The Peasant and the Prince

by Harriet Martineau

Two women were kept for the sole business of attending to the bath, which was usually rolled into the room upon castors. The bathing-gown was of fine flannel, with collar and cuffs, and lining throughout of fine linen. The breakfast, of coffee or chocolate, was served on a tray which stood on the cover of the bath. Meantime one of the ladies warmed the bed with a silver warming-pan, and the queen returned to it, sitting up in her white taffeta dressing-gown, and reading; or if any one who had permission to visit her at that hour wished to see her, she took up her embroidery. This kind of visit, at a person’s rising, is customary abroad; and it had been so long so at the court of France, that certain classes of persons were understood to have a right to visit the queen at the hour of her levée, as it was called. These persons were the physicians and surgeons of the court; any messengers from the king; the queen’s secretary and others; so that there were often, besides the ladies in waiting, ten or a dozen persons visiting the queen as she sat up in bed, at work, or taking her breakfast.

The great visiting hour, however, was noon, when the queen went into another room to have her hair dressed. We see in prints, how the hair was dressed at that time,—frizzed and powdered, and piled up with silk cushions, and ribbons and flowers, till the wonder was how any head could bear such a weight. It took a long time to dress a lady’s hair in those days. The queen sat before a most splendid toilet-table, in the middle of the room. The ladies who had been in waiting for twenty-four hours now went out, and gave place to others in full dress, with rose-coloured brocade petticoats, wide hoops, and high head-dresses with lappets, and all the finery of a court. The usher took his place before the folding-doors; great chairs and stools were set in a circle for such visitors as had a right to sit down in the presence of royalty. Then entered the ladies of the palace, the governess of the royal children, the princes of the royal family, the secretaries of state, the captains of the guard, and, on Tuesdays, the foreign ambassadors. According to their rank, the queen either nodded to them as they entered, or bowed her head, or leaned with her arm upon her toilet-table, as if about to rise. This last salutation was only to the royal princes. She never actually rose, for her hair-dresser was powdering her hair.

It was considered presumptuous and dangerous to alter any customs of the court of France; but this queen thought fit to alter one among others. It had always, before her time, been the etiquette for the lady of the highest rank who appeared in readiness in the queen’s chamber, to slip her majesty’s petticoats over her head in dressing; but when her majesty was pleased to have her head dressed so high that no petticoat would go over it, but must be slipped up from her feet, she used to step into her closet, to be dressed by her favourite milliner and one of her women. This change gave great offence to the ladies who thought they had a right to the honour of dressing the queen.

Her majesty came forth from her closet ready to go to mass in the chapel, on certain days: and by this time her chaplains were in waiting among her suite. The royal princesses and their trains stood waiting to follow the queen to the chapel: but, strangely enough, this was the hour appointed for signing deeds of gift on the part of the queen. These gifts were too often licences for the exclusive sale of articles which all should have been left free to sell. The secretary of the queen presented the pen to her majesty; and at these hours she signed away the goodwill of thousands of well-disposed subjects. At such a moment, while she stood, beautiful and smiling, among a crowd of adorers, and while her husband, with smutted face and black hands, was filing his locks in his attic, how little did either of them think that their eldest son was sinking to his grave, and that the storm of popular fury was even now growling within their dominions,—the tremendous storm which was to prove fatal to themselves!

At this hour of the toilet, on the first day of the month, the queen was presented with her pocket-money for the month—the sum which she might do what she liked with, and out of which she made presents. This sum was always in gold, and was presented in a purse of white kid, embroidered in silver, and lined with white silk. Its amount was, on an average for the year round, 12,500 pounds. It was by saving out of this allowance that she paid for the pair of diamond ear-rings which she bought soon after her marriage; but it took six years’ savings to pay for that one ornament. She was young and giddy when she bought those jewels, and she paid for them out of her own pocket-money; but, as has been seen, the purchase did not sound well in the ears of peasants who boiled nettles for food when they could get no bread, from the pressure of the taxes. Whether the discontented knew it or not, a good deal of this monthly gold went in charity—charity, however, which did not do half the good that self-denial would have done.

Her majesty was waited on at dinner by her ladies. She dined early, generally eating chicken, and drinking water only. She supped on broth, or the wing of a fowl, and biscuits which she steeped in water. She spent the afternoons among her ladies, or with her two most intimate friends—the Duchess de Polignac, for some time governess to the royal children, and the Princess de Lamballe, superintendent of the household. After a time the friendship with both these ladies cooled; but while it lasted, the pleasantest hours the queen passed were when working and conversing with these ladies. After the private theatre was given up, the evenings were commonly spent in small dull card-parties, but sometimes in more agreeable parties in the apartments of one or other of her two friends. It was thoughtless and undignified of the queen to act plays, to which the captains of the guard, and various other persons, were in time admitted as spectators; but though her best friends would have been glad that she should have abstained from such performances, it is not surprising that she inclined to an amusement that gave her something to think of and to do, and from which she really learned more of literature than she could otherwise have done. Amidst the deplorable dulness of such a life as hers, we cannot wonder that studying some of the best French dramatic poetry, and feeling for the hour that she was the companion and not the queen, should have been a pleasure which she was sorry to forego. She sorely lamented afterwards that she had ever indulged in it.

But, it may be said, she had children and she had friends. Could she not make herself happy with them? Alas! She found herself disappointed there,—as she was whichever way she turned for happiness. Though her friend, the Duchess de Polignac, was governess to her children, and though she had hoped by this plan to enjoy more freedom with both than by any other means, all went wrong. The other gentlemen and ladies—the tutors and under-governesses who were about the children—became jealous of the duchess, and taught the children to dislike her. The Princess de Lamballe also had misunderstandings with the duchess; and the queen and her children’s governess began to be equally hated by the people, who believed that the duchess instigated the queen to all the bad actions of which she was reported guilty.

The Duke of Normandy was three years old when the serious misfortunes of his family began. Up to that time he had seen only what was bright and gay. He himself was a little rosy, plump, merry child, with beautiful curling hair, and so sweet a temper that everybody loved him. He found many to love. There was his beautiful, kind mother. She could not do for him what a mother of a lower rank would have done; she could not wash and dress him, and keep him on her lap, or play with him half the day, or walk in the sweet, fresh fields with him—but she often opened her arms to him, and always smiled upon him, and loved him so much, that some ill-natured people persuaded his elder brother, the Dauphin, that the little Duke of Normandy was his mother’s favourite, and that she did not care for her other children.

Then there was the Princess Royal, the eldest of the children. She was at that time eight years old, and as grave a little girl as was ever seen at that age. She rarely laughed or played, but she was kind to her brothers and the people about her.

Next was the Dauphin, a year younger than his sister. He was sinking under disease; and it made every one’s heart ache to see his long sharp face, and his wasted hands, and his limbs, so shrunk and feeble that he could not walk. His tutor could not endure the duchess, his governess, and taught the poor fretful child to be rude to her, and even to his mother. When the duchess came near to amuse him, he told her to go away, for he could not bear the perfumes that she was so dreadfully fond of. This was put into his head, for she used no perfumes. When the queen carried to her poor boy some lozenges that she knew could not hurt him, and that he was fond of, the under-tutors, and even a footman of the Dauphin, started forward, and said she must give him nothing without the advice of the physicians. She knew that these were the very people who were always putting it into the Dauphin’s head that, she was more fond of his little brother, and she saw that it was intended to prevent her having any influence with her own sick child; and bitterly she wept over all this in her own apartment.