Tea at Trianon: Where the Temple Once Stood

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

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Where the Temple Once Stood

Relics from the imprisonment of the royal family in the Temple prison. Share

4 comments:

Stephanie A. Mann said...: There was a Travel Channel show this past weekend about the treasure of the Templars. The host tried to link the Templars and the Cathars. When told by an "expert" that the Cathars could not have possibly escaped a siege with the treasure lost after the fall of the Templars because the siege took place a century before the fall of the Templars, the host said "So the Cathars probably didn't hide the Templar treasure after all"! PROBABLY? He'd just been told it was a temporal impossibility!
I suppose that's why some people will believe the story about Pope Joan. The Fantasy Channel (aka The History Channel) will air a special about that fiction and make it seem like it could be fact.; July 6, 2010 at 10:39:00 AM EDT
May said...: Beautiful!; July 6, 2010 at 11:54:00 AM EDT
P. M. Doolan said...: Thank you Elena for posting this link to my blog.; July 7, 2010 at 3:46:00 AM EDT
Julygirl said...: Poignant!; July 7, 2010 at 9:57:00 AM EDT