The winter was passed--a sad dismal winter for the royal family, and for Marie Antoinette in particular! None of those festivities, those diversions, those simple and innocent joys, which are wont to adorn the life of a woman and of a queen!
Marie Antoinette is no more a queen who commands, who sees around her a throng of respectful courtiers, zealously listening to every word that falls from her lips; Marie Antoinette is a grave solitary woman, who works much, thinks much, makes many plans for saving the kingdom and the throne, and sees all these plans shipwrecks on the indecision and weakness of her husband.
Far away from the queen lay those happy times when every day brought new joys and new diversions; when the dawn of a summer morning made the queen happy, because it promised her a delightful evening, and one of those charming idyls at Trianon. The brothers of the king, the schoolmaster and mayor of Trianon, had left France and had located themselves at Coblentz on the Rhine; the Polignacs had fled to England; the Princess Lamballe, too, had, at the wish of the queen, gone to negotiate with Pitt, in order to implore the all-powerful minister of George III. to give to the oppressed French crown more material and effectual support than was afforded by the angry and bitter words which he hurled in Parliament against the riotous and rebellious French nation. The Counts de Besenval and Coigny, the Marquis de Lauzun, and Baron d'Adhemar, all the privileged friends of the summer days at Trianon and the winter days of Versailles, all, all, were gone.
They had fled to Coblentz, and were at the court of the French princes. There they spun their intrigues, sought to excite a European war against France; from there they hurled their flaming torches into France, their calumnies against Queen Marie Antoinette, the Austrian woman. She alone was accountable for all the misfortunes and the disturbances of France, she alone had given occasion for the distrust now felt against royalty. On her head fell the curse and the burden of all the faults and sins which the French court had for a hundred years committed. There must be a sacrificial lamb, to be thrown into the arms glistening with spears and daggers, of a revolution which thirsted for blood and vengeance, and Marie Antoinette had to be the victim. In her bleeding heart the spirits glowing with hate might cool themselves, and there the evil which her predecessors had done, was to be atoned for. Many a wrong had been done, and the French nation had, no doubt, a right to be angry and to rage as does the lion for a long time kept in subjection, when at last, touched too much by the iron of its keeper, it rises in its wildness, and with withering greed, tears him in pieces from whom it has suffered so long and so much. The French people rose just as the incensed lion does, and determined to wreak their vengeance on their keepers, on those whom they had so long called their lords and rulers.
To pacify the lion some prey must be thrown to him, and to him who thirsts for vengeance and blood, a human offering must be brought to propitiate him.
Marie Antoinette had to be the offering to the lion! Her blood had to flow for the sins of the Bourbons! On her all the anger, the exasperation, the rage of the people must concentrate! She must bear the blame of all the miseries and the needs of France! She must satisfy the hunger for vengeance, in order that when the lion is appeased it can be made placable and patient again, the chains put on which he has broken in his rage--the chains, however, to which, when his rage is past, he must again submit.
The queen, the queen is to blame for all! Marie Antoinette has brought royalty into discredit; the Austrian woman has brought the hatred of the French nation upon herself, and she must atone for it, she alone!
Libels and calumnies are forged against the queen by those who were once the friends and cavaliers of the queen--cavaliers no longer, but cavillers now; the poisoned arrows are sent to France to be directed against the head of the queen, to destroy first her honor and good name, and then to make her a prey for scorn and contempt.
If the lion stills his rage and cools his hate with Marie Antoinette as his victim, he will relax again and bow to his king, for it is time for these royal princes to return to France and their loved Paris once more.
The Count do Provence is the implacable enemy of the queen; he can never forgive her for gaining the heart of the king her husband, and leaving no influence for his wise, clever brother. The Count de Provence is avaricious and crafty. He sees that an abyss has opened before the throne of the lilies, and that it will not close again!
It must, therefore, be filled up! A reconciliation will not be possible in a natural way, and artificial methods must be found to accomplish it. Louis XVI. will not be saved, and Marie Antoinette shall not be! The two, perhaps, can fill up the abyss that yawns between the throne of the lilies and the French people. They, perhaps, may fill it up, and then a way may be made for the Count de Provence, the successor of his brother.
The Count d'Artois was once the friend of the queen, the only one of the royal family who wished her well, and who defended her sometimes against the hatred of the royal aunts and sisters-in-law, and the crafty brother. But while living in Coblentz, the Count d'Artois had become the embittered enemy of Marie Antoinette. He had heard it so often said on all sides that the queen by her levity, her extravagance, and her intrigues, was the cause of all, that she alone had brought about the revolution, that he at last believed it, and turned angrily against the royal woman, whose worst offence in the eyes of the prince lay in this, that she had been the occasion of his enforced exile to Coblentz.