The idea of turning it into a museum was first suggested by Louis XVI., who reverted to the plan frequently, but was compelled by financial difficulties to leave the glory of its execution to Bonaparte. Those who have seen the beautiful old palace recently, before its partial destruction, would hardly recognize it as the same which fifteen years ago was choked up to its very windows by the rubbish of the encroaching town; the space now cleared away between the two palaces, the Louvre proper and the Tuileries, was filled with mean houses, for the most part shops. Even the façade of the Tuileries was cumbered and disfigured by a variety of shabby buildings, barracks, stables, and domestic offices, these latter being necessary for the convenience of its inmates—since royalty must dine—the original plan of the palace having made no provision for those vulgar essentials for the carrying on of daily life. It was an unsafe abode for royalty when safety needed to be thought of and the hearts of the people had ceased to be the king's best stronghold; but when the Médicis reared the noble, picturesque old pile, they were troubled with no such considerations. The ghosts of constitutionalism and sans-culottism were slumbering quietly unsuspected in the womb of the future, and no provision was made for slaying or defying them. For nearly a century the Tuileries had been uninhabited, when, on the wrathful day of the 6th of October, the mob surged from Paris to Versailles, and dragged Louis Seize and Marie Antoinette from their beds, and installed them within its empty, neglected walls.
“Buildings, like builders, have their destiny.” Ever since the memorable morning when insurrection reared its hydra-head under the windows of the Queen of France, and battered in the chamber door with clubs and tricolor-bedizened pikes, and sent her flying in terrified déshabillé through secret corridors and trap-tapestries into the king's room for safety; ever since “rascality looked in the king's face, and did not die,” but seized royalty by the beard, and led it, amidst hootings of triumph, to lodge where the people willed, the grand château of Versailles has stood vacant of kings and queens, its polished floors reflecting the dead monarchs on the walls, a great hush filling its broad galleries, grass growing in its courts, the silence of the past brooding everywhere. Noisy demagogues may scream and howl in the theatre where the Grand Monarch applauded the verses of Corneille and Racine, and their nimble heels may tread down some of the grass between the paving-stones of the Cour du Roi, but they are but jackdaws chattering in the deserted temple. Versailles has lived its day, and outlived its generation.
Neglected and uncomfortable as the Tuileries was, the royal family had no choice but to go there. The Louvre was partly dilapidated and quite unfurnished, while the sister palace, though so long uninhabited, was still furnished, and needed comparatively little to make it, even in this sudden emergency, a suitable domestic residence. The discomforts of the first few days were great, but the royal captives were absorbed in graver cares, and bestowed no idle regrets on such small matters as personal accommodation. Louis was satisfied with his truckle-bed, hurriedly provided by the nation in the tapestried room. “Where will your majesty please to sleep?” inquired an obsequious municipal, [pg 376] entering the presence; and majesty, with head bowed over his knees, answers, without deigning to look around and choose, “I am well enough here; let each lodge as he may.” So the truckle-bed is got ready. Strange days followed this strange beginning. Paris for a week was drunk with joy. The mob had got the king in their possession. Loyal subjects looked on, not knowing whether to weep or to rejoice. The Orleanist faction chuckled boldly over the degradation of the crown, and over the fact that the persons of the king and, above all, of the queen were safe in a gilded prison.
The queen was far too wise and keen-eyed to be deceived by the pale glimmer of popularity which, during the early days of their abode in Paris, shone upon them. Louis took pleasure in the scanty vivats that greeted him when he sauntered out for a walk on the terrace—his only place of exercise now—and within doors amused himself with carpentry and lock-making. The Dauphin played at soldiering, dressed in military uniform, and gave the word of command to his men, a regiment of warriors from five to eight years old. Marie Antoinette had her library brought from Versailles, and sought refuge from thought in reading. Mme. Elizabeth, meanwhile, watches the signs of the coming storm, prays, loves, and hopes.
The Assembly had followed the king to Paris, and installed itself in the Salle de Manège, formerly the riding-school of the Tuileries, and situated within sight of the palace on the north terrace. This proximity, whether accidental or designed, was a source of danger and humiliation to the king. The members could see the royal prison-house from the windows of the Manège, and the prospect served to point many an insolent period in the tribune. Mirabeau used it with fine effect. “I see,” he cried, “the window whence a king of France, under the influence of execrable advisers, fired the shot which gave the signal of the massacre of S. Bartholomew!”
But the Assembly did not content itself with pointing the arrows of its rhetoric at the doomed Louis; it sought to give him more practical proofs of disrespect. The riding-school being situated on the Terrace des Feuillants, the members declared that this terrace belonged to them, and not to the king; it was therefore thrown open as a public thoroughfare, the palace being thus exposed to the coming and going of the populace, who availed themselves of the opportunity of flaunting their disloyalty under the very windows of the sovereign. There was no longer any barrier on the north side, and, the external posts being all sentinelled by National Guards, the royal family had no control over either the courts or the gardens. This scandalous violation of his privacy roused even Louis to utter a mild protest to the Assembly, but it was met by one of the Girondists retorting that “the people lodged Louis in the Tuileries, but it nowise followed that they gave up to him the exclusive use of the gardens.” The unhappy king had no resource henceforth but in dignified patience, fed by the hope of escaping to the freedom and seclusion of St. Cloud at Easter. We know how, just as he had entered his carriage to start for that suburban castle, it was surrounded by the mob, and he himself only rescued from personal violence by Lafayette [pg 377] and his troop, who were, however, unable to effect his release. Louis re-entered the Tuileries crushed and humbled, but inwardly resolved on some desperate attempt to escape from the insupportable bondage of his position. The abortive attempt to leave the Tuileries, even for his usual summer residence, roused a bitter feeling of suspicion against him, and more especially against the queen, which was soon manifested by the increasing insolence of the mob. They dared no longer show themselves in public, and even their afternoon walk on the terrace by the river's side became impossible. They tried to avoid the humiliation and annoyance it provoked by rising at daybreak, and taking an hour's exercise in the early dawn; but this soon became known, and had also to be abandoned. At last the queen complained that she “could not even open her windows on these hot summer evenings without being subjected to the grossest invectives and threats.”
When things came to this point, the king was forced to lend an ear to the proposals which had up to this time met with a dogged and somewhat contemptuous refusal. There was but one way of remedying the miseries of their position, and that was by flight. It was no longer a question of flying from humiliation, but from absolute and imminent danger. The most sanguine or the most obtuse observer could not but see that things were hastening to a fearful crisis, which, terminate how it may, must work ruin to the royal family.
Many schemes were arranged, but for one reason or another they fell through. Finally, it was settled that the sovereign should escape with his wife and children and sister to Montmédy. This was the utmost that could be wrung from Louis, even in this extremity. No arguments could induce him to consent to leave France, or even to cross the frontier with the purpose of re-entering France the next day, though by so doing he would have shortened the journey and lessened its dangers. If even then he had consented to fly speedily, separately, instead of losing the precious days and weeks in preparations that only awoke suspicion and proved hindrances instead of helps! But in the race of destiny, who wins? Not he who flies, but he who waits. Louis waited too long, or not long enough; fled too late, if he should have fled at all.
The story of the flight to Varennes has been written by historians of all shades and camps, but it is generally tainted with such vehement partisanship that the simple, underlying facts become obscured, almost obliterated, by hysterical reproaches of this one and that; whereas the cause of the failure of that memorable expedition is to be sought rather in the attitude of the entire population, the atmosphere of the times, or, let us say at once, the mysterious leadings of the First Great Cause which overrules human events, even while it leaves the human instruments free to decide the issue. It is easy for one historian[105] to lay the blame on Marie Antoinette, who “could not travel without new clothes,” showing us how “Dame Campan whisks assiduous to this mantua-maker and to that; and there is clipping of frocks and gowns, upper clothes and under, great and small—such clipping and sewing as might be dispensed with. Moreover, majesty cannot go [pg 378] a step anywhere without her nécessaire, dear nécessaire, of inlaid ivory and rosewood, cunningly devised, which holds perfumes, toilet implements, infinite small, queenlike furniture necessary to terrestrial life.” Poor Marie Antoinette! her grand, queenlike soul was lifted far above such silly “terrestrial life” by this time, and it is not likely that, when such tremendous stakes were impending, her care dwelt with new clothes or perfume bottles—so misleading does prejudice make the clearest mind, the most intentionally sincere witness. The plain truth is that the difficulty of the new clothes existed, but from a very different motive from that suggested by Mr. Carlyle. It was necessary that the queen and the royal children should be disguised, and for this purpose new clothes were essential, and it required all the ingenuity of Mme. De Tourzel, and Mme. Campan, and every one connected with the affair to get them made so as to fit the royal fugitives, and then conveyed into the palace without exciting the keen lynx-eyes that were fixed on every incomer and outgoer passing through the queen's apartments. As to the nécessaire over which the Scotch philosopher breaks the vials of his scorn so loftily, it was wanted. Some box was wanted to hold the money, jewels, and certain indispensable papers that were to be taken on the journey, and the queen suggested that her dressing-case should be used, adding at the same time that she was loath to leave it behind her, as it was almost the first present she had received from her husband—no great subject for philosophical sneers, as far as we can see. Nor did either nécessaire or new clothes—though the obtaining and smuggling in of the latter caused much delay—give rise to any of the accidents which worked the failure of the scheme.
Then there was the new berlin to be provided—a lamentable mistake, but not one that deserves Mr. Carlyle's withering sarcasms any more than the nécessaire. “Miserable new berlin!” he cries. “Why could not royalty go in an old berlin similar to that of other men? Flying for life, one does not stickle about one's vehicle.” It was not for the newness or dignity of the vehicle that the queen stickled, but for its capability of carrying “all her treasures with her.” She positively refused to fly at all, unless it could be so contrived that she was not separated for an hour of the way from her husband, her children, and her beloved sister-in-law, the Princess Elizabeth. She insisted, moreover, that the few faithful friends who were to share her flight should be with them also, and not exposed to solitary risks in a separate conveyance. This was characteristic enough of the queen's loyal heart towards those she loved, but it was unlike her practical sense and intelligence. M. de Fersen, who was taken into confidence from the first, declared that no travelling-coach was to be found large enough to answer these requirements, and that one must be built on purpose. It so happened that the previous year he had ordered a berlin, of just such form and dimensions as was now wanted, for a friend of his in Russia; he therefore went to the coach-maker, and desired him with all possible speed to build another on the same model for a certain Baronne de Korff, a cousin of his, who was about to return to St. Petersburg with her family and suite. The berlin was built, and, to baffle suspicion more effectually, was [pg 379] driven through some of the most public streets in Paris, in order to try it. The result was most satisfactory, and M. de Fersen talked aloud to his friends of the perfect coach he had ordered and partly designed for his cousin, Mme. de Korff.