III. 1781. Oct. 22, 1781. CHAP. personal revenue as Queen of France.* This piece of good fortune was ere long followed by another; on the 22d October 1781 the Queen was again confined, and on this occasion she gave birth to a young prince, who of course became the dauphin. The public joy knew no bounds on this occasion; the Queen, on her recovery, was received with the most tumultuous applause at the opera, the Hôtel de Ville, and the Théâtre Français ; and she observed, with peculiar satisfaction, that the humblest classes were the most enthusiastic in the expression of their delight. The address of the women of the Halle, or chief market of Paris, deserves to be in an ⚫ especial manner noticed, as showing what were the feelings towards the royal family of that class, afterwards so fierce during the Revolution, before their opinions had been perverted by the arts and falsehoods of an ambitious faction. The beneficence of the King and Queen on this occasion exceeded all their former generosity; the sums bestowed on the debtors alone amounted to 474,000 *The Queen, in every important event of her life, made it an invariable rule to add largely to her already magnificent charities. On this occasion she distributed funds for the liberation of an extraordinary number of poor debtors, fathers of families, from prison, in every part of France, requesting only in return the prayers of the reunited households for the heir of France. When distributing this munificence in Paris, the archbishop, to whom it was intrusted, expressed himself thus, in his address to the objects of the royal bounty :"The prayers of the poor are so efficacious! What will the prayers not obtain of so many unfortunate fathers, who, by the unlooked-for recovery of their freedom, have been restored to their families and their children, who stood in need of the support of their parents at the very time that, by the burden they occasioned, they were the innocent cause of their detention!"-MONTJOYE, Vie de Marie Antoinette, i. 111. The Femmes de la Halle thus addressed the King:-"Sire! If heaven owed a son to a king who regarded his people as his family, our prayers and our wishes have long petitioned for it; at length we have been heard. We are now sure that our children will be as happy as ourselves; for that child will resemble you. You will teach him, sire, to be as good and just as yourself; we will teach our children how they should love and respect their king." To the Queen they thus addressed themselves :-"For long, madam, we have loved you, without daring to say so; we have need of all our respect not to abuse the permission now given to express it." To the dauphin they said:"You cannot as yet hear the wishes which we form over your cradle: one day they will be explained to you; they cannot go further than that you should resemble those to whom you owe your being."-MONTJOYE, Vie de Marie Antoinette, i. 128. III. 1782. francs, (£19,000); nearly all the captives in the prisons CHAP. were liberated; and Paris, in particular shared so largely in the royal bounty, that poverty literally was, for a short period, banished from among its vast population. The King, overjoyed at the birth of his children, redoubled his tenderness towards the Queen: his confidence in her was unbounded, his affection and solicitude unintermitting. Adored by her husband, beloved by her friends, cherished by her subjects, admired by all, the Queen of the first monarchy in Europe, the mother of a rising family, she seemed to have approached as near the perfection human felicity as it is given to mortals to attain. in this very combination of causes, so pregnant present felicity, were preparing in secret the springs of unbounded future disaster.1 1 Montjoye, of i. 112, 129. Weber, i. Yet 57, 59. with Campan, i. 200, 209. becomes the persecution to the Orleans party. The long period of eleven years which elapsed after 83. the marriage of the King before the birth of the princess- The Queen royal, had given rise to a general opinion that the Queen object of was never destined to be a mother. Though both Monsieur, the next heir to the throne, and the Comte d'Artois, were married, the former had no family, and till 1778 the Comte d'Artois had only one son, and his health was very delicate.* In these circumstances it was natural, and, in truth, unavoidable, that sanguine hopes of succeeding to the throne should be entertained by the Orleans family; and as long as this auspicious state of matters continued, the Queen was allowed to rest in peace, and she remained the object of unvarying attachment to her subjects. But when these prospects were endangered by the birth of the princess-royal, and destroyed by that of the dauphin, a very different state of matters arose. The bright vision of the crown vanished * Monsieur Comte de Provence, afterwards Louis XVIII., was married on 14th May 1771 to Josephine Louise of Savoy, but had no family. The Comte d'Artois was married on 16th November 1773 to Marie Therese of Savoy, and had two sons- the Duc d'Angoulême, born 6th August 1775; and Charles Ferdinand Duc de Berri, born on 16th November 1778. Failing these two sons, the Orleans family were the next heirs to the throne.-SOULAVIE ii. 2, 3. III. Nov. 18, 1785. CHAP. from before the Duc de Chartres; clouds overcast the coteries of the Palais Royal.* That palace, the most 1785. splendid and influential of any, after Versailles, in France, became the centre of dissatisfaction, intrigue, and disappointment, for every rank of society, from the highest to the lowest in Paris. The respectable veil which had hitherto concealed the irregularities of the old Duke of Orleans, proved a certain, though but a slight restraint upon their turbulent activity as long as he lived; but his death, on the 18th November 1785, entirely removed this check. The Duc de Chartres, elevated to be the head of the family, found himself master at once of its immense riches and its vast influence; his dissolute companions encouraged in his breast ambitious projects, to which, but for them, he might have remained a stranger; the dangerous and needy crowd of nobles, libertines, atheists, philosophers, insolvents, courtesans, and democrats, who crowded the antechambers of the Palais Royal,+ began openly to speculate on the chance of a change of Viede Marie dynasty, and the vast benefits which it would bring to Antoinette, themselves; and in the event of the Queen continuing to Soul. vi. 3, give birth to sons, it was whispered that means might be i. 146, 239. found to get quit altogether of the elder branch of the Bourbon family.1 1 Montjoye, i. 185, 192. 34. Droz, 84. the Duke and his party. It is probable that views of this sort are never very far Character of from the thoughts of the hangers-on of a branch of the of Orleans royal family, which has a near prospect of succeeding to the throne by the failure of the direct line of succession; and the example of England sufficiently demonstrates, that the heir-apparent is in general the head of the opposition against the throne. But in the case of France, the danger of this natural, and perhaps unavoidable tendency, * The well-known palace of the Duke of Orleans in the Rue St Honoré, and the head-quarters of the opposition to the court in France. "Un tas d'hommes perdus de dettes et de crimes, Et qui, désespérant les plus éviter, Si tout n'est renversé ne sauraient subsister." -CORNEILLE, Cinna, act v. scene 1. III. 1786. was greatly increased by the peculiar character of the CHAP. young Duke of Orleans, and the dissolute nobility by whom he was surrounded. That celebrated prince was not destitute of talents; he at first evinced some good dispositions; he retained to the last some of the qualities by which his family had been distinguished, and in early youth the most sanguine hopes were entertained that he would prove an honour to his race. But he inherited an extraordinary passion for intrigue from his mother, whose gallantries had afforded subject for scandal even to the court of Louis XV.; and the profligate society, both male and female, into which, from his first entrance into life, he was plunged, completely obliterated the good impressions which he had received in infancy from his learned and able governess, Madame Genlis, and might have imbibed in maturer years from his young wife, one of the most accomplished and superior women in France.* Initiated at the age of sixteen into all the vices of the capital, he soon outdid them all; and the scandal of his nocturnal orgies, with crowds of abandoned associates, recalled the accounts recorded, but till then hardly credited, of Nero and Heliogabalus. What the courtesans had left undone, the Philosophers did; and between the two he became impregnated with all the selfishness, pro * He was married, on 5th April 1769, to Mademoiselle de Penthièvre, daughter of the Duc de Penthièvre, from whom she inherited a princely fortune. She succeeded, with the grace and elegance, to the virtue and delicacy of her family; and she had need of all her firmness and prudence in the midst of the anxiety and distress in which she was subsequently involved by the profligacy and ambition of her husband.-SOULAVIE, ii. 5, and 110, 112. The style of his manners at times will be sufficiently illustrated by two anecdotes." Il paria un jour à Versailles, qu'il retournerait nud à cheval et au galop au Palais Royal: les compagnons de ses plaisirs furent les premiers à rougir de cette pétulance; ils le conjurèrent de commencer la partie en partant non de Versailles, mais de ses écuries. D'autres compagnons de ses débauches, soutenant le pari, jurèrent qu'il ne partirait pas même de ses écuries; le Duc de Chartres gagna le pari."-SOULAVIE, ii. 186. "L'année 1789 fut l'époque principale de la licence révolutionnaire de ce palais fameux, (le Palais Royal); et le public était invité à voir deux sauvages nouvellement arrivés dans la capitale. C'était uniquement un homme et une femme vêtus couchés dans un hamac fait à Paris; et se permettant en présence des spectateurs les jouissances du mariage."-Ibid. ii. 109. III. 1786. CHAP. fligacy, irreligion, and licentiousness which then prevailed in the capital. Sensual, voluptuous, and insatiable in the pursuit of excitement, he was fond of violent exercises, had some knowledge of mechanics, and was passionately addicted to horse races, which at that period, in imitation of England, had become fashionable in Paris. But though constitutionally brave, he was destitute of moral courage, and was totally devoid of fixed principle even for his own interest; he was impelled into a conspiracy against the crown rather by the efforts of his associates than his own ambition; repeatedly, though urged by them, he failed at the decisive moment when he might have seized the reins of power; and ultimately fell a victim to the faction which he had had the wickedness to create, and wanted the vigour to govern.1 1 Weber, i. 317, 326, 327. Soul. 105, 109. Besenval, ii. 321. 85. Incessant efforts of party to Queen. When the successive children which she bore to Louis made it evident that the Duke of Orleans had daily less the Orleans chance of succeeding to the throne in any other way than defame the by a change of dynasty, the Queen became the object of incessant and envenomed attacks from the profligate retainers, male and female, of the Orleans faction. Surmises unfavourable to her reputation were first whispered in fashionable circles; next they made their appearance in libels, which were privately circulated, and greedily bought up by all classes; at length, emboldened by impunity, the calumnies were generally disseminated, and the libellers openly ascribed to her all the vices with which their own imaginations were stored. The numerous courtesans whom the Duke of Orleans had in his train were peculiarly active and successful in this sourd and malignant warfare; for they knew well, from experience, how to pander to the rage of a depraved capital for scandal were familiar with the manners of the great; could invent falsehoods which had the air of truth; and were at once stimulated by the thirst for gain, and the prospect of obtaining the spoils of Versailles as the reward of their mendacity. The police |