PREFACE TO APPENDICES
The practice of loading every page of a modern history with references to authority is charlatan. Such footnotes (as was lamentably evident, for instance, in Anatole France’s recent work upon Joan of Arc) are usually copied from earlier authorities, and are, for the greater part, added without any conscientious reference to the original. Moreover, in dealing with a subject which has been as thoroughly written out by innumerable scholars as has the life of Marie Antoinette, there are very few new pieces of evidence which would make reference excusable.
With this in mind, I have determined to omit any note of the kind.
I had indeed in the original MS. a full series of notes rectifying the more glaring errors of the Cambridge History, but I was so continually discovering new ones that the task outran me, and I further remembered that the reader of a biography of Marie Antoinette would have but little interest in the misfortunes of official academic history. These also, therefore, with some reluctance I deleted from this book, reserving them for a special article upon the subject. All that could be challenged in the book in the way of statement of fact seems to me included in the Appendices that follow, and I am convinced that it is far preferable to leave the pages free to the reader, even at the expense of having perhaps to defend myself later against the criticism of certain points.
APPENDIX A
THE OPERATION ON LOUIS THE SIXTEENTH OF FRANCE
THE somewhat lengthy attempt to determine the exact date which changed the course of Louis XVI.’s life, to which I have been compelled in the text, would have been unnecessary had the document which proves both the operation itself and the moment of it been published.
It is certain that Maria Theresa knew in the last year of the old King’s reign the nature of the trouble.[[46]]
[46]. Maria Theresa to Mercy, 3rd January 1774.—“Je ne compte presque plus que sur l’entremise de l’empereur, qui à son arrivée à Versailles, trouvera peut-être le moyen.”
Louis XVI.’s hesitation in the matter endured through the month immediately succeeding his accession; though in the December[[47]] of that year he seems to have come very near to a decision. It is certain that the Emperor was to act with authority in the matter; and it is probable that Louis XVI.’s long and disastrous hesitation was in part occasioned by his brother-in-law’s delay and postponement of his voyage to Versailles.
[47]. Marie Antoinette to Maria Theresa, 17th December 1774.—“Le roi a eu il y a huit jours une grande conversation avec mon médecin; je suis fort contente de ses dispositions et j’ai bonne espérance de suivre bientôt l’example de ma sœur.”
Mercy was informed thoroughly of the main object of the Emperor’s visit just before it took place,[[48]] and Maria Theresa at the same time specially emphasised to her Ambassador this capital business which her son had undertaken.[[49]]
[48]. Mercy to Maria Theresa, 18th March 1777.—“Relativement au séjour que fera ici S.M. l’empereur, et à toutes les circonstances qui pourront en résulter, il ne me reste pas la moindre incertitude sur les hautes intentions de V.M., et ses ordres seront remplis avec tout le scrupule et le soin qu’exige l’importance d’une pareille conjuncture dont il peut résulter tant de différents effets.”
[49]. Maria Theresa to Mercy, 31st March 1777.—“Vous pouvez bien croire que ce point est un des plus importants a éclaircir, s’il y a à espérer de la succession ou point, et vous tâcherez de mettre au clair cela avec l’empereur.”
We know that the operation was performed by the King’s surgeon, Lassone, and the point is to determine, in the absence of direct evidence, the date upon which Lassone operated.
I say “in the absence of direct evidence,” for, though that evidence exists, it is not available. All papers left by Lassone, including the procès verbal of the operation on the King, were ultimately brought into the collection of Feuillet de Conches. This collector has been dead twenty years, and Dr. Des, among others, asked, just after his death, for the production of this all-important document; but it was refused, and I believe it is still refused.
It is a great loss to history. Moreover, one does not see what purpose can be served by such reticence, if, as I believe, it is still maintained.
As it is, we must depend upon a few veiled and discreet allusions in the contemporary correspondence of Mercy, the Queen, and the Empress. The principal of these consist in nine passages, the first of which is as follows:—
“Le 27 je me rendis de grand matin à Versailles, où, après avoir parlé d’affaires avec le comte de Vergennes, j’allai à l’hôtel garni qu’occupait l’empereur. Le premier medécin Lassone avait été pendant une heure chez S.M., et elle était alors dans son cabinet avec l’abbé de Vermond.”
This letter was written on 15th June 1777. Mercy, who had been in very bad health, sends to Maria Theresa his account of the Emperor’s visit. In this letter he mentions, under the date Tuesday, 27th May, a long interview which the Emperor had with Lassone, he himself, Mercy, being present, and also Vermond, the Queen’s former tutor. Later in the day the Emperor spent two hours alone with his brother-in-law, discussing, in Mercy’s phrase, “confidential details.” It was at this moment, presumably, that the Emperor persuaded the King. It will be seen, therefore, that he put off mention of the matter until late in his visit, at the end of the month of May. Maria Theresa, having by that time had opportunity of hearing by word of mouth things that could hardly be written, writes that she is content so far as things have gone, but is waiting to hear about everything from her son on his return.
She also writes to Marie Antoinette on the 29th June 1777, as follows:—
“J’en attends les plus heureuses suites, et même pour votre état de mariage, sur lequel on me laisse espérance: mais on remet le tout au retour,[[50]] où on pourra me parler.”
[50]. “The return,” of the Emperor, that is.
It is evident that nothing was done during the Emperor’s actual stay, or in his presence. On the 29th of August, Maria Theresa, having seen her son, is still by no means certain.[[51]] One must allow a fortnight (more or less) for news to reach her from Versailles. We may be confident, therefore, that whatever was written to her about the middle of the month of August was not yet wholly reassuring, though this may not prove that no operation had taken place; it may only go to show that success was not yet certain.
[51]. Marie Theresa to Mercy, 29th August 1777.—“Je le souhaite à l’égard du roi, mais je n’en suis pas rassurée.”
It is on the 10th of September, in a letter from Marie Antoinette to Maria Theresa, that the first note of confidence on the part of the Queen appears. It was premature, but matters were now certain.[[52]]
[52]. “Ce nouveau-né”—she writes of her sister-in-law’s child—“me fait encore plus de plaisir par l’espérance que j’ai d’avoir bientôt le même bonheur.”
We may, therefore, take it for certain that things were settled not earlier than the middle of August, nor later than the end of the first week of September; and it may be predicted that when Lassone’s paper sees the light it will bear a date within those three weeks.
Mercy sees by January[[53]] that everything is long settled. The Queen knew herself to be with child in the first week in April, and news was sent to her mother on the date which I have given in the text.
[53]. “Je dois aussi ajouter la remarque très essentielle que la reine continue à se conduire très-bien avec le roi, qui de son côté persiste à vivre maritalement dans le sens le plus exact et le plus réel.”
APPENDIX B
ON THE EXACT TIME AND PLACE OF DROUET’S RIDE
THE reader or student acquainted with various records of the French Revolution may be tempted to regard the account of Drouet’s Ride in my text as containing too much detail for accurate history; especially as no historian has hitherto done more than vaguely allude to it. I will therefore in this Appendix show the way in which I found it possible to reproduce every circumstance of Drouet’s movements from the time when he left Ste. Menehould until the time of his arrival at Varennes.
The berline left Ste. Menehould shortly after eight. It had to climb to Germeries Wood[[54]] on the crest of the forest, four hundred feet in four miles. It could not possibly, therefore, have reached the summit till after nine, and however fast was the run down on to Islettes (just over five miles from Ste. Menehould) that village cannot have been reached before 9.15. From Islettes to Clermont is just four miles, and mostly slightly rising. The best going could not cover the distance in twenty minutes, which puts the earliest possible entry into Clermont at twenty-five or twenty to ten. The change of horses took from ten minutes to a quarter of an hour. Put it at the lowest, and one has for the earliest possible time the berline can have left Clermont that it must have been within ten minutes of ten o’clock.
[54]. The summit is 860 feet above the sea; the town about 460 feet.
From Clermont to Varennes is nine miles: a straight road, descending slightly on the whole, but not quite flat. Under the best conditions that day the berline had not covered ten miles in the hour; let it gallop at twelve (a pace it was quite incapable of, save in short spells) and Varennes would still be three-quarters of an hour off.
Now Varennes was entered just on a quarter to eleven. The berline cannot therefore have left Clermont later than ten; and cannot have arrived earlier than ten minutes to ten; so this departure of the Royal Family from Clermont for Varennes, of Drouet’s postillions back from Clermont for Ste. Menehould, took place sometime in those ten minutes.
Now Drouet reached Varennes before eleven. He reached it round about by the forest—not by the main road—and he reached it by a gallop through a pitch dark night in dense wood without a moon.[[55]] The shortest line as the crow flies from the last bend of the road before Clermont to Varennes Bridge is ten miles; any deviation through the wood, even in a straight line, would make it nearly twelve. It is very difficult to cover twelve miles in an hour under such conditions, but even if you allow Drouet that pace he must leave the high road about ten.
[55]. The sky was overcast.
All this synchronises to within a very few minutes. The postillions leave Clermont to turn back home in the ten minutes before ten; they go fast, for they are riding light; a mile or so up the road they meet their master. It is just here that the forest on the northern side of the ravine touches the modern railway and comes nearest to the road. Drouet takes to the forest certainly not before ten and equally certainly not ten minutes after.
So much for the hour at which he took to the wood.
Now what road did he pursue in the forest? Only one is possible. The forest here covers a high ridge, some three hundred feet above the open plain. Down in the plain, parallel to this ridge and at its base, runs the high road from Clermont to Varennes, with a row of farms and wide fields between it and the edge of the wood. Had Drouet gone anywhere but along the ridge he would have had to cross some twenty streams, to climb and fall over as many ravines (all of clay), to flank a dozen clay ponds and marshes, and with all this there was no continuous path. He could not have done it in two hours, let alone one. He was compelled to follow the ridge. It so happens that there runs all along the ridge a green ride called “the High Ride.” It is a Gaulish track of great antiquity, known to the peasantry as “the Roman Way.” It does not come down as far as Clermont; it leaves the forest at the farm and huts of Lochères. To this farm Drouet must have made his way by the lanes and gates of Jacques and Haute Prise—once at Lochères, a hard gallop along the High Ride brought him in six or seven miles to the Crossed Stone (called also the Dead Girl); here another green ride crosses the main ride of the ridge. He took this cross ride to the right hand: it leads down and out of the forest; one comes out of the wood a mile or so from Varennes with the town right below one and what was then a lane (now it is a county road) through the open valley fields. Just before entering the town a detour (by where the tile-works are now) would get him into the Rue de Mont Blainville, and so to the Bridge: a detour serving the double purpose of avoiding possible troops at the entry to the town and of getting ahead of any carriage coming in from Clermont. He cannot but have taken this detour, have noted the waggon by the bridge as he passed it (he later used it to block the bridge), and then have come up the main street from the river.
APPENDIX C
THE ORDER TO CEASE FIRE
THE order to cease fire, which forms the frontispiece of this book, and which is the last executive document of the French monarchy, has been misunderstood by not a few critics, and its value thereby lessened.
It is, as I shall presently show, authentic, and therefore of the highest possible interest to every student of history. The traveller will find it to-day in the central glass case of the square Revolutionary Room in the Carnavalet Museum. The body of the writing is not in the hand of Louis himself, but the signature is undoubtedly his. The lines were scribbled in haste by some one attendant upon the King, signed by him, and sent to the palace.
Now no event of such importance and so recent has been more variously described by eye-witnesses than the fall of the palace in 1792; and the particular incident of the order to cease fire suffers, like every other detail of those famous hours, from a plethora, and therefore a conflict, of evidence.
It may be remarked in passing, and by way of digression, that such difficulty cannot but attach to any episode of hard fighting, on account of the mental condition which that exercise produces. There is exactly the same trouble, for instance, in determining with exactitude the all-important moment of the evening in which the Guard failed at Waterloo.
We may confidently say, however, that two separate messages were sent to the palace. The first was a verbal message to cease fire, which reached Hervilly, who was directing the whole operation. Hervilly, as we know, refused to obey, having the action well in hand, and being yet confident of success. Either after the southern end of the Tuileries had been forced by the populace (who, as we now know, turned the flank of the defence by fighting their way through from the Long Gallery), or while that capital incident was in progress, Durler, a captain of the Swiss Guards, commanding no more than a company, but probably the company which had the best chance of retreating, asked for orders. It is difficult to believe that he would have done so unless the position was already desperate. The order which reached him was a repetition of the former one, but it was written, not verbal, and it is this second written order the facsimile of which forms the frontispiece to this volume. Durler did not see it written. He had gone in person to learn what he should do, but he was back again with his men before the note was handed to him. He was a perfectly honest and trustworthy man, and his testimony remains. It is evident from this testimony that, by the time the note came, all was over.
As to the pedigree of the document:—
Durler rose to the rank of general before his death. He naturally regarded this piece of historic writing as among the most precious of his possessions, and left it to his family, who were resident in Lucerne. Chateaubriand, visiting Lucerne on the 15th of May 1832, saw it in that town. From General Durler’s daughter and heiress it descended to his grandchildren, Schimacher by name, and was in the early eighties the property of M. Felix Schimacher of Lucerne, whose agent in Paris was a banker, Mr. de Trooz.
M. Cousin, the curator of the Municipal Museum of Paris (the Carnavalet), hearing of it, approached Mr. de Trooz, and offered a large sum on behalf of the city. The offer was accepted. The pedigree of the document was drawn up by M. Dagobert Schimacher, lawyer in Lucerne, and the whole despatched to Paris, where the purchase was completed on the 27th July 1886, and the document deposited in the Museum, where it now lies.
APPENDIX D
ON THE LOGE OF THE “LOGOTACHYGRAPHE”
THE Manège was pulled down after the consular decree of year XI., which originated the Rue de Rivoli; the historical reconstruction of its arrangements on the 10th of August 1792 is the more difficult from the fact that the only accurate plan of it which has come down to us[[56]] dates from a period earlier than December 1791, in which month (on the 27th) the order was given to change nearly the whole of its dispositions. The box of the Logographe can be fixed in this plan (though not in the new place it occupied after the 5th of January 1792),[[57]] but not that of the Logotachygraphe.
[56]. In the Histoire des Edifices, &c., by Paris.
[57]. The work was finished by the 26th of January 1792.
We know[[58]] that the first was near the President’s Chair, and this was on the south side of the Manège, in the middle. It was in this box that the Queen had appeared when her husband had accepted the Constitution on the return from Varennes; and it was in this box that the Royal Family were supposed, until lately, to have stayed in the three days after the fall of the palace.
[58]. By the 7th clause of the order cited.
There were many such grated boxes for reporters up and down the Hall: the proximity of the Logographe’s to the Chair being due to the desire for accurate verbatim reports to be recorded from the best acoustic position of the Hall.
Our establishment of the Logographe’s box is only of value to the history of the 10th of August because (though a confusion was till recently made between the two) the box in which the Royal Family were put, that of the Logotachygraphe, a journal not yet published, but in preparation, and one which had already obtained leave to have its reporting place in the Hall, must have been near by. Its exact situation we cannot determine, but it was certainly not far from the Chair on the south wall, and presumably in the eastern half of it.
APPENDIX E
UPON THE “LAST PORTRAIT OF THE QUEEN” BY KUCHARSKI
THREE “last” portraits of Marie Antoinette, each very similar to the two others, though not replicas, are known to exist: each is ascribed to the painter Kucharski, who appears for a moment at the Queen’s trial, and who is known to have painted her at Court.
These portraits are, one in Arenburg Gallery at Brussels, another in the Carnavalet, and the third in the new Revolutionary Room on the third floor at Versailles. This last is the one which is reproduced here, because M. de Nolhac, by far the best authority, has assured me of its authenticity. On the other hand, it must be mentioned that the Belgian one was vouched for by Auguste d’Arenberg[[59]] who bought it in 1805, and who quotes the testimony of the painter[[60]] himself, who was then alive.
[59]. See “Notes sur quelques Portraits de la Galerie d’Arenberg,” in the Annales de l’Académie Royale d’Archéologie de Belgique, 4th series, vol. x. 1897.
[60]. On this painter there exists a monograph by Mycielski (Paris, 1894), and an article published in the December number, 1905, of the Revue d’ Art, Ancien et Moderne.
He appears to have affirmed that he saw the Queen in the Temple when he was on guard, took the sketch, noting the details of dress, &c., and completing the work at home.
APPENDIX F
ON THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE QUEEN’S LAST LETTER
THE few doubts that some have put forward against the authenticity of this famous document will, unless history abandons its modern vices, increase with time, for it is a document exactly suited to the type of minute, internal, literal, and documentary criticism by which tradition is, to-day, commonly assailed. It will be pointed out that the psychology of this letter differs altogether from that of the mass of Marie Antoinette’s little scribbled notes, and equally from her serious political drafts and despatches. Critics will very probably be found to dispute the possibility of such a woman at such a time producing such a document. The style fits ill with what she was in Court just before it purports to have been written, and also with what she was on her way to the scaffold just after. Most important of all, perhaps, the sentences are composed in a manner quite different from that of any other letter of hers we possess; they have a rhythm and a composition in them: the very opening words are in a manner wholly more exalted and more rhetorical than ever was her own.
It will be further and especially pointed out that the moment when it was discovered was the very moment for forgery, and this point is of such importance to the discussion that I must elaborate it.
By nightfall of June 18, 1815, the experiment of founding democracy in Europe was imagined to be at an end: Napoleon was definitely defeated. On the 7th of July the first forces of the Allies entered Paris, and on the 20th of November was signed the second Treaty of Paris, whereby the reinstatement of the old régime in France was accomplished at a price to the nation of 700,000,000 francs and of all its conquests. All the power of a highly centralised Government was now in the hands of Louis XVIII., and it was in the highest degree profitable to prove oneself a friend to what had but a few months before seemed a lost cause. Document after document appeared professing a special knowledge of the woes of the Royal Family, petition after petition was presented in which the petitioners (nearly always in the same conventional and hagiographical style) spoke of the Royal “martyrs” in the Temple and in the Conciergerie.
In the light of such a character attaching to this particular moment, note the following sequence of dates in connection with the production of the document we are discussing.
Not two months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris the French Chamber voted the Law of Amnesty. The seventh clause of this Act banished the regicides who had sat in the Convention. Among these was a certain Courtois, a man now over seventy years of age, who had bought a large country house and estate near the frontier. Note, further, that Courtois had started as a small bootmaker and was one of the very few politicians of the Revolution who had followed our modern practice of making money out of politics. His honesty, therefore, was doubtful: a thing which we cannot say of the enthusiasts of the time. Of those we can say that their imaginations or their passions may warp their evidence, but in the case of Courtois we know that he was a professional politician of the modern type, and would do a dishonest thing for money.
Now this Courtois had been one of a Commission named by the Convention to examine Robespierre’s papers after the fall of Robespierre on the 28th of July 1794. He was what the French call the Reporter of the Commission—that is, the director of it—and it was called the “Courtois Commission.” The Commission published their report of what they had found in Robespierre’s house. It was a report two volumes in length for which Courtois was responsible, and of which he was practically the author.
This minute and voluminous report made no mention of the Queen’s letter. Not a word is heard of it during all those twenty-two years until the aforesaid Bill of Amnesty is before the French Parliament of the Restoration and the regicides, including old Courtois, passing his last days on his comfortable estate, are to suffer exile. Then for the first time the Queen’s letter appears. On the 25th of January 1816 Courtois writes to a prominent lawyer, an acquaintance of his wife’s, a Royalist, and in touch with the Court, telling him that he had kept back ten pieces among the mass of things found in Robespierre’s house, three of them trinkets, a lock of hair, &c., one or two letters of no importance—and the capital point of all, this letter of Marie Antoinette’s to her sister-in-law. He offers to exchange these against a special amnesty to himself, or at least of a year’s delay before he is exiled, in order, presumably, to allow him to realise his fortune.
This is not all: the letter was not written until Courtois’ wife was dead; and it was written on the very day of her death and the moment after it—the moment, that is, after the death of the only person who would presumably know—if he allowed any one to know—whether he had or had not carefully concealed these documents for so many years.
The Government of Louis XVIII. offered money for the letter, and, having so lulled the suspicions of Courtois, sent one of its officials without warning into his house and seized his effects. Some days afterwards the letter (which no one had yet seen or heard of) is produced by Royal order and shown to Madame d’Angoulême (who is said to have fainted when she saw it), and ordered to be read from every pulpit during Mass on the 16th of October of every year; a vast edition of it is brought out in facsimile and distributed broadcast, and the letter itself is enshrined among the public exhibits at the Archives.
A lengthy analysis of the sort just concluded is necessary to make the reader understand how and why a strong attack upon the authenticity of the letter will sooner or later certainly be made. I owe it to my readers to say why the apparently strong presumption against this letter does not in my opinion hold.
First let me recapitulate what is to be said against it:—
(1) There is no contemporary trace of it.[[61]]
[61]. The woman Bault, who was wardress of the Conciergerie, says that her husband told her of such a letter, but her evidence is given after Louis XVIII. had published it, and for all those twenty-two years she had said nothing about it. Moreover she talked of its discovery with the usual clap-trap phrases of “The Omnipotence of Heaven showing its ineffable goodness by restoring us this monument in its most admirable way, &c.” And the only contemporary account, while it does mention the lock of hair which the Queen desired given to a friend, says nothing of the letter.
(2) It appears at a moment when forged documents of that sort were of the highest value both to a despotic Government and to the vendors or producers of them.
(3) That moment is no less than twenty-two years posterior to the supposed writing of the letter, and, during all those twenty-two years, of the many who should have seen it, of the three public men (all enemies) through whose hands it must have passed, no one has heard of its existence nor mentioned it in a private correspondence, nor apparently so much as spoken of it in a conversation to a friend.
(4) It is first heard of from a man who would have every interest in forging it and who is known to have been very unscrupulous in political dealings for money.
(5) He makes his offer on the very day when the last witness there could be against him dies.
(6) The document, when it does appear, appears without any pedigree, or chain of witnesses to vouch for it, nor even any tradition. It is vouched for only by the people who had most interest in creating such a relic and is forced upon the public with every apparatus at the command of a despotic Government.
(7) Most important of all, the letter is written in a high and affecting style wholly different from all that we know of Marie Antoinette’s writing, and quite inconsistent with her demeanour at the moment, consonant only with the sanctity which it was at that moment desired to give to the Royal Family.
Nevertheless I believe the document to be without the slightest doubt authentic, and I will give my reasons for this certitude:—
(1) To forge a letter of Marie Antoinette’s is peculiarly difficult. There have been many such attempts. They have been discovered with an ease familiar to all students of her life.
This difficulty lies in the great irregularity of her method of writing, coupled with the exact persistence of certain types of letter. She never in her life could write a line straight across a page. She never made two “d’s” exactly the same, and yet you never can mistake one of her “d’s.” She never crossed a “t” quite in the same manner twice, and yet you can always tell her way of crossing it. The absence of capitals after a full stop is a minor point but a considerable one. She always brought the lower loop of the “b” up to the up stroke, so that it looks like an “f”; she always separated her “l’s” from the succeeding letter.
Let the reader compare the document of which I am speaking, reproduced in facsimile opposite page 395, and her letter of the 3rd of September 1791 to Joseph II. (opposite page 297), and he will see what I mean. The first is reproduced on a four-fifths scale, the second in facsimile, but the points I make can easily be followed upon them. Note the first “d” in the first line of the letter written in prison, the second “d” and the third “d” all in the same line. Next look down to the seventh line and note the “d” in “tendre,” and see how the first three “d’s” though irregular are of the same type, and how the fourth, though much less hooked, is obviously written by the same hand. Look down two lines lower to the “d” in “plaidoyer”; it has a complete hook and is quite different from the other letters, and three lines lower, in the word “deux,” the hook has a sharp angle apparent nowhere else on the page. Now if you turn to the “d’s” in her letter to her brother of the 3rd of September 1791, you will find exactly the same characteristics. Not one “d” like another, yet all obviously from the same hand; the “d” in the second line with a full hook to it, the two “d’s” in the twelfth line much vaguer.
So with the “t’s,” they are crossed in every kind of way with a short straight line, a long curved one, a little jab followed by a straight, now with a slope downward, now with a slope upward, but all evidently from the same hand, and their very variety makes it impossible for them to be a forgery. The “l’s,” written separately from the letter following each, are obvious everywhere, so is that irregularity of line of which I have spoken. Let the reader look at the third line of the letter of the 3rd of September 1791 (opposite page 297) and at the seventh line of the letter written in prison, and ask himself whether it would have been possible to copy such native irregularity.
The identity of handwriting is apparent even from these two documents. It is absolutely convincing to any one who has seen much of her penmanship.
(2) To the faults in grammar and in spelling I should pay little attention—those things are easily copied; but it is worth remarking that on the third line of the letter written in prison she spells the infinitive of “montrer” without the final “r” as though it were a participle, while in the letter written to her brother in 1791 she makes no such error. She puts an “e” in “Jouis,” and so forth. All these discrepancies are a proof of the authenticity of the letter. She spelt at random, and her grammar was at random, though she got a little more accurate as she grew older. It would, on the contrary, be an argument against the authenticity of the letter if particular mistakes, discovered in a particular document of hers, were repeated in this last letter from the Conciergerie.
(3) The letter was immediately exposed to public view; the paper was grown yellow, the writing was apparently old, the ink in places faded, the creases deep and worn. Now all these accidental features could no doubt be reproduced by a modern forger with the advantage of modern methods, modern mechanical appliances, modern chemical science and photography. They could not have been achieved by a forger of 1816.
It seems to me, therefore, a document absolutely unassailable. The arguments against it are of the same sort which modern scepticism perpetually brings against every form of historical evidence that does not fit in with some favourite modern theory. I must believe the evidence of my senses, and I am compelled to admit that a woman, every expression of whose soul was different from this, and whose whole demeanour before and after writing the letter betrayed a mental condition quite inconsistent with the writing of it, was granted for perhaps an hour (in spite of a full day’s fast, the fear of imminent death and the breakdown of her health and of all her power), an exaltation sufficient to produce this wonderful piece of prose, and a steadfast control of language and a discovery of language miraculously exceptional to her character and experience.
No other conclusion is possible to a student unless, like any Don, he prefers a sceptical hypothesis to the testimony of his eyes and the judgment of his common sense.