THE FLIGHT OF MARIE ANTOINETTE.* THERE is a certain school

of writers which will never be happy till it is convinced by positive evidence that Count • The night of Marie Antoinette. From the French of G. Lenotre by Mrs. Rudolph Stowell. With over 50 Illustrations. London: W. Heinemann. 110s. net.]

Axel Fersen was the lover, in an immoral sense, of Queen Marie Antoinette. Fortunately the days are past when scandals, especially about Royalty, were believed without any evidence at all, and therefore the future has no real dangers for the fair fame of the Queen. We have no idea of including M. Lenotre in this school, to which his own words prove that he does not belong, but the opening chapter of his book affords something like an opportunity of studying its methods. Not only every scrap of writing from one to the other is sifted with the utmost care, the separate words being wrung out, as it were, or examined under a microscope, so that no hidden drop of poisonous sweetness, no shade of passion, may escape unnoticed, but all letters and memoirs which may merely mention the Queen and Fersen are dissected with equal minuteness. It is unluckily true that critics and historians take more pains of this kind to prove guilt than to establish innocence ; and considering Fersen's romantic devotion of

so many years and the rash frankness with which Marie Antoinette characteristically expressed the tender friendship

with which she repaid it, one cannot wonder at the possibility of misunderstanding. But, after all, this keen and careful criticism tells both ways, and those who believe in "the white soul of the Queen" have no reason for dreading it. Once again, the evidence brought by M. Lenotre proves this. After an exhaustive study of the subject, he asserts that none of the slanderers have really been able to tarnish her fair fame. He considers that all doubtful stories as to the Fersen friendship have been successfully refuted. He quotes M. Geoffroy, a trustworthy historian, who had full access to Fersen's papers in Sweden, as well as to all other sources of information :—

" This devotion must strike us as being chivalrous and sincere: we can trace it from the first youthful impression, which doubtless made way, when the hour of trouble came, for a feeling of tender adoration ; but nowhere do we find, either in the various authori- ties that are still unpublished or in the printed documents, any certain proof that this feeling ever ceased to be respectful."

It was impossible, of course, to tell the story of the un- lucky Bight to Varennes without some reference to the loyal friend who arranged its details with such pains and care: and we are glad to see Count Fersen's portrait reproduced here once more. There never was a face which spoke a man's character more plainly ; beautiful, sad, refined, it expresses in every feature the unselfish chivalry and nobility, rare at all times, which were rather specially out of fashion in the later eighteenth century. But it is also the face of a man who fails in life. In one of his final chapters M. Lenotre describes the tragic end of this most faithful of Marie Antoinette's friends,—her lover in the noblest sense of the word.

One would have thought that the story of those six days in June, 1791, had been told so many times over that nothing could be left unsaid. The absorbing interest of M. Lenotre's book shows three things : that these days were indeed the frame of a separate act in that tragedy, the downfall of the old Monarchy of France ; that the bare story, striking as it has always been, has lacked till now a thousand details of scenery and personality, which M. Lenotre happily supplies; and that his vivid, picturesque art, his thrilling touch, has met with a first-rate English interpreter. One cannot exaggerate the importance of this last fact. Foreign books too often lose all their savour in translation. Traduttore, traditore is a proverb only too true. But Mrs. Stawell knows French, knows English, and knows the art of translation. We have not met with the original of M. Lenotre's book ; but it is difficult to imagine it more delightful reading than the volume before us. One forgets that the English book is a translation, and there can be no higher praise.

The whole thing, terribly true as it is, reads like a chapter in a masterly romance. All the ceremonial details of life at the Tuileries, so cleverly touched and described, make one realise how the formal state of Royalty had been carried on with little change from earlier days before that march from Versailles in the fateful autumn of 1789. Outside the Tuileries Royal power had ceased to exist; the King and his family had become mere ornamental possessions of the nation, mechanical toys to be kept going as long as they were wanted, then remorselessly broken. This was the real state of things, and the danger was understood by all the friends of Royalty whose eyes were open. But inside the guarded palate gateways the great household, with all its rights and duties, etiquettes, sinecures, moved ponderously on its way. On the whole, it was a faithful household. There were traitors, such as that Madame Rochereuil, a Woman of the Bedchamber, who afterwards told the ridiculous story, with "no appearance of truth," as M. Lenotre says, that the King gave her a tart containing a sleeping-powder in order to keep her safely out of the way on the night of the planned escape. The truth is that she was leaving the Queen's service on June 20th, and from fear of her, as Fersen states, the flight was delayed till after her departure. But the rest of the servants, though a motley crowd that could not, of course, be trusted with a secret on which so much depended, were not spies of the National Assembly.

In M. Lenotre's vivid story we see the great lumbering

berline with its anxious passengers, the King, the Queen, Madame Elisabeth, Madame de Tourzel, Madame Royale, and the Dauphin, who was dressed as a little girl for safety. They started in high spirits. Everything seemed so well arranged, the relays at the various post-houses, the hussars and dragoons waiting near the frontier ; quiet roads, harmless villages and small towns, with the one exception of Chalons. Not many hours and they would be beyond pursuit, far from the cruel capital. Each had a character to assume in case of necessity; but this game was never played, for the King was recognised even before they reached Chalons, and after that, however, slowly the affair may have worked itself out through days and nights of mental and physical suffering, it is evident that there could be only one end. In the then state of feeling in France, especially within a day or two's journey of Paris, the

King would never have been allowed to leave the country. And yet it is difficult to read the story without forgetting

its inevitable end. The art of M. Lenotre makes us follow the yellow berline along the white roads in midsummer heat,

climbing the long hills slowly, descending into the sudden evening coolness of valleys where rows of trembling poplars shade the quiet streams. There is plenty of time to look about, for the pace is under eight miles an hour. The great carriage rumbles on, loaded with luggage : the three faithful bodyguards in yellow livery on the box are exhausted with heat and covered with dust. Two waiting-women follow in a yellow cabriolet. Gradually the crowds of country people

gather and stare ; the hussars, wherever they may have.been at first, disappear into the woods and are far away when the supreme moment comes; for there was a moment when an armed guard, commanded by an officer with a touch of genius, might have carried the fugitives across the frontier before the crowds, at first gaping, then raging and furious, really knew

what they wanted.

It seems that Drouet, the postmaster of Sainte-Menehould,

has been given rather too much credit for his cleverness in recognising Louis XVI. from his portrait on an aseignat. M. Lenotre treats that ancient story as a product of Drouet's

own imagination. He did not recognise the King; but his suspicions were roused by the behaviour of the dragoons under M. d'Andoins, who had arrived at Sainte-Menehould not long

before. "Save me from my friends ! " the King might well have said, for it was the stupidity of d'Andoins and his men

which had much to do with sending the wrathful Drouet in full pursuit to help in the famous capture at Varennes.

As long as French history is read at all, that little town will have its melancholy interest. Changes of government, as years roll on, will less and less affect this interest. Re- publicans, Monarchists, no matter who they are, will there realise one of the bitterest hours in the life of a good man, two heroic women and two children, the innocent victims of a terrible past and an impatient, unforgiving present. The mean back-room in Sauce's house was the death-chamber of French Royalty : the melancholy grocer himself, his obstinate sense of duty in conflict with a certain natural kindliness, was in a way its executioner. M. Lenotre tells a pretty story of an old peasant-woman, Sauce's grandmother, who, hearing that the King was at Varennes in her grandson's house, dragged herself into the town :—

"The poor old dame, born in the era of the Grand Roi, had venerated royalty all her days, and still clung to the theories of the past. Having greeted the King and Queen with a country- woman's awkward curtsey, she drew near to the bed on which the ohildren were asleep—the children of France. She meant to give them her blessing, but bursting into sobs, she fell on her knees beside the bed, and hiding her wrinkled face in the coverlet, she wept long and bitterly."

Then followed that terrible drive back to Paris which whitened the Queen's hair, the berline escorted by a crowd so

savage that it is hard to understand how the Royal fugitives ended their journey alive. They were only preserved, of course, by the presence of the two Deputies, Barnave and Petion, the latter of whom in his own Memoirs has " written himself down an ass" for the benefit of posterity.

The illustrations are by no means the least interesting part of this delightful book. Besides portraits, they include all the scenes of the journey,—roads, bridges, woods, the streets of villages and towns, the different post-houses, mostly old farms or wayside inns, where the travellers stopped or passed by. No one who cares to study the French Revolution at all, and no one who loves a true story uncommonly well told, and including litany interesting characters impossible to be mentioned here, should neglect to read this book.