VI.—The Vision.
“How long I remained on my knees beside my father’s corpse I cannot tell. I was so utterly overwhelmed by grief and sorrow that I was plunged in a kind of lethargy which rendered my soul insensible to everything. Death, the loneliness of the forest, terrified me no longer; for solitude dwelt in my heart, where so short a time before all was bright and joyous. Dreams, illusions—those flowers of life that I have seen fall leaf by leaf, to be swept away by the storm; glory, happiness, the future—those angels of the heart who so lately entranced my soul with their mysterious music, had all departed, veiling with their drooping wings their sorrowful faces. All had gone—all. Nothing remained but a void, a horrible nothingness. But one feeble star watched yet in the midst of my night. The faint lamp of the inner sanctuary was not entirely extinguished; there came a ray from its expiring flame. Remembering the vow that my dying father had desired me to make, I invoked with a sort of desperation the Blessed Virgin, Comfortress of the Afflicted; and behold, suddenly—but can I tell what took place within me? Human words are inadequate to unveil the mysteries of God. I cannot explain, human ears cannot comprehend—yes, suddenly, in the midst of my darkness, my soul trembled, and a something seemed to pass through me like an impetuous wind, and my soul was carried over the troubled waters; then, rapid as the lightning that flashes through the storm-cloud, a light appeared in the darkness, in this chaos—a dazzling, superhuman light—and the tempest was appeased within me; a wondrous calm had entered my soul, and the divine light penetrated its most remote recesses and imparted a delicious tranquillity and peace, but such a peace as surpasses all comprehension; and through my closed eyelids I saw that a great light was before me. O my God! dare I tell what happened then? Would it not be profane to weaken thus the marvels of your power! I felt that something extraordinary, something supernatural, was taking place around me, and a mysterious emotion, a holy terror, that every mortal should feel at the approach of a Divine Being seized me. Like Moses, my soul said within me, ‘I will go and I will see this grand vision’; and my eyes opened, and I saw—it was not a dream—it was a reality, a miracle, from the right hand of the Most High. No; the eye of man has never seen, nor his ear heard, what was permitted that I should see and hear then. In the midst of a cloud of dazzling light, the Queen of heaven appeared, holding in her arms the divine Child. The ineffable splendor that enveloped her form was so brilliant that in comparison the sun is only a dim star; but this brilliancy, far from fatiguing the sight, refreshed it deliciously. Twelve stars formed her crown, the colors of the rainbow tinged her robes, while under her feet were clouds which reflected the colors of aurora and the setting sun, and behind their golden fringing myriads of angels were smiling and singing hymns which have no echo here below. And what I saw and heard was so real that all that I had heard and seen heretofore seemed like a vague, dark dream of night. The divine Virgin looked at me with an immortal smile, which was reflected no doubt from the lips of her divine Child on the day of his birth.
“She said to me: ‘Here I am, my son. I come because you called me. The help that I sent you is very near. Remember, my son—’ But, oh! what was I going to say! I am only permitted to reveal a few words of this celestial conversation, which relate to my deliverance. The rest is a secret between God and myself—sufficient to say these words have fixed my destiny.
“For a long time she spoke to me, and my soul, ravished, absorbed, transfigured, listened in unspeakable ecstasy to the divine harmony of her voice. It will vibrate eternally in my soul, and the torrents of tears that poured from my eyes were as refreshing as dear to my heart. At last the mysterious vision gradually vanished. Clouds, figures, angels, light, all had disappeared, and yet my soul invoked the celestial vision by ineffable sighs and moans.
“When at last I turned round, the help which had been miraculously promised to me had arrived. ‘Twas then, reverend father, that I perceived you near me. You know the rest.”
The next day there was great excitement among the little population of the neighborhood. The news of the miracle had spread rapidly, and a pious and devout crowd had gathered in the modest little church to assist at a solemn Mass celebrated by the holy missionary. More than one pitying look was turned during the ceremony toward the young officer, who knelt near the sanctuary, praying with an angelic fervor.
It is said that some time after, in another country, far, far beyond the sea, a young officer who had miraculously escaped death abandoned a brilliant future, and consecrated himself to God in a cloister. Was it he? No one has ever known positively.
If ever you pass by the old church of the Rivière Ouelle, don’t forget to stop a moment. You will see hanging in one of the side-chapels the antique ex-voto which recalls the souvenir of this miraculous event. The picture has no intrinsic value; but it is an old, old relic, that one loves to see, for it tells a thrilling story. Often travellers who come from distant lands stop before this dusty old picture, struck by the strange scene it represents. Oftentimes pious mothers stand before it with their little ones, and relate to them the wondrous legend; for the souvenir of this thrilling story is still vivid throughout the country.
[THE RECORDS OF A RUIN.]
The Palais Royal derives its chief historical interest from its association with the memory of Cardinal Richelieu. When it first attracted his notice by its situation, at once delightful and convenient, surrounded by richly planted gardens, and close to the Louvre and the then fashionable thoroughfare of the city, it was the property and residence of the Marquis d’Estrée. From this nobleman Richelieu purchased it in 1624. Soon, however, the elegant mansion, which had been abundantly spacious for the lords of d’Estrée with their innumerable retainers and long corteges of valets of every degree in the lengthy domestic hierarchy of those days, became too small for the growing importance of Louis XIII.’s magnificent minister.
Richelieu fell a conquest to the building and decorating mania prevalent at that period amongst princes and princely prelates; he threw down the walls of the Hôtel d’Estrée at the north end, pushed the house into the gardens, drove the gardens further out into the open space beyond, and pierced a way through into the street which was henceforth to be honored by bearing his name. Philippe of Champagne was invited to paint the ceilings and decorate the walls of the stupendous eminence whose cipher gleamed over all the doors, sometimes engrained in gold letters upon marble, sometimes curiously interlaced with emblematic figures, or emblazoned in the Richelieu arms. When all was complete, it was necessary to rechristen the dwelling which had been so enlarged and renovated as to be virtually a new edifice—the mansion which had been metamorphosed into a palace. After much serious consultation, and many times changing his mind, Richelieu decided that it should be called Palais Cardinal. A slab bearing these two words in large gold letters was accordingly placed over the gates of the ci-devant Hôtel d’Estrée. The next morning all Paris beheld it, and burst out laughing. The beaux-esprits of the sarcastic capital, with Balzac at their head, rushed in a body to the square in front of the new palace, and woke the echoes of the sleeping aristocratic gardens with their uproarious mirth; there they stood, armed with grammars, lexicons of divers tongues, and pens and portfolios, discussing with much solemnity the two inoffensive nouns on the marble slab; every now and then a wag from the crowd raising shouts of laughter by some ludicrous explanation of his own. Presently the gates were swung apart, and out drove the cardinal, and beheld the spectacle, so eminently gratifying to his sensitive pride, of “all Paris laughing at him.”
The scoffers gathered round his equipage, books and pen in hand, imploring him to enlighten their ignorance from the depths of his unfathomable erudition; how were they to parse the name of his eminence’s house? Palais and Cardinal—it was most perplexing to their weak intelligence. The conjunction was a turning upside down of all established rules—a topsy-turvy of principles and of all known precedents.
Separately, the two nouns were comprehensible, but joined together, what were they? Was it, mayhap, Greek or Latin construction, or was it taken from the legends of old Gaul French, or a specimen of some new and unknown tongue evolved from the universal genius of the minister? Richelieu, writhing under the pitiless hilarity of the tormentors, lent a deaf ear to them, and rode forth in scornful taciturnity; petitions from imaginary savants, who professed to be laboring in the mazes of a new grammar, flowed in the following days upon the unlucky author of the ungrammatical inscription, beseeching him to let the ignorant world into the secret of its proper parsing; the enemies of the cardinal, in fact, made capital out of his vanity to their heart’s content, but Richelieu’s pride was a match for them. The only answer he condescended to make was to point to the inscription over the Hôtel Dieu. The precedent was no doubt unanswerable; but vanity remained, nevertheless, more prominent in the imitation than either sense or grammar. It held its place, however, in spite of all attempts to laugh it down. The splendors of the Palais Cardinal have been enlarged upon in most of the memoirs and chronicles of that time. Richelieu, while busy making and mending quarrels between the king and the queen-mother, Marie de Medicis, governing France, and pulling the strings of all the governments of Europe, found time to devote to his hobby of enriching and beautifying his palace, overseeing in its most minute details the architectural part of the work, and directing the research after objects of art far and near for its adornment. While he was thus variously occupied, a knot of literary men were in the habit of meeting quietly once a week close to his palace gates, to read aloud their own works, and discuss the state of letters, whose horizon was just then beginning to brighten under the rising sun of the great Corneille. The meetings were held at the house of one of the circle; they were quite unostentatious, and aspired to no notoriety beyond their own circle; the members sought only to encourage each other by honest criticism, and by the emulation that comes of working in common towards a common end. Soon, however, these weekly gatherings became talked about; courtiers heard of them, and begged to be allowed to assist at them. By-and-by Richelieu came to hear of them; his curiosity was excited, first from a political point of view—he feared the so-called réunions littéraires might be a covert for something more dangerous; he was not slow, however, to find out his mistake, and to detect in the modest literary club a germ of future greatness; he expressed his desire that the meetings should be held henceforth at the Palais Cardinal, and under his immediate auspices. The members protested; they were not worthy of so distinguished an honor, etc.; but Richelieu assured them that he saw in their modest labors the promised fulfilment of his long-cherished desire “to raise the French language from the ranks of barbarous tongues, and to cleanse it from the impurities which it had contracted in the mouth of the people and on the lips of courtiers.” The little band of writers yielded reluctantly to the pompous summons so flatteringly sent forth against their independence, and the Académie Française was founded. Louis XIII. gave it letters-patent, and became its chief patron, while Richelieu was named President. The number of academicians was limited to forty. Amongst the great and gifted men who figure at the birth of this modern Areopagus, destined to be glorified in its after-career by so many brilliant members, Pierre Corneille stands out conspicuous. The young poet found in Richelieu a kind and munificent patron, until he had the ill-luck to wound his vanity in one of its most vulnerable points. Not content with being a potentate, a warrior, a financier, and innumerable other things besides, the insatiable cardinal aspired to being a poet—a disastrous form of ambition which gave a cruel handle to his enemies, and furnished them with many a shaft of ridicule wherewith to pierce his thin-skinned susceptibilities. Richelieu, however, pursued his way in serene self-confidence, despising the ignorance and jealousy of the vulgar herd, and periodically bringing forth the offspring of his genius in the shape of plays and poems. One set of verses with which he was particularly satisfied he handed in MS. to Corneille, desiring to secure his approval before launching them on the sea of public criticism, and modestly requesting the young poet to overlook them and make any alteration that he thought advisable. Corneille had not graduated long enough in the school of courtiers to know what this flattering request was worth, so he set about complying with it conscientiously, pruning and altering with his fine critical pen as it ran along the course of the ministerial poem. Richelieu’s amazement on beholding his masterpiece thus audaciously overhauled was only equalled by his indignation. Corneille, instead of falling on his knees and crying peccavi when he saw his mistake, proceeded with infantine naïveté to argue the case with the wrathful poet, and prove to him that every correction had been called for by some glaring fault. This did not mend matters. Such insane honesty met with the fate it deserved—the fate that from time immemorial it has met with in similar circumstances. The scene between Gil Blas and the bishop was enacted in the library of the Palais Cardinal between Corneille and Richelieu, and certainly Gil Bias was not more astonished by the effect of his candid criticism on the bishop’s long-winded sermon than was the young academician by the thunderbolt which fell from his patron’s brow on perusing his MS. revised and corrected. He was dismissed peremptorily, and withdrew cursing his own stupidity, and vowing that never again would he be entrapped into the folly of believing in the common sense of a patron. Shortly after this mishap, while wandering about in listless pursuit of an object at Rouen, his native place, he fell in accidentally with a gentleman who had read his first poetic efforts, and discerned through their faults and trammels the promise of true genius that lay beneath. “Why do you waste and hamper your talent in the threadbare conventionalities of French art?” inquired M. de Chalan. “You want a higher and a wider scope; read Guillen de Castro, and there you will find a subject worthy of you, and which will bring out your powers with a fire and force unsuspected by yourself.”
“Unfortunately, I am not acquainted with Spanish,” replied the young man.
“But I am,” returned M. de Chalan, “and, if you like, I will teach it to you.”
Corneille, having nothing else to do, accepted the proposal, and to this chance circumstance the world apparently owes The Cid. That masterly composition came upon the dramatic world of France—hitherto fed on threadbare conventionalities, as de Chalan had well said—like a revelation, and raised such a tempest of senseless vituperation and malignant opposition as has no parallel in the history of literary cyclones. Richelieu, who was far too good a judge not to see the rare merits of the poem, had not the magnanimity to proclaim his opinion, and thus quell the storm, but fell in with the rioters, and was one of the loudest in crying down the new tragedy. He could not forgive the young poet who, without his patronage, nay, in spite of his own disgrace, had succeeded in climbing to the topmost round of the ladder. Corneille’s star rose steady and clear above the stormy waters, and he lived to see it shine out in glorious lustre through the clouds of envy and hostile criticism. His career was one of unparalleled triumph, till the appearance of his last work, Pertharite, written in 1653. It was played on the boards of the Palais Cardinal theatre, that had echoed to so many of his previous triumphs, and was received with a coldness that was equivalent to condemnation. Corneille saw in this isolated defeat the ruin of his poetic fame; he became possessed by a morbid despair, flung away his lyre, and gave up the theatre in disgust. During the interval of depression that followed this fancied humiliation, he devoted himself to the translation of Thomas à Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ, sacrificing, as he said himself, “his own reputation to the glory of a sovereign author.”
The Palais Cardinal, during Richelieu’s multifarious reign, was the theatre of many boisterous scenes, dark intrigues, and events otherwise important than these literary skirmishes that occasionally engage the thoughts of ambitious statesmen. Its propinquity to the Louvre enabled him to keep his lynx eyes on the busy hive of friends, foes, and tools who gathered round the king; to frustrate the petty plots of courtiers; and forestall the schemes of faction by his ubiquitous presence. Nor are comic chapters lacking in the annals of the Palais Cardinal at this period. One related by the sprightly Duchesse de Chevreuse, in a letter to Mme. de Motteville, is grotesque enough to be worth recording, as characteristic of the cardinal and the court. Richelieu, it was said, had dared to raise his eyes to the queen, then in the full bloom of her youth and beauty. As might be expected, the unwarrantable presumption inspired Anne of Austria with no gentler feeling than contempt, not unmixed with disgust. She gathered up her purple robes, as she might have done at the touch of a viper, and shook them, and passed on with a shudder and a shrug. But her volatile friend, Mme. de Chevreuse, whose rôle was fun at any price, thought the cardinal’s love too good a joke not to be turned to account. She proposed playing him a trick which would have the double advantage of giving herself and her royal mistress an hour’s good fun, and of making Richelieu, whom she hated with a woman’s inventive hate, appear thoroughly ridiculous. “Let me tell him from myself,” she entreated, “that your majesty is only inexorable because you do not believe in the sincerity of his love; but that, if he can give you proof of it, you are open to conviction. I will propose that he come here by the private way, dressed as a harlequin, and dance the saraband before you one of these evenings, assuring him, if he does this, you will believe in the reality of his protestations.” Anne was young, her life had not much sunshine in its splendor, and the demon of frolic which so madly possessed her friend was not without its power over her. She consented that the outrageous joke should be played off on her gloomy swain. The duchess accordingly informed him that the queen was passionately fond of the saraband, and had often expressed a desire to see it danced by one whose dignified deportment and elastic figure were so admirably adapted to bring out the peculiar characteristics of the spirited and stately dance, and that nothing would gratify and flatter her more than to see his eminence yield to this fancy. It was necessary, she added, that he should be dressed as a harlequin, in order to bring out in all their perfection the picturesque points of the dance. Richelieu bit at this outlandish bait, and it was agreed on a given night he would roam to the Louvre, and disport himself in the aforesaid manner for the edification of the queen, he being alone in one room, while her majesty looked on at the performance from behind a screen in an adjoining one; a musician, concealed also from view, was to accompany the performance on the violin. The duchess, who had not bargained for her own share in the sport, took care not to be deprived of it, but stood beside the queen, peeping through the screen, while the haughty statesman, bedizened in the variegated costume of harlequin, “with bells on his fingers, and bells on his toes,” and jingling from his comical fool’s cap, tripped it on the light fantastic toe. Mme. de Chevreuse describes the scene with the mischievous glee of a schoolboy: herself and the queen squeezing each other’s hands, and terrified lest one explosive burst should betray them and suddenly cut short the performance; the musician convulsed in another corner, scratching away frantically at his fiddle to drown the irrepressible laughter of the trio; while Richelieu, the proud, the grave, the vindictive and all-powerful Richelieu, capered backwards and forwards on the polished floor, snapping his fingers at each rapid pirouette, stamping his heel and pointing his toe as the figures of the saraband demanded. The performance over, he donned his cloak, and made his way back discreetly to the Palais Cardinal. No time was lost in recapitulating the farce to the court, and the merriment that it provoked may be readily imagined. But who might laugh with impunity at Richelieu? The true motive of the unseemly burlesque to which he had lent himself was soon made known to the hero, and terrible was the vengeance that awaited its authors. He bided awhile, and then began that series of calumnies and persecutions that poisoned so many years of the young queen’s life. Richelieu had insinuated himself into the confidence of Louis XIII., and his influence over him was boundless. This tremendous weapon he used against the queen with cruel ingenuity. He contrived to implicate her in the odious and diabolical conspiracy of the arch-traitor de Chalais; accused her of having plotted to dethrone and murder the king, with a view to putting Gaston d’Orléans, his brother, on the throne, and marrying him. When Louis XIII. brutally challenged his wife to vindicate herself from the twofold criminal charge, she replied, with spirituelle disdain: “I had too little to gain by the exchange.” It is more than probable that Louis never seriously suspected Anne of Austria of having had any share in the guilt laid to her charge by Richelieu; but the calumny did its work efficiently in another way: it cut at the root of her affection for her husband and of his trust in her—it chilled and alienated them for years. The Duchesse de Chevreuse, accused, with some show of truth, of having conspired with Gaston d’Orléans to dethrone the king, was exiled from France. Richelieu followed up the advantage of his first attack by accusing the queen of keeping up a correspondence with the enemies of the state. Anne, too proud to justify herself, imprudently paraded her contempt for Richelieu’s malevolent intrigues by openly and on every occasion showing her love for her own family, at that time at war with France; expressions full of the warmth of natural affection were made a handle of by her enemies, construed into treason against the king and the state. The birth of Louis XIV. (1638) brought about a partial reconciliation between her and the husband who had insulted and treated her with systematic neglect. But Richelieu’s sway remained unshaken to the end. It was entirely an intellectual sway; the heart had no share in it on either side. The minister hated the king, and the king hated the minister; their natures were essentially antagonistic, and mutual interest alone held them together. Louis, hearing that he was about to be freed from the bondage under which he had chafed so long—that the summons had come for Richelieu—went in haste to the Palais Cardinal to receive the adieux of the dying minister. The interview between them was short and utterly devoid of pathos; no shade of tenderness had entered into the bond that was about to be dissolved. The breaking up of it was simply a matter of business. The king left the death-chamber of the man to whom he owed all the glory of his reign, without a tear in his eye or a passing emotion in his heart, and paced the adjoining room with a steady step and satisfied air, while a smile, amounting at intervals to a suppressed laugh, was visible on his features. When all was over, and the signal came forth that Richelieu was no more, he exclaimed tranquilly: “Voilà un grand politique de mort!”[42] (1642.) A few months later, he himself had joined the great politician in another world.
Richelieu, whose more than royal munificence of state had roused the jealous susceptibilities of the king, atoned for it by bequeathing his beautiful palace, with its accumulated treasures of art and industry, to his unthankful master. Anne of Austria inaugurated her reign as regent by taking up her abode under the roof of the man who had been to the last day of his life her implacable enemy. Immediately after the death of Louis XIII., she came to the Palais Cardinal with the little king and his brother, the Duc d’Anjou. The theatre on which Richelieu had lavished so much taste and wealth was included in the bequest, though he had often expressed his intention of presenting it to the nation, and endowing it for the benefit of rising dramatic artists.
Notwithstanding that Anne of Austria had good reason to execrate the cardinal for his injustice and malignity to herself personally, she did full honor to his merits as a statesman; and years after his death, when at the zenith of her popularity as regent, she said once, looking up at a portrait of Richelieu which hung in the state-saloon of the Palais Cardinal: “Were that man alive now, he would be more powerful than ever.” It was a generous and exhaustive tribute to the memory of those services which had consolidated the monarchy in France, and made her own position what it was.
The name of Palais Cardinal, which, despite its equivocal grammar, was appropriate while Richelieu inhabited it, ceased to be so when it passed into the possession of the crown. Anne was advised to change it, but refused to do so, at the solicitation of the Duchesse d’Aiguillon, who besought her to retain a name which so honorably associated Richelieu with the glorious reign of Louis XIII. Public opinion, however, prevailed before long, and the palace was henceforth by common consent designated as the Palais Royal. With its new name began a new era in its annals.
Anne has been compared by some of her admirers and biographers to Blanche of Castille; but, while rendering full justice to the queenly qualities of the Austro-Spanish regent, we own that the comparison strikes us as being suggested rather by their circumstances than by the characters of the two queen-mothers who each played so remarkable a part in the history of their epochs. Blanche of Castille made it her first and paramount ambition to render her son worthy of that imperishable crown which awaited him in the Kingdom that is not of this world: Anne of Austria aimed at securing for hers the supremacy of earthly glory—at making him a great and powerful king. In each case, as it mostly happens, the omnipotent mother’s will worked out its own ideal. The minority of the future Grand Monarque opened in troubled times; the elements of the Fronde were fermenting deep down under the apparently smooth surface, and the fêtes, and masquerades, and merry-making with which the regent celebrated her tardy accession to sovereign power were soon followed by more exciting events. Mazarin had succeeded to Richelieu—oily, pliant Mazarin, so zealous in his endeavors to keep well with all parties; flattering the ambitious hopes of Gaston d’Orléans, and laying himself out with elaborate zeal to please the regent and secure her confidence; yielding outwardly, with alluring grace, to every caprice of her soft despotic sway; and pulling dexterously the complicated strings of the malcontents, Condé, and Conti, and Longueville, and many other illustrious personages who chafed uneasily under the sceptre of the foreigner; benevolent and outspoken, but irreclaimably despotic. Mazarin, in his desire to please all parties whom it was of use to propitiate, and make money plentiful where it was needed for his purposes, had gone on taxing till he raised the devil in the then much enduring people. Everything was ready for an outbreak. The Te Deum after the victory of Lens gave the signal for it. It was a burning day in August, in the year 1648. The city had turned out to join in the jubilee, and, amidst the inspiriting chorus of trumpets, and cannons, and bells that sent exulting chimes from many belfries, such small matters as hunger and empty hearths and misery in its multiform moods and tenses were forgotten for a moment. But it needed only a touch to rouse the sleeping furies in the hearts of the hungry, rejoicing crowd. Broussel was seized by the troops, who had just played their part in the gay thanksgiving, and carried off to prison—Broussel, the venerable magistrate, the people’s sturdy friend; who had fought their battles over and over again against mighty Mazarin himself; who had stood by them and upheld their rights in the teeth of the foreign queen and her foreign minister; Broussel, whom the people called notre père—were they going to see him seized by soldiers, and carried off before their eyes? No; they would stand by him as he had stood by them. The last notes of the Te Deum were still ringing over the city, when up leaped the shouts of revolution and the cry “To arms!” and chased away their holy echoes. The mob surrounded the carriage in which Broussel was placed, guarded on all sides by armed men; they were beaten back and trodden down; the people returned to the charge undaunted, and finally bore down on the Palais Royal, vociferating unmannerly threats, and demanding Broussel: “Give us Broussel, or we will burn down your house about you!”—pleasant sounds for the queen to hear beneath her windows! Anne of Austria had not foreseen this bursting up of the vulgar depths over which she had hitherto ridden in safe and scornful unconcern; nor, in all probability, had Mazarin. He was with the queen in that sumptuous apartment called the queen’s boudoir, whose one broad window, mounted in a frame of massive silver wrought like a brooch, looked out upon the court; the regent paced the room in feverish excitement, her face flushed, her hands, alternately crossed on her breast with an air of stern resolve, moving in the animated and expressive play that was familiar to her; every now and then she would stand in the embrasure of the rich and cunningly carved window, and cast a glance of mingled scorn and defiance on the vociferous rabble below. They catch sight of her, and greet her with ominous signs and gestures. They see in her cool courage a taunt that rouses them to desperation. All unarmed as they are, except with stones and sticks and such like unmilitary weapons, they are ready to give battle to her troops. At this crisis, when the Fronde was born, a young man named Gondi starts to the surface, shooting up from the dark horizon like a glittering rocket. He is endowed with that peculiar kind of alcoholic eloquence which appears to be in all climes and ages the apanage of demagogues. Gondi had already made himself conspicuous as a discontented spirit whom it would be well either to crush or to conciliate; and Mazarin would in all likelihood have adopted the latter plan but for the fact of his jealousy having been aroused by the queen’s kindly notice of the young firebrand; he foresaw a possible rival in Gondi’s ardor and talents, and forthwith decreed his ruin. Gondi was just now making himself popular by declaiming on the wrongs of the people, and denouncing the seizure of Broussel as iniquitous and tyrannical. There was some talk of sending a despatch to the regent to demand his release; Mazarin caught at this opportunity of lowering Gondi in the estimation of the queen by placing him in the position of a leader of the Fronde, so he sent word to him indirectly to come to the Palais Royal and present the people’s petition. Gondi, who saw in the mission an occasion for distinguishing himself with all parties, accepted it. He told the people that he undertook to ask, and pledged himself to obtain, the liberation of Broussel within an hour. They followed him with enthusiastic cheers to the Palais Royal, where he was admitted to the presence of the queen. She received him with flattering promptitude, unconscious of the motive of his visit. Anne was in no mood for compromises or concessions; the rebellious attitude of her subjects had steeled her heart for the moment against the demands of clemency, and when Gondi, announcing himself the bearer of the demands of the people, asked for the liberation of the magistrate, her anger broke out into violence: “Give up Broussel!” she cried, with a sardonic laugh, “I will strangle him first with my own hands!” And clenching those beautiful little hands that have been sung by every poet of her day, she went close up to Gondi, and shook them in his face. The deputy, confounded, stood rooted to the spot, and uttered not a word; when Anne, abruptly turning away, said, with a quiet sarcasm the more chilling from its sudden contrast with her foregoing vehemence: “Go and rest, Monsieur de Gondi; you have worked hard.”
He left her presence, and carried his perplexity to Mazarin. But Mazarin, who had led him into the dilemma of playing false to the people and vexing the queen, coldly declined interfering, and bowed the unsuccessful diplomatist out. Gondi, betrayed and baffled, left the Palais Royal with an oath that the morrow would see him master of Paris. When a lad of eighteen, he had written an essay on the Conjuration de Fiesque, which drew from Richelieu the remark: “Voilà un esprit dangereux.”[43] The day had come when the fiery young author was to fulfil this sagacious prophecy. The future Cardinal de Retz had entered the Palais Royal an ambitious courtier: he left it an infuriated frondeur. The next day Paris was bristling with barricades—its traditional mode of expressing its irritated feelings.
This day, famous as la journée des barricades, saw Mathieu Molé appear in one of the finest attitudes that have marked his noble and honorable career.
While still young, Molé had risen to the brilliant and perilous position of Premier Président du Parlement de Paris by the mere force of talent and rigid integrity of character; he had never courted the patronage of a minister, nor accepted a favor from one; he had lent no base compliance to Richelieu’s despotism or to Mazarin’s more captivating rule; he had remained the staunch friend of the heterodox Abbé de St. Cyran, holding faster by him in his disgrace and imprisonment than in the days of his transient popularity, persecuting Richelieu to obtain his pardon, dodging the inaccessible minister late and early, waylaying him in all possible and impossible places with the same persistent cry, “Give me back my friend St. Cyran,” till at last Richelieu, worn out with his importunity, seized the president by the arm one day, and said: “This M. Molé is a worthy magistrate, but the most obstinate pleader in France,” and gave him back his Abbé de St. Cyran. This was the man who was chosen to head a second embassy from the people to the Palais Royal. The regent was aware of his coming, and received him with cold civility; but her high spirit was slightly subdued since the preceding day; she had passed a sleepless night waiting for the events of the morrow, and was disposed to admit the possibility of coming to a compromise with her unruly citizens. Mathieu Molé was not an orator in the classical sense of the word, but he had that sort of eloquence that stirs the hearts of men. It achieved a victory, in the first place, over the angry mob by making them listen to reason and take a dispassionate view of their position, and now it gained an equally important one with the regent, inducing her to yield a reluctant consent to the liberation of Broussel. The barricades were lowered, and Paris gave a joyous welcome to its friend. But the blaze thus rashly kindled was not to be so quickly quenched. Anne of Austria eventually conquered both the Fronde and the less violent but equally dangerous pretensions of Mazarin, who, succumbing with a fairly good grace before the indomitable courage and inflexible firmness of the regent, renounced the ambition of making her his tool, and was satisfied with being her right hand in governing the state. How high his ambition soared may be guessed from the following trait. Once, when conversing with Anne of Austria, emboldened by that gracious abandon of manner which made the haughty Spaniard so charming in her amiable moods, Mazarin alluded to the boyish passion of the king for his niece, Marie Mancini, and observed how deeply he would have deplored it had his majesty, yielding to the infatuation of the hour, committed the chivalrous folly of marrying her. Anne of Austria drew herself up with all the pride of her Castilian blood, and answered: “Had my son been capable of such an unworthiness, I should have placed myself with his brother at the head of the nation against him and against you.” The proud daughter of kings, who, by the strength of her solitary will, could govern a nation and cow the daring leaders of the Fronde, was in person as tender and delicate as a child; her health was fragile, and her skin so sensitive that it was difficult to find any cambric soft enough to clothe without hurting her. Mazarin, alluding once to this Sybarite delicacy of temperament, declared to the regent that her purgatory in the next world would be to sleep in Holland sheets. Yet, when Anne was attacked by the cruel malady which ended her days, no Roman matron could have endured it with greater fortitude. Her piety, which had guarded her youth through the alluring temptations of the court, despite the neglect and rudeness of a morose and heartless husband, sustained her in the protracted tortures of her last illness. Shortly before she expired, Louis XIV. was kneeling by the bedside of his mother, weeping bitterly, and covering her hand with his tears; she drew it gently away, and, looking for a moment at that hand which had been her chief woman’s vanity, she murmured: “They are beginning to swell; it is time to go!” Some historians have flippantly taxed Anne with having systematically kept her son in the background, and sacrificed him selfishly to the prolongation of her own power; but Louis’ passionate grief at her death, and his lifelong gratitude to the memory of his mother, sufficiently repudiate this charge. Louis XIV. never resided at the Palais Royal after her death; when necessity obliged him to remain in Paris, he occupied the Louvre.
The characters and careers of Richelieu and Mazarin furnish one of those points of comparison which history is so fond of. Richelieu was undeniably the more brilliant statesman of the two; he was endowed with greater originality and a larger breadth of view; he left a deeper impress on his time, and his remote action on France was more enduring; but if the achievement of peace be more valuable to a people than the prosecution of war, Mazarin has paramount claims on the gratitude of his country. The Treaty of Westphalia, and the Peace of the Pyrenees, are two monuments raised by Mazarin to his own fame that out-top all the dazzling trophies of his predecessors, and establish a nobler claim to the admiration of the civilized world than all Richelieu’s victorious accomplishments in war. Both statesmen were pre-eminently gifted with that power of reading men which is so serviceable an agent in the hands of those who are called to govern. It was this electric instinct which prompted Richelieu to single out Mazarin from the crowd as the man best fitted to be his successor—a choice which the young Italian justified by carrying out with unswerving fixity of purpose the vast unfinished designs of the patron whom death had cut short in the midst of his work. Mazarin, on the other hand, gave a striking proof of this same subtle insight when he said of the young king, then a mere boy in his mother’s leading-strings, and as yet having done nothing to reveal the future grand monarch: “There is stuff enough in him to make four kings and one honest man.” Both ministers set their influence and power above the interest and authority of the sovereign; but both labored with unflinching steadiness of aim to raise the monarchy to a height of splendor it had never before reached, and was not destined long to retain. Both carried their soutane with more of martial dignity than priestly gravity—that soutane of which Richelieu boasted: “I mow down everything, I upset everything, and then I cover it all with my red soutane.” Both made it the business of their lives while at the head of the state to humble Austria and Spain, and both succeeded. The marriage of Louis XIV. with the Infanta of Spain was one of Mazarin’s most successful diplomatic acts; he foresaw in this union the probable succession of the Bourbons to the crown of Charles Quint. But alongside of his many services to his country, there is one act of his that goes far to annul them—this was his introduction of gambling into France. To this deplorable importation the Abbé St. Pierre traces, not perhaps without a shade of exaggeration, but with palpable logic, the rapid decadence of the national morals and character; he says that Mazarin inoculated the young king with the passion for games of hazard, in order to keep his mind aloof from things in which it became him better to be interested, and thereby to prevent his interference in the affairs of state; the regent, in her turn, became smitten with the novel mania, and would spend whole nights with her court playing cards. Mazarin himself was an incorrigible gambler, and often devoted to this passion the hours he should have given to sleep after his day’s arduous task. He was looked upon more as a player of doubtful honesty—“un joueur plus que suspect”; but “who allowed others in turn to cheat him, provided they did it cleverly,” St. Pierre tells us; and he goes on to say: “The young nobles, first at court, and then all over the country, followed his example, and took to card-playing; they forsook the athletic sports and manly amusements which had delighted their fathers, and gave themselves up to this enervating and ruinous passion; they became weaker, more ignorant, and less polished; women caught the fever, and grew to respect themselves less, and to be less respected.” Mazarin’s avarice was as insatiable as his ambition; he died colossally rich; but during his last illness, seized with remorse, he made over all his unjust gains to the king, who, of course, refused to accept them, and the cardinal then divided his vast wealth between Louis, the queen, Condé, Turenne, his friend Louis de Haro, and several members of his own family. He bequeathed a large sum for the foundation of a college, which he also endowed with his splendid library, recollected after its dispersion by the Frondeurs at immense trouble and expense. He wished this college to be called Collége des quatre nations, destining it chiefly for the education of young men belonging to the four provinces annexed to France during his ministry—Pignerol, Alsace, Roussillon, and Artois. Le Tellier, who was his executor, punctually obeyed all his instructions except the last-named. By desire of the king, it was called Collége Mazarin, which was to become the magnificent Bibliothèque Royale of to-day.
Henrietta Maria of England occupied the Palais Royal in 1644. The marriage of her daughter Henrietta to Philip of Orleans, then Duc d’Anjou, was celebrated here with great pomp, and here the young princess held a brilliant court for a few years, while her mother dwelt in the cloistered retreat of Chaillot. The thread of this bright young life was suddenly snapped asunder. Bossuet’s “O night of horror!” came like a thunderbolt from a summer sky, scattering the volatile court, and spreading the news of its loss over the whole of France. Then came the Regency, which was to add a chapter of such dark and lamentable notoriety to the history of the Palais Royal. The nephew of Louis XIV. inherited all the vices and foibles of his race without any of their redeeming qualities. His selfish, easy-going bonhomie has been sometimes lauded as clemency; but it may more justly be considered a combination of weakness and cynical contempt for the claims of justice. When the enraged populace gathered before his palace, dragging three naked corpses—the victims of their legitimate but misplaced anger—along with them, the regent looked out at the tempestuous scene, and remarked coolly: “The mob are right; the wonder is they bear so much from us.” And truly it was a wonder; and if the Revolution of ‘93 did not break out under the lawless and exasperating rule of the Regency, it must only have been because, as St. Simon explained it, “three things are necessary to make a revolution: leaders, brains, and funds, none of which were to be found in France at this period.” The petits soupers de la Régence, which have acquired an infamous celebrity through all the chronicles of the time, can have no place in our sketch.
The visit of Peter the Great broke in on the luxurious and effeminate court of the Palais Royal like a Spartan appearing suddenly in the midst of a banquet of Sybarites. Peter, who had “civilized his people by cutting their heads off,” set his heart on visiting France during the preceding reign; but Louis XIV., partly from an insurmountable antipathy to the semi-barbarous autocrat, partly from political motives, had signified to his brother of all the Russias that his absence would be more agreeable than his presence. Peter was compelled, therefore, to wait until the Grand Monarque had rejoined his ancestors before gratifying his desire to visit Paris. The regent, far from making any difficulty about receiving him, made the most sumptuous preparations for the Northern reformer, and invited him to be his guest at the Palais Royal. But the hardy Muscovite could not conceal his contempt for the epicurean habits of his host, and horrified him by declaring that he never slept on anything softer than a camp-stretcher, which he carried with him in all his peregrinations, and used on the field of battle and in his own palace, and which he insisted now on substituting for the luxurious couch prepared for him. Altogether, the ways of Peter bewildered the nephew of Louis XIV. He was up with the birds, and flying over the city to see things and people that the latter would never have dreamed of calling his attention to. He expressed a wish to see Mme. de Maintenon, then living in dignified retreat at St. Cyr. Her Solidity, as Louis XIV. had dubbed her, pleaded ill-health as an excuse for declining the honor and fatigue of an official reception. Peter, therefore, set off one morning and scared the learned and sedate ladies of St. Cyr out of their propriety by requesting to be shown at once to Mme. de Maintenon’s room. On arriving there, he entered without knocking, walked straight to the bed, pushed aside the curtains, and, sitting down beside the astonished lady, entered brusquely into conversation. The Sorbonne he also honored with one of these unceremonious visitations; perceiving a statue of Richelieu in one of the galleries, he rushed up to it, and, clasping the marble in his arms, exclaimed: “O incomparable man! would that thou wert still alive, and I would give thee one-half of my empire to teach me how to govern the other!”
But with all this rough and somewhat ostentatious disregard of etiquette, Peter had a keen sense of what was due to his imperial mightiness, and, with the caprice of a despot, could assert it trenchantly enough when he thought fit. The regent invited a number of the most illustrious men of the day to meet his eccentric guest at a banquet at the Palais Royal. As they were about to enter the dining-room, little Louis XV. stood back to let the czar pass first; Peter was unwilling to take precedence of the King of France, and equally reluctant to walk behind a child, so he wittily solved the difficulty by catching up the small monarch in his arms and carrying him to his seat.
The regent closed his ignoble life at the Palais Royal in 1723. His son Louis, Duke of Orleans, succeeded him. This prince brought his young bride, Jeanne de Bade, there soon after he took possession of his ancestral home, and lost her after a brief and blissful union. At the time of her death, Louis XV. was lying mortally sick, it was believed, at Metz, and thither, in the frenzy of his grief, the bereaved husband flew, and, going straight to the room of the dying king, demanded admittance; the attendants expostulated, but Louis pushed them aside, and kicked in the door to announce his loss to the kinsman who himself lay battling with death. He survived Jeanne some years, but never recovered her loss; he led a solitary and desolate life, and gave himself up to works of benevolence and the study of oriental languages. He became a perfect adept in the Arabic, Hebrew, and Greek tongues, and never appeared at court as a widower except when the imperious etiquette of Versailles occasionally demanded it. He died in 1752. His son’s reign at the Palais Royal is chiefly remarkable by his having inoculated his own children with small-pox; the daring experiment, which was performed by Tronchin, summoned from Geneva for the purpose, was crowned with success. Paris, transported with joy, made bonfires in the Place in front of the palace, and for a time the rash and fortunate father was the hero of toast and song. Another event which signalized his occupation of Richelieu’s palace was the destruction of the theatre by fire (1763). The duke rebuilt it on a somewhat larger but infinitely less gorgeous scale as to decoration. He was an enlightened patron of art, and especially kind in assisting young men whose talent was struggling to make head against poverty. He divined the genius of the young poet Le Fèvre, and encouraged him both by personal notice and by liberal gifts. He was so pleased with Le Fèvre’s tragedy Zuma that immediately on its appearance he bestowed a pension of 1,200 crowns on the poet out of his privy purse; and on the latter’s asking what services were expected from him in return for this munificence, the duke answered: “It obliges you to work henceforth more ardently for your own fame—nothing more.” This prince, though he allowed himself to be drawn, to a certain extent, into the fashionable follies of the court, had inherited from his father many sterling and beautiful qualities. His benevolence was unbounded; but it was only after his death that his real character was revealed, so carefully did he shun everything like ostentation in the exercise of his favorite virtue. It was then discovered that two-thirds of his immense revenue had been spent upon the poor, in the payment of pensions to artists, men of letters, widows, etc.; some granted in his own name, others in the name of one or other of his ancestors. His condescending kindness towards his dependents endeared him to all who approached him. A chamberlain coming one day to announce to him the death of a most inefficient and tiresome valet, who had been twenty years in the duke’s service, “Poor fellow!” sighed the duke, “for twenty years he served me, and for twenty years he worried me!” “Why did you keep him, monseigneur?” inquired a bystander. “Why, he would never have found a place if I had turned him away,” replied the prince, and then added: “We must see now that his wife and children are provided for.” Was it not Sophocles who said, “Only a great soul knows how much glory there is in being kind”? What a germ of true glory there lies buried in this quiet little trait of Louis d’Orléans!
The death of this magnificent patron, forbearing master, and generous father of the poor makes way for another prince of the House of Orleans who has earned a louder but less enviable notoriety on the world-stage of history. Almost immediately on his becoming master of the Palais Royal, the new Duc d’Orléans had the vexation of seeing the theatre so recently rebuilt by his father burnt down again. Discouraged, no doubt, by this precedent, he refused to rebuild it at his own expense, and applied to the city of Paris for the necessary funds; but that body declined to furnish them. The Comédie Française was consequently transferred to the Porte St. Martin, where a building was erected in the space of six weeks by Lenoir. It was not till many years later that Richelieu’s beautiful temple to dramatic art was rebuilt by a prince of the House of Orleans, to be henceforth hired out on lease to enterprising managers.
We are told that in his early youth Joseph Philippe d’Orléans gave promise of an estimable manhood. How wofully this promise was belied by his after-life and shameful and tragic death we know. He was born at St. Cloud in 1747, and married, in 1769, the only daughter of the Duc de Penthièvre—a creature endowed with every charm of person and mind to make her at once reverenced and loved. Philippe was tall, slight, and well proportioned, his features finely cut and lit up with vivacity and intelligence, his manners gracious and dignified. Such is the portrait handed down to us of him in those early days before the shadow of coming infamy had obscured the picture. He fell soon into habits of unbridled dissipation; but, so long as he confined himself to this, to mad charioteering pranks on the boulevards, and aerial escapades in balloons, with boon companions as mad as himself, the people looked on in contemptuous disapproval. It was necessary, in order to stimulate this passive feeling to one of direct antagonism, that he should interfere with the popular pleasure and convenience. This he did by turning his broad and richly planted garden into a huge shop, thus depriving the bourgeois and idlers of Paris of their accustomed resort on the sultry days and long mellow evenings of summer. His royal highness had contrived very soon to compromise a fortune more than royal in its extent; and, in order to replenish his coffers, he decided to cut down his ancestral chestnuts, and build up in their place long rows of shops, to be hired out at a high rent to tradespeople. The fashionables and the bourgeois, and, more important than all in a Frenchman’s eyes, the children, were thus driven to promenade under a stone colonnade, instead of enjoying the green shade of Richelieu’s groves, where the buzz of a multifarious bazaar had replaced the cooing of doves and the twitter of singing-birds. By-and-by we see the thermometer rising from resentful dislike to fierce hatred. Philip is smitten with Anglomania, and spends his time and, what is of more consequence to Paris, his money in London. He wears only London-made coats, drives English horses, hires English grooms, altogether affects the ways and manners of outre-mer, to the great disgust of Versailles and the boulevards. Wretched Philip! well had it been for him and for Versailles had he dwelt content in these puerile masquerades and self-degrading follies! But under the frivolous surface there lay a substratum of cruel vindictiveness, a bristling self-love, that was quick to see an affront, and implacable in avenging it. Marie Antoinette had the dire ill-luck to offend her disreputable cousin of Orleans. When her brother, the Archduke Maximilian, came to see her at Versailles, the queen, then in her twentieth year, very naturally desired to see as much as possible of this dear companion of her childhood during his short stay; so she dispensed, as far as she could, with court ceremonial, remaining chiefly in her private apartments with her brother. It did not probably occur to her that, in omitting to invite the Duc d’Orléans to share this sisterly intercourse, she was inflicting a wound that would one day distil its deadly poison upon herself and those dearest to her. So it was, however. Philip never forgave what he considered a slight, and bitterly did he make the thoughtless young queen repent having inflicted it.
The gardens of the Palais Royal, which had given rise to his first unpopularity, were destined to be the scene of the upheaving of the revolution. All was ready, only waiting for a bold hand to give a push to the pendulum and set it going. Camille Desmoulins did it. It was the 12th of July, 1789. Yesterday the great crisis had been prepared, and to-day it burst. Necker, the universal genius whose advent to the ministry was hailed as the panacea for all discords, and difficulties, and threatened dangers; Necker, the “Achilles of computation,” whose, vigorous hand and capacious brain were to seize France, tottering on the brink of some invisible gulf, and steady her; Necker, to whom the timid, apathetic king, and the proud, valiant queen, had all but gone on their knees to induce him to come and redeem the treasury by “swift arithmetic,” and save the government and—yes, even at this date they must have included it in the salvations to be accomplished by Necker—the throne; Necker, who had yielded to the royal suppliants with these words: “I yield in obedience to duty, but with the certainty that I am doomed”—Necker had been dismissed. On the 11th of July, Louis XVI. signed the letter imploring the minister to leave the kingdom “at once and without éclat.” When his secretary objected that Necker’s extraordinary popularity was a strong presumption against his obeying this last command; that he had only to show himself, and the people would rise en masse to prevent his flight, Louis replied: “I know Necker; he will guard us against himself; he will obey me scrupulously, and fly without éclat.” And he was right. The minister received the letter at three in the afternoon, and quietly put it in his pocket without communicating its contents even to his wife; he dined at the usual hour with some friends already invited; nothing in his appearance or conversation betrayed the slightest emotion during the repast; on leaving the table, he showed the letter of dismissal to Mme. Necker, ordered his carriage, and they went out for a drive; when they were about two hundred yards from the house, he pulled the check-string, and desired the coachman to drive to the nearest post-station. It was not till the following morning that his daughter and his numerous friends knew of his departure. The news electrified everybody. Camille Desmoulins’ grand opportunity had arrived. He had already made himself notorious as a leader of malcontents; this afternoon he was drinking with a certain set of them in a café at the Palais Royal—of late a favorite rendezvous of patriots of his type—noisy and blustering, believing in copious libations as the most efficacious proof of patriotism. Desmoulins, on hearing the news, rushed out, pistol in hand, and, jumping on an orange-tree tub, proceeded to harangue the assembled multitude. He was afflicted with a painful stuttering in his speech, but this impediment appears to have been no hindrance to the effect of his oratory; on the contrary, it gave it a more vehement character, impelling him to wild and passionate gesticulation, by way of helping out his defective utterance. He spoke with his eyes, his teeth, every member of his body; he would shake out his hair in lion-like fashion, stamp his feet, toss his arms with clenched fists above his head to supply the word his tongue refused to articulate, and the energetic pantomine elicited the sympathy, while it fired the passions, of his hearers. “Citizens!” he cried, “I come from Versailles.” (He came from a neighboring café, as we have seen, but what of that?) “Necker is dismissed. This dismissal is the tocsin of S. Bartholomew for all patriots. Before the sun has gone down, we shall see the Swiss and German battalions marching from the Champs de Mars to murder us like dogs. One chance yet remains to us. To arms! Let us choose a cockade whereby we may know each other.” This exordium was covered with thundering salvos by the patriots. “What color shall we choose?” continued the orator. “Speak, patriots! Select your own flag. Shall it be green, the emblem of hope, or blue—the color of free America, of liberty, and democracy?” A voice from the patriots cried out: “Green, the color of hope!” But the choice was negatived by the voice of popular prejudice. Green, it was said, was unlucky. No; they would not have green.
A scene of indescribable tumult followed while the momentous question of the cockade was being canvassed. Finally, by what train of argument history does not record, blue, white, and red were elected to the honor of representing the patriots. They happened to be the colors of the House of Orleans. From the tub which served as a rostrum to the orator the decree was shouted to the serried ranks around, and all through the gardens it was borne along the colonnade rapid as lightning, swelling, as it went, into a deafening peal that soon reverberated from the boulevards and the thoroughfares of Paris to Versailles. It is said, we know not whether or not on authentic testimony, that while this wild uproar, which terminated in the adoption of his House’s colors by the popular party, was going on under his windows, Philip of Orleans, henceforth to be known under the title of Egalité, was coolly looking out at the performance, smoking his cigar, and discussing the probable effect of it all at Versailles. By the time the whole city was out-of-doors, it was the hour for the performance to begin in the Palais Royal theatre, close by the scene of Camille’s rhetorical triumph; other more interesting pieces, beginning with comedy and ending with tragedy, were now to be performed; a band of patriots, with Camille at their head, burst into the theatre, and, rushing on the stage, summarily reversed the programme of the evening. They flung tricolor cockades right and left, and called the spectators to arms. “The audience rose en masse” at the appeal, like a true-born Parisian audience, and, surging from pit and boxes, poured out impetuous and desperate, it knew not well why, at the bidding of Camille Desmoulins. He marched off, with the swelling stream behind him, to the studio of the sculptor Curtius; there the patriots seized a bust of Necker and Philip of Orleans, and carried them in procession through the streets. This was Egalité’s official début, as a leader of the Red Revolution. It was at the Palais Royal he was arrested. Here, on the site of its first eruption, the wild demon which he had, in the measure of his power, evoked and called up from the smouldering lava depths to the full activity of its satanic life, and flattered and bowed down to, was doomed at the appointed hour of retribution to raise its bloody hand against the regicide, and strike him down. On his way to the guillotine, the car, whether by accident or design, passed under Egalité’s old home. He raised his eyes for a moment to the windows, and, surveying them with an unmoved countenance, turned his glance calmly again upon the yelling crowd.
While the Terror lasted, the Palais Royal remained untenanted. After the Restoration it was occupied by Louis Philippe while Duke of Orleans; when the son of Egalité called himself to the throne of his nephew, he forsook it for the Tuileries, and during the remainder of his reign it was open to the public as an historical monument and museum. On the resurrection of the Empire, the Palais Royal became the residence of Prince Jerome Bonaparte, only surviving brother of Napoleon I. When this last venerable twig fell from the old imperial tree, it continued in the possession of his son, Prince Napoleon. Hither, in March, 1859, he brought his young bride, the Princess Clothilde, daughter of Victor Emmanuel, and there he resided until the memorable summer of 1870, when the disastrous war with Prussia came like a cyclone, and tore up the old tree by the roots, and sent the branches flying hither and thither over the astonished face of Europe.
The Commune closes our retrospect of Richelieu’s palace. The Tuileries and the Palais Royal sent up their petroleum flames together to the soft summer skies where the bright May sun was shining down, serenely sad, upon the awful spectacle of Paris on fire—a funeral pile whereon were consumed, let us hope never again to rise from their ashes, the Commune itself, and the delusions of the few honest fools, if such there were, who believed in its insane theories. Surely as they fled, scared from their old historic haunts by the blaze and stench of the devilish modern fluid, the ghosts of Richelieu, and Mazarin, and Anne of Austria, and all that band of majestic figures from the unburied past, must have laughed a bitter laugh, wherein horror was not without a note of triumph, as they looked back upon the ghastly scene. “Our little systems had their day,” the dead legislators may have said, one to another, as they stood in the lurid light of the conflagration that illuminated, to the eyes of their disembodied spirit, the far-stretching vistas of the present and the past; “they were all faulty, how faulty we know now with unavailing knowledge, but, compared to this, were they not the Millennium, Eutopia, the ideal of the reign of justice upon the earth?”
[AN ABUSE OF DIPLOMATIC AUTHORITY.]
The tendency, to which we have heretofore alluded, to ostracize Catholics, and to take it for granted that this is a Protestant country, to be ruled exclusively by anti-Catholics, has had even a more dangerous and far-reaching effect beyond our borders, and that, too, apparently with official sanction. The popular prejudice has not unnaturally reached and infected the authorities at Washington. We do not allude especially to the present Administration or Congress, for the evil is of long standing; but we have no hesitation in saying that our diplomatic and consular systems as at present conducted are unjust to a very respectable minority of the American people, and are likely to mislead and deceive the nations with which we are on terms of peace and amity. The foreign appointees are, almost without exception, taken from the ranks of non-Catholics and without regard either to the feelings of a large class of our own citizens or the wishes of the people to whom they are sent. The ministers plenipotentiary to the great powers of Europe have been invariably selected from the ultra Protestant class like Motley; while the numerous consuls, with a few honorable exceptions, have been men of the same way of thinking, according to their limited understanding. When the Holy Father was yet in possession of his dominions, we used to delight in sending him now and then a specimen of a genuine Know-Nothing; and when Spain—Catholic and conservative Spain—began to feel the Gem of the Antilles slipping from her grasp, we despatched an atheistical filibustero, Soulé, to assure her of our friendship and good-will With Catholic countries generally we have acted in the same spirit of contradiction, as if our object were to excite hostility rather than to perpetuate kindness and harmony, as among them, particularly in South America, each legation and consulate habitually formed the nucleus of anti-Catholic society. As long as this blundering—we will not call it by a harsher name—was confined to our European appointments, it mattered little; for the relative condition of Catholics and the sects in this country is there pretty well known, and, the faith of the people being well fixed, prejudice and bigotry, even when protected by the stars and stripes, could do little harm.
It is of the character of our representatives in Turkey, Africa, India, China, and other places in partibus infidelium that we have most reason to complain. These American envoys and consuls seem to become volunteer lay evangelizers; and if, like our friends of the Methodist and Presbyterian missionary societies of this city, they do not succeed in converting the benighted heathen from the error of their ways, they endeavor, by the exercise of all their delegated authority, to thwart and depreciate the labors of those who can—the Catholic missionaries from other countries. Take, for example, India and China, the great missionary fields of the world, containing as they do at least one-half of the whole human race in a comparative state of civilization. The former being a province of Great Britain, it is natural that sectarian missions should receive at least a semi-official recognition and protection from the appointees of the head of the Protestant Church “as by law established”; but even in this respect the English officials have been outdone in zeal and officiousness by our own agents in the Indian Peninsula, as we learn from a late work on that country.[44] But in China, with its four or five hundred millions of idolaters, the case is different. There the Catholic priest and the devoted Sister of Charity, unsupported by the temporal arm, and unawed by threats, torture, and death, have been most active and most successful in advancing the standard of the cross and winning souls to Christ. Their converts are numbered by tens of thousands, and their churches, schools, and orphanages dot the southern and western coasts; while the sectarian missionaries, lacking the sustaining power of the state, have practically done nothing. This has long been a source of much chagrin to the various dissenting proselytizing societies in England and the United States, as it also seems to have been the cause of exasperation to our Minister at Peking, Mr. Frederick F. Low.
That gentleman’s mission to China appears to have embraced but three objects, if we except his attempt and absurd failure to bring the Coreans into communication with the outside world. The first of these was the protection of American Protestant missionaries, and them only; the second, to convince the Chinese officials that the United States have nothing to do with Catholics, or, as he is pleased to style them on all occasions, “Romanists”; and the third, to send home false despatches and mistranslated documents.
In looking over the foreign correspondence of our government for 1871, as presented to Congress with the President’s Message,[45] we find that, in October, 1870, Mr. Low, without any authority whatever from Washington, ordered a United States war-vessel from Chefoo to Tungchow, for the sole purpose of returning some Protestant missionaries to the latter place, who, with their usual regard for the first law of nature, had fled from it upon the slightest rumor of danger. The ship was the Benecia, and her precious cargo consisted of “the missionaries (number not stated), their teachers and servants, also their children, amounting to a total of twenty-four persons.” Of the reverend gentlemen at whose disposal a public vessel had been so obsequiously placed by the accommodating Mr. Low, Commander Kimberly, in his report, bluntly says:
“The missionaries expressed themselves perfectly satisfied with everything that had been done in regard to returning them to their homes, and wished me to visit the shore and walk about the city with the officers of the ship in full uniform, which I declined to do, as, after the promises made by the Chinese officials, I considered it unnecessary, and the Chinese being perfectly willing and pleased, as far as I could judge, that they had returned. From my interview, I came to the conclusion that there never existed any real danger at Tungchow-foo, but the missionaries were frightened by the threats of some Chinese not in authority. Mischievous persons are found in every community, and Tungchow-foo is not free from this infliction. The massacre of Tientsin capped the climax, and the missionaries left in consequence.”
The cowardly conduct of the missionaries, who were thus so honorably reconducted to their homes, is even partially admitted by the minister in his explanatory despatch, for he says: “In this connection, I desire to say that I have had no information from the missionaries, except a short note from one of them saying that they had all reached Tungchow. Without expressing any opinion as to the real peril they were in, or whether there was or was not cause for the step they took, I am of the opinion that their removal and the manner of their return will, on the whole, result in good.”
We admit that it is the duty of every envoy, consul, or other foreign agent of our government to succor and protect our citizens abroad in all things lawful; but here, in this respect, their duty ends. They have no shadow of right to employ the public vessels of the country, paid for by the public at large, and destined for far other purposes, in any other business, much less for the transportation of runaway missionaries, “their teachers, servants, and children.” This is not a Protestant country de facto or de jure, and, as far as the national government is concerned, no religion whatever is recognized. If it were an equal number of merchants or traders who had fled in terror from imaginary danger, is it likely that Mr. Low would have depleted our small squadron in the Chinese seas by putting at their service, and that of their “teachers, servants, and children,” one of the best vessels in the fleet? Or does any one suppose that, if those persons had been Catholic missionaries, he would have been guilty of a similar abuse of authority? But he apologetically says, “The manner of their return will, on the whole, result in good.” Just so. Good to Mr. Low, though we have not yet heard of a vote of thanks having been presented to him by any of our numerous foreign missionary societies, or that they have sent on to Washington deputations for his retention or promotion. That his conduct deserves such commendation from these bodies no one can doubt who reads further his despatches to the State Department.
In 1858, a treaty was formed between China, on the one part, and the leading Western powers, on the other, whereby, among other things, it was stipulated that the Christian converts in the former country should practise their religion without molestation, and also enjoy certain immunities; and that in the free or open ports and districts the ministers of religion should be guaranteed the full exercise of their functions, etc. In 1870, as previously agreed upon, this treaty came up for revision, and France, ever foremost in the work of civilization and conversion, proposed five amendments to the treaty, all relating directly or indirectly to commerce. The second of these reads as follows:
“You have expressed a desire to know the demands which I have engaged my government to make from the Chinese government when the treaty of 1858 is revised. I have no objection to satisfy you, for I believe that the alterations are indispensable, and I shall be happy to learn that the other governments allied with China have decided also to demand them.... Second, I demand that we shall have the right to place salaried consuls wherever we judge proper, and that those cities where consuls reside shall also be opened to foreign trade.”
These demands seemed rational enough, and have since, we understand, been substantially complied with; but our clear-sighted minister immediately detected the danger that lurked beneath them, particularly the one just quoted, and hastened to advise his government not to second the propositions of the French ambassador. Here is one of his reasons:
“I see so many objections to such a treaty provision, and so many chances of its proving a delusion and a snare, that, unless the proposition can be more definitely defined, I should not be inclined to favor it. If the exact truth could be ascertained, it would be found, I expect, that the whole idea of the French chargé in this scheme is the better protection of the French missionaries; and were it possible to obtain the concession asked for, these additional consuls would be, to all intents and purposes, agents of Roman Catholic missionaries. Their official positions and influence would be used to sustain missionary claims and assumptions, some of which have been described in a former despatch. So far as trade is concerned, it may well be questioned whether the presence of French consuls in the interior would not prove a damage instead of a benefit.”
And this is the representative of a free and commercial people who desire to be considered Christian! Rather than see Catholic missions extended, and paganism eradicated from the hearts of millions of human beings, he would be willing to keep some of the most populous and fertile portions of the Celestial Empire closed for ever against civilization and commerce. But let us follow this model minister a little further.
In February, 1871, the Chinese Foreign Office submitted to the foreign representatives at the capital, for consideration and approval, the draft of a minute, and eight rules for the guidance and government of missionaries in the entire empire. They were drawn up with true Tartar cunning and ingenuity, and were intended, if adopted, to baffle the straightforward demands of France. In terms they were plausible enough, but in reality exceedingly restrictive, and evidently aimed at the Sisters of Charity, whose schools and orphan asylums were rapidly increasing, and at those zealous and enterprising missionaries who, under various disguises, and despite the vigilance of the local authorities, are in the habit, at imminent personal danger, of penetrating into the very heart of the country, and preaching the Word of God where his name has never before been heard. This was a chance for Mr. Low to exhibit his sectarian bigotry before the mandarins, and he eagerly availed himself of it. Answering their communication in his official capacity, and while dissenting generally from their views, he takes occasion, we think very gratuitously, to say:
“It is a noticeable fact that, among all the cases cited, there does not appear to be one in which Protestant missionaries are charged with violating treaty, law, or custom. So far as I can ascertain, your complaints are chiefly against the action and attitude of the missionaries of the Roman Catholic faith, and, as these are under the exclusive protection and control of the government of France, I might with great propriety decline to discuss a matter with which the government of the United States has no direct interest or concern, for the reason that none of its citizens are charged with violating treaty or local law, and thus causing trouble.”
And again, with equal truthfulness and appositeness, he adds:
“Whenever cases occur in which the missionaries overstep the bounds of decorum, or interfere in matters with which they have no proper concern, let each case be reported promptly to the minister of the country to which it belongs. Such isolated instances should not produce prejudice or engender hatred against those who observe their obligations, nor should sweeping complaints be made against all on this account. Those from the United States sincerely desire the reformation of those whom they teach, and to do this they urge the examination of the Holy Scriptures, wherein the great doctrines of the present and a future state, and also the resurrection of the soul, are set forth, with the obligation of repentance, belief in the Saviour, and the duties of man to himself and others. It is owing, in a great degree, to the prevalence of a belief in the truth of the Scriptures that Western nations have attained their power and prosperity.”
Having thus, as he thought, directed the prejudice and hostility of the authorities against the Catholics exclusively, and put in a good word for the evangelizers; and assured them that, as far as the former were concerned, the United States had no concern whatever, and by inference that they might maltreat and murder as many of them as they pleased without let or hindrance from us, Mr. Low next proceeds to mislead his government in a manner which may be diplomatic, but is certainly far from honorable.
In transmitting to the Department of State a translation of the rules alluded to, he remarks:
“A careful reading of the memorandum clearly proves that the great, if not only, cause of complaint against the missionaries comes from the action of the Roman Catholic priests and the native Christians of that faith; although the rules proposed for the government of missionaries apply equally to Protestants and Catholics.”
“A careful reading” of the document as translated under his auspices would indeed seem to bear out Mr. Low’s views, for it is filled with complaints and denunciations of “Romanists,” and the derivative adjective “Romish” is used with a freedom that would delight the heart of the most virulent colporteur. But, unfortunately, there was another translation of the same document in England, and in it, behold, all the “Romanists” are turned into “Christians”![46] Even Mr. Davis, of the State Department, could not help noticing this discrepancy between the two papers, and in a letter dated Oct. 19, 1871, calls upon the Peking minister for an explanation, which, of course, was never given, for the good reason that the deception was intentional. If, as according to Blackstone, forgery consists in the material alteration of the body of a written instrument, as well as in the imitation or alteration of a signature, we fear our respected representative has been guilty of a very serious legal mistake. The assistant secretary writes:
“Two versions of these regulations have found their way to the Department—the translation enclosed in your No. 56, and a translation apparently made from a French version presented to the houses of Parliament in Great Britain in June or July last, and printed in British Blue-Book, entitled “China, No. 3, 1871.” These versions differ widely in form and expression, and, to some extent, in sense.
“The version presented to Parliament has been or will be made the subject of instructions by her Majesty’s government to Mr. Wade. A copy of these proposed instructions was communicated to this Department by her Majesty’s chargé at Washington in August last. A copy is herewith enclosed, and also a copy of the version to which they relate.
“The most material variance between the two versions is in the designation of the missionaries against whom the Chinese Foreign Office complains. Your version limits the complaints to missionaries of the Roman Church. The British translation, following the French version, represents the complaints against ‘Christians.’ For instance, the British version renders the beginning of the first article or rule as follows: ‘The Christians, when they found an orphanage, give no notice to the authorities, and appear to act with mystery.’ Your translation of the same sentence reads: “The establishment of asylums for training up children by the Romanists has hitherto not been reported to the authorities, and as these institutions are carefully kept private,’ etc., etc. From the English version of the accompanying note from the Yamên, it is evident that the Chinese Foreign Office recognizes that there are in China Christian missionaries of different faiths; for they say that ‘the people in general, unaware of the difference which exists between Protestantism and Catholicism, confound these two religions under this latter denomination.’”
The sectarian views of the minister in Peking were ably seconded by his subordinate, the consul-general at Shanghai. That official, Mr. G. F. Seward, under date August 22, 1871, sends to the Assistant-Secretary of State a cursory review of the general condition of China, and a detailed account of the horrible massacre of Tientsin, June 21, 1870; with a report of the trial and execution of some of the miscreants engaged in it. His communication, as might be expected, is, whenever possible, thoroughly anti-Catholic, filled with innuendos, insinuations, and even broad statements against the missionaries of that faith, and the Sisters of Charity; the usual elegant phrases “Romish” and “Romanist” being used at every opportunity. As a sample of this commercial agent’s style and skill in the art of hinting a fault and hesitating dislike, we quote the following passages from his letter:
“Various allegations have been made against Roman Catholic missionaries. It has been alleged that the bishop of one of the western provinces resides in a palace which vies with that of the viceroy; that he uses a palanquin decorated in a way allowed only to the highest officials of the empire; and that his progresses from one part of his diocese to another are made in a regal way. It has been asserted that the priests claim the right to correspond with the officials on terms of equality; that they combine with and arrange combinations among their converts to defeat the objects of the government; that they claim for their converts various unusual and objectionable immunities; that, in fact, they are building up a rule within the territorial rule which is very dangerous to the state. One who has studied the history of the Roman Church cannot be surprised when he hears that China is seriously alarmed; but we can estimate the actual danger more perfectly than she. Any exposition of her fears which she is likely to make will exhibit many puerilities. Yet we must admit that her statesmen would be unwise if they should fail to study the problems which the presence of the church presents.”
So much for some of our diplomats in Asia. If they had been sent out by the Methodist missionary body or any other fanatical society, they could not have shown more narrow-minded bigotry or less regard for the advancement of religion and true civilization; but as representatives of this republic, where all are regarded as equal, and where the general government is supposed to represent the interests of every class and creed alike, it is not too much to say that they have been sadly recreant to the trust reposed in them.
Turning over the pages of this voluminous collection of foreign correspondence from all parts of the world with the Department of State, we came upon the following curious despatch. It is dated Mexico, April 29, 1871, signed by our minister, Mr. Thomas H. Nelson, and referred to in the index as “The Spread of Protestantism”:
“The Protestant movement in Mexico has for the past year been making considerable progress, chiefly owing to the efforts of the American clergyman, Rev. H. Chauncey Reilly, a letter from whom upon this subject was forwarded by me, forming an enclosure to my No. 38, of August 9, 1869. There are now about fifty congregations or assemblies of Mexican Protestants in this city and vicinity, and an equal or greater number scattered throughout the country. Most of these assemblies still meet in private houses, though in some small places of the interior they form a numerical majority, and have, therefore, acquired possession of the parish churches. In this city, through the efforts and personal liberality of Mr. Reilly, the Protestants have acquired two fine churches of those which were secularized and sold by the government some years since; one of these is the former convent of San Francisco, the most magnificent as well as the first one erected in Mexico. It is now being repaired for its new use. The other is the commodious church of San José de Garcia, which, having been thoroughly repaired, was dedicated to the Protestant service on Sunday, the 23d instant, in the presence of an immense multitude. Two or three Catholic priests of some prominence have, within the past two or three months, joined the Protestant communion, and two of them have ventured upon the decisive step of matrimony. One of the recent converts, Father Manuel Auguas, formerly an eloquent preacher of the Dominican Order, has become the pastor of the new church. This event has caused a vigorous polemic in the newspapers of this city; the two papers considered especially Catholic have been filled with attacks upon the new religious movement, while most of the other papers have exhibited a commendable spirit of tolerance or even of good-will toward the Protestants. I enclose an interesting article upon this subject from the Two Republics of to-day, translated from the Federalista, and written by M. Ignacio M. Altamirano, who is considered as the chief of the Mexican literary writers of the present day. Yours, etc.”
This is the entire communication, no other subjects being touched upon; but the matter seems of so much importance and of so great national interest as to warrant the sapient Mr. Nelson in making it the basis of a special official despatch. Is this gentleman the envoy of the United States, or a commissioner appointed by some Bible or tract society to report on the “spread of Protestantism” in the neighboring republic, or does he unite the two characters in his own person? Does he receive the public money for puffing the Rev. H. Chauncey Reilly, and transmitting his diatribes and the effusions of a certain M. Altamirano for preservation in the archives of the nation? If so, it is time the public should know it. Mr. Nelson’s letter, however, explains an incident that occurred in Washington a few years since. It was this: the mission to Mexico was vacant, and it was applied for by a gentleman every way qualified for the post. He was thoroughly educated, knew the Spanish language well, and had served with high rank and marked distinction during the late war. He was appointed by the President, and his nomination by the Senate was urged by several influential citizens, including the then Secretary of State, the late Mr. Seward. The committee of the Senate refused to report his name favorably, and, in reply to the query of the writer what objection could be urged against the applicant, a leading senator replied that “he understood him to be a very violent (meaning practical) Catholic!” The policy of this gentleman, like that of many others at the national capital, was not to send a Catholic to a Catholic country, but one who would report on the “spread of Protestantism,” and doubtless, find materials for his despatches.
Nor must we blame the government too severely for their injudicious sectarian appointments. Its views are but the reflex of popular opinion, and, as long as we tolerate bigotry and proscription in our popular elections, we must expect that those who are supposed to represent us will follow the bad example thus set them. The fault hitherto has been partly ours, and the remedy is in our own hands. This remedy consists in discountenancing all subsidized newspaper writers and demagogues whose abuse and slanders prevent good men from filling the national and state councils; in trampling under foot all party and religious prejudices, and invariably voting against those who would maintain them; and by supporting for offices, both at home and abroad, only those who will attend to the public business, and let sectarian missionaries and the “spread of Protestantism” alone.
[A LEGEND OF S. MARTIN.]
After many strifes and battles, and after having been for years Administrator of Thrace, Asia, and Egypt, with Dacia and Macedonia, to which the dethroned and executed Emperor of the West, Gratian, had appointed him, Theodosius I., the Roman emperor, returned from Thessalonica, his former headquarters, to Constantinople.
The day was cold and stormy, and many a one of the emperor’s suite wrapped his cloak closer around his shivering body, as the snowflakes fell thicker and faster, covering the road quickly in the white mantle of winter.
The troop had just entered a small village, when the emperor’s horse was stopped by a man miserably clad and trembling with cold.
Impatient of the detention, Theodosius pressed his spurs into the sides of his steed, and flew past the wretched beggar.
But a knight called Martin, from Pannonia, who followed next, halted and looked pityingly upon the poor trembling form. Willingly would he have given him money or clothing, but a soldier seldom has much to give, and, except his hat and coat, the knight possessed nothing. One moment only he reflected, and the next he drew forth his sword, and cut in two the large cloak hanging over his shoulders. Handing the one half to the beggar, and wrapping himself closely in the other, he followed the emperor with lightning speed, without listening to the words of blessing which fell from the lips of the mendicant.
After the sun had set, the emperor and his followers took quarters for the night.
All had gone to rest, and Knight Martin also had laid himself down, and soon was fast asleep. Shortly, however, he felt as if his eyes were forced open by a most brilliant and dazzling light. He sat up, and perceived at his feet a man upon whose head was a crown of thorns. Shining angels surrounded him, and the mantle which Martin had given to the beggar hung around his shoulders. Pointing to it, he asked S. Peter (who stood by his side) in sweet and gentle voice: “Do you see this mantle?”
“From whom did you receive it?” S. Peter questioned.
“From Martin here,” was the reply, given in a heavenly voice, his finger pointing at the same time to the astonished soldier. “Rise, my son,” he then continued—and his angelic smile was ravishing to the eyes of Martin—“I have chosen thee henceforth to be my servant. Until now thou hast been a blind heathen: thou shalt now become a shining light in my army. Put up thy sword; thou shalt be a soldier of God.” And then Martin knew that it was the Lord himself who spake to him.
An angel kissed the mantle’s border—and Martin awoke.
The morning broke. He rose quickly, and left the place, never resting, never stopping, until he had reached the portal of a cloister; there he knocked and entered.
Soon he became famous for his goodness and piety, and, as bishop, served his Master with spiritual rather than material weapons.