Tea at Trianon: Praying in the Temple Prison

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Praying in the Temple Prison

Author Melanie Clegg features this moving picture of Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVII saying their prayers in prison, before the little boy was forcibly removed from his mother. More HERE. Share

2 comments:

lara77 said...: Elena Maria, I love this painting; it reminds me of an earlier one posted where the Queen, her children and Madame Elizabeth have a huge table protecting them from the mob. The artist in both these paintings portrays good and evil. The woman in the background as the Dauphin prays with the Queen looks like one of those revolutionary spies. Just my observations.; March 8, 2010 at 8:59:00 AM EST
elena maria vidal said...: So true, Lara. The woman in the background is Madame Tison who made the false report and later ended up going insane from guilt and placed in a mental hospital.; March 8, 2010 at 9:24:00 AM EST