Tea at Trianon: The Nun and The Duchess

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, October 13, 2012

The Nun and The Duchess

Some words of wisdom from Mother Mectilde de Bar to the Duchess of Orleans.

It will be impossible for you to keep on much longer if you are going to let your afflictions weigh you down so. Our Lord wills that your soul should rise above all that surrounds you. Attach yourself gently to God. You possess Him, in faith, within yourself. You needn't search for Him long. He wants you to be renewed in His Spirit. Your suffering nature, which, I see, has almost no vigour, needs to make a little effort. It mustn't happen that so beautiful an offering* be consumed in any fire other than that of of pure and divine love; this would be to fall short of God's designs on your soul. Your soul cannot ignore that you are being led by the gentleness and love that make one rest in God. Simply surrender all that you are to His holy Providence. Abandon everything to Him and you will no more be anxious about anything. (Read entire post.)