A QUEEN OF SORROWS.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 11413, 25 October 1902, Page 6

A QUEEN OF SORROWS.

Except Mary Queen of Scots, there is r.o queen In history whose character has been more disputed than that of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette. Fresh light has been lately let in on the truth by the publication of various memoirs and correspondence of

her time, the latest of which are the letters of the Austrian Ambassador Comte de Mercy-Argenteau, hi s Imperial mistress Maria Ttteresa, and Alarse Antoinette herself. In her own time the French queen was assailed with frenzied hatred by all the The calumnies that gathered round her name were firmly believed then, and still survive after the lapse of over a century. Probably there are still people living who credit the legend that, when told the poor had no bread, ehe replied, "Let them eat cake then." Our English poet Blake in a poem warning La

Fayette, describes her as a beautiful fiend cursing her people with famine and pesti-

Jenee. A few years ago, an English maga-

zinc published the preposterous story of how she had compromising documents walled up iii the palace of Versailles, and afterwards with her own hands offered poisoned wine, and biscuits to the carpenter—as if queens of France under the old regime were in the habit of serving artisans with refreshments. We might almost expect after this a repetition, of Hubert's infamous accusation at her trial against which she "ap- " pealed to every inctliar present." No in-

vention was too monstrous for the preternatural suspicion (as Carlyle calls it) of the French brain,-; no raving too wild for the delirium of the Revolutionists. The charges brought against Mary Queen of Scots by the fiercest and sternest among the Protestants were mild and gentle in comparison. Yet there can be no rational doubt that Marie Antoinette was immeasurably the tetter woman of the two. Mary was the pupil of Catherine de Medicd, and Tras brought up in the most corrupt court of Europe, but the court of Marie Antoinette's mother was as remarkable for its purity as tliat of our own Queen Victoria. There is abundant evidence to that the French queen inherited to the full Maria. Theresa's

domestic virtues. For a woman of spirit and intellect, it was no small merit at that time to remain absolutely loyal and attached to a man whom de Meroy-Argen-teau's correspondence reveak as actually deficient in mind. Even her enemies can. hardly deny that she was a devoted mother. She defended the little Dauphin in her arms for over an hour when the brutal deputies came to separate mother and child, anci gave hini up only on a threat that if ehe did not, he would be assassinated before

her eyefl. Even in extreme youth, she introduced a purer element into the vile court of Louis XV., and so far from being callous to the poor, she seems personally to ! have been very tender-hearted. We hear of her adopting orphans, and during one hard winter tire Parisians set up a snow statue of her in gratitude for>her gift of coal. Her frivolity Has been greatly exaggerated. -The whole social atmosphere of the old regime was frivolous, and she was a mere girl when she played 'the comparatively innocent role of mock dairymaid at the Little Trianon. Mirabeau, afMr an interview wMi her, declared bho was the only man the King had about him, and La Fayiette's prejudice vanished when be knew her. At the same time, it must be admitted, she was neither- a saint like Jeanne d'Arc, nor t one of tie few great women of the world like Maria Theresa. And although, she was heax>io at times, she was not even a resolute heroine, of the type of Charlotte Oorday. Her ineffectual struggles to save herself and her husband and- children' led to useless

wars, which were treason in the eyes of patriots, and her vehemence and indiscretion increased her own miseries. But as she justly said' to the so-called "Constdtutromal .priest,^ , who came to insult her before her execution. by a recital of her orynes, "they were 'errors, not crimes." It is not at all surprising when the eaintly maid of Orleans for centuries bore the reputation of being a witch and a wanton that Marie Antoinette, whose virtues were merely human, and who had many*hmman failings, should wen mow have a load of obliquy.on her name. The French people when they were suddenly awatttened to a sense of their wrongs, wanted a victim on whom they could wreak their revenge, and they found it in the only one of noble blood who offered them a determined resistance. Perhaps no woman that ever lived drank deeper of the cup of grief. She lived to see her friends murdered, the Princess de- Lamballe, " the Saint of Penthievre" massacredl, and the head paraded before the window, (her husband executed, her children left alone in the hands of'butchers, and herself an object of execration and insult to millions. "I

was a queen, and you took my crowai; a wife, and you killed 1 my husband; a mother, and. you took from mc my children. I have nothing but my blood left, and now you will take that," she said; at her trial. If we grant her the devout reverence we feel for Jeanne D'Arc she at least deserves the -pity due to a virtuous and most unfortunate woman, and the respect due to a queen who never forgot <h?er queenly dignity. To her we might well apply the words of Shakespeare's Constance: —

" Here I and sorrow sit, Thig is mv throne, bid kings come bow to it."