A fierce conflict was now commenced between the king and the Parliament. The Parliament passed a decree condemning arbitrary arrests. The king, by an order in council, canceled the decree. The Parliament reaffirmed it. The king was exasperated to the highest degree, but, with the united Parliament and the popular voice against him, he did not dare to proceed to extreme measures. Louis XIV. would have sent every man of them to the Bastille or the scaffold. But the days of Louis XIV. were no more.
It may at first thought seem strange that in this conflict the people should have sided with the Parliament. But the power of the crown was the great power they had to dread, and which they wished to see humbled. It was to them a matter of much more moment that the despotism of the court should be curtailed than that the one act of taxation should be passed in their favor. Men of far-reaching sagacity must have guided the populace to so wise a decision. Inequality of taxation was but one of the innumerable wrongs to which the people were exposed. What they needed was a thorough reform in the government which should correct all abuses. To attain this it was first indispensable that despotism should be struck down. Therefore their sympathies were with the Parliament in its struggle against the crown, though it so happened that the conflict arose upon a point adverse to the popular interest.
The Duke of Orleans began seriously to contemplate the dethronement of his cousin and the usurpation of the crown. With almost boundless wealth at his command, and placing himself at the head of the popular party, now rising with such resistless power, he thought the plan not difficult of accomplishment. He had traveled in England, had invested large sums there, had formed friendship with the sons of the king, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York. The court of St. James was bitterly exasperated against the court of Louis XVI. for aiding in the emancipation of America. The Duke of Orleans consequently doubted not that he could rely upon the friendship of England in the introduction of a new dynasty to France.[68]
And now the parliaments which had been organized in many of the provinces made common cause with the Parliament of Paris, and sent in their remonstrances against the despotism of the crown. Gloom now pervaded the saloons of Versailles. Marie Antoinette, with pale cheek and anxious brow, wandered through the apartments dejected and almost despairing. Groves and gardens surrounded her embellished with flowers and statues and fountains. The palace which was her home surpassed in architectural grandeur and in all the appliances of voluptuous indulgence any abode which had ever before been reared upon earth. Obsequious servants and fawning courtiers anticipated her wishes, and her chariot with its glittering outriders swept like a meteor through the enchanting drives which art, aided by the wealth of a realm, had constructed, and yet probably there was not a woman in the whole realm, in garret or hut or furrowed field, who bore a heavier heart than that which throbbed within the bosom of the queen. The king was a harmless, inoffensive, weak-minded man, spending most of his time at the forge. It was well understood that the queen, energetic and authoritative, was the real head of the government, and that every act of vigor originated with her. She consequently became peculiarly obnoxious to the Parliament, and through them to the people; and Paris was flooded with the vilest calumnies against her.
There was at that time fluttering about Versailles a dissolute woman of remarkable beauty, the Countess Lamotte. She forged notes against the queen, and purchased a very magnificent pearl necklace at the price of three hundred thousand dollars. Cardinal Rohan was involved in the intrigue. The transaction was noised through all Europe. The queen was accused of being engaged in a swindling transaction with a profligate woman to cheat a jeweler, and was also accused of enormous extravagance in wishing to add to the already priceless jewels of the crown others to the amount of three hundred thousand dollars. The queen was innocent; but the public mind exasperated wished to believe all evil of her. Men, haggard and hungry, and without employment; women ragged and starving, and with their starving children in their arms, were ever repeating the foul charge against the queen as a thief, an accomplice with a prostitute, one who was willing to see the people starve if she might but hang pearls about her neck. The story was so universally credited, and created such wide-spread exasperation, that Talleyrand remarked, "Mind that miserable affair of the necklace. I should be nowise surprised if it should overturn the French monarchy."
In addition to all this the report was spread abroad that the children of Marie Antoinette were illegitimate; that the king had not sufficient capacity to reign; that his next brother, called Monsieur, subsequently Louis XVIII., was engaged in a conspiracy with the Parliament to eject Louis XVI. from the throne, and to establish a government of the nobles, of which Monsieur should be the nominal head. It is by no means improbable that this plan was formed. It will account for many of the actions of the nobles during the first stages of the Revolution.[69]
The second brother of the king, Count d'Artois, a very elegant and accomplished man of fashion, fond of pleasure, and with congenial tastes with the young and beautiful queen, was accused, though probably without foundation, of being her paramour and the father of her children. He had erected, just outside the walls of Paris, in the woods of Boulogne, a beautiful little palace which he called Bagatelle. This was the seat of the most refined voluptuousness and of the most costly indulgence.
The queen now knew not which way to turn from the invectives which were so mercilessly showered upon her. It was in vain to attempt an answer. Her lofty spirit so far sustained her as to enable her in public to appear with dignity. But in her boudoir she wept in all the anguish of a crushed and despairing heart. "One morning at Trianon," writes Madame Campan, "I went into the queen's chamber when she was in bed. There were letters lying upon her bed and she was weeping bitterly. Her tears were mingled with sobs, which she occasionally interrupted by exclamations of 'Ah! that I were dead. Wretches! monsters! what have I done to them?' I offered her orange-flower-water and ether. 'Leave me, if you love me; it would be better to kill me at once.' At this moment she threw her arm over my shoulder and began weeping afresh."[70]