Winged Wheels in France

by Michael Myers Shoemaker

As we pass through Louveciennes, we pause a moment before the pavilion, all that remains of the Villa of Madame du Barry. Everything else has vanished and it is only the exterior of the pavilion that remains as she beheld it.

What was her real character,—the daughter of a dressmaker, the mistress of a king, the power before which all the Court bowed, and whose influence over the aged monarch was unbounded? How did she use it? Should we pity her fate, or turn in disgust from a thing so degraded? Some authorities state that from the first to last she was all bad,—the mistress of one Comte du Barry, she was, by the King's orders, married to another, and so presented at Court where her power soon eclipsed that of all others. The Court was at its lowest stage of depravity during her time. She cost France thirty-five millions of francs, and died a coward, showing more fear and terror on the scaffold than any other woman who mounted its fatal platform. The only thing in her favour was her patronage of art and of the men of letters.

The other side of the picture, told by an eye-witness, Madame Campan, is far different, at least as regards the standing of the frail du Barry. Therein we find her treated with indulgence by Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, and we are told that with the latter she was, during the dark days of the terror, in constant communication, giving the queen all the information which she worked so hard to obtain,—that her grief over the tragedy of the Queen was intense, and that she desired to dispose of all she possessed in their favour, in re-payment for the infinite goodness of the King and Queen towards herself. Returning to France to join the man she loved, de Bressac, she was forced to gaze upon his severed head carried on a pike past her windows in Versailles.

Betrayed at last by the negro boy Zamore, whom she had benefited and protected for years, she was guillotined.

She was evil, doubtless, but was there not enough good there to admit of the hope of a greeting in another world such as came to the woman of Palestine, "Neither do I condemn thee?"

The figures of history come trooping to us as we roll onward towards Versailles, to which we give but a passing glance. Later on, we glide through the woods where Racine first learned the language of poetry and so on to Rambouillet, where Francis I. ended his days murmuring to his son, "Beware of the Guise." The château is a gloomy pile of red brick, and it was in a chamber in its great round tower that the soul of the merry monarch sailed forth on its long journey, scarcely faster I think we glide away from his palace to-day.

To me, properly dressed, this ride is delightful. I find a lined leather jacket to be of all things the most comfortable, but poor Narcissus is chattering with cold and so we leave the Château de Maintenon for inspection on our return.

There is much rushing water around the château and its little village, and we come soon upon a majestic aqueduct spanning the river,—a structure which might be considered one of the immediate causes of the French Revolution. Rising from the placid river and its bright green banks, the arches are picturesque and beautiful to-day, and yet, to build them, forty thousand troops were employed. The spot was so unhealthy that the mortality was immense,—many thousands,—and the dead were carried away by night that the workers might not be discouraged or the pleasure of the King delayed, for this was to furnish life to his fountains at Versailles. The King intended to carry the waters of the river through a new channel eight leagues in length, and hence this aqueduct, as it was necessary to connect two mountains. However, before it was completed, the work was abandoned for the hydraulics at Marly. This structure was partly demolished to build the Château of Crécy for Madame de Pompadour. Of the forty-seven original arches, fourteen remain, each eighty-three feet high with a forty-two foot span. The loss of life caused in the building of this canal of thirty-three miles does not appear to have excited much attention at the time,—such was the power of the King, but the people remember, and the grandchildren of these did remember in 1793, when, as usual, the innocent suffered for the guilty.

Leaving the aqueduct with its burden of sorrow and the softly murmuring river, we mount the hills and enter upon La Beauce, the finest corn land in France. It spreads away from us, a vast plain, gently sloping off for miles, until far in the hazy distance of this lovely spring day the twin towers of the famous Cathedral of Chartres pierce the sky, and from now on with scarcely any power, and soundless, the car speeds on and on, ever faster and faster, until the wings come out on its hubs once more, and we are flying, fairly flying.

If Sheridan had possessed an automobile that day at Winchester, T. Buchanan Reid would have lost the opportunity to make him immortal, but still "hurrah, hurrah for Sheridan, hurrah, hurrah for horse and man," and one feels like returning to boyhood's days and giving utterance to some wild whoops as this car rushes onward and onward.