BOOKS.
MADAME ELISABETH.* THE memory of Madame Elisabeth had almost faded from the minds of this, the second generatiou born since her tragical death, when the publication of a volume of her letters roused consider- able interest among the lovers of historical biography, and gave life and colour to the dim figure which had vanished in the gloom of the Temple, and whose very tomb it had been impossible to identify. In Clery's memoirs, and in prints and pictures relative to the family group which met so awful, and personally so un- deserved a fate, Elisabeth appears as the gentle supporter of her brilliant sister-in-law ; but until M. Feuillet de Conches published her correspondence with certain of the ladies nearest to her person, and closely allied to her by friendship, she could scarcely be said to have for us a substantive existence. Since then, the two thick volumes given to the world by M. de Beauchesne, and bearing date of last year, give as complete a picture as can be desired of a very admirable nature, firmly built, and capable of achieving a separate reputation for itself, but for the simple directness of purpose which caused it to utterly disregard all praise and all social success.
The Court of the Bourbon Kings of France at all times con- tained the most singular diversity of character within the bosom of the Royal family itself. Something in the blood seemed to run to extremes of virtue or of vice. Louis XIV., after a life of very lax morality, ended by an old age of strict devotion ; his son, the Grand Dauphin, was a non-entity, but his grandson, the Due de Bourgogne, Femilon's pupil, inspired the highest hopes from the virtuous promise of his youth. His early death and the long minority of the boy Louis XV., under a vicious Regent, prepared the fatal reign which was to cost France all her chance of steady national development. But nothing in authentic history is more amazing and more touching than the contrast of the two lives led at Versailles by Louis XV. and by his wife and children. Marie Leczinska, daughter of Stanislaus, the dethroned King of Poland, was a truly good woman ; whether she was also a sensible one is a difficult matter to judge of. Her portraits are very characteristic, showing a plain face, nez retroussie, and eyes of considerable intelligence. But even supposing she was narrow and bigoted, as the Liberal writers of the period affirmed, her husband was enough to make her so. She could but stiffen herself against the flood of immorality surging about her ; and a hard lot was hers, for it appears tru.t that in the beginning of their married life her husband was really attached to her, and that, like many weak affectionate natures, the beginning of evil had for him no end. It was a miserable Court intrigue which first plotted the young king's moral ruin, and from thenceforth Marie Leczinska had to uphold her own dignity and the purity of her family circle against fearful odds. She had eight daughters and one son. Of the daughters, one married a prince of Spain, an- other became a Carmelite nun, two or three died, the others grew to middle age at Versailles. When the Revolution came two were still living, Mesdames Adelaide and Victoire. They got away to Rome with some difficulty, were received with open arms, and there, in an old Roman palace, they spent their remaining years. Marie Leczinska's only son, the "Good Dauphin," died of consumption at the age of 36. This man was so strangely unlike his father, was so religious, so industrious, so single-hearted, that one won- ders as one reads of him what special providence had guarded him in that terrible atmosphere of the Court. He was the father, by Marie Josephe de Saxe, of many children, three of whom were Kings of France. Elisabeth was the youngest, and had lost father and mother before she was four years old.
The poor little child thus left lonely was so delicate that small hopes were entertained of rearing her. She was given, with her elder sister Clotilde, into the hands of Madame de Martian, the Royal governess. Clotilde was nearly five years the oldest, and one of those good little girls with whom everything goes well. She lived to espouse the Prince of Sardinia, to be a wanderer over
• La Vie de Madame Elisabeth; Saar de Louis XV!. Par H. A. de Beanchesne. Paris: Henri Pion. Europe in the times when the old Legitimate thrones were sub- verted, and to be finally entitled "venerable" by the Catholic Church. But in proportion as Clotilde was good, Elisabeth was naughty. Passionate and obstinate was this Royal Mite, scolding her maids, and declaring that princesses need not tease themselves to learn, as they had always somebody to think for them. In Marie Antoinette's letters, she makes kindly mention of this little sister-in-law, who was intelligent, but so unmanageable. The child was jealous of Clotilde because it was natural that Madame de Marsan should prefer the tractable pupil, but the eldest sister lavished all her tenderness upon the younger one, and was the first strong influence which bore upon Elisabeth for good. In the year 1770, Clotilde made her first Communion, and according to the etiquette of the French Court she quitted on that day the simple dress of her childhood, and put on the stately attire of a princess, cushioned and powdered hair, hoop, stomacher, and the tout-ensemble of the time to which we are accustomed in Sir Joshua's pictures.
Her governess, anxious to change the little Elisabeth's natural difficulties into the virtues which lay near akin, now sent for a widow lady, once a pupil at St. Cyr's, then living in retirement at Alsace, to assist her in her charge. Not only had Madame de Mackau a firm and commanding character, by which to work on Elisabeth's sensible but obstinate nature ; but she had one young daughter of her own, two years older than the one and younger than the other princess, and the three were henceforth educated together under a strict maternal rule. This daughter became Madame de Bombelles, Elisabeth's dear friend in youth, and con- stant correspondent when later life separated them. It is by this friendship that the memory of both survives in its freshness.
The three young girls received a good education. It was the time when the Galtons at Barr, and the Edgworths in Ireland, and Mr. Day in England, and many others whose projects have been less known, were all energetically alive to the necessity of good teaching. Accordingly, we find the same current in the Court of France. Elisabeth learned botany from the Kin g's physician, Lemon- flier, a remarkable man ; she read Plutarch, and acted little plays, besides, of course, being taught all the regular routine. She often went to visit the young ladies of St. Cyr, and her childhood passed happily up to the year 1777, marked by two great events, her own first communion, and the marriage of her sister Clotilde. It was the Count de Viry (married later to an English wife, the daughter of Lord Sandwich, and sister of the eminent barrister Basil Montagu) who came to fetch the young bride. She bade a formal adieu at Versailles to the King and Queen, but Elisabeth went with her as far as Choisy, and her brother also followed privately. On the 28th of August they both parted from their Clotilde. She never saw either of them again. Elisabeth fell ill of grief, and Marie Antoinette wrote to her mother that she feared learning to love the child too much, "since I feel for her sake, and taking • warning by my aunts, that it is essential that she should not remain to be an old maid in this country."
WhenElisabeth was about fifteen, projects of marriage were afloat for her. Portugal was seriously talked of, but the negotiations came to nothing. Then the Due d'Aosta was proposed, but French pride objected to marrying a daughter of France to a younger son. Lastly, the Emperor of Austria, Joseph II., was said to have greatly admired her when he paid a visit incognito to his sister the Queen, but the anti-Austrian party at Court prevented any result. Nor did Elisabeth ever seem to have an anxious moment in regard to herself and her establishment. All her letters show her living for others, wrapped up in their interests and acting as counsellor and friend. Mademoiselle de Mackau, married to M. de Bombelles, Mademoiselle de Causaus, who became Madame de Raigecourt, and the young and lively Mademoiselle de la Briffe, who became the Marquise de Moutiers, were her three intimates. The last was her " cher demon," alternately petted and scolded by the Princess, and the constant object of an almost maternal solicitude.
The King, in the year 1781, bought from the Princesse de Gudinerni a small estate on the outskirts of Versailles, named Mon- treal]; and gave it to Madame Elisabeth for her own, on the con- dition that until she had attained the age of twenty-five she was to continue to sleep at the palace. She was enchanted with her new acquisition, went there with her ladies early every morning, worked, read, walked, and looked after the poor ; and after family prayers in common returned in the evening to Versailles. She spent much time in this, her own home, during the next nine years ; the place still remains, almost in its former state, and belongs to a proprietor who respects the memory of the Princess sufficiently to take a pleasure in preserving the relics of her resi- dence as intact as possible.
M. de Beauchesne has accumulated in regard to these years a quantity of correspondence, anecdotes, and political matter. He reproaches the King for want of firmness, and says that on the first occasion of the invasion of Versailles, Elisabeth counselled the !repression of the insurrection by force. She was undoubtedly in ! the right. At that moment, when the nobles were giving up their ' privileges, and the King was amply disposed to take the place of a constitutional monarch, the Government ought certainly to have enforced tranquillity with the strong hand of power. It was sheer weakness to let the constitutional party be over-ridden by the roughs. Priceless as may be the substantial changes in the law wrought by the great Revolution, they were brought about unnaturally, and after a lapse of seventy years the Government of France at the present day is so utterly rootless a thing, that the. first wind bringing disease and death upon its wings may cause its overthrow ; while local liberty, and the natural premiums on local activity which in England are of the very essence of our political life, are cut down so low that one doubts if they ever can be efficaciously revived again.
It is in its vivid portraiture of pre-revolutionary times that the Life of Madame Elisabeth has its chief interest for us. The story of the imprisonment of the Temple, so pathetically told in its freshness by the valet Clay, is familiar to us all from childhood, and so are the previous acts of the departure of the Royal family from Versailles, taking seven hours for the weary route, and their fruitless flight to Vareanes. M. de Beauchesne says that on leav- ing Versailles, Elisabeth leaned out to catch a last glimpse of the tree-tops of Montreuil, and when playfully said by the King to be saluting her home, answered, "Sire, I am bidding it adieu." In fact, from the beginning of the troubles Elisabeth seems to have had a prescience of the end. She had bade adieu to Madame de Bombelles while still at Versailles, her friend being called to join her husband in Germany. "Had I known," said Madame de Bombelles, later, "that I should never have seen her again, I should have fallen dead at her feet." When lodged in a semi- imprisonment at the Tuileries, then a desolate place, full of gloomy old furniture, and uninhabited since the early part of the reign of Louis XIV., Elizabeth will not hear of Madame de Raigecourt, who is enceinte, coming to share her danger. So long as pen and ink are left to her, she writes to " mon cher demon" with her usual sweetness. But there is no hint of hope in her letters. Yet her only complaint is of being lodged on the ground-floor looking into the court, where the mob came and stared through the win- dows, and several market-women even broke in. The King moved her into the Pavillon de Fiore, which she occupied for many months. It is now taken down, and a huge new pavilion erected, said to be destined for Napoleon's private rooms. So long as it existed, it was often pointed to as the scene of Elisabeth's sad sojourn. Even the market-women called her "the St. Genevieve of the Tuileries." Of her many heroiams, of her throwing herself in front of Marie Antoinette, exclaiming, "I am the Queen !" when the mob were striking at her sister; of her comfortings on the dread- ful night when the Dauphin was taken away out of his bed ; of her partings from brother and brother's wife, and all the rest of the piteous tale, nothing is to us so pathetic and so genuinely good as her sedulous cheerful care of the young niece who was for many mouths her sole charge. In later life, Madame d'Angoulenne said that her aunt never broke down, never complained, never suffered her to be idle through all those dreary days. One feels it must have been owing to her that the young girl's reason kept steady on its throne. At length, one night, came the officers again ; and this time they they took Elisabeth away (it was in May, 1794), leaving the unfortunate child to the horrors of solitude.
The Princess was tried and condemned at the Conciergerie for various imaginary crimes ; inciting massacres, teaching her nephew to hate and revenge himself upon the people; and so on. Twenty- three men and women were condemned on the same day. When taken to the guillotine, they were seated on a bench, and sum- moned one by one ; Elisabeth last of all. Each woman asked to kiss her, each man came up to her and bowed. The scene is described by a concierge, who stood close by, and soother woman told of the wonderful prayers and consolations by which the Princess strengthened her fellow-sufferers. Two were lads of twenty, one of whom had his mother with him. Close by the guillotine stood a cart with two immense panniers: the heads were put into one, the bodies into the other. Elisabeth's, dressed in all its clothes, was at the top. The cart was driven away past the Madeleine, where the cemetery was full, by the Rue St. Lazare, and up the Rue du Rocher, to a field near the Pare Monceaux, where many victims already lay and many were yet to come. Malesherbes and several members of his family had been guillotined some days previously, and Denton with fourteen of his party were there. Arrived at the cemetery, or rather field, for a part of the ground still retained traces of the furrow and the spade, the bodies were stripped, and laid in a large fosse, with about six inches of earth between. The digger intended to take special note of where he laid the corpse of Madame Elisabeth ; and at the Restoration various depositions were taken in the hope of identifying and removing her remains. But, as may be imagined, it was found to be impossible ; and Louis XVIII., sceptical by disposition, and not feeling very certain that the bodies so solemnly removed to St. Denis were veritably those of his brother and Marie Antoinette, ceased from endeavours to certify that of his sister Elisabeth. It would have been only natural to have set aside the whole piece of ground as a memorial, to have planted it with trees and flowers, and consecrated it to the illustrious dead. Strange to say, this was not done. The horrors of the guillotine and the sorrows of exile had broken through the habit of tender respect which the French pay to the grave. In many cases, relations did not even know to which one of the cemeteries of Paris the victims of a particular day had been taken. This par- ticular piece of ground, which went originally by the name of the Champ du Christ, had been closed at the end of two years, and the great gate opened in the town wall to admit the carts had been built up. The place had sunk into silence and oblivion, and when it was found impossible to identify Madame Elisabeth, it was allowed so to remain. After a further lapse of years part was sold ; buildings were erected on speculation, and when bones were dug up among the foundations, the inhabitants of the Faubourg could not imagine whence they came ; all memory of the Revolution- ary graveyard had passed away. Lately, in making the upper part of the Boulevard Malesherbes, a quantity more bones were found. These were carefully removed to the catacombs. This is all that can ever be known of the grave of Elisabeth.
We turn to the dire sorrow caused by her death. When the Prince of Piedmont learnt what had happened, he went to his wife, holding a crucifix in his hands, and said, "It is necessary to make a great sacrifice." Clotilde, who had so loved her little sister, and who must have suffered agonies of suspense during the long imprisonment of the Temple, guessed in a moment what he meant. Rallying her courage, she answered, "The sacrifice is made," and fell fainting at her husband's feet. On that day a religious ceremony was appointed to take place. It was pro- posed to postpone it ; but Clotilde came to herself, insisted on going through with it, and walked dry-eyed to the church, praying as she went, while the people who saw her pass wept from com- passion. A servant walked close behind, fearing she would fall ; but she went steadily through the whole, until on her return to the palace she took to her bed. It is a little trait of the strange firmness of the women of that generation.
At Wartegg, in Switzerland, were the family of the De Bom- belles. A newspaper brought the news, which flew like wildfire through the castle. Its mistress had not left her room ; and a servant came in, uttering with tears the words, "Madame Elisabeth !" Madame de Bombelles cried out, and fell back motionless on her pillow. Her husband ran into the room, brought back breath and motion, but only to hear her break into a fear- ful fit of laughter. M. de Bombelles, cried out, "The children, the children !" The little things ran and flung themselves on to their mother's bed ; and gradually the laughter changed into sobs. Madame de Raigecourt and Madame de Menders, the two next dearest to the dead princess, wrote, one to the niece, the other to the brother. The answer, dated from Vienna, of Marie Therese, and the reply of Louis XVIII. to his sister's " cher demon," are both given. They are stiff in wording, but human language deals ill with catastrophes which surpass ordinary human experi- ence. Those who frequently saw Madame d'Angouleme in later life, say that though excellently kind and good, she never lost a certain abrupt harshness of manner, as if the springs of grace had been early broken by the frightful sorrows she had undergone.
Here we leave M. de Beauchesne and his task. We have preferred to analyze the contents of the book, rather than to give translated extracts, which would lose their savour by losing the clear, expressive French in which Elisabeth wrote. These two volumes are a book for a permanent library ; they are also a book for the young, since the story which they tell is as noble as any one of Plutarch's lives. It was no ordinary spirit which, when confronted, after long months of depressing imprisonment, with a
row of accusers and judges, twenty in number, and asked her name, replied with quietness, "I am named Elisabeth Marie de France, sister of Louis XVI., aunt of Louis XVII., your King."
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