The vast inconvenience of such a part was but one aspect of its sanctity, and the Crown united, as in the heart of a mystery, the functions of Victim and of Lord.
Amid the great new wealth of the eighteenth century, and in the glare of its brilliant new intelligence, it may be imagined with what a fence of tradition and precedent public opinion and its own nature insisted on defending this national centre. Anecdotes of that rigid, minute, and often inhuman etiquette are too well known to need repetition here. Two instances may suffice.
The Queen could drink nothing by night or by day but from the hand of the highest in rank of the women present, nor could this last accept the glass and the water save from the hand of a page. The King must not eat at all until he had performed an ablution like a priest: the vessels of this and the napkin were sacred; rather than put them to a profane use, when they had once done their service they were destroyed by fire.
Such extravagances in the old age of an institution lend themselves to ridicule, as do (for instance) the fantastic ceremonies of the House of Commons or the comic-opera costumes of court officials and of peers. But though, isolated, they present this weakness, collectively, and seen in relation to the function they serve, such survivals have a meaning, and a consideration of such ceremonial helps men to a comprehension of the institution it surrounds.
Conceive, then—for it is the note of all this chapter—the impact of such a mood as that of the distracted Queen upon such a Court, stiff with such traditions and living under such a bright beam of publicity, the mark of a million eyes all keen to discern whatever trifle was done between mid-day and dawn. Marie Antoinette chafed impatiently against this central national institution. The fever now upon her caused her always to despise and sometimes to neglect the rules that were of the essence of her position. The moral and internal constraint which tortured her inflamed her to “live her life”; but for those of great wealth and opportunity such a mood is and must be dissipation; dissipation in its fullest sense: the dispersion not only of character and of self-discipline, but of responsibility, of externals even, and at last of power. It meant, and necessarily meant, the patronage of those far below her and their consequent estrangement; the contempt of those immediately beneath her and their consequent enmity.
Just after the old King’s death the Court was at La Muette. She must needs, to prove her liberty, go up and talk familiarly to an old gardener like any Lady Bountiful. The old gardener’s annoyance is not recorded; that of her ladies is. They complained to the King, who was troubled, but who, knowing the truth, answered, “Let her be.”
That same day, when a deputation of the Burgesses’ wives paid her their court, coming from the city at her gate and full of ceremony, she could do nothing more dignified than giggle at their awkwardness and at their dress. In the intervals of, according to each, a pompous greeting, she must whisper to one or other of her ladies most unpompously; the very servants were rendered uneasy by her manner.
In how many ways and how rapidly this mood (this physical, fatal, necessary mood) was to wear down her position immediately after her accession to the throne many examples will show. The best and the most general aspect from which one may first regard it is her attempted immixture in public affairs, for that also was a fretful and personal thing, part of her mood.
The first six or seven months of the new reign cover the period which was officially that of mourning for Louis XV. and are for the general historian of this importance: that in them was fixed the new ministerial tradition which culminated in the summoning of the States-General.