Mme. Du Hausset

“ Certainly no one had a greater opportunity of knowing the real character of Marie Antoinette. She was an eye-witness to her conduct during the most brilliant and luxurious portion of her reign; she saw her from the meridian of her magnificence down to her dejection to the depths of unparalleled misery. If the unfortunate Queen had ever been guilty of the slightest of those glaring vices of which she was so generally accused, the Princess must have been aware of them; and it was not in her nature to have remained the friend and advocate, even unto death, of one capable of depravity. ”

“ Has she not always been an enthusiastic advocate for all those that have supported the American war? Who was it that crowned, at a public assembly, the democratical straight hairs of Dr. Franklin? Why the same Madame Comtesse Diane! Who was ‘capa turpa’ in applauding the men who were framing the American Constitution at Paris? Madame Comtesse Diane! Who was it, in like manner, that opposed all the Queen’s arguments against the political conduct of France and Spain, relative to the war with England, in favour of the American Independence? The Comtesse Diane! ”

“ The Princesse Elizabeth has been from the beginning an unwavering comforter. She still flatters Marie Antoinette that Heaven will spare her for better times to reward our fidelity and her own agonies. The pious consolations of Her Highness have never failed to make the most serious impression on our wretched situation. Indeed, each of us strives to pour the balm of comfort into the wounded hearts of the others, while not one of us, in reality, dares to flatter herself with what we all so ardently wish for in regard to our fellow-sufferers. ”

“ Tell my sister, when you return to Brussels again—and do not forget to say I desired you to tell her—our cruel situation! She does not believe that we are surrounded by enemies, even in our most private seclusions! in our prison! that we are even thrown exclusively upon foreigners in our most confidential affairs; that in France there is scarcely an individual to whom we can look! They betray us for their own safety, which is endangered by any exertions in our favour. Tell her this,” repeated the Queen three or four times. ”

“ I foresaw the results long, long before they took place; but the Queen was not to be thwarted. Fearful she might attribute my anxiety for her general safety to unworthy personal views, I was often silent, even when duty bade me speak. I was, perhaps, too scrupulous about seeming officious or jealous of the predilection shown to the Duchess. Experience had taught me the inutility of representing consequences, and I had no wish to quarrel with the Queen. Indeed, there was a degree of coldness towards me on the part of Her Majesty for having gone so far as I had done. ”

“ Scarcely had she felt the warm rays of royal favour, when the chilling blasts of envy and malice began to nip it in the bud of all its promised bliss. Even long before she touched the pinnacle of her grandeur as governess of the royal children the blackest calumny began to show itself in prints, caricatures, songs, and pamphlets of every description.
“A reciprocity of friendship between a Queen and a subject, by those who never felt the existence of such a feeling as friendship, could only be considered in a criminal point of view. ”

“ Noticing the effect of his words, the Abbe resumed:
“I knew well I should frighten you in showing any partiality for that bloody monopoliser of human heads. But you do not know the perfidy of the French nation so well as I do. I have lived among them many years. France is the sink of human deception. A Frenchman will deceive his father, wife, and child; for deception is his element. Robespierre knew this, and acted upon it, as you shall hear.” ”

“ Never should I have been so firmly and so long attached to Marie Antoinette, had I not known that her native thorough goodness of heart had been warped and misguided, though acting at the same time with the best intentions, by a false notion of her real innocence being a sufficient shield against the public censure of such innovations upon national prejudices, as she thought prayer to introduce,—the fatal error of conscious rectitude, encouraged in its regardlessness of appearances by those very persons who well knew that it is only by appearances a nation can judge of its rulers. ”

“ It would take me an age to tell you the many causes which have conspired against this much-injured Queen! I fear none who are near her person will escape the threatening storm that hovers over our heads. The leading causes of the clamour against her have been, if you must know, Nature; her beauty; her power of pleasing; her birth; her rank; her marriage; the King himself; her mother; her imperfect education; and, above all, her unfortunate partialities for the Abbe Vermond ”

“ How can I describe my grief at what I endured in the Assembly, from the studied humiliation to which the King and the royal authority were there reduced in the face of the national representatives! from seeing the King on his return choked with anguish at the mortifications to which I was doomed to behold the majesty of a French Sovereign humbled! These events bespeak clouds, which, like the horrid waterspout at sea, nothing can dispel but cannon! The dignity of the Crown, the sovereignty itself, is threatened ”

“ It burlesques the ways and manners of every individual connected with the Court of Versailles. Not a scene but touches some of their characters. Are not the Queen herself and the Comte d’Artois lampooned and caricatured in the garden scenes, and the most slanderous ridicule cast upon their innocent evening walks on the terrace? Does not Beaumarchais plainly show in it, to every impartial eye, the means which the Comtesse Diane has taken publicly to demonstrate her jealousy of the Queen’s ascendency over the Comte d’Artois? ”

“ Who, then, can for a moment presume, after all these circumstances, that the Queen of France, with a nation’s wealth at her feet and thousands of individuals offering her millions, which she never accepted, would have so far degraded herself and the honour of the nation, of which she was born to be the ornament, as to place herself gratuitously in the power of a knot of wretches, headed by a man whose general bad character for years had excluded him from Court and every respectable society, and had made the Queen herself mark him as an object of the utmost aversion. ”

“ The felicity of the Queen was too great not to be soon overcast. The unbounded influence of the De Polignacs was now at its zenith. It could not fail of being attacked. Every engine of malice, envy, and detraction was let loose; and, in the vilest calumnies against the character of the Duchess, her royal mistress was included.
“It was, in truth, a most singular fatality, in the life of Marie Antoinette that she could do nothing, however beneficial or disinterested, for which she was not either criticised or censured. ”

“ Who that is false to his God can be expected to remain faithful to his Sovereign? When a man, as a Catholic Bishop, marries, and, under the mask of patriotism, becomes the declared tool of all work to every faction, and is the weathercock, shifting to any quarter according to the wind,—such a man can be of no real service to any party: and yet has a man of this kind been by turns the primum mobile of them all, even to the present times, and was one of those great Church fomenters of the troubles of which we speak, who disgraced the virtuous reign of Louis XVI. ”

“ Often and often have I heard the Princesse de Lamballe repeat the words in which Her Majesty uniformly rejected the proposition. “I have no wish,” cried the Queen, “for myself. My life or death must be encircled by the arms of my husband and my family. With them, and with them only, will I live or die.”
It would have been impossible to have persuaded her to leave France without her children. If any woman on earth could have been justified in so doing, it would have been Marie Antoinette. But she was above such unnatural selfishness, though she had so many examples to encourage her ”

“ Germain said, one day, to the King, “To think well of mankind, one must be neither a Confessor, nor a Minister, nor a Lieutenant of Police.”—“Nor a King,” said His Majesty. “Ah! Sire,” replied he, “you remember the fog we had a few days ago, when we could not see four steps before us. Kings are commonly surrounded by still thicker fogs, collected around them by men of intriguing character, and faithless Ministers—all, of every class, unite in endeavouring to make things appear to Kings in any, light but the true one.” ”

“ After some questions of mere form, Her Highness was commanded to swear to be faithful to the new order of government, and to hate the King, the Queen, and royalty.
“To the first,” replied Her Highness, “I willingly submit. To the second, how can I accede? There is nothing of which I can accuse the Royal Family. To hate them is against my nature. They are my Sovereigns. They are my friends and relations. I have served them for many years, and never have I found reason for the slightest complaint.” ”

“ The Duchess was herself an attentive, careful mother. She felt for the Queen, and encouraged her maternal sympathies, so doubly endeared by the long, long disappointment which had preceded their gratification. The sacrifice of all the cold forms of state policy by the new governess, and the free access she gave the royal mother to her children, so unprecedented in the Court of France, rendered Marie Antoinette so grateful that it may justly be said she divided her heart between the governess and the governed. ”

“ I heard her say to the Marechal de Belle-Isle, wiping her eyes, “M. de Soubise is inconsolable; he does not try to excuse his conduct, he sees nothing but the disastrous fortune which pursues him.”—“M. de Soubise must, however, have many things to urge in his own behalf,” said M. de Belle-Isle, “and so I told the King.”—“It is very noble in you, Marshal, not to suffer an unfortunate man to be overwhelmed; the public are furious against him, and what has he done to deserve it?”—“There is not a more honourable nor a kinder man in the world. ”

“ Guilt, unpunished in its first crime, rushes onward, and hurrying from one misdeed to another, like the flood-tide, drives all before it! My silence, and his being defeated without reproach, armed him with courage for fresh daring, and he too well succeeded in embittering the future days of my life, as well as those of his own affectionate wife, and his illustrious father-in-law, the virtuous Duc de Penthievre, who was to all a father. ”