correspondence accounts of the Anglomania, which still subsisted in Paris; surpassing that which the letters of the empress describe as reigning in Vienna, though it did not show itself now in quite the same manner as a year or two before, in the aping of English vices, gambling at races, and hard drinking, but rather in a copying of the fashions of men's dress; in the introduction of top-boots; and, very wholesomely, in the adoption of a country life by many of the great nobles, in imitation of the English gentry; so that, for the first time since the coronation of Louis XIV., the great territorial lords began to spend a considerable part of the year on their estates, and no longer to think the interests and requirements of their tenants and dependents beneath their notice.
The winter of 1779 and the spring of 1780 passed very happily. If Versailles, from the reasons mentioned above, was not as crowded as in former years, it was very lively. The season was unusually mild; the hunting was scarcely ever interrupted, and Marie Antoinette, who now made it a rule to accompany her husband on every possible occasion, sometimes did not return from the hunt till the night was far advanced, and found her health much benefited by the habit of spending the greater part of even a winter's day in the open air. Her garden, too, which daily occupied more and more of her attention, as it increased in beauty, had the same tendency; and her anxiety to profit by the experience of others on one occasion inflicted a whimsical disappointment oil the free- thinkers of the court. The profligate and sentimental infidel Rousseau had died a couple of years before, and had been buried at Ermenonville, in the park of the Count de Girardin. In the course of the summer the queen drove over to Ermenonville, and the admirers of the versatile writer flattered themselves that her object was to pay a visit of homage to the shrine of their idol; but they wore greatly mortified to find that, though his tomb was pointed out to her, she took no further notice of it than such as consisted of a passing remark that it was very neat, and very prettily placed; and that what had attracted her curiosity was the English garden which the count had recently laid out at a great expense, and from which she had been led to expect that she might derive some hints for the further improvement of her own Little Trianon.
She had not yet entirely given up her desire for novelty in her amusements; and she began now to establish private theatricals at Versailles, choosing light comedies interspersed with song, and with but few characters, the male parts being filled by the Count d'Artois and some of the most distinguished officers of the household, while she herself took one of the female parts; the spectators being confined to the royal family and those nobles whose posts entitled them to immediate attendance on the king and queen. She was so anxious to perform her own part well, though she did not take any of the principal characters, but preferred to act the waiting-woman rather than the mistress, that she placed herself under the tuition of Michu, a professional actor of reputation from one of the Parisian theatres; but, though the audience was far too courtly to greet her appearance on the stage without vociferous applause, the preponderance of evidence must lead us to believe that her majesty was not a good actress.[1] And perhaps we may think that as the parts which she selected required rather an arch pertness than the grace and majesty which were more natural to her, so, also, they were not altogether in keeping with the stately dignity which queens should never wholly lay aside.
It was well, however, that she should have amusements to cheer her, for the year was destined to bring her heavy troubles before its close: losses in her own family, which would be felt with terrible heaviness by her affectionate disposition, were impending over her; while the news from America, where the English army at this time was achieving triumphs which seemed likely to have a decisive influence on the result of the war, caused her great anxiety. How great, a letter which she wrote to her mother in July affords a striking proof. In June, when she heard of the dangerous illness of her uncle, Prince Charles of Lorraine, now Governor of the Low Countries, formerly the gallant antagonist of Frederick of Prussia, she declared that 'the intelligence overwhelmed her with an agitation and grief such as she had never before experienced,' and she lamented with evidently deep and genuine distress the threatened extinction of the male line of the house of Lorraine. But before she wrote again, the news of Sir Henry Clinton's exploits in Carolina had arrived, and, though almost the same post informed her of the prince's death, the sorrow which that bereavement awakened in her mind was scarcely allowed, even in its first freshness, an equal share of her lamentations with the more absorbing importance of the events of the campaign beyond the Atlantic.
'MY DEAREST MOTHER,-I wrote to you the moment that I received the sad intelligence of my uncle's death; though, as the Brussels courier had already started, I fear my letter may have arrived rather late. I will not venture to say more on the subject, lest I should be reopening a sorrow for which you have so much cause to grieve.... The capture of Charleston[2] is a most disastrous event, both for the facilities it will afford the English and for the encouragement which it will give to their pride. It is perhaps still more serious because of the miserable defense made by the Americans. One can hope nothing from such bad troops.'
It is curious to contrast the angry jealousy which she here betrays of our disposition and policy as a nation, with the partiality which, as we have seen, she showed for the agreeable qualities of individual Englishmen. But her uneasiness on this subject led to practical results, by inducing her to add her influence to that of a party which was discontented with the ministry; and was especially laboring to persuade the king to make a change in the War Department, and to dismiss the Prince de Montbarey, whose sole recommendation for the office of secretary of state seemed to be that he was a friend of the prime minister, and to give his place to the Count de Segur. The change was made, as any change was sure to be made in favor of which she personally exerted herself; even the partisans of M. de Maurepas himself were forced to allow that the new minister was in every respect far superior to his predecessor; and Mercy was desirous that she should procure the dismissal of Maurepas also, thinking it of great importance to her own comfort that the prime minister should be bound to her interests.
But she was far more anxious on other subjects. Nearly two years had now elapsed since the birth of the princess royal; and there was as yet no prospect of a companion to her, so that the Count d'Artois began to make arrangements for the education of his infant son, the Duc d'Angouleme, with a premature solicitude, which was evidently designed to point the child out to the nation as its future sovereign.[3] The queen was greatly annoyed; and, to add to her vexation, one of the teething illnesses to which children are subject at this time threw the little princess into convulsions, which, to a mother's anxiety, seemed even dangerous to her life; though in a day or two that apprehension passed away.
But these hopes of D'Artois and his flatterers again filled the court with intrigues. In the course of the summer she was made highly indignant by finding that news from the court, with malicious comments, were sent from Paris across the frontier to be printed at Deux-Ponts or Duesseldorf, and then circulated in Paris and in Vienna; and it was difficult to avoid connecting these libels with those who in the palace itself were manifestly building hopes on the diminution of her influence and the disparagement of her character.
But this and all other vexations were presently thrown into the shade by a great grief, the more difficult to bear because it was wholly unexpected by her-the death of her mother. In reality, Maria Teresa had been unwell for some time; but the suspicions of the serious character of her complaint, which she secretly entertained, she had never revealed to Marie Antoinette; and at last the end followed too quickly on the first appearance of danger to allow time for any preparatory warnings to be received at Versailles before the fatal intelligence arrived. On the 24th of November she was taken ill in a manner which excited the alarm of her physicians, but her family felt no apprehensions. Even on the 27th, the emperor felt so sanguine that the cough which seemed her most distressing symptom was but temporary, that it was with the greatest unwillingness that he consented to her receiving the communion, as the physicians recommended; but the next day even he was forced to acquiesce in the hopeless view which they took of their patient; and on the 29th she died, after having borne sufferings, which for the last three days had been of the most painful character, with the same heroism with which, in her earlier life, she had struggled against griefs of a different kind.
The dispatch announcing her death was brought to the king; and it is characteristic of his timid disposition that he could not nerve himself to communicate it to his wife, but suppressed all mention of it during the evening; and in the morning summoned the Abbe de Vermond, and employed him to break the news to her, reserving for himself the less painful task of approaching her with words of affectionate consolation after the first shock was over. For a time, however, she was almost overwhelmed with sorrow. She attempted to write to her brother, but after a few lines she closed the letter, declaring that her tears prevented her from seeing the paper; and those about her found that for some time she could bear no other topic of conversation than the courage, the wisdom, the greatness of her mother, and, above all, her warm affection for herself and for all her other children.[4]
With the death of the empress we lose the aid of Mercy's correspondence, which has afforded such invaluable service in the light it has thrown on the peculiarities of Marie Antoinette's position, and the gradual development of her character during the earlier years of her residence in France. We shall again obtain light from the same source of almost greater importance, when the still more terrible dangers of the Revolution rendered the queen more
