Empress Josephine: An Historical Sketch of the Days of Napoleon

by L. Mühlbach

The Count de Provence had, under the shadow of a mulberry-tree, his house, with a large school-room in it; and oftentimes the whole court-society were converted into scholars of both sexes, who took their seats on the benches of the school-room, whilst the Count de Provence, in a long coat with lead buttons and with an immense rod in his hand, ascended the cathedra and delivered to his school-children a humorous and piquant lecture, all sparkling with wit.

The princesses also had in this “grove of Paradise,” as Marie Antoinette called the woods of Trianon, their cottages, where they milked cows, made butter, and searched for eggs in the hens’ nests. In the midst of all these cottages and Swiss houses stood the cottage of the farming Marie Antoinette; it was the finest and the most beautiful one of all, adorned with vases full of fragrant blossoms and surrounded by flowering plants and by cozy bowers of verdure. This cottage was the highest delight of the queen’s life, the enchanting toy of her happiness. Even the little castle of Trianon, however simple and modest, seemed too splendid for the taste of the pastoral queen. For in Trianon one was always reminded that the lady of this castle was a queen; there, servants were in livery; there, officials and names and titles were to be found, even when etiquette was forbidden entrance into the halls of the little castle of Trianon. Marie Antoinette was no more queen there, it is true, but she was the lady of the palace to whom the highest respect was shown, and who therefore had been constrained expressly and strictly to order that at her entrance into the drawing-rooms the ladies would not interrupt the piece begun on the piano, nor stand up if seated at their embroidery, and that the gentlemen would keep on undisturbed their billiard-party or their game at trictrac.

But in her cottage all rank disappeared; there, was no distinction; there, ceased the glory of name and title, and no sooner was the castle abandoned for the cottages than each named the other with some Arcadic, pastoral appellation, and each busied himself with his rural avocations. How lustily the laughter, how merrily the song sounded from these cottages amid these bowers and groves; how the countenance of the farming-lady was lighted up with happiness and joy; with what delight rested upon her the eye of the farmer Louis, who in his blue blouse, with a straw hat on his head, with a rosy, fleshy, good-natured face, was exactly fitted for his part, and who found it no difficult task to hide under the farmer’s garment the purple of the king!

How often was Marie Antoinette seen in her simple white dress, her glowing countenance shaded by a straw hat, bounding through the garden as light as a gazelle, and going from the barn to the milk-room, followed by the company she had invited to drink of her milk and eat of her fresh eggs! How often, when the farmer Louis had secreted himself in a grove for the sake of reading, how often was he discovered there by the queen, torn away from his book and drawn to a dejeuner on the grass! When that was over, and Louis had gone back to his book, Marie Antoinette hastened to her cows to see them milked, or she went into the rocking-boat to fish, or else reposed on the lawn, busy as a peasant, with her spindle.

But this quiet occupation detained not long the lively, spirited farming-lady; with a loud voice, she called to her maids or companions from the cottages, and then began those merry, unrestrained amusements which the queen had introduced into society, and which since then have been introduced not only into the drawing-rooms of the upper classes, but also into the more austere circles of the wealthy burghers.

Then the queen with her court played at blindman’s bluff, at pampam, or at a game invented by the Duke de Chartres, the future Duke Philippe d’Orleans, Egalite, and which game was called “descamper,” a sort of hide-and-seek amusement, in which the ladies hid themselves in the shady bushes and groves, to be there discovered by the gentlemen, and then to endeavor by flight to save themselves, for if once caught and seized they had to purchase their liberty with a kiss.

When evening came all left the cottages for the little castle, and the pastoral recreations gave way to the higher enjoyments of refined society. Marie Antoinette was not in the castle of Trianon queen again, but she was not either the simple lady of the farm, she was the lady of the castle, and—the first amateur in the theatrical company which twice a week exhibited their pieces in the theatre of Trianon.

These theatrical performances were quite as much the queen’s delight as her pastoral occupations in her farm cottages, and Marie Antoinette was unwearied in learning and studying her parts. She had chosen for teachers two pensioned actors, Caillot and Dazincourt, who had to come every day to Trianon to teach to the noble group of actors the small operas, vaudevilles, and dramas, which had been chosen for representation, and in which the queen naturally always played the part of first amateur, while the princesses, the wives of the Counts de Provence and Artois, the two Countesses de Polignac, undertook the other parts, even those of gentlemen, when the two brothers of the king, the only male members of this theatrical company, could not assume all the gentlemen’s parts.

At first the audience at these representations was very limited. Only the king, the princes and the princesses of the royal household, not engaged in the performance, constituted the audience; but afterward it was found that to encourage the actors a little, a larger audience was needed; then the boxes were filled with the governesses of the princesses, the queen’s waiting-women, whose sisters and daughters with a few other select ladies had been invited.

It was natural that those who had been thus preferred, and who enjoyed the privilege of seeing the Queen of France, the princes and princesses, appear as actors, should be full of admiration and applause at the talents displayed by the royal troupe; and as they alone formed the select audience, whose presence had for object to animate the artistes, they had also assumed the duty to excite and to vitalise the zeal and the fire of the players by their enthusiasm and by their liberal praises.