Her
escapades
at first would have been thought mild
enough had she not been a "daughter of France"; but they served to shock
the old French king, and likewise, perhaps even more, her own imperial
mother, Maria Theresa.
enough had she not been a "daughter of France"; but they served to shock
the old French king, and likewise, perhaps even more, her own imperial
mother, Maria Theresa.
Orr - Famous Affinities of History, Romacen of Devotion
Soon
after, with great magnificence, she was married to Prince Peter, and
from that moment began a career which was to make her the most powerful
woman in the world.
At this time a lady of the Russian court wrote down a description of
Catharine's appearance. She was fair-haired, with dark-blue eyes; and
her face, though never beautiful, was made piquant and striking by the
fact that her brows were very dark in contrast with her golden hair. Her
complexion was not clear, yet her look was a very pleasing one. She had
a certain diffidence of manner at first; but later she bore herself with
such instinctive dignity as to make her seem majestic, though in fact
she was beneath the middle size. At the time of her marriage her figure
was slight and graceful; only in after years did she become stout.
Altogether, she came to St. Petersburg an attractive, pure-minded German
maiden, with a character well disciplined, and possessing reserves of
power which had not yet been drawn upon.
Frederick the Great's forebodings, which had led him to withhold
his sister's hand, were almost immediately justified in the case of
Catharine. Her Russian husband revealed to her a mode of life which must
have tried her very soul. This youth was only seventeen--a mere boy
in age, and yet a full-grown man in the rank luxuriance of his vices.
Moreover, he had eccentricities which sometimes verged upon insanity.
Too young to be admitted to the councils of his imperial aunt, he
occupied his time in ways that were either ridiculous or vile.
Next to the sleeping-room of his wife he kept a set of kennels, with
a number of dogs, which he spent hours in drilling as if they had been
soldiers. He had a troop of rats which he also drilled. It was his
delight to summon a court martial of his dogs to try the rats for
various military offenses, and then to have the culprits executed,
leaving their bleeding carcasses upon the floor. At any hour of the day
or night Catharine, hidden in her chamber, could hear the yapping of
the curs, the squeak of rats, and the word of command given by her
half-idiot husband.
When wearied of this diversion Peter would summon a troop of favorites,
both men and women, and with them he would drink deep of beer and
vodka, since from his early childhood he had been both a drunkard and a
debauchee. The whoops and howls and vile songs of his creatures could
be heard by Catharine; and sometimes he would stagger into her rooms,
accompanied by his drunken minions. With a sort of psychopathic
perversity he would insist on giving Catharine the most minute and
repulsive narratives of his amours, until she shrank from him with
horror at his depravity and came to loathe the sight of his bloated
face, with its little, twinkling, porcine eyes, his upturned nose
and distended nostrils, and his loose-hung, lascivious mouth. She was
scarcely less repelled when a wholly different mood would seize upon him
and he would declare himself her slave, attending her at court functions
in the garb of a servant and professing an unbounded devotion for his
bride.
Catharine's early training and her womanly nature led her for a long
time to submit to the caprices of her husband. In his saner moments she
would plead with him and strive to interest him in something better
than his dogs and rats and venal mistresses; but Peter was incorrigible.
Though he had moments of sense and even of good feeling, these never
lasted, and after them he would plunge headlong into the most frantic
excesses that his half-crazed imagination could devise.
It is not strange that in course of time Catharine's strong good sense
showed her that she could do nothing with this creature. She therefore
gradually became estranged from him and set herself to the task of doing
those things which Peter was incapable of carrying out.
She saw that ever since the first awakening of Russia under Peter the
Great none of its rulers had been genuinely Russian, but had tried to
force upon the Russian people various forms of western civilization
which were alien to the national spirit. Peter the Great had striven
to make his people Dutch. Elizabeth had tried to make them French.
Catharine, with a sure instinct, resolved that they should remain
Russian, borrowing what they needed from other peoples, but stirred
always by the Slavic spirit and swayed by a patriotism that was their
own. To this end she set herself to become Russian. She acquired the
Russian language patiently and accurately. She adopted the Russian
costume, appearing, except on state occasions, in a simple gown of
green, covering her fair hair, however, with a cap powdered with
diamonds. Furthermore, she made friends of such native Russians as were
gifted with talent, winning their favor, and, through them, the favor of
the common people.
It would have been strange, however, had Catharine, the woman,
escaped the tainting influences that surrounded her on every side. The
infidelities of Peter gradually made her feel that she owed him nothing
as his wife. Among the nobles there were men whose force of character
and of mind attracted her inevitably. Chastity was a thing of which the
average Russian had no conception; and therefore it is not strange that
Catharine, with her intense and sensitive nature, should have turned to
some of these for the love which she had sought in vain from the half
imbecile to whom she had been married.
Much has been written of this side of her earlier and later life; yet,
though it is impossible to deny that she had favorites, one should judge
very gently the conduct of a girl so young and thrust into a life whence
all the virtues seemed to be excluded. She bore several children before
her thirtieth year, and it is very certain that a grave doubt exists as
to their paternity. Among the nobles of the court were two whose courage
and virility specially attracted her. The one with whom her name has
been most often coupled was Gregory Orloff. He and his brother, Alexis
Orloff, were Russians of the older type--powerful in frame, suave in
manner except when roused, yet with a tigerish ferocity slumbering
underneath. Their power fascinated Catharine, and it was currently
declared that Gregory Orloff was her lover.
When she was in her thirty-second year her husband was proclaimed Czar,
after the death of the Empress Elizabeth. At first in some ways his
elevation seemed to sober him; but this period of sanity, like those
which had come to him before, lasted only a few weeks. Historians have
given him much credit for two great reforms that are connected with his
name; and yet the manner in which they were actually brought about is
rather ludicrous. He had shut himself up with his favorite revelers, and
had remained for several days drinking and carousing until he scarcely
knew enough to speak. At this moment a young officer named Gudovitch,
who was really loyal to the newly created Czar, burst into the
banquet-hall, booted and spurred and his eyes aflame with indignation.
Standing before Peter, his voice rang out with the tone of a battle
trumpet, so that the sounds of revelry were hushed.
"Peter Feodorovitch," he cried, "do you prefer these swine to those who
really wish to serve you? Is it in this way that you imitate the glories
of your ancestor, that illustrious Peter whom you have sworn to take
as your model? It will not be long before your people's love will be
changed to hatred. Rise up, my Czar! Shake off this lethargy and sloth.
Prove that you are worthy of the faith which I and others have given you
so loyally! "
With these words Gudovitch thrust into Peter's trembling hand two
proclamations, one abolishing the secret bureau of police, which had
become an instrument of tyrannous oppression, and the other restoring to
the nobility many rights of which they had been deprived.
The earnestness and intensity of Gudovitch temporarily cleared the brain
of the drunken Czar. He seized the papers, and, without reading them,
hastened at once to his great council, where he declared that they
expressed his wishes. Great was the rejoicing in St. Petersburg, and
great was the praise bestowed on Peter; yet, in fact, he had acted only
as any drunkard might act under the compulsion of a stronger will than
his.
As before, his brief period of good sense was succeeded by another of
the wildest folly. It was not merely that he reversed the wise policy of
his aunt, but that he reverted to his early fondness for everything that
was German. His bodyguard was made up of German troops--thus exciting
the jealousy of the Russian soldiers. He introduced German fashions. He
boasted that his father had been an officer in the Prussian army. His
crazy admiration for Frederick the Great reached the utmost verge of
sycophancy.
As to Catharine, he turned on her with something like ferocity. He
declared in public that his eldest son, the Czarevitch Paul, was
really fathered by Catharine's lovers. At a state banquet he turned
to Catharine and hurled at her a name which no woman could possibly
forgive--and least of all a woman such as Catharine, with her high
spirit and imperial pride. He thrust his mistresses upon her; and
at last he ordered her, with her own hand, to decorate the Countess
Vorontzoff, who was known to be his maitresse en titre.
It was not these gross insults, however, so much as a concern for her
personal safety that led Catharine to take measures for her own defense.
She was accustomed to Peter's ordinary eccentricities. On the ground
of his unfaithfulness to her she now had hardly any right to make
complaint. But she might reasonably fear lest he was becoming mad. If he
questioned the paternity of their eldest son he might take measures to
imprison Catharine or even to destroy her. Therefore she conferred with
the Orloffs and other gentlemen, and their conference rapidly developed
into a conspiracy.
The soldiery, as a whole, was loyal to the empress. It hated Peter's
Holstein guards. What she planned was probably the deposition of Peter.
She would have liked to place him under guard in some distant palace.
But while the matter was still under discussion she was awakened early
one morning by Alexis Orloff. He grasped her arm with scant ceremony.
"We must act at once," said he. "We have been betrayed! "
Catharine was not a woman to waste time. She went immediately to the
barracks in St. Petersburg, mounted upon a charger, and, calling out
the Russian guards, appealed to them for their support. To a man they
clashed their weapons and roared forth a thunderous cheer. Immediately
afterward the priests anointed her as regent in the name of her son; but
as she left the church she was saluted by the people, as well as by the
soldiers, as empress in her own right.
It was a bold stroke, and it succeeded down to the last detail. The
wretched Peter, who was drilling his German guards at a distance from
the capital, heard of the revolt, found that his sailors at Kronstadt
would not acknowledge him, and then finally submitted. He was taken to
Ropsha and confined within a single room. To him came the Orloffs, quite
of their own accord. Gregory Orloff endeavored to force a corrosive
poison into Peter's mouth. Peter, who was powerful of build and now
quite desperate, hurled himself upon his enemies. Alexis Orloff seized
him by the throat with a tremendous clutch and strangled him till the
blood gushed from his ears. In a few moments the unfortunate man was
dead.
Catharine was shocked by the intelligence, but she had no choice save
to accept the result of excessive zeal. She issued a note to the foreign
ambassadors informing them that Peter had died of a violent colic. When
his body was laid out for burial the extravasated blood is said to have
oozed out even through his hands, staining the gloves that had been
placed upon them. No one believed the story of the colic; and some six
years later Alexis Orloff told the truth with the utmost composure. The
whole incident was characteristically Russian.
It is not within the limits of our space to describe the reign of
Catharine the Great--the exploits of her armies, the acuteness of her
statecraft, the vast additions which she made to the Russian Empire, and
the impulse which she gave to science and art and literature. Yet these
things ought to be remembered first of all when one thinks of the woman
whom Voltaire once styled "the Semiramis of the North. " Because she was
so powerful, because no one could gainsay her, she led in private a
life which has been almost more exploited than her great imperial
achievements. And yet, though she had lovers whose names have been
carefully recorded, even she fulfilled the law of womanhood--which is to
love deeply and intensely only once.
One should not place all her lovers in the same category. As a girl, and
when repelled by the imbecility of Peter, she gave herself to Gregory
Orloff. She admired his strength, his daring, and his unscrupulousness.
But to a woman of her fine intelligence he came to seem almost more
brute than man. She could not turn to him for any of those delicate
attentions which a woman loves so much, nor for that larger sympathy
which wins the heart as well as captivates the senses. A writer of the
time has said that Orloff would hasten with equal readiness from the
arms of Catharine to the embraces of any flat-nosed Finn or filthy
Calmuck or to the lowest creature whom he might encounter in the
streets.
It happened that at the time of Catharine's appeal to the imperial
guards there came to her notice another man who--as he proved in a
trifling and yet most significant manner--had those traits which Orloff
lacked. Catharine had mounted, man--fashion, a cavalry horse, and, with
a helmet on her head, had reined up her steed before the barracks. At
that moment One of the minor nobles, who was also favorable to her,
observed that her helmet had no plume. In a moment his horse was at her
side. Bowing low over his saddle, he took his own plume from his helmet
and fastened it to hers. This man was Prince Gregory Potemkin, and this
slight act gives a clue to the influence which he afterward exercised
over his imperial mistress!
When Catharine grew weary of the Orloffs, and when she had enriched them
with lands and treasures, she turned to Potemkin; and from then until
the day of his death he was more to her than any other man had ever
been. With others she might flirt and might go even further than
flirtation; but she allowed no other favorite to share her confidence,
to give advice, or to direct her policies.
To other men she made munificent gifts, either because they pleased her
for the moment or because they served her on one occasion or another;
but to Potemkin she opened wide the whole treasury of her vast realm.
There was no limit to what she would do for him. When he first knew
her he was a man of very moderate fortune. Within two years after their
intimate acquaintance had begun she had given him nine million rubles,
while afterward he accepted almost limitless estates in Poland and in
every province of Greater Russia.
He was a man of sumptuous tastes, and yet he cared but little for mere
wealth. What he had, he used to please or gratify or surprise the
woman whom he loved. He built himself a great palace in St. Petersburg,
usually known as the Taurian Palace, and there he gave the most
sumptuous entertainments, reversing the story of Antony and Cleopatra.
In a superb library there stood one case containing volumes bound with
unusual richness. When the empress, attracted by the bindings, drew
forth a book she found to her surprise that its pages were English
bank-notes. The pages of another proved to be Dutch bank-notes, and, of
another, notes on the Bank of Venice. Of the remaining volumes some were
of solid gold, while others had pages of fine leather in which were set
emeralds and rubies and diamonds and other gems. The story reads like a
bit of fiction from the Arabian Nights. Yet, after all, this was only a
small affair compared with other undertakings with which Potemkin sought
to please her.
Thus, after Taurida and the Crimea had been added to the empire
by Potemkin's agency, Catharine set out with him to view her new
possessions. A great fleet of magnificently decorated galleys bore her
down the river Dnieper. The country through which she passed had been
a year before an unoccupied waste. Now, by Potemkin's extraordinary
efforts, the empress found it dotted thick with towns and cities which
had been erected for the occasion, filled with a busy population which
swarmed along the riverside to greet the sovereign with applause. It
was only a chain of fantom towns and cities, made of painted wood and
canvas; but while Catharine was there they were very real, seeming
to have solid buildings, magnificent arches, bustling industries, and
beautiful stretches of fertile country. No human being ever wrought on
so great a scale so marvelous a miracle of stage-management.
Potemkin was, in fact, the one man who could appeal with unfailing
success to so versatile and powerful a spirit as Catharine's. He was
handsome of person, graceful of manner, and with an intellect which
matched her own. He never tried to force her inclination, and, on the
other hand, he never strove to thwart it. To him, as to no other man,
she could turn at any moment and feel that, no matter what her mood, he
could understand her fully. And this, according to Balzac, is the thing
that woman yearns for most--a kindred spirit that can understand without
the slightest need of explanation.
Thus it was that Gregory Potemkin held a place in the soul of this great
woman such as no one else attained. He might be absent, heading armies
or ruling provinces, and on his return he would be greeted with even
greater fondness than before. And it was this rather than his victories
over Turk and other oriental enemies that made Catharine trust him
absolutely.
When he died, he died as the supreme master of her foreign policy and at
a time when her word was powerful throughout all Europe. Death came upon
him after he had fought against it with singular tenacity of purpose.
Catharine had given him a magnificent triumph, and he had entertained
her in his Taurian Palace with a splendor such as even Russia had never
known before. Then he fell ill, though with high spirit he would not
yield to illness. He ate rich meats and drank rich wines and bore
himself as gallantly as ever. Yet all at once death came upon him while
he was traveling in the south of Russia. His carriage was stopped, a
rug was spread beneath a tree by the roadside, and there he died, in the
country which he had added to the realms of Russia.
The great empress who loved him mourned him deeply during the five years
of life that still remained to her. The names of other men for whom she
had imagined that she cared were nothing to her. But this one man lived
in her heart in death as he had done in life.
Many have written of Catharine as a great ruler, a wise diplomat, a
creature of heroic mold. Others have depicted her as a royal wanton and
have gathered together a mass of vicious tales, the gossip of the palace
kitchens, of the clubs, and of the barrack-rooms. But perhaps one finds
the chief interest of her story to lie in this--that besides being
empress and diplomat and a lover of pleasure she was, beyond all else,
at heart a woman.
MARIE ANTOINETTE AND COUNT FERSEN
The English-speaking world long ago accepted a conventional view of
Marie Antoinette. The eloquence of Edmund Burke in one brilliant passage
has fixed, probably for all time, an enduring picture of this unhappy
queen.
When we speak or think of her we speak and think first of all of a
dazzling and beautiful woman surrounded by the chivalry of France and
gleaming like a star in the most splendid court of Europe. And then
there comes to us the reverse of the picture. We see her despised,
insulted, and made the butt of brutal men and still more fiendish women;
until at last the hideous tumbrel conveys her to the guillotine, where
her head is severed from her body and her corpse is cast down into a
bloody pool.
In these two pictures our emotions are played upon in turn--admiration,
reverence, devotion, and then pity, indignation, and the shudderings of
horror.
Probably in our own country and in England this will remain the historic
Marie Antoinette. Whatever the impartial historian may write, he can
never induce the people at large to understand that this queen was far
from queenly, that the popular idea of her is almost wholly false, and
that both in her domestic life and as the greatest lady in France she
did much to bring on the terrors of that revolution which swept her to
the guillotine.
In the first place, it is mere fiction that represents Maria Antoinette
as having been physically beautiful. The painters and engravers have so
idealized her face as in most cases to have produced a purely imaginary
portrait.
She was born in Vienna, in 1755, the daughter of the Emperor Francis
and of that warrior-queen, Maria Theresa. She was a very German-looking
child. Lady Jackson describes her as having a long, thin face, small,
pig-like eyes, a pinched-up mouth, with the heavy Hapsburg lip, and
with a somewhat misshapen form, so that for years she had to be bandaged
tightly to give her a more natural figure.
At fourteen, when she was betrothed to the heir to the French throne,
she was a dumpy, mean-looking little creature, with no distinction
whatever, and with only her bright golden hair to make amends for her
many blemishes. At fifteen she was married and joined the Dauphin in
French territory.
We must recall for a moment the conditions which prevailed in France.
King Louis XV. was nearing his end. He was a man of the most shameless
life; yet he had concealed or gilded his infamies by an external dignity
and magnificence which, were very pleasing to his people. The French,
liked to think that their king was the most splendid monarch and the
greatest gentleman in Europe. The courtiers about him might be vile
beneath the surface, yet they were compelled to deport themselves with
the form and the etiquette that had become traditional in France. They
might be panders, or stock-jobbers, or sellers of political offices;
yet they must none the less have wit and grace and outward nobility of
manner.
There was also a tradition regarding the French queen. However loose
in character the other women of the court might be, she alone, like
Caesar's wife, must remain above suspicion. She must be purer than the
pure. No breath, of scandal must reach her or be directed against her.
In this way the French court, even under so dissolute a monarch as Louis
XV. , maintained its hold upon the loyalty of the people. Crowds came
every morning to view the king in his bed before he arose; the same
crowds watched him as he was dressed by the gentlemen of the bedchamber,
and as he breakfasted and went through all the functions which are
usually private. The King of France must be a great actor. He must
appear to his people as in reality a king-stately, dignified, and beyond
all other human beings in his remarkable presence.
When the Dauphin and Marie Antoinette came to the French court King
Louis XV. kept up in the case the same semblance of austerity. He
forbade these children to have their sleeping-apartments together. He
tried to teach them that if they were to govern as well as to reign they
must conform to the rigid etiquette of Paris and Versailles.
It proved a difficult task, however. The little German princess had no
natural dignity, though she came from a court where the very strictest
imperial discipline prevailed. Marie Antoinette found that she could
have her own way in many things, and she chose to enjoy life without
regard to ceremony.
Her escapades at first would have been thought mild
enough had she not been a "daughter of France"; but they served to shock
the old French king, and likewise, perhaps even more, her own imperial
mother, Maria Theresa.
When a report of the young girl's conduct was brought to her the empress
was at first mute with indignation. Then she cried out:
"Can this girl be a child of mine? She surely must be a changeling! "
The Austrian ambassador to France was instructed to warn the Dauphiness
to be more discreet.
"Tell her," said Maria Theresa, "that she will lose her throne, and even
her life, unless she shows more prudence. "
But advice and remonstrance were of no avail. Perhaps they might have
been had her husband possessed a stronger character; but the young Louis
was little more fitted to be a king than was his wife to be a queen.
Dull of perception and indifferent to affairs of state, he had only two
interests that absorbed him. One was the love of hunting, and the other
was his desire to shut himself up in a sort of blacksmith shop, where he
could hammer away at the anvil, blow the bellows, and manufacture small
trifles of mechanical inventions. From this smudgy den he would emerge,
sooty and greasy, an object of distaste to his frivolous princess, with
her foamy laces and perfumes and pervasive daintiness.
It was hinted in many quarters, and it has been many times repeated,
that Louis was lacking in virility. Certainly he had no interest in the
society of women and was wholly continent. But this charge of physical
incapacity seems to have had no real foundation. It had been made
against some of his predecessors. It was afterward hurled at Napoleon
the Great, and also Napoleon the Little. In France, unless a royal
personage was openly licentious, he was almost sure to be jeered at by
the people as a weakling.
And so poor Louis XVI. , as he came to be, was treated with a mixture
of pity and contempt because he loved to hammer and mend locks in his
smithy or shoot game when he might have been caressing ladies who would
have been proud to have him choose them out.
On the other hand, because of this opinion regarding Louis, people
were the more suspicious of Marie Antoinette. Some of them, in coarse
language, criticized her assumed infidelities; others, with a polite
sneer, affected to defend her. But the result of it all was dangerous to
both, especially as France was already verging toward the deluge which
Louis XV. had cynically predicted would follow after him.
In fact, the end came sooner than any one had guessed. Louis XV. , who
had become hopelessly and helplessly infatuated with the low-born Jeanne
du Barry, was stricken down with smallpox of the most virulent type. For
many days he lay in his gorgeous bed. Courtiers crowded his sick-room
and the adjacent hall, longing for the moment when the breath would
leave his body. He had lived an evil life, and he was to die a loathsome
death; yet he had borne himself before men as a stately monarch. Though
his people had suffered in a thousand ways from his misgovernment, he
was still Louis the Well Beloved, and they blamed his ministers of state
for all the shocking wrongs that France had felt.
The abler men, and some of the leaders of the people, however, looked
forward to the accession of Louis XVI. He at least was frugal in his
habits and almost plebeian in his tastes, and seemed to be one who would
reduce the enormous taxes that had been levied upon France.
The moment came when the Well Beloved died. His death-room was fetid
with disease, and even the long corridors of the palace reeked with
infection, while the motley mob of men and women, clad in silks and
satins and glittering with jewels, hurried from the spot to pay their
homage to the new Louis, who was spoken of as "the Desired. " The body of
the late monarch was hastily thrown into a mass of quick-lime, and was
driven away in a humble wagon, without guards and with no salute,
save from a single veteran, who remembered the glories of Fontenoy and
discharged his musket as the royal corpse was carried through the palace
gates.
This was a critical moment in the history of France; but we have
to consider it only as a critical moment in the history of Marie
Antoinette. She was now queen. She had it in her power to restore to
the French court its old-time grandeur, and, so far as the queen was
concerned, its purity. Above all, being a foreigner, she should have
kept herself free from reproach and above every shadow of suspicion.
But here again the indifference of the king undoubtedly played a strange
part in her life. Had he borne himself as her lord and master she might
have respected him. Had he shown her the affection of a husband she
might have loved him. But he was neither imposing, nor, on the other
hand, was he alluring. She wrote very frankly about him in a letter to
the Count Orsini:
My tastes are not the same as those of the king, who cares only for
hunting and blacksmith work. You will admit that I should not show to
advantage in a forge. I could not appear there as Vulcan, and the part
of Venus might displease him even more than my tastes.
Thus on the one side is a woman in the first bloom of youth, ardent,
eager--and neglected. On the other side is her husband, whose
sluggishness may be judged by quoting from a diary which he kept during
the month in which he was married. Here is a part of it:
Sunday, 13--Left Versailles. Supper and slept at Compignee, at the house
of M. de Saint-Florentin.
Monday, 14--Interview with Mme. la Dauphine.
Tuesday, 15--Supped at La Muette. Slept at Versailles.
Wednesday, 16--My marriage. Apartment in the gallery. Royal banquet in
the Salle d'Opera.
Thursday, 17--Opera of "Perseus. "
Friday, 18--Stag-hunt. Met at La Belle Image. Took one.
Saturday, 19--Dress-ball in the Salle d'Opera. Fireworks.
Thursday, 31--I had an indigestion.
What might have been expected from a young girl placed as this queen was
placed? She was indeed an earlier Eugenie. The first was of royal
blood, the second was almost a plebeian; but each was headstrong,
pleasure-loving, and with no real domestic ties. As Mr. Kipling
expresses it--
The colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady
Are sisters under their skins;
and so the Austrian woman of 1776 and the Spanish woman of 1856 found
amusement in very similar ways. They plunged into a sea of strange
frivolity, such as one finds to-day at the centers of high fashion.
Marie Antoinette bedecked herself with eccentric garments. On her head
she wore a hat styled a "what-is-it," towering many feet in height and
flaunting parti-colored plumes. Worse than all this, she refused to wear
corsets, and at some great functions she would appear in what looked
exactly like a bedroom gown.
She would even neglect the ordinary niceties of life. Her hands were not
well cared for. It was very difficult for the ladies in attendance
to persuade her to brush her teeth with regularity. Again, she would
persist in wearing her frilled and lace-trimmed petticoats long after
their dainty edges had been smirched and blackened.
Yet these things might have been counteracted had she gone no further.
Unfortunately, she did go further. She loved to dress at night like
a shop-girl and venture out into the world of Paris, where she was
frequently followed and recognized. Think of it--the Queen of France,
elbowed in dense crowds and seeking to attract the attention of common
soldiers!
Of course, almost every one put the worst construction upon this,
and after a time upon everything she did. When she took a fancy for
constructing labyrinths and secret passages in the palace, all Paris
vowed that she was planning means by which her various lovers might
enter without observation. The hidden printing-presses of Paris swarmed
with gross lampoons about this reckless girl; and, although there
was little truth in what they said, there was enough to cloud her
reputation. When she fell ill with the measles she was attended in her
sick-chamber by four gentlemen of the court. The king was forbidden to
enter lest he might catch the childish disorder.
The apathy of the king, indeed, drove her into many a folly. After four
years of marriage, as Mrs. Mayne records, he had only reached the point
of giving her a chilly kiss. The fact that she had no children became
a serious matter. Her brother, the Emperor Joseph of Austria, when he
visited Paris, ventured to speak to the king upon the subject. Even
the Austrian ambassador had thrown out hints that the house of Bourbon
needed direct heirs. Louis grunted and said little, but he must have
known how good was the advice.
It was at about this time when there came to the French court a young
Swede named Axel de Fersen, who bore the title of count, but who was
received less for his rank than for his winning manner, his knightly
bearing, and his handsome, sympathetic face. Romantic in spirit, he
threw himself at once into a silent inner worship of Marie Antoinette,
who had for him a singular attraction. Wherever he could meet her they
met. To her growing cynicism this breath of pure yet ardent affection
was very grateful. It came as something fresh and sweet into the
feverish life she led.
Other men had had the audacity to woo her--among them Duc de Lauzun,
whose complicity in the famous affair of the diamond necklace afterward
cast her, though innocent, into ruin; the Duc de Biron; and the Baron
de Besenval, who had obtained much influence over her, which he used for
the most evil purposes. Besenval tainted her mind by persuading her to
read indecent books, in the hope that at last she would become his prey.
But none of these men ever meant to Marie Antoinette what Fersen meant.
Though less than twenty years of age, he maintained the reserve of a
great gentleman, and never forced himself upon her notice. Yet their
first acquaintance had occurred in such a way as to give to it a touch
of intimacy. He had gone to a masked ball, and there had chosen for his
partner a lady whose face was quite concealed. Something drew the two
together. The gaiety of the woman and the chivalry of the man blended
most harmoniously. It was only afterward that he discovered that his
chance partner was the first lady in France. She kept his memory in her
mind; for some time later, when he was at a royal drawing-room and she
heard his voice, she exclaimed:
"Ah, an old acquaintance! "
From this time Fersen was among those who were most intimately favored
by the queen. He had the privilege of attending her private receptions
at the palace of the Trianon, and was a conspicuous figure at the feasts
given in the queen's honor by the Princess de Lamballe, a beautiful girl
whose head was destined afterward to be severed from her body and borne
upon a bloody pike through the streets of Paris. But as yet the deluge
had not arrived and the great and noble still danced upon the brink of a
volcano.
Fersen grew more and more infatuated, nor could he quite conceal his
feelings. The queen, in her turn, was neither frightened nor indignant.
His passion, so profound and yet so respectful, deeply moved her. Then
came a time when the truth was made clear to both of them. Fersen was
near her while she was singing to the harpsichord, and "she was betrayed
by her own music into an avowal which song made easy. " She forgot that
she was Queen of France. She only felt that her womanhood had been
starved and slighted, and that here was a noble-minded lover of whom she
could be proud.
Some time after this announcement was officially made of the approaching
accouchement of the queen. It was impossible that malicious tongues
should be silent. The king's brother, the Comte de Provence, who hated
the queen, just as the Bonapartes afterward hated Josephine, did his
best to besmirch her reputation. He had, indeed, the extraordinary
insolence to do so at a time when one would suppose that the vilest
of men would remain silent. The child proved to be a princess, and she
afterward received the title of Duchesse d'Angouleme. The King of Spain
asked to be her godfather at the christening, which was to be held in
the cathedral of Notre Dame. The Spanish king was not present in person,
but asked the Comte de Provence to act as his proxy.
On the appointed day the royal party proceeded to the cathedral, and the
Comte de Provence presented the little child at the baptismal font. The
grand almoner, who presided, asked;
"What name shall be given to this child? "
The Comte de Provence answered in a sneering tone:
"Oh, we don't begin with that. The first thing to find out is who the
father and the mother are! "
These words, spoken at such a place and such a time, and with a strongly
sardonic ring, set all Paris gossiping. It was a thinly veiled innuendo
that the father of the child was not the King of France. Those about the
court immediately began to look at Fersen with significant smiles. The
queen would gladly have kept him near her; but Fersen cared even more
for her good name than for his love of her. It would have been so
easy to remain in the full enjoyment of his conquest; but he was too
chivalrous for that, or, rather, he knew that the various ambassadors
in Paris had told their respective governments of the rising scandal.
In fact, the following secret despatch was sent to the King of Sweden by
his envoy:
I must confide to your majesty that the young Count Fersen has been so
well received by the queen that various persons have taken it amiss. I
own that I am sure that she has a liking for him. I have seen proofs of
it too certain to be doubted. During the last few days the queen has not
taken her eyes off him, and as she gazed they were full of tears. I beg
your majesty to keep their secret to yourself.
The queen wept because Fersen had resolved to leave her lest she should
be exposed to further gossip. If he left her without any apparent
reason, the gossip would only be the more intense. Therefore he decided
to join the French troops who were going to America to fight under
Lafayette. A brilliant but dissolute duchess taunted him when the news
became known.
"How is this? " said she. "Do you forsake your conquest? "
But, "lying like a gentleman," Fersen answered, quietly:
"Had I made a conquest I should not forsake it. I go away free, and,
unfortunately, without leaving any regret. "
Nothing could have been more chivalrous than the pains which Fersen took
to shield the reputation of the queen. He even allowed it to be supposed
that he was planning a marriage with a rich young Swedish woman who
had been naturalized in England. As a matter of fact, he departed for
America, and not very long afterward the young woman in question married
an Englishman.
Fersen served in America for a time, returning, however, at the end of
three years. He was one of the original Cincinnati, being admitted
to the order by Washington himself. When he returned to France he was
received with high honors and was made colonel of the royal Swedish
regiment.
The dangers threatening Louis and his court, which were now gigantic and
appalling, forbade him to forsake the queen. By her side he did what
he could to check the revolution; and, failing this, he helped her to
maintain an imperial dignity of manner which she might otherwise have
lacked. He faced the bellowing mob which surrounded the Tuileries.
Lafayette tried to make the National Guard obey his orders, but he was
jeered at for his pains. Violent epithets were hurled at the king. The
least insulting name which they could give him was "a fat pig. " As for
the queen, the most filthy phrases were showered upon her by the men,
and even more so by the women, who swarmed out of the slums and sought
her life.
At last, in 1791, it was decided that the king and the queen and their
children, of whom they now had three, should endeavor to escape from
Paris. Fersen planned their flight, but it proved to be a failure. Every
one remembers how they were discovered and halted at Varennes. The royal
party was escorted back to Paris by the mob, which chanted with insolent
additions:
"We've brought back the baker, the baker's wife, and the baker's boy!
Now we shall have bread! "
Against the savage fury which soon animated the French a foreigner like
Fersen could do very little; but he seems to have endeavored, night and
day, to serve the woman whom he loved. His efforts have been described
by Grandat; but they were of no avail. The king and queen were
practically made prisoners. Their eldest son died. They went through
horrors that were stimulated by the wretch Hebert, at the head of his
so-called Madmen (Enrages). The king was executed in January, 1792. The
queen dragged out a brief existence in a prison where she was for ever
under the eyes of human brutes, who guarded her and watched her and
jeered at her at times when even men would be sensitive. Then, at last,
she mounted the scaffold, and her head, with its shining hair, fell into
the bloody basket.
Marie Antoinette shows many contradictions in her character. As a young
girl she was petulant and silly and almost unseemly in her actions. As
a queen, with waning power, she took on a dignity which recalled the
dignity of her imperial mother. At first a flirt, she fell deeply in
love when she met a man who was worthy of that love. She lived for most
part like a mere cocotte. She died every inch a queen.
One finds a curious resemblance between the fate of Marie Antoinette and
that of her gallant lover, who outlived her for nearly twenty years. She
died amid the shrieks and execrations of a maddened populace in Paris;
he was practically torn in pieces by a mob in the streets of Stockholm.
The day of his death was the anniversary of the flight to Varennes. To
the last moment of his existence he remained faithful to the memory of
the royal woman who had given herself so utterly to him.
THE STORY OF AARON BURR
There will come a time when the name of Aaron Burr will be cleared from
the prejudice which now surrounds it, when he will stand in the public
estimation side by side with Alexander Hamilton, whom he shot in a duel
in 1804, but whom in many respects he curiously resembled. When the
white light of history shall have searched them both they will appear as
two remarkable men, each having his own undoubted faults and at the same
time his equally undoubted virtues.
Burr and Hamilton were born within a year of each other--Burr being
a grandson of Jonathan Edwards, and Alexander Hamilton being the
illegitimate son of a Scottish merchant in the West Indies. Each of them
was short in stature, keen of intellect, of great physical endurance,
courage, and impressive personality. Each as a young man served on
the staff of Washington during the Revolutionary War, and each of them
quarreled with him, though in a different way.
On one occasion Burr was quite unjustly suspected by Washington of
looking over the latter's shoulder while he was writing. "Washington
leaped to his feet with the exclamation:
"How dare you, Colonel Burr? "
Burr's eyes flashed fire at the question, and he retorted, haughtily:
"Colonel Burr DARE do anything. "
This, however, was the end of their altercation The cause of Hamilton's
difference with his chief is not known, but it was a much more serious
quarrel; so that the young officer left his staff position in a fury and
took no part in the war until the end, when he was present at the battle
of Yorktown.
Burr, on the other hand, helped Montgomery to storm the heights of
Quebec, and nearly reached the upper citadel when his commander was
shot dead and the Americans retreated. In all this confusion Burr showed
himself a man of mettle. The slain Montgomery was six feet high, but
Burr carried his body away with wonderful strength amid a shower of
musket-balls and grape-shot.
Hamilton had no belief in the American Constitution, which he called "a
shattered, feeble thing. " He could never obtain an elective office,
and he would have preferred to see the United States transformed into
a kingdom. Washington's magnanimity and clear-sightedness made Hamilton
Secretary of the Treasury. Burr, on the other hand, continued his
military service until the war was ended, routing the enemy at
Hackensack, enduring the horrors of Valley Forge, commanding a brigade
at the battle of Monmouth, and heading the defense of the city of New
Haven.
after, with great magnificence, she was married to Prince Peter, and
from that moment began a career which was to make her the most powerful
woman in the world.
At this time a lady of the Russian court wrote down a description of
Catharine's appearance. She was fair-haired, with dark-blue eyes; and
her face, though never beautiful, was made piquant and striking by the
fact that her brows were very dark in contrast with her golden hair. Her
complexion was not clear, yet her look was a very pleasing one. She had
a certain diffidence of manner at first; but later she bore herself with
such instinctive dignity as to make her seem majestic, though in fact
she was beneath the middle size. At the time of her marriage her figure
was slight and graceful; only in after years did she become stout.
Altogether, she came to St. Petersburg an attractive, pure-minded German
maiden, with a character well disciplined, and possessing reserves of
power which had not yet been drawn upon.
Frederick the Great's forebodings, which had led him to withhold
his sister's hand, were almost immediately justified in the case of
Catharine. Her Russian husband revealed to her a mode of life which must
have tried her very soul. This youth was only seventeen--a mere boy
in age, and yet a full-grown man in the rank luxuriance of his vices.
Moreover, he had eccentricities which sometimes verged upon insanity.
Too young to be admitted to the councils of his imperial aunt, he
occupied his time in ways that were either ridiculous or vile.
Next to the sleeping-room of his wife he kept a set of kennels, with
a number of dogs, which he spent hours in drilling as if they had been
soldiers. He had a troop of rats which he also drilled. It was his
delight to summon a court martial of his dogs to try the rats for
various military offenses, and then to have the culprits executed,
leaving their bleeding carcasses upon the floor. At any hour of the day
or night Catharine, hidden in her chamber, could hear the yapping of
the curs, the squeak of rats, and the word of command given by her
half-idiot husband.
When wearied of this diversion Peter would summon a troop of favorites,
both men and women, and with them he would drink deep of beer and
vodka, since from his early childhood he had been both a drunkard and a
debauchee. The whoops and howls and vile songs of his creatures could
be heard by Catharine; and sometimes he would stagger into her rooms,
accompanied by his drunken minions. With a sort of psychopathic
perversity he would insist on giving Catharine the most minute and
repulsive narratives of his amours, until she shrank from him with
horror at his depravity and came to loathe the sight of his bloated
face, with its little, twinkling, porcine eyes, his upturned nose
and distended nostrils, and his loose-hung, lascivious mouth. She was
scarcely less repelled when a wholly different mood would seize upon him
and he would declare himself her slave, attending her at court functions
in the garb of a servant and professing an unbounded devotion for his
bride.
Catharine's early training and her womanly nature led her for a long
time to submit to the caprices of her husband. In his saner moments she
would plead with him and strive to interest him in something better
than his dogs and rats and venal mistresses; but Peter was incorrigible.
Though he had moments of sense and even of good feeling, these never
lasted, and after them he would plunge headlong into the most frantic
excesses that his half-crazed imagination could devise.
It is not strange that in course of time Catharine's strong good sense
showed her that she could do nothing with this creature. She therefore
gradually became estranged from him and set herself to the task of doing
those things which Peter was incapable of carrying out.
She saw that ever since the first awakening of Russia under Peter the
Great none of its rulers had been genuinely Russian, but had tried to
force upon the Russian people various forms of western civilization
which were alien to the national spirit. Peter the Great had striven
to make his people Dutch. Elizabeth had tried to make them French.
Catharine, with a sure instinct, resolved that they should remain
Russian, borrowing what they needed from other peoples, but stirred
always by the Slavic spirit and swayed by a patriotism that was their
own. To this end she set herself to become Russian. She acquired the
Russian language patiently and accurately. She adopted the Russian
costume, appearing, except on state occasions, in a simple gown of
green, covering her fair hair, however, with a cap powdered with
diamonds. Furthermore, she made friends of such native Russians as were
gifted with talent, winning their favor, and, through them, the favor of
the common people.
It would have been strange, however, had Catharine, the woman,
escaped the tainting influences that surrounded her on every side. The
infidelities of Peter gradually made her feel that she owed him nothing
as his wife. Among the nobles there were men whose force of character
and of mind attracted her inevitably. Chastity was a thing of which the
average Russian had no conception; and therefore it is not strange that
Catharine, with her intense and sensitive nature, should have turned to
some of these for the love which she had sought in vain from the half
imbecile to whom she had been married.
Much has been written of this side of her earlier and later life; yet,
though it is impossible to deny that she had favorites, one should judge
very gently the conduct of a girl so young and thrust into a life whence
all the virtues seemed to be excluded. She bore several children before
her thirtieth year, and it is very certain that a grave doubt exists as
to their paternity. Among the nobles of the court were two whose courage
and virility specially attracted her. The one with whom her name has
been most often coupled was Gregory Orloff. He and his brother, Alexis
Orloff, were Russians of the older type--powerful in frame, suave in
manner except when roused, yet with a tigerish ferocity slumbering
underneath. Their power fascinated Catharine, and it was currently
declared that Gregory Orloff was her lover.
When she was in her thirty-second year her husband was proclaimed Czar,
after the death of the Empress Elizabeth. At first in some ways his
elevation seemed to sober him; but this period of sanity, like those
which had come to him before, lasted only a few weeks. Historians have
given him much credit for two great reforms that are connected with his
name; and yet the manner in which they were actually brought about is
rather ludicrous. He had shut himself up with his favorite revelers, and
had remained for several days drinking and carousing until he scarcely
knew enough to speak. At this moment a young officer named Gudovitch,
who was really loyal to the newly created Czar, burst into the
banquet-hall, booted and spurred and his eyes aflame with indignation.
Standing before Peter, his voice rang out with the tone of a battle
trumpet, so that the sounds of revelry were hushed.
"Peter Feodorovitch," he cried, "do you prefer these swine to those who
really wish to serve you? Is it in this way that you imitate the glories
of your ancestor, that illustrious Peter whom you have sworn to take
as your model? It will not be long before your people's love will be
changed to hatred. Rise up, my Czar! Shake off this lethargy and sloth.
Prove that you are worthy of the faith which I and others have given you
so loyally! "
With these words Gudovitch thrust into Peter's trembling hand two
proclamations, one abolishing the secret bureau of police, which had
become an instrument of tyrannous oppression, and the other restoring to
the nobility many rights of which they had been deprived.
The earnestness and intensity of Gudovitch temporarily cleared the brain
of the drunken Czar. He seized the papers, and, without reading them,
hastened at once to his great council, where he declared that they
expressed his wishes. Great was the rejoicing in St. Petersburg, and
great was the praise bestowed on Peter; yet, in fact, he had acted only
as any drunkard might act under the compulsion of a stronger will than
his.
As before, his brief period of good sense was succeeded by another of
the wildest folly. It was not merely that he reversed the wise policy of
his aunt, but that he reverted to his early fondness for everything that
was German. His bodyguard was made up of German troops--thus exciting
the jealousy of the Russian soldiers. He introduced German fashions. He
boasted that his father had been an officer in the Prussian army. His
crazy admiration for Frederick the Great reached the utmost verge of
sycophancy.
As to Catharine, he turned on her with something like ferocity. He
declared in public that his eldest son, the Czarevitch Paul, was
really fathered by Catharine's lovers. At a state banquet he turned
to Catharine and hurled at her a name which no woman could possibly
forgive--and least of all a woman such as Catharine, with her high
spirit and imperial pride. He thrust his mistresses upon her; and
at last he ordered her, with her own hand, to decorate the Countess
Vorontzoff, who was known to be his maitresse en titre.
It was not these gross insults, however, so much as a concern for her
personal safety that led Catharine to take measures for her own defense.
She was accustomed to Peter's ordinary eccentricities. On the ground
of his unfaithfulness to her she now had hardly any right to make
complaint. But she might reasonably fear lest he was becoming mad. If he
questioned the paternity of their eldest son he might take measures to
imprison Catharine or even to destroy her. Therefore she conferred with
the Orloffs and other gentlemen, and their conference rapidly developed
into a conspiracy.
The soldiery, as a whole, was loyal to the empress. It hated Peter's
Holstein guards. What she planned was probably the deposition of Peter.
She would have liked to place him under guard in some distant palace.
But while the matter was still under discussion she was awakened early
one morning by Alexis Orloff. He grasped her arm with scant ceremony.
"We must act at once," said he. "We have been betrayed! "
Catharine was not a woman to waste time. She went immediately to the
barracks in St. Petersburg, mounted upon a charger, and, calling out
the Russian guards, appealed to them for their support. To a man they
clashed their weapons and roared forth a thunderous cheer. Immediately
afterward the priests anointed her as regent in the name of her son; but
as she left the church she was saluted by the people, as well as by the
soldiers, as empress in her own right.
It was a bold stroke, and it succeeded down to the last detail. The
wretched Peter, who was drilling his German guards at a distance from
the capital, heard of the revolt, found that his sailors at Kronstadt
would not acknowledge him, and then finally submitted. He was taken to
Ropsha and confined within a single room. To him came the Orloffs, quite
of their own accord. Gregory Orloff endeavored to force a corrosive
poison into Peter's mouth. Peter, who was powerful of build and now
quite desperate, hurled himself upon his enemies. Alexis Orloff seized
him by the throat with a tremendous clutch and strangled him till the
blood gushed from his ears. In a few moments the unfortunate man was
dead.
Catharine was shocked by the intelligence, but she had no choice save
to accept the result of excessive zeal. She issued a note to the foreign
ambassadors informing them that Peter had died of a violent colic. When
his body was laid out for burial the extravasated blood is said to have
oozed out even through his hands, staining the gloves that had been
placed upon them. No one believed the story of the colic; and some six
years later Alexis Orloff told the truth with the utmost composure. The
whole incident was characteristically Russian.
It is not within the limits of our space to describe the reign of
Catharine the Great--the exploits of her armies, the acuteness of her
statecraft, the vast additions which she made to the Russian Empire, and
the impulse which she gave to science and art and literature. Yet these
things ought to be remembered first of all when one thinks of the woman
whom Voltaire once styled "the Semiramis of the North. " Because she was
so powerful, because no one could gainsay her, she led in private a
life which has been almost more exploited than her great imperial
achievements. And yet, though she had lovers whose names have been
carefully recorded, even she fulfilled the law of womanhood--which is to
love deeply and intensely only once.
One should not place all her lovers in the same category. As a girl, and
when repelled by the imbecility of Peter, she gave herself to Gregory
Orloff. She admired his strength, his daring, and his unscrupulousness.
But to a woman of her fine intelligence he came to seem almost more
brute than man. She could not turn to him for any of those delicate
attentions which a woman loves so much, nor for that larger sympathy
which wins the heart as well as captivates the senses. A writer of the
time has said that Orloff would hasten with equal readiness from the
arms of Catharine to the embraces of any flat-nosed Finn or filthy
Calmuck or to the lowest creature whom he might encounter in the
streets.
It happened that at the time of Catharine's appeal to the imperial
guards there came to her notice another man who--as he proved in a
trifling and yet most significant manner--had those traits which Orloff
lacked. Catharine had mounted, man--fashion, a cavalry horse, and, with
a helmet on her head, had reined up her steed before the barracks. At
that moment One of the minor nobles, who was also favorable to her,
observed that her helmet had no plume. In a moment his horse was at her
side. Bowing low over his saddle, he took his own plume from his helmet
and fastened it to hers. This man was Prince Gregory Potemkin, and this
slight act gives a clue to the influence which he afterward exercised
over his imperial mistress!
When Catharine grew weary of the Orloffs, and when she had enriched them
with lands and treasures, she turned to Potemkin; and from then until
the day of his death he was more to her than any other man had ever
been. With others she might flirt and might go even further than
flirtation; but she allowed no other favorite to share her confidence,
to give advice, or to direct her policies.
To other men she made munificent gifts, either because they pleased her
for the moment or because they served her on one occasion or another;
but to Potemkin she opened wide the whole treasury of her vast realm.
There was no limit to what she would do for him. When he first knew
her he was a man of very moderate fortune. Within two years after their
intimate acquaintance had begun she had given him nine million rubles,
while afterward he accepted almost limitless estates in Poland and in
every province of Greater Russia.
He was a man of sumptuous tastes, and yet he cared but little for mere
wealth. What he had, he used to please or gratify or surprise the
woman whom he loved. He built himself a great palace in St. Petersburg,
usually known as the Taurian Palace, and there he gave the most
sumptuous entertainments, reversing the story of Antony and Cleopatra.
In a superb library there stood one case containing volumes bound with
unusual richness. When the empress, attracted by the bindings, drew
forth a book she found to her surprise that its pages were English
bank-notes. The pages of another proved to be Dutch bank-notes, and, of
another, notes on the Bank of Venice. Of the remaining volumes some were
of solid gold, while others had pages of fine leather in which were set
emeralds and rubies and diamonds and other gems. The story reads like a
bit of fiction from the Arabian Nights. Yet, after all, this was only a
small affair compared with other undertakings with which Potemkin sought
to please her.
Thus, after Taurida and the Crimea had been added to the empire
by Potemkin's agency, Catharine set out with him to view her new
possessions. A great fleet of magnificently decorated galleys bore her
down the river Dnieper. The country through which she passed had been
a year before an unoccupied waste. Now, by Potemkin's extraordinary
efforts, the empress found it dotted thick with towns and cities which
had been erected for the occasion, filled with a busy population which
swarmed along the riverside to greet the sovereign with applause. It
was only a chain of fantom towns and cities, made of painted wood and
canvas; but while Catharine was there they were very real, seeming
to have solid buildings, magnificent arches, bustling industries, and
beautiful stretches of fertile country. No human being ever wrought on
so great a scale so marvelous a miracle of stage-management.
Potemkin was, in fact, the one man who could appeal with unfailing
success to so versatile and powerful a spirit as Catharine's. He was
handsome of person, graceful of manner, and with an intellect which
matched her own. He never tried to force her inclination, and, on the
other hand, he never strove to thwart it. To him, as to no other man,
she could turn at any moment and feel that, no matter what her mood, he
could understand her fully. And this, according to Balzac, is the thing
that woman yearns for most--a kindred spirit that can understand without
the slightest need of explanation.
Thus it was that Gregory Potemkin held a place in the soul of this great
woman such as no one else attained. He might be absent, heading armies
or ruling provinces, and on his return he would be greeted with even
greater fondness than before. And it was this rather than his victories
over Turk and other oriental enemies that made Catharine trust him
absolutely.
When he died, he died as the supreme master of her foreign policy and at
a time when her word was powerful throughout all Europe. Death came upon
him after he had fought against it with singular tenacity of purpose.
Catharine had given him a magnificent triumph, and he had entertained
her in his Taurian Palace with a splendor such as even Russia had never
known before. Then he fell ill, though with high spirit he would not
yield to illness. He ate rich meats and drank rich wines and bore
himself as gallantly as ever. Yet all at once death came upon him while
he was traveling in the south of Russia. His carriage was stopped, a
rug was spread beneath a tree by the roadside, and there he died, in the
country which he had added to the realms of Russia.
The great empress who loved him mourned him deeply during the five years
of life that still remained to her. The names of other men for whom she
had imagined that she cared were nothing to her. But this one man lived
in her heart in death as he had done in life.
Many have written of Catharine as a great ruler, a wise diplomat, a
creature of heroic mold. Others have depicted her as a royal wanton and
have gathered together a mass of vicious tales, the gossip of the palace
kitchens, of the clubs, and of the barrack-rooms. But perhaps one finds
the chief interest of her story to lie in this--that besides being
empress and diplomat and a lover of pleasure she was, beyond all else,
at heart a woman.
MARIE ANTOINETTE AND COUNT FERSEN
The English-speaking world long ago accepted a conventional view of
Marie Antoinette. The eloquence of Edmund Burke in one brilliant passage
has fixed, probably for all time, an enduring picture of this unhappy
queen.
When we speak or think of her we speak and think first of all of a
dazzling and beautiful woman surrounded by the chivalry of France and
gleaming like a star in the most splendid court of Europe. And then
there comes to us the reverse of the picture. We see her despised,
insulted, and made the butt of brutal men and still more fiendish women;
until at last the hideous tumbrel conveys her to the guillotine, where
her head is severed from her body and her corpse is cast down into a
bloody pool.
In these two pictures our emotions are played upon in turn--admiration,
reverence, devotion, and then pity, indignation, and the shudderings of
horror.
Probably in our own country and in England this will remain the historic
Marie Antoinette. Whatever the impartial historian may write, he can
never induce the people at large to understand that this queen was far
from queenly, that the popular idea of her is almost wholly false, and
that both in her domestic life and as the greatest lady in France she
did much to bring on the terrors of that revolution which swept her to
the guillotine.
In the first place, it is mere fiction that represents Maria Antoinette
as having been physically beautiful. The painters and engravers have so
idealized her face as in most cases to have produced a purely imaginary
portrait.
She was born in Vienna, in 1755, the daughter of the Emperor Francis
and of that warrior-queen, Maria Theresa. She was a very German-looking
child. Lady Jackson describes her as having a long, thin face, small,
pig-like eyes, a pinched-up mouth, with the heavy Hapsburg lip, and
with a somewhat misshapen form, so that for years she had to be bandaged
tightly to give her a more natural figure.
At fourteen, when she was betrothed to the heir to the French throne,
she was a dumpy, mean-looking little creature, with no distinction
whatever, and with only her bright golden hair to make amends for her
many blemishes. At fifteen she was married and joined the Dauphin in
French territory.
We must recall for a moment the conditions which prevailed in France.
King Louis XV. was nearing his end. He was a man of the most shameless
life; yet he had concealed or gilded his infamies by an external dignity
and magnificence which, were very pleasing to his people. The French,
liked to think that their king was the most splendid monarch and the
greatest gentleman in Europe. The courtiers about him might be vile
beneath the surface, yet they were compelled to deport themselves with
the form and the etiquette that had become traditional in France. They
might be panders, or stock-jobbers, or sellers of political offices;
yet they must none the less have wit and grace and outward nobility of
manner.
There was also a tradition regarding the French queen. However loose
in character the other women of the court might be, she alone, like
Caesar's wife, must remain above suspicion. She must be purer than the
pure. No breath, of scandal must reach her or be directed against her.
In this way the French court, even under so dissolute a monarch as Louis
XV. , maintained its hold upon the loyalty of the people. Crowds came
every morning to view the king in his bed before he arose; the same
crowds watched him as he was dressed by the gentlemen of the bedchamber,
and as he breakfasted and went through all the functions which are
usually private. The King of France must be a great actor. He must
appear to his people as in reality a king-stately, dignified, and beyond
all other human beings in his remarkable presence.
When the Dauphin and Marie Antoinette came to the French court King
Louis XV. kept up in the case the same semblance of austerity. He
forbade these children to have their sleeping-apartments together. He
tried to teach them that if they were to govern as well as to reign they
must conform to the rigid etiquette of Paris and Versailles.
It proved a difficult task, however. The little German princess had no
natural dignity, though she came from a court where the very strictest
imperial discipline prevailed. Marie Antoinette found that she could
have her own way in many things, and she chose to enjoy life without
regard to ceremony.
Her escapades at first would have been thought mild
enough had she not been a "daughter of France"; but they served to shock
the old French king, and likewise, perhaps even more, her own imperial
mother, Maria Theresa.
When a report of the young girl's conduct was brought to her the empress
was at first mute with indignation. Then she cried out:
"Can this girl be a child of mine? She surely must be a changeling! "
The Austrian ambassador to France was instructed to warn the Dauphiness
to be more discreet.
"Tell her," said Maria Theresa, "that she will lose her throne, and even
her life, unless she shows more prudence. "
But advice and remonstrance were of no avail. Perhaps they might have
been had her husband possessed a stronger character; but the young Louis
was little more fitted to be a king than was his wife to be a queen.
Dull of perception and indifferent to affairs of state, he had only two
interests that absorbed him. One was the love of hunting, and the other
was his desire to shut himself up in a sort of blacksmith shop, where he
could hammer away at the anvil, blow the bellows, and manufacture small
trifles of mechanical inventions. From this smudgy den he would emerge,
sooty and greasy, an object of distaste to his frivolous princess, with
her foamy laces and perfumes and pervasive daintiness.
It was hinted in many quarters, and it has been many times repeated,
that Louis was lacking in virility. Certainly he had no interest in the
society of women and was wholly continent. But this charge of physical
incapacity seems to have had no real foundation. It had been made
against some of his predecessors. It was afterward hurled at Napoleon
the Great, and also Napoleon the Little. In France, unless a royal
personage was openly licentious, he was almost sure to be jeered at by
the people as a weakling.
And so poor Louis XVI. , as he came to be, was treated with a mixture
of pity and contempt because he loved to hammer and mend locks in his
smithy or shoot game when he might have been caressing ladies who would
have been proud to have him choose them out.
On the other hand, because of this opinion regarding Louis, people
were the more suspicious of Marie Antoinette. Some of them, in coarse
language, criticized her assumed infidelities; others, with a polite
sneer, affected to defend her. But the result of it all was dangerous to
both, especially as France was already verging toward the deluge which
Louis XV. had cynically predicted would follow after him.
In fact, the end came sooner than any one had guessed. Louis XV. , who
had become hopelessly and helplessly infatuated with the low-born Jeanne
du Barry, was stricken down with smallpox of the most virulent type. For
many days he lay in his gorgeous bed. Courtiers crowded his sick-room
and the adjacent hall, longing for the moment when the breath would
leave his body. He had lived an evil life, and he was to die a loathsome
death; yet he had borne himself before men as a stately monarch. Though
his people had suffered in a thousand ways from his misgovernment, he
was still Louis the Well Beloved, and they blamed his ministers of state
for all the shocking wrongs that France had felt.
The abler men, and some of the leaders of the people, however, looked
forward to the accession of Louis XVI. He at least was frugal in his
habits and almost plebeian in his tastes, and seemed to be one who would
reduce the enormous taxes that had been levied upon France.
The moment came when the Well Beloved died. His death-room was fetid
with disease, and even the long corridors of the palace reeked with
infection, while the motley mob of men and women, clad in silks and
satins and glittering with jewels, hurried from the spot to pay their
homage to the new Louis, who was spoken of as "the Desired. " The body of
the late monarch was hastily thrown into a mass of quick-lime, and was
driven away in a humble wagon, without guards and with no salute,
save from a single veteran, who remembered the glories of Fontenoy and
discharged his musket as the royal corpse was carried through the palace
gates.
This was a critical moment in the history of France; but we have
to consider it only as a critical moment in the history of Marie
Antoinette. She was now queen. She had it in her power to restore to
the French court its old-time grandeur, and, so far as the queen was
concerned, its purity. Above all, being a foreigner, she should have
kept herself free from reproach and above every shadow of suspicion.
But here again the indifference of the king undoubtedly played a strange
part in her life. Had he borne himself as her lord and master she might
have respected him. Had he shown her the affection of a husband she
might have loved him. But he was neither imposing, nor, on the other
hand, was he alluring. She wrote very frankly about him in a letter to
the Count Orsini:
My tastes are not the same as those of the king, who cares only for
hunting and blacksmith work. You will admit that I should not show to
advantage in a forge. I could not appear there as Vulcan, and the part
of Venus might displease him even more than my tastes.
Thus on the one side is a woman in the first bloom of youth, ardent,
eager--and neglected. On the other side is her husband, whose
sluggishness may be judged by quoting from a diary which he kept during
the month in which he was married. Here is a part of it:
Sunday, 13--Left Versailles. Supper and slept at Compignee, at the house
of M. de Saint-Florentin.
Monday, 14--Interview with Mme. la Dauphine.
Tuesday, 15--Supped at La Muette. Slept at Versailles.
Wednesday, 16--My marriage. Apartment in the gallery. Royal banquet in
the Salle d'Opera.
Thursday, 17--Opera of "Perseus. "
Friday, 18--Stag-hunt. Met at La Belle Image. Took one.
Saturday, 19--Dress-ball in the Salle d'Opera. Fireworks.
Thursday, 31--I had an indigestion.
What might have been expected from a young girl placed as this queen was
placed? She was indeed an earlier Eugenie. The first was of royal
blood, the second was almost a plebeian; but each was headstrong,
pleasure-loving, and with no real domestic ties. As Mr. Kipling
expresses it--
The colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady
Are sisters under their skins;
and so the Austrian woman of 1776 and the Spanish woman of 1856 found
amusement in very similar ways. They plunged into a sea of strange
frivolity, such as one finds to-day at the centers of high fashion.
Marie Antoinette bedecked herself with eccentric garments. On her head
she wore a hat styled a "what-is-it," towering many feet in height and
flaunting parti-colored plumes. Worse than all this, she refused to wear
corsets, and at some great functions she would appear in what looked
exactly like a bedroom gown.
She would even neglect the ordinary niceties of life. Her hands were not
well cared for. It was very difficult for the ladies in attendance
to persuade her to brush her teeth with regularity. Again, she would
persist in wearing her frilled and lace-trimmed petticoats long after
their dainty edges had been smirched and blackened.
Yet these things might have been counteracted had she gone no further.
Unfortunately, she did go further. She loved to dress at night like
a shop-girl and venture out into the world of Paris, where she was
frequently followed and recognized. Think of it--the Queen of France,
elbowed in dense crowds and seeking to attract the attention of common
soldiers!
Of course, almost every one put the worst construction upon this,
and after a time upon everything she did. When she took a fancy for
constructing labyrinths and secret passages in the palace, all Paris
vowed that she was planning means by which her various lovers might
enter without observation. The hidden printing-presses of Paris swarmed
with gross lampoons about this reckless girl; and, although there
was little truth in what they said, there was enough to cloud her
reputation. When she fell ill with the measles she was attended in her
sick-chamber by four gentlemen of the court. The king was forbidden to
enter lest he might catch the childish disorder.
The apathy of the king, indeed, drove her into many a folly. After four
years of marriage, as Mrs. Mayne records, he had only reached the point
of giving her a chilly kiss. The fact that she had no children became
a serious matter. Her brother, the Emperor Joseph of Austria, when he
visited Paris, ventured to speak to the king upon the subject. Even
the Austrian ambassador had thrown out hints that the house of Bourbon
needed direct heirs. Louis grunted and said little, but he must have
known how good was the advice.
It was at about this time when there came to the French court a young
Swede named Axel de Fersen, who bore the title of count, but who was
received less for his rank than for his winning manner, his knightly
bearing, and his handsome, sympathetic face. Romantic in spirit, he
threw himself at once into a silent inner worship of Marie Antoinette,
who had for him a singular attraction. Wherever he could meet her they
met. To her growing cynicism this breath of pure yet ardent affection
was very grateful. It came as something fresh and sweet into the
feverish life she led.
Other men had had the audacity to woo her--among them Duc de Lauzun,
whose complicity in the famous affair of the diamond necklace afterward
cast her, though innocent, into ruin; the Duc de Biron; and the Baron
de Besenval, who had obtained much influence over her, which he used for
the most evil purposes. Besenval tainted her mind by persuading her to
read indecent books, in the hope that at last she would become his prey.
But none of these men ever meant to Marie Antoinette what Fersen meant.
Though less than twenty years of age, he maintained the reserve of a
great gentleman, and never forced himself upon her notice. Yet their
first acquaintance had occurred in such a way as to give to it a touch
of intimacy. He had gone to a masked ball, and there had chosen for his
partner a lady whose face was quite concealed. Something drew the two
together. The gaiety of the woman and the chivalry of the man blended
most harmoniously. It was only afterward that he discovered that his
chance partner was the first lady in France. She kept his memory in her
mind; for some time later, when he was at a royal drawing-room and she
heard his voice, she exclaimed:
"Ah, an old acquaintance! "
From this time Fersen was among those who were most intimately favored
by the queen. He had the privilege of attending her private receptions
at the palace of the Trianon, and was a conspicuous figure at the feasts
given in the queen's honor by the Princess de Lamballe, a beautiful girl
whose head was destined afterward to be severed from her body and borne
upon a bloody pike through the streets of Paris. But as yet the deluge
had not arrived and the great and noble still danced upon the brink of a
volcano.
Fersen grew more and more infatuated, nor could he quite conceal his
feelings. The queen, in her turn, was neither frightened nor indignant.
His passion, so profound and yet so respectful, deeply moved her. Then
came a time when the truth was made clear to both of them. Fersen was
near her while she was singing to the harpsichord, and "she was betrayed
by her own music into an avowal which song made easy. " She forgot that
she was Queen of France. She only felt that her womanhood had been
starved and slighted, and that here was a noble-minded lover of whom she
could be proud.
Some time after this announcement was officially made of the approaching
accouchement of the queen. It was impossible that malicious tongues
should be silent. The king's brother, the Comte de Provence, who hated
the queen, just as the Bonapartes afterward hated Josephine, did his
best to besmirch her reputation. He had, indeed, the extraordinary
insolence to do so at a time when one would suppose that the vilest
of men would remain silent. The child proved to be a princess, and she
afterward received the title of Duchesse d'Angouleme. The King of Spain
asked to be her godfather at the christening, which was to be held in
the cathedral of Notre Dame. The Spanish king was not present in person,
but asked the Comte de Provence to act as his proxy.
On the appointed day the royal party proceeded to the cathedral, and the
Comte de Provence presented the little child at the baptismal font. The
grand almoner, who presided, asked;
"What name shall be given to this child? "
The Comte de Provence answered in a sneering tone:
"Oh, we don't begin with that. The first thing to find out is who the
father and the mother are! "
These words, spoken at such a place and such a time, and with a strongly
sardonic ring, set all Paris gossiping. It was a thinly veiled innuendo
that the father of the child was not the King of France. Those about the
court immediately began to look at Fersen with significant smiles. The
queen would gladly have kept him near her; but Fersen cared even more
for her good name than for his love of her. It would have been so
easy to remain in the full enjoyment of his conquest; but he was too
chivalrous for that, or, rather, he knew that the various ambassadors
in Paris had told their respective governments of the rising scandal.
In fact, the following secret despatch was sent to the King of Sweden by
his envoy:
I must confide to your majesty that the young Count Fersen has been so
well received by the queen that various persons have taken it amiss. I
own that I am sure that she has a liking for him. I have seen proofs of
it too certain to be doubted. During the last few days the queen has not
taken her eyes off him, and as she gazed they were full of tears. I beg
your majesty to keep their secret to yourself.
The queen wept because Fersen had resolved to leave her lest she should
be exposed to further gossip. If he left her without any apparent
reason, the gossip would only be the more intense. Therefore he decided
to join the French troops who were going to America to fight under
Lafayette. A brilliant but dissolute duchess taunted him when the news
became known.
"How is this? " said she. "Do you forsake your conquest? "
But, "lying like a gentleman," Fersen answered, quietly:
"Had I made a conquest I should not forsake it. I go away free, and,
unfortunately, without leaving any regret. "
Nothing could have been more chivalrous than the pains which Fersen took
to shield the reputation of the queen. He even allowed it to be supposed
that he was planning a marriage with a rich young Swedish woman who
had been naturalized in England. As a matter of fact, he departed for
America, and not very long afterward the young woman in question married
an Englishman.
Fersen served in America for a time, returning, however, at the end of
three years. He was one of the original Cincinnati, being admitted
to the order by Washington himself. When he returned to France he was
received with high honors and was made colonel of the royal Swedish
regiment.
The dangers threatening Louis and his court, which were now gigantic and
appalling, forbade him to forsake the queen. By her side he did what
he could to check the revolution; and, failing this, he helped her to
maintain an imperial dignity of manner which she might otherwise have
lacked. He faced the bellowing mob which surrounded the Tuileries.
Lafayette tried to make the National Guard obey his orders, but he was
jeered at for his pains. Violent epithets were hurled at the king. The
least insulting name which they could give him was "a fat pig. " As for
the queen, the most filthy phrases were showered upon her by the men,
and even more so by the women, who swarmed out of the slums and sought
her life.
At last, in 1791, it was decided that the king and the queen and their
children, of whom they now had three, should endeavor to escape from
Paris. Fersen planned their flight, but it proved to be a failure. Every
one remembers how they were discovered and halted at Varennes. The royal
party was escorted back to Paris by the mob, which chanted with insolent
additions:
"We've brought back the baker, the baker's wife, and the baker's boy!
Now we shall have bread! "
Against the savage fury which soon animated the French a foreigner like
Fersen could do very little; but he seems to have endeavored, night and
day, to serve the woman whom he loved. His efforts have been described
by Grandat; but they were of no avail. The king and queen were
practically made prisoners. Their eldest son died. They went through
horrors that were stimulated by the wretch Hebert, at the head of his
so-called Madmen (Enrages). The king was executed in January, 1792. The
queen dragged out a brief existence in a prison where she was for ever
under the eyes of human brutes, who guarded her and watched her and
jeered at her at times when even men would be sensitive. Then, at last,
she mounted the scaffold, and her head, with its shining hair, fell into
the bloody basket.
Marie Antoinette shows many contradictions in her character. As a young
girl she was petulant and silly and almost unseemly in her actions. As
a queen, with waning power, she took on a dignity which recalled the
dignity of her imperial mother. At first a flirt, she fell deeply in
love when she met a man who was worthy of that love. She lived for most
part like a mere cocotte. She died every inch a queen.
One finds a curious resemblance between the fate of Marie Antoinette and
that of her gallant lover, who outlived her for nearly twenty years. She
died amid the shrieks and execrations of a maddened populace in Paris;
he was practically torn in pieces by a mob in the streets of Stockholm.
The day of his death was the anniversary of the flight to Varennes. To
the last moment of his existence he remained faithful to the memory of
the royal woman who had given herself so utterly to him.
THE STORY OF AARON BURR
There will come a time when the name of Aaron Burr will be cleared from
the prejudice which now surrounds it, when he will stand in the public
estimation side by side with Alexander Hamilton, whom he shot in a duel
in 1804, but whom in many respects he curiously resembled. When the
white light of history shall have searched them both they will appear as
two remarkable men, each having his own undoubted faults and at the same
time his equally undoubted virtues.
Burr and Hamilton were born within a year of each other--Burr being
a grandson of Jonathan Edwards, and Alexander Hamilton being the
illegitimate son of a Scottish merchant in the West Indies. Each of them
was short in stature, keen of intellect, of great physical endurance,
courage, and impressive personality. Each as a young man served on
the staff of Washington during the Revolutionary War, and each of them
quarreled with him, though in a different way.
On one occasion Burr was quite unjustly suspected by Washington of
looking over the latter's shoulder while he was writing. "Washington
leaped to his feet with the exclamation:
"How dare you, Colonel Burr? "
Burr's eyes flashed fire at the question, and he retorted, haughtily:
"Colonel Burr DARE do anything. "
This, however, was the end of their altercation The cause of Hamilton's
difference with his chief is not known, but it was a much more serious
quarrel; so that the young officer left his staff position in a fury and
took no part in the war until the end, when he was present at the battle
of Yorktown.
Burr, on the other hand, helped Montgomery to storm the heights of
Quebec, and nearly reached the upper citadel when his commander was
shot dead and the Americans retreated. In all this confusion Burr showed
himself a man of mettle. The slain Montgomery was six feet high, but
Burr carried his body away with wonderful strength amid a shower of
musket-balls and grape-shot.
Hamilton had no belief in the American Constitution, which he called "a
shattered, feeble thing. " He could never obtain an elective office,
and he would have preferred to see the United States transformed into
a kingdom. Washington's magnanimity and clear-sightedness made Hamilton
Secretary of the Treasury. Burr, on the other hand, continued his
military service until the war was ended, routing the enemy at
Hackensack, enduring the horrors of Valley Forge, commanding a brigade
at the battle of Monmouth, and heading the defense of the city of New
Haven.
