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36 - Marie Antoinette and the Downfall of Royalty by Imbert de Saint-Amand · Marie Antoinette and the Downfall of Royalty

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  Speaker 1: Chapter thirty six of Marie Antoinette and the Downfall of Royalty.
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  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information not a volunteer, please
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  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Read for you by Chiqito Crasto.
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  Speaker 1: Marie Antoinette and the Downfall of Royalty by Imbappe de
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  Speaker 1: Saint Ammand translated by Elizabeth G. Martin Chapter thirty six,
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  Speaker 1: Madame Rolent. During the massacres, Madame Rolent's hatred was appeased.
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  Speaker 1: The ambitious bourgeoirs throned it for the second time at
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  Speaker 1: the Ministry, the ambitious bourgeois throned it for the second
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  Speaker 1: time at the Ministry of the Interior, and the Queen
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  Speaker 1: groaned in captivity in the temple tower. The Egeria of
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  Speaker 1: the Giondret had not felt her heart swell with a
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  Speaker 1: single movement of pity. For Marie Antoinette, the fatal tenth
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  Speaker 1: of August had seemed to her a personal triumph in
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  Speaker 1: which her pride delighted. The parvenu enjoyed the humiliations of
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  Speaker 1: the Dotter of the German Caesars, Her jealous instincts feasted
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  Speaker 1: on the afflictions of the Queen of France and navarre
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  Speaker 1: La Martine, indignant at this cruelty on Madame Hollane's part,
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  Speaker 1: had repented of the eulogies he gave her in his
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  Speaker 1: Istuar de Gionvains. In his Course Illiterature, Volume thirteen, Conversation
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  Speaker 1: twenty three, he says, I glided over that medley of
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  Speaker 1: intrigue and pomposity which composed the genius, both feminine and Roman,
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  Speaker 1: of this woman. In so doing I conceded more to
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  Speaker 1: popularity than to truth. I wanted to give a Cornelia
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  Speaker 1: to the republic. As a matter of fact, I do
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  Speaker 1: not know what Cornelia was, that mother of the Gracchi,
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  Speaker 1: who brought up conspirators against the Roman Senate and trained
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  Speaker 1: them to sedition, that virtue of ambitious commoners. As to
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  Speaker 1: Madame Roland, who inflated a vulgar husband by the breadth
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  Speaker 1: of her feminine anger against a court she found odious
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  Speaker 1: because it did not open to her upstart vanity. There
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  Speaker 1: was nothing really fine in her except her death. Her
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  Speaker 1: role has been a mere parade of true greatness of soul.
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  Speaker 1: What Lamartine finds fault with most of all is her
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  Speaker 1: hostility to the martyr queen. He adds, she inspired the
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  Speaker 1: jondaars her intimate friends with an implacable hatred against the queen.
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  Speaker 1: Already so humiliated and so menaced, she had neither respect
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  Speaker 1: nor pity for this victim. She points her out to
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  Speaker 1: the rebellious multitude. She is no longer a wife, a mother,
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  Speaker 1: or a frenchwoman. She poses as nemesis at the door
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  Speaker 1: of the temple when the Queen is groaning there over
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  Speaker 1: her husband, her children, and herself between the throne and
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  Speaker 1: the scaffold. This ostentatious stoicism of implacability is what, in
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  Speaker 1: my view, kills the woman with this female demagogue. Alas,
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  Speaker 1: if Madame Rolan was guilty, she was to be punished cruelly.
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  Speaker 1: The colleague of the virtuous Rolent was the organizer of
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  Speaker 1: the September massacres. The Republican sheep fold, dreamed of by
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  Speaker 1: the admirer of Jean Jacques Rouchaud, was invaded by ferocious beasts.
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  Speaker 1: Human nature had never appeared under a more execrable aspect then,
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  Speaker 1: since its so called regeneration. With a naive astonishment after
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  Speaker 1: having sown the wind, she was utterly surprised to reap
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  Speaker 1: the whirlwind. What she said to herself, my husband disminister,
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  Speaker 1: also to speak with great exactness. I am the minister myself.
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  Speaker 1: And yet there are people in France who are dissatisfied,
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  Speaker 1: ungrateful nation. Why dost thou not appreciate thy happiness? Madame
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  Speaker 1: Roland resembled certain politicians, who, having attained to power, would
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  Speaker 1: willingly disembarrass themselves of those by whose aid they reached it.
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  Speaker 1: For the second time. She had just arrived at the
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  Speaker 1: goal of her ambition. Who dared then to pollute her joy?
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  Speaker 1: Why did that Marplot d'antan come with his untimely massacres
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  Speaker 1: to destroy such brilliant projects and banish such delightful dreams.
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  Speaker 1: The man who, as if in derision and antithesis, allowed
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  Speaker 1: himself to be called the Minister of Justice, produced the
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  Speaker 1: effect of a monster on Madame Rolan. The Republic, as
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  Speaker 1: conceived by him, had not the head of a goddess,
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  Speaker 1: but of a gorgon. Its eyes glittered with sinister luster.
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  Speaker 1: The sword it held was that of an assassin or
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  Speaker 1: a headsman. Madame Rolan was greatly astonished when, on Sunday
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  Speaker 1: September second, seventeen ninety two, tow at five in the evening,
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  Speaker 1: when the massacres had already begun, she saw two hundred
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  Speaker 1: men of forbidding appearance arrive at the Ministry of the
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  Speaker 1: Interior and ask for her husband, who was absent. Lucky
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  Speaker 1: for him he was for albeit a minister. They had
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  Speaker 1: come to arrest him in virtue of a mandate of
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  Speaker 1: the Communal Council of Surveyance. Not finding rolent, the two
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  Speaker 1: hundred men retired. One of them, with his shirt sleeves
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  Speaker 1: rolled up to his elbows and a saber in his hand,
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  Speaker 1: declaimed furiously against the treachery of ministers. A few minutes later,
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  Speaker 1: D'Anton said to Petion, do you know what they have
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  Speaker 1: taken into their heads? If they haven't issued a decree
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  Speaker 1: to arrest Roland? Who did that? Demanded the mayor, Ay,
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  Speaker 1: those levels of committeemen, I have taken the mandate whole
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  Speaker 1: here it is what was Madame Roland doing the Next day,
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  Speaker 1: when the worst of the massacres were going on, she
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  Speaker 1: gave a dinner and allowed the Prussian anacharsis Clutes, who
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  Speaker 1: came moreover uninvited, to make a regular defense of these
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  Speaker 1: horrible murders. The events of the day, she says in
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  Speaker 1: her memoirs, formed the subject of conversation. Clutes pretended to
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  Speaker 1: prove that it was an indispensable and salutary measure. He
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  Speaker 1: uttered a good many commonplaces about the people's rights, the
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  Speaker 1: justice of their vengeance, and of its utility to the
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  Speaker 1: welfare of the species. He talked a long while, and
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  Speaker 1: very loudly, ate still more, and fatigued more than one listener.
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  Speaker 1: And yet revolutionary passions had not extinguished every notion of
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  Speaker 1: humanity and justice in Madame Rolan's soul. On that very
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  Speaker 1: day she induced her husband to write a letter to
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  Speaker 1: the National Assembly concerning the massacres. But how weak and
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  Speaker 1: undecided is this letter, and how public opinion must have
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  Speaker 1: been low and debased when it could regard Rolan as
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  Speaker 1: a courageous minister. In place of scathing the murderers with
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  Speaker 1: the energy of an honest man, he pleads extenuating circumstances
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  Speaker 1: in their favor. It is in the nature of things
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  Speaker 1: and according to the human heart. He said, in its
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  Speaker 1: pale missive that victory should lead to some excesses. The sea,
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  Speaker 1: agitated by a violent storm, continues to roar long after
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  Speaker 1: the tempest. But everything has its limits, and must finally
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  Speaker 1: see them determined. Yesterday was the day over whose events
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  Speaker 1: we ought, perhaps to draw a wail. I know that
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  Speaker 1: the terrible vengeance of the people carries with it a
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  Speaker 1: sort of justice. But how easy it is for scoundrels
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  Speaker 1: and traitors to abuse this efferorescence, and how necessary it
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  Speaker 1: is to arrest it. This language produced not the least effect.
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  Speaker 1: The massacres went on, and Roland remained Minister, although in
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  Speaker 1: his letter of September third he had written, I asked
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  Speaker 1: the privilege of resigning if the silence of the laws
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  Speaker 1: does not permit me to act the virtuous Rolan sat
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  Speaker 1: in the council beside his colleague, the organizer of this
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  Speaker 1: human butchery. September thirteenth, he address a letter to the
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  Speaker 1: Parisians in which he burnt incense to himself, bragged about
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  Speaker 1: his character, his actions, and his firmness, and carried his
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  Speaker 1: infatuations so far as to write, I have twice accepted
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  Speaker 1: a burden which I felt myself able to bear. Ah,
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  Speaker 1: how difficult it is to renounce even a shadow of power,
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  Speaker 1: and of what compromises with their consciences. Are not ministers
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  Speaker 1: capable in order to retain for a few days longer
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  Speaker 1: the portfolios that are slipping from their hands. In the
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  Speaker 1: depths of his soul, Crolon, like his wife, had the
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  Speaker 1: profoundest horror of the murders and the murderers, and yet
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  Speaker 1: notice how he extenuates them. In his letter to the Parisians,
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  Speaker 1: I admired August tenth. I trembled over the results of
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  Speaker 1: September second. I carefully considered what the betrayed patience of
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  Speaker 1: the people and their justice had produced, and I did
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  Speaker 1: not blame a first impulse to inconsiderately. I believed that
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  Speaker 1: its further progress should have been prevented, and that those
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  Speaker 1: who were seeking to perpetuate it were deceived by them
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  Speaker 1: their imagination, or by cruel and evil minded men. If
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  Speaker 1: the erring brethren recognize that they have been deceived, let
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  Speaker 1: them come. My arms are open to them. That was
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  Speaker 1: a very prompt amnesty. Already the assassins are but erring brethren,
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  Speaker 1: and the minister welcomes them into his arms. The Gironde
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  Speaker 1: kept silence, or if it spoke, it was to attribute
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  Speaker 1: like Vertno, the massacres to the Emigree and the satellite
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  Speaker 1: of Kublenz. Later on they were horrified by the crimes,
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  Speaker 1: but it was when others were to profit by them,
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  Speaker 1: each taken by himself. The Girondin did not hesitate to
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  Speaker 1: condemn the murders, but taken as a whole, they considered
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  Speaker 1: merely the interests of their party. Were not three of
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  Speaker 1: them still in the Ministerial council, what had they to
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  Speaker 1: complain of? Then? The September massacres are the most striking
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  Speaker 1: expression of what abominations the ambitious may commit, or allow
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  Speaker 1: to be committed, in order to maintain themselves a few
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  Speaker 1: weeks longer in power. But there is a voice in
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  Speaker 1: the depths of conscience which neither interest nor ambition can
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  Speaker 1: succeed in stifling. Madame Rolent could not blind herself. The
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  Speaker 1: odious reality appeared to her. At last, she saw the
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  Speaker 1: yawning gulf beneath her feet, and she uttered a cry
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  Speaker 1: of terror. A secret voice warned her that her fate
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  Speaker 1: would be like that of the September victims. After the
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  Speaker 1: ninth of that fatal month, her imagination was vividly impressed.
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  Speaker 1: Bloody phantoms rose before her. She wrote on that day
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  Speaker 1: to Bancaldisi. Sa, if you knew the frightful details of
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  Speaker 1: these expeditions, you know my enthusiasm for the revolution. Well,
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  Speaker 1: I am ashamed of it. It has become hideous in
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  Speaker 1: a week. How do I know what may happen? It
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  Speaker 1: is degrading to remain in office, and we are not
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  Speaker 1: permitted to leave Paris. We are detained so that we
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  Speaker 1: may be destroyed at the propitious moment. From that time
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  Speaker 1: a rising anger and indignation took possession of the mind
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  Speaker 1: and heart of the Egeria of the Girondin, and constantly
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  Speaker 1: increased until the hour when she ascended the steps of
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  Speaker 1: the scaffold, she writes in her memoirs Apropos of the
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  Speaker 1: Ste Massacres. All Paris witnessed these horrible scenes, executed by
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  Speaker 1: a small number of wretches. There were but fifteen at
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  Speaker 1: the abbey, at the door of which only two National
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  Speaker 1: Guards were stationed. In spite of the applications made to
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  Speaker 1: the Commune and the Commandant, all Paris permitted it to
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  Speaker 1: go on. All Paris was accursed in my eyes, and
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  Speaker 1: I no longer hope that liberty might be established among
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  Speaker 1: cowards insensible to the worst outrages that could be perpetrated
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  Speaker 1: against nature and humanity, cold spectators of attempts which the
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  Speaker 1: courage of fifty armed men could have prevented with ease.
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  Speaker 1: It is not the first night that astonishes me, but
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  Speaker 1: full days an inquisitive people going to see the spectacle.
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  Speaker 1: No I know nothing in the annals of the most
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  Speaker 1: barbarous peoples which can compare with these atrocities. What a
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  Speaker 1: striking lesson for those who play with anarchical passions and
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  Speaker 1: end by falling themselves into the snares they have laid
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  Speaker 1: for others. Nothing is more deserving of study than this
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  Speaker 1: retaliatory punishment which is found, one may say, whenever page
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  Speaker 1: of revolutionary histories, the hour was coming when the Girondins
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  Speaker 1: and their heroine would repent of the means they had
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  Speaker 1: employed to overset the throne. This was when the same
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  Speaker 1: means were employed against them, when they recognized their own
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  Speaker 1: weapons in the wounds they received. Then, when they had
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  Speaker 1: no more interest in keeping silence, they sought to escape
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  Speaker 1: a complicity that gained them nothing. Instead of the luminous
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  Speaker 1: heights which in their golden dreams they had aspired to gain,
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  Speaker 1: They fell crushed and overwhelmed into a dismal gulf full
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  Speaker 1: of tears and blood. How bitter, then were their recriminations
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  Speaker 1: against men and things. It was only to virtue that
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  Speaker 1: the dying Brutus said, thou art, but a name, the
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  Speaker 1: Girondain said it also to glory, to country and to liberty.
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  Speaker 1: Those among them who did not succeed in fleeing disavowed, denounced,
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  Speaker 1: and insulted each other. Before the revolutionary tribunal at the
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  Speaker 1: Conciergerie they intoned the marseillers, but parodine the demagogic chant.
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  Speaker 1: In this wise contre nous de la Tyrannis le Couteau
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  Speaker 1: saintglan Illin. They read the memoirs of Luay Beuzo, Babaru
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  Speaker 1: Petion and Madame Roman, and you will see to what
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  Speaker 1: extremes of bitterness the language of deceived ambition can go.
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  Speaker 1: They are paroxysms of rage, howls of anger, shrieks of despair.
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  Speaker 1: Consider the difference between philosophy and religion, the philosopher's curse
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  Speaker 1: and the Christian pardons. Yes, as that Galcine has said,
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  Speaker 1: Louis the sixteenth alone speaks of forgiveness on that scaffold
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  Speaker 1: to which the others were to bring thoughts of vengeance
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  Speaker 1: and despair, and by that he seems still to reign
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  Speaker 1: over those who were to follow him in death. With
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  Speaker 1: the passions and the furies of earth. Louis the sixteenth
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  Speaker 1: will be magnanimous and calm. A celestial sweetness will overspread
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  Speaker 1: this royal countenance. An infernal rage will distort the heart
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  Speaker 1: and the features of the geraldin what pains, what tortures
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  Speaker 1: in their death struggle, Earth fails them, and they do
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  Speaker 1: not look to Heaven, what accents of disgust and hatred
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  Speaker 1: when they speak of their former accomplices now become their executioners.
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  Speaker 1: Great God Besor will say, if it is only by
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  Speaker 1: such men in such infamous means that republics can arise
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  Speaker 1: and be consolidated, there is no government more frightful on
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  Speaker 1: this earth, nor more fatal to human happiness. He will
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  Speaker 1: address these insults worthy of the imprecations of Camillus to
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  Speaker 1: the city of Paris. I say truly that France can
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  Speaker 1: expect neither liberty nor happiness except from the irreparable destruction
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  Speaker 1: of that capital. Babaru will be more severe. His anethhemas
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  Speaker 1: are launched, not only at Paris, but at all France.
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  Speaker 1: The people, he says, do not deserve that one should
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  Speaker 1: become attached to them, for they are essentially ungrateful. It
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  Speaker 1: is the absurdest folly to try to conduct to liberty
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  Speaker 1: people without morals, who blaspheme God and adore Maha. These
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  Speaker 1: people are no more fit for a philosophical government than
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  Speaker 1: the Lazzaroni of Naples or the cannibals of America. Liberty, virtue,
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  Speaker 1: sacred rights of men. To day you are nothing but
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  Speaker 1: empty names. Petion, before dying, will write to his son
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  Speaker 1: this letter, which is like the testament of the Girand
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  Speaker 1: my greatest torment will be to think that so many
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  Speaker 1: crimes went unpunished. Vengeance is here the most sacred of duties,
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  Speaker 1: my son. Either the murderers of thy father and thy
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  Speaker 1: country will be delivered to the severities of the law
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  Speaker 1: and expiate their crimes upon the scaffold, or thou art
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  Speaker 1: under obligation to free thy country from them. They have
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  Speaker 1: broken all the ties of society. Their crimes are of
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  Speaker 1: such a nature that they do not fall under ordinary rules.
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  Speaker 1: From such monsters, every one is authorized to purge the earth.
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  Speaker 1: Madame Rolent will not be less vehement than Besseau, Barbaroux
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  Speaker 1: and petion. She will address these severe but just reproaches
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  Speaker 1: to her friends, who had not been valiant enough in
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  Speaker 1: their own defense. They temporized with crime the cowards they
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  Speaker 1: were to fall in their turn, but they succumbed, shamefully,
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  Speaker 1: pitied by nobody, and with nothing to expect from posterity
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  Speaker 1: but utter contempt, rather than obey their tyrants, than descend
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  Speaker 1: from the bar and go out of the assembly like
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  Speaker 1: a timid flock about to be branded by the butcher.
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  Speaker 1: Why did they not do justice to themselves by falling
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  Speaker 1: on the monsters to annihilate them, rather than be sentenced
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  Speaker 1: by them. It is not her friends alone whom her
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  Speaker 1: anger will lash, but the sovereign people, the people once
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  Speaker 1: so flattered, whom she will pursue with her anathemas the people,
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  Speaker 1: she will say, can feel nothing but the cannibal joy
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  Speaker 1: of seeing blood flow in order that they may run
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  Speaker 1: no risk of shedding their own. That predicted time has
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  Speaker 1: come when if they ask for bread, dead bodies will
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  Speaker 1: be given them. But their degraded nature takes pleasure in
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  Speaker 1: the spectacle, and the satisfied instinctive cruelty makes the dirt
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  Speaker 1: supportable until it becomes absolute. The Egeria of the Gironde
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  Speaker 1: will comprehend that all is lost, that even her blood
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  Speaker 1: will be sterile, and that France is condemned either to
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  Speaker 1: anarchy or a dictatorship. Liberty, she will exclaim, was not
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  Speaker 1: made for this corrupt nation, which leaves the bed of
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  Speaker 1: debauchery or the dunghill of poverty, only to brutalize itself
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  Speaker 1: in license and howl as it wallows in the blood
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  Speaker 1: streaming from scaffolds, like the damned souls in Dante. Madame
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  Speaker 1: Rolan will leave all hope behind. And when a few
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  Speaker 1: days after Marie Antoinette she ascends the steps of the guillotine,
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  Speaker 1: instead of thinking of heaven like the Queen, she will
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  Speaker 1: address the sarcastic speech to the plaster statue, which has
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  Speaker 1: replaced that of Louis the fifteenth O Liberty. How they
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  Speaker 1: have betrayed thee. But let us not anticipate. The Girontin
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  Speaker 1: are still to have a glimmer of joy. The republic
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  Speaker 1: is about to be proclaimed. End of chapter thirty six,
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  Speaker 1: read for you by Chichito Crasto, Birmingham, Alabama,