Tea at Trianon: The Orphans in the Temple

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

Saturday, April 23, 2011

The Orphans in the Temple

Madame Royale and Louis XVII

Rosalie trudged back towards the Conciergerie. It was dinner time, and she would be needed. With her head lowered, she moved through the masses of people, all going about their business, the spectacle having ended. On the cobbles, she saw a card, and quickly stooped to pick it up. It was a holy picture of the Sacred Heart, drawn in red ink, with orange and yellow flames, and around it were inscribed in letters of gold: “Long live Louis XVII, King of France!” Rosalie quickly put the card in her apron pocket. Tears streamed down her face, as she whispered a prayer for her little King, mistreated by his jailers in the Temple. Everyone at the Conciergerie talked about it. She prayed for him, and for his sister, Madame Royale, a girl about Rosalie’s own age, who like her brother was orphaned and imprisoned. “Oh, God, save them,” whispered the servant girl.