BOOKS.
THE GUARDIA.N OF MARIE ANTOINETTE.*
THE Comte de Mercy-Argenteau deserved better Madame Elisabeth's epithet of le vieuz renard than that of "old woman" bestowed upon him by a recent English writer. He had all the best qualities of the sagacious fox,—clever, cunning, quick-sighted, knowing how. to dodge his enemies— that is, the enemies of his precious charge—and. sometimes, like- the fox of fable, to fascinate and lead them astray to their• undoing. There is nothing helpless, nothing narrow or old-womanish, about Mercy-Argenteau. He has earned the opprobrious, epithet by the very nature of his charge, the complete trust reposed in him by an affectionate mother who was sending her young daughter, not fifteen, into a strange country, ruled by the worst King and the most corrupt Court in Europe., Such a trust presupposed in him who received it something a the good nurse, the wise governess, but also of the confessor, the tutor, the counsellor to advise, the soldier to
as well as the diplomatic leader to show the way through such a maze as few Princesses have been called upon to tread. Miss Lillian Smythe's narrative ends with the year 1780, when, on the death of the great Empress Marie Therese, the correspondence she has followed throughout suddenly ceases. She gives a few glimpses, bat nothing more, of Mercy's later guardianship, especially of those last years when he passionately and vainly tried to save his beloved Queen from the fury of the Revolution. He lived till the last blow had fallen, and then, broken- hearted, an old man of seventy-two, since 1790 ruler of the Netherlands under Leopold II., was sent by the Austrian Government • to London for negotiations connected with the coalition against France. There he died, his mission unful- filled, in August, 1794.
Miss Smythe has written a book ,great interest, and in the most favourable circumstances. She is acquainted, apparently, with the representatives of the Comte de Mercy- Argenteau—not his direct descendants, for Comte Florimond was never married—and by visiting the ancient Chateau d'Argenteau, which stands to this day looking down upon the Meuse, she has gained that inner knowledge, that sympithY with her subject, which no reading and study at a distance can ever supply. The portraits that hang on the walls of the Chateau d'Argenteau, reproduced for the first time in this book, =cladding greatly to its value, are of the sort to make history live again. We would specially mention the sweet, childlike picture of Marie Antoinette as Dauphine, full of simplicity and that natural nobleness which, with all her mistakes and faults, public and private, ought to make it for ever impossible to believe the slanders which take so -march disproving. There is also a remarkably fine portrait of Louis XVI., on whose memory, by the by, Miss Smythe seems to us rather unkindly and :unphilosophically severe. Two of the most interesting and characteristic portraits are those of the Empress Marie Therese and the Emperor Joseph. Last, not least, we must mention the charming, refined, anxious face of Count Florimond himself. It is the faee of a man indispensable to his Sovereign, a true and delightful friend, an unselfish servant, yet one to whom the burden ho carries is not light, but heavy.. There seems nothing of the worldly courtier about this man, who had the hard, yet beloved, task of guiding Marie Antoinette. Yet he was a courtier of the most polished, and a diplomat of the most worldly—/e vieuz renard. All through the first volume, which tells again the well-known, never-tiring story of Marie Aiiteinette's• high-spirited rebellion against the necessity of showing politeness to Madame du Barry, a rebellion which, certainly to his credit, only exalted her in the eyes of The Guardian of Marie Antoinette : Letters from the Comte de Mercy. Argentina, Austrian ..4mbassador to the Court of VorsoAltes. to Marie Th.:Woe, Empress of Austria, 17704180. By Lillian C. Smythe. Illustrated with nuinerons Portraits, Sc. 2 vols.' Loudon : Hutchinson and Co. [Ns. net.] Louis XV., our sympathies are with, the Dauphine, and not with the Empress and Mercy in their anxious diplomacies.
Horrible as the Court of Louis XV. was, there were a few persons in it who stood aloof from its immoralities ; and here, again, we find Miss Smythe a little severe, this time with regard to the King's poor daughters, who were in the most difficult position, and behaved, on the whole, uncommonly well. Mesdames do not deserve to be mentioned always with a, sneer, and seldom without the odious nicknames their graceless father gave them. Even he, we fancy, would have been revolted by the thought that the twentieth century would so insult them still. Three of them nearly paid with their lives for their devotion in nursing him. And as to Madame Louise, the Carmelite, we hardly think that any. one can have read her own Life and letters and yet quite accept Miss Smythe's judgment of her.
However, these hard and rather unfair views, expressed with a sharpness of speech which seems to be a temptation -beset- ting a clever and pleasant writer, are no great blot on the interest and value of the book. It is a successful book from an artistic point of view. Above all the immorality and con- fusion, the depths of intrigue, the worldliness, selfishness, marl luxury, through which French Royalty was hurrying to its ruin in the last years of Louis XV., and above the far more decent, yet wildly extravagant, state of things in the early years of Louis XVI., when the good King was too stupid, and the noble young Queen not wise enough, to lead any sort of reform—above all the welter of struggling politicians, heartless courtiers, hopeless finances, gambling on one side and starva- tion on the other, the figure of Marie Antoinette stands out predominant. Miss Smythe has succeeded in painting a life- like portrait of the Queen, more convincing than any we have met with in English. She has done for the English public what M. de Nolhac has done for the Frenoh,—distinguishing the real Marie Antoinette from the figure created by scandal- mongers who hated the Queen because of her best qualities. Persistent slanders which have made their way into history are very hard to kill. A true book like Miss Smythe's, which hides and extenuates nothing, but gives us the Queen herself as her most intimate associates knew her, standing out, not faultless, but a shape of . light against the background of dis- honesty and craftiness, quarrels, lies and intrigue, in which Princes and Princesses were as deeply involved as the meanest hangers-on of the Court,—such a book is a real contribution to history. Mercy-Argenteau himself would ask nothing better. Marie Antoinette had the faults of a proud, im- patient, thoughtless character, but Effie " nothing common did, or mean" ; and Mercy bears a witness not often true of Sovereigns : " I doubt if there is any living person of her rank besides herself to whom one can always speak the truth without fear."
It must be added that the book is very entertaining, and for this quality it is not indebted only to the letters of Mercy to the Empress, but to a, careful study of many memoirs of the time. Fashions, amusements, absurdities,—all this side of life is vividly painted. We improve our acquaintance with many characters who have not been much more than names before. Men such as the Cardinal de Rohan are hit off smartly with a biting pen. Voltaire appears in a light which will hardly please his more serious admirers. By the by, this last word reminds us to notice what seems a little misunderstanding. When Marie Antoinette writes to her mother of her new position as Queen of France, " Je ne puis m'emptsilier d'admirer 1' arrangement do la Providence," she is not exactly, we think, " complimenting heaven upon its selection
of herself for the most beautiful kingdom in Europe." She surely uses the word " admirer " iu its old sense of regarding with wonder or astonishment.
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