and we are tasting cruel experience. We are paying dearly to-day for our zeal and enthusiasm for the American war. The voice of honest men is stifled by members and cabals. Men disregard principles to bind themselves to words, and to multiply attacks on individuals. The seditious will drag the State to its ruin rather than renounce their intrigues."

And in her second letter she specifies some of the Opposition by name; one of whom, as will be seen hereafter, contributed greatly to her subsequent miseries.... "The repugnance which you know that I have always had to interfering in business is today put cruelly to the proof; and you would be as tired as I am of all that goes on. I have already spoken to you of our Upper and Lower House,[6] and of all the absurdities which take place there, and of the nonsense which is talked. To be loaded with benefits by the king, like M. de Beauvau, to join the Opposition, and to surrender none of them, is what is called having spirit and courage. It is, in truth, the courage of infamy. I am wholly surrounded with folks who have revolted from him. A duke,[7] a great maker of motions, a man who has always a tear in his eye when he speaks, is one of the number. M. de La Fayette always founds the opinions he expresses on what is done at Philadelphia.... Even bishops and archbishops belong to the Opposition, and a great many of the clergy are the very soul of the cabal. You may judge, after this, of all the resources which they employ to overturn the plans of the king and his ministers."

Calonne, however, as has already been intimated, had been dismissed from office before this last letter was written. There had been a trial of strength between him and his enemies; which he, believing that he had won the confidence of Louis himself, reckoned on turning to his own advantage, by inducing the king to dismiss those of his opponents who were in office.

To his astonishment, he found that Louis preferred dispensing with his own services, and the general voice was probably correct when it, affirmed that it was the queen who had induced him to come to that decision.

Lomenie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, was again a candidate for the vacant post, and De Vermond was as diligent as on the previous occasion[8]

in laboring to return the obligations under which that prelate had formerly laid him, by extolling his abilities and virtues to the queen, and recommending him as a worthy successor to Calonne, whom she had never trusted or liked. In reality, the archbishop was wholly dest.i.tute of either abilities or virtues. He was notorious both for open profligacy and for avowed infidelity, so much so that Louis had refused to transfer him to the diocese of Paris, on the ground that "at least the archbishop of the metropolis ought to believe in G.o.d.[9]" But Marie Antoinette was ignorant of his character, and believed De Vermond's a.s.surance that the appointment of so high an ecclesiastic would propitiate the clergy, whose opposition, as many of her letters prove, she thought specially formidable, and for whose support she knew her husband to be nervously anxious. Some of Calonne's colleagues strongly urged the king to re-appoint Necker, whose recall would have been highly popular with the nation. But Necker had recently given Louis personal offense by publis.h.i.+ng a reply to some of Calonne's statements, in defiance of the king's express prohibition, and had been banished from Paris for the act; and the queen, recollecting how he had formerly refused to withdraw his resignation at her entreaty, felt that she had no reason to expect any great consideration for the opinions or wishes of either herself or the king from one so conceited and self-willed, who would be likely to attribute his re-appointment, not to the king's voluntary choice, but to his necessities: she therefore strongly pressed that the archbishop should be preferred. In an unhappy moment she prevailed;[10] and on the 1st of May, 1787, Lomenie de Brienne was installed in office with the t.i.tle of Chief of the Council of Finance.

A more unhappy choice could not possibly have been made. The new minister was soon seen to be as devoid of information and ability as he was known to be of honesty. He had a certain gravity of outward demeanor which imposed upon many, and he had also the address to lead the conversation to points which, his hearers understood still less than himself; dilating on finance and the money market even to the ladies of the court, who had had some share in persuading the queen of his fitness for office.[11] But his disposition was in reality as rash as that of Calonne; and it was a curious proof of his temerity, as well as of his ignorance of the feeling of parties in Paris, that though he knew the Notables to be friendly to him, as indeed they would have been to any one who might have superseded Calonne, he dismissed them before the end of the month. And the language held on their dissolution both by the ministers and by the President of the Notables, and which was cheerfully accepted by the people, is remarkable from the contrast which it affords to the feelings which swayed the national council exactly two years afterward. Some measures of retrenchment which the Notables had recommended had been adopted; some reductions had been made in the royal households; some costly ceremonies had been abolished; and one or two imposts, which had pressed with great severity on the poorer cla.s.ses, had been extinguished or modified. And not only did M. Lamoignon, the Keeper of the Seals, in the speech in which he dismissed them, venture to affirm that these reductions would be found to have effected all that was needed to restore universal prosperity to the kingdom; but the President of the a.s.sembly, in his reply, thanked G.o.d "for having caused him to be born in such an age, under such a government, and for having made him the subject of a king whom he was constrained to love," and the thanksgiving was re-echoed by the whole a.s.sembly. But this contentment did not last long. The embarra.s.sments of the Treasury were too serious to be dissipated by soft speeches. The Notables were hardly dissolved before the archbishop proposed a new loan of an enormous amount; and, as he might have foreseen, their dissolution revived the pretensions of the Parliament. The queen's description of the rise of a French opposition at once received a practical commentary. The debates in the Parliament became warmer than they had ever been since the days of the Fronde: the citizens, sharing in the excitement, thronged the palace of the Parliament, expressing their approval or disapproval of the different speakers by disorderly and unprecedented clamor; the great majority hooting down the minister and his supporters, and cheering those who spoke against him. The Duc d'Orleans, by open bribes, gained over many of the councilors to oppose the court in every thing. The registration of several of the edicts which the minister had sent down was refused; and one member of the Orleanist party even demanded the convocation of the States- general, formerly and const.i.tutionally the great council of the nation, but which had never been a.s.sembled since the time of Richelieu.

The archbishop was sometimes angry, and sometimes terrified, and as weak in his anger as in his terror. He persuaded the king to hold a bed of justice to compel the registration of the edicts. When the Parliament protested, he banished it to Troyes. In less than a month he became alarmed at his own vigor, and recalled it. Encouraged by his pusillanimity, and more secure than ever of the support of the citizens who had been thrown into consternation by his demand of a second loan, nearly[12] six times as large as the first, it became more audacious and defiant than ever, D'Orleans openly placing himself at the head of the malcontents. Lomenie persuaded the king to banish the duke, and to arrest one or two of his most vehement partisans; and again in a few weeks repented of this act of decision also, released the prisoners, and recalled the duke.

As a matter of course, the Parliament grew bolder still. Every measure which the minister proposed was rejected; and under the guidance of one of their members, Duval d'Espremesnil, the councilors at last proceeded so far as to take the initiative in new legislation into their own hands. In the first week in May, 1788, they pa.s.sed a series of resolutions affirming that to be the law which indeed ought to have been so, but which had certainly never been regarded as such at any period of French history. One declared that magistrates were irremovable, except in cases of misconduct; another, that the individual liberty and property of every citizen were inviolable; others insisted on the necessity of convoking the States- general as the only a.s.sembly ent.i.tled to impose taxes; and the councilors hoped to secure the royal acceptance of these resolutions by some previous votes which a.s.serted that, of those laws which were the very foundation of the Const.i.tution, the first was that which a.s.sured the "crown to the reigning house and to its descendants in the male line, in the order of primogeniture.[13]"

But Louis, or rather his rash minister, was not to be so conciliated; and a scene ensued which is the first of the striking parallels which this period in France affords to the events which had taken place in England a century and a half before. As in 1642 Charles I. had attempted to arrest members of the English Parliament in the very House of Commons, so the archbishop now persuaded Louis to send down the captain of the guard, the Marquis d'Agoust, to the palace of the Parliament, to seize D'Espremesnil, and another councilor named Montsabert, who had been one of his foremost supporters in the recent discussions. They behaved with admirable dignity.

Marie Antoinette was not one to betray her husband's counsels, as Henrietta Maria had betrayed those of Charles. D'Espremesnil and his friend, wholly taken by surprise, had had no warning of what was designed, no time to withdraw, nor in all probability would they have done so in any case. When M. d'Agoust entered the council hall and demanded his prisoners, there was a great uproar. The whole a.s.sembly made common cause with their two brethren who were thus threatened. "We are all d'Espremesnils and Montsaberts," was their unanimous cry; while the tumult at the doors, where a vast mult.i.tude was collected, many of whom had arms in their hands and seemed prepared to use them, was more formidable still.

But D'Agoust, though courteous in the discharge of his duty, was intrepid and firm; and the two members voluntarily surrendered themselves and retired in custody, while the archbishop was so elated with his triumph that a few days afterwards he induced the king to venture on another imitation of the history of England, though now it was not Charles, but the more tyrannical Cromwell, whose conduct was copied. Before the end of the month the Governor of Paris entered the palace of the Parliament, seized all the registers and doc.u.ments of every kind, locked the doors, and closed them with the king's seal; and a royal edict was issued suspending all the parliaments both in the capital and the provinces.

CHAPTER XXII.

Formidable Riots take place in some Provinces.--The Archbishop invites Necker to join his Ministry.--Letter of Marie Antoinette describing her Interview with the Archbishop, and her Views.--Necker refuses.--The Queen sends Messages to Necker.--The Archbishop resigns, and Necker becomes Minister.--The Queen's View of his Character.--General Rejoicing.--Defects in Necker's Character.--He recalls the Parliament.--Riots in Paris.-- Severe Winter.--General Distress.--Charities of the King and Queen.-- Grat.i.tude of the Citizens.--The Princes are concerned in the Libels published against the Queen.--Preparations for the Meeting of the States- general.--Long Disuse of that a.s.sembly.--Need of Reform.--Vices Of the Old Feudal System.--Necker's Blunders in the Arrangements for the Meeting of the States.--An Edict of the King concedes the Chief Demands of the Commons.--Views of the Queen.

The whole kingdom was thrown into great and dangerous excitement by these transactions. Little as were the benefits which the people had ever derived from the conduct of the Parliament, their opposition to the archbishop, who had already had time to make himself generally hated and despised, caused the councilors to be very generally regarded as champions of liberty; and in the most distant provinces, in Bearn, in Isere, and in Brittany, public meetings (a thing hitherto unknown in the history of the nation) were held, remonstrances were drawn up, confederacies were formed, and oaths were administered by which those who took them bound themselves never to surrender what they affirmed to be the ancient privileges of the nation.

The archbishop became alarmed; a little, perhaps, for the nation and the king, but far more for his own place, which he had already contrived to render profitable to himself by the preferments which it had enabled him to engross. And, in the hope of saving it, he now entreated Necker to join the Government, proposing to yield up the management of the finances to him, and to retain only the post of prime minister.

A letter from the queen to Mercy shows that she acquiesced in the scheme.

Her disapproval of Necker's past conduct was outweighed by her sense of the need which the State had of his financial talents; though, for reasons which she explains, she was unwilling wholly to sacrifice the archbishop; and the letter has a further interest as displaying some of the difficulties which arose from the peculiar disposition of the king, while every one was daily more and more learning to look upon her as the more important person in the Government. On the 19th of August, 1783, she writes to Mercy,[1] whom the archbishop had employed as his agent to conciliate the stubborn Swiss Banker:

"The archbishop came to me this morning, immediately after he had seen you, to report to me the conversation which he had had with you. I spoke to him very frankly, and was touched by what he said. He is at this moment with the king, to try and get him to decide; but I very much fear that M.

Necker will not accept while the archbishop remains. The animosity of the public against him is pushed so far that M. Necker will be afraid of being compromised, and, indeed, perhaps it might injure his credit; but, at the same time, what is to be done? In truth and conscience we can not sacrifice a man who has made for as all these sacrifices of his reputation, of his position in the world, perhaps even of his life; for I fear they would kill him. There is yet M. Foulon, if M. Necker refuses absolutely.[2] But I suspect him of being a very dishonest man; and confidence would not be established with him for comptroller. I fear, too, that the public is pressing us to take a part much more humiliating for the ministers, and much more vexatious for ourselves, inasmuch as we shall have done nothing of our own will. I am very unhappy. I will close my letter after I know the result of this evening's conference. I greatly fear the archbishop will be forced to retire altogether, and then what man are we to take to place at the head of the whole? For we must have one, especially with M. Necker. He must have a bridle; and the person who is above me[3] is not able to be such; and I, whatever people may say, and whatever happens, am never any thing but second; and, in spite of the confidence which the first has in me, he often makes me feel it.... The archbishop has just gone. The king is very unwilling; and could only be brought to make up his mind by a promise that the person[4] should only be sounded; and that no positive engagement should be made."

Necker refused. The next day Mercy reported to the queen that, though the excitement was great, it confined itself to denunciations of the archbishop and of the keeper of the seals; and that "the name of the queen had never once been mentioned;" and on the 22d, Marie Antoinette,[5] from a conviction of the greatness of the emergency, determined to see Necker herself; and employed the emba.s.sador and De Vermond to let him know that her own wish for his restoration to the direction of the finances was sincere and earnest, and to promise him that the archbishop should not interfere in that department in any way whatever. Two days later,[6] she wrote again to mention that the king had vanquished his repugnance to Necker, and had come wholly over to her opinion. "Time pressed, and it was more essential than ever that Necker should accept;" and on the 25th she writes a final letter to report to Mercy that the archbishop has resigned, and that she has just summoned Necker to come to her the next morning.

Though she felt that she had done what was both right and indispensable, she was not without misgivings. "If," she writes, in a strain of anxious despondency very foreign to her usual tone, and which shows how deeply she felt the importance of the crisis, and of every step that might be taken-- "if he will but undertake the task, it is the best thing that can be done; but I tremble (excuse my weakness) at the fact that it is I who have brought him back. It is my fate to bring misfortune, and, if infernal machinations should cause him once more to fail, or if he should lower the authority of the king, they will hate me still more."

In one point of view she need not have trembled at being known to have caused Necker's re-appointment, since it is plain that no other nomination was possible. Vergennes had died a few months before, and the whole kingdom did not supply a single statesman of reputation except Necker. Nor could any choice have for the moment been more universally popular. The citizens illuminated Paris; the mob burned the archbishop in effigy; and the leading merchants and bankers showed their approval in a far more practical way. The funds rose; loans to any amount were freely offered to the Treasury; the national credit revived; as if the solvency or insolvency of the nation depended on a single man, and him a foreigner.