thought of the Female Dramatist who, for eighteen long months, can exhibit the beautifullest Fata-morgana to a plush Cardinal, wide awake, with fifty years on his head; and so lap him in her scenic illusion that he never doubts but it is all firm earth, and the pasteboard Coulisse-trees are producing Hesperides apples? Could Madame de Lamotte, then, have written a Hamlet? I conjecture, not. More goes to the writing of a Hamlet than completest 'imitation' of all characters and things in this Earth; there goes, before and beyond all, the rarest understanding of these, insight into their hidden essences and harmonies. Erasmus's Ape, as is known in Literary History, sat by while its Master was shaving, and imitated' every point of the process; but its own foolish beard grew never the smoother.

As in looking at a finished Drama, it were nowise meet that the spectator first of all got behind the scenes, and saw the burnt-corks, brayed-resin, thunder-barrels, and withered hunger-bitten men and women, of which such heroic work was made so here with the reader. A peep into the sidescenes shall be granted him, from time to time. But, on the whole, repress, O reader, that too insatiable scientific curiosity of thine; let thy aesthetic feeling first have play; and witness what a Prospero's-grotto poor Eminence Rohan is led into, to be pleased he knows not why.

Survey first what we might call the stage-lights, orchestra, general structure of the theatre, mood and condition of the audience. The theatre is the World, with its restless business and madness; near at hand rise the royal Domes of Versailles, mystery around them, and as background the memory of a thousand years. By the side of the River Seine walks, haggard, wasted, a Joaillier-Bijoutier de la Reine, with Necklace in his pocket. The audience is a drunk Christopher Sly in the fittest humour. A fixed-idea, driving him headlong over steep places, like that of the Gadarenes' Swine, has produced a deceptibility, as of despera tion, that will clutch at straws. Understand one other word:

Cagliostro is prophesying to him! The Quack of Quacks has now for years had him in leading. Transmitting 'predictions in cipher;' questioning, before Hieroglyphic Screens, Columbs in a state of innocence, for elixirs of life, and philosopher's stone; unveiling, in fuliginous clear-obscure, an imaginary majesty of Nature; he isolates him more and more from all unpossessed men. Was it not enough that poor Rohan had become a dissolute, somnolent-violent, evervapoury Mud-volcano; but black Egyptian magic must be laid on him!

If perhaps, too, our Countess de Lamotte, with her blandishments ? For though not beautiful, she has a certain piquancy' et cetera! - Enough, his poor Eminence sits in the fittest place, in the fittest mood: a newly-awakened Christopher Sly; and with his small ale,' too, beside him. Touch, only, the lights with firetipt rod; and let the orchestra, softwarbling, strike up their fara-lara fiddle-diddle-dee!

CHAPTER VII.
Marie-Antoinette.

Such a soft-warbling fara-lara was it to his Eminence, when, in early January of the year 1784, our Countess first, mysteriously, and under seal of sworn secrecy, hinted to him that, with her winning tongue and great talent as Anecdotic Historian, she had worked a passage to the ear of Queen's Majesty itself.1 Gods! dost thou bring with thee airs from Heaven? Is thy face yet radiant with some reflex of that Brightness beyond bright? Men with fixed-idea are not as other men. To listen to a plain varnished tale, such as your Dramatist can fashion; to ponder the words; to snuff them up, as Ephraim did the east-wind, and grow flatulent and drunk with them: what else could poor Eminence do? His

1 Compare Rohan's Mémoires pour (there are four of them), in the Affaire du Collier, with Lamotte's four. They go on in the way of controversy, of argument and response.

poor somnolent, so swift-rocked soul feels a new element infused into it; turbid resinous light, wide-coruscating, glares over the waste of his imagination. Is he interested in the mysterious tidings? Hope has seized them; there is in the world nothing else that interests him.

The secret friendship of Queens is not a thing to be let sleep ever new Palace Interviews occur; - yet in deepest privacy; for how should her Majesty awaken so many tongues of Principalities and Nobilities, male and female, that spitefully watch her? Above all, however, 'on the 2d of February,' that day of the Procession of blue Ribands,'1 much was spoken of: somewhat, too, of Monseigneur de Rohan! Poor Monseigneur, hadst thou three long ears, thou'dst hear her.

But will she not, perhaps, in some future priceless Interview, speak a good word for thee? Thyself shalt speak it, happy Eminence; at least, write it: our tutelary Countess will be the bearer! - On the 21st of March goes off that long exculpatory imploratory Letter: it is the first Letter that went off from Cardinal to Queen; to be followed, in time, by above two hundred others;' which are graciously answered by verbal Messages, nay at length by Royal Autographs on gilt paper, - the whole delivered by our tutelary Countess.2 The tutelary Countess comes and goes, fetching and carrying; with the gravity of a Roman Augur, inspects those extraordinary chicken-bowls, and draws prognostics from them. Things are in fair train: the Dauphiness took some offence at Monseigneur, but the Queen has nigh forgotten it. No inexorable Queen; ah no! So good, so free, light-hearted; only sore beset with malicious Polignacs and others; at times, also, short of money.

Marie Antoinette, as the reader well knows, has been much

1 Lamotte's Mémoires Justificatifs (London, 1788).

2 See Georgel: see Lamotte's Mémoires; in her Appendix of 'Documents' to that volume, certain of these Letters are given.

blamed for want of Etiquette. Even now, when the other accusations against her have sunk down to oblivion and the Father of Lies, this of wanting Etiquette survives her;in the Castle of Ham, at this hour, M. de Polignac and Company may be wringing their hands, not without an oblique glance at her for bringing them thither. She indeed discarded Etiquette; once, when her carriage broke down, she even entered a hackney-coach. She would walk, too, at Trianon, in mere straw-hat, and perhaps muslin gown! Hence, the Knot of Etiquette being loosed, the Frame of Society broke up; and those astonishing Horrors of the French Revolution' supervened. On what Damocles' hairs must the judgment-sword hang over this distracted Earth! Thus, however, it was that Tenterden Steeple brought an influx of the Atlantic on us, and so Godwin Sands. Thus, too, might it be that because Father Noah took the liberty of, say, rinsing out his wine-vat, his Ark was floated off, and a world drowned. - Beautiful Highborn that wert so foully hurled low! For, if thy Being came to thee out of old Hapsburg Dynasties, came it not also (like my own) out of Heaven? Sunt lachrymæ rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt. Oh, is there a man's heart that thinks, without pity, of those long months and years of slow-wasting ignominy; of thy Birth, soft-cradled in Imperial Schönbrunn, the winds of heaven not to visit thy face too roughly, thy foot to light on softness, thy eye on splendour; and then of thy Death or hundred Deaths, to which the Guillotine and Fouquier Tinville's judgment-bar was but the merciful end? Look there, O man born of woman! The bloom of that fair face is wasted, the hair is gray with care; the brightness of those eyes is quenched, their lids hang drooping, the face is stony pale as of one living in death. Mean weeds, which her own hand has mended,2 attire the Queen of the World.

1 A. D. 1831.

2 Weber: Mémoires concernant Marie-Antoinette (London, 1809), tome iii. notes, 106.

The death-hurdle, where thou sittest pale motionless, which only curses environ, has to stop: a people, drunk with vengeance, will drink it again in full draught, looking at thee there. Far as the eye reaches, a multitudinous sea of maniac heads; the air deaf with their triumph-yell! The Living-dead must shudder with yet one other pang; her startled blood yet again suffuses with the hue of agony that pale face, which she hides with her hands. There is then no heart to say, God pity thee? O think not of these; think of HIM whom thou worshippest, the Crucified, who also treading the wine-press alone, fronted sorrow still deeper; and triumphed over it, and made it holy; and built of it a 'Sanctuary of Sorrow,' for thee and all the wretched! Thy path of thorns is nigh ended. One long last look at the Tuileries, where thy step was once so light, where thy children shall not dwell. The head is on the block; the axe rushes -Dumb lies the World; that wild-yelling World, and all its madness, is behind thee.

Rest

Beautiful Highborn that wert so foully hurled low! yet in thy innocent gracefully heedless seclusion, unintruded on by me, while rude hands have not yet desecrated it. Be the curtains, that shroud-in (if for the last time on this Earth) a Royal Life, still sacred to me. Thy fault, in the French Revolution, was that thou wert the Symbol of the Sin and Misery of a thousand years; that with Saint-Bartholomews, and Jacqueries, with Gabelles, and Dragonades, and Parcsaux-cerfs, the heart of mankind was filled full, — and foamed over, into all-involving madness. To no Napoleon, to no Cromwell wert thou wedded: such sit not in the highest rank, of themselves; are raised on high by the shaking and confounding of all the ranks! As poor peasants, how happy, worthy had ye two been! But by evil destiny ye were made a King and Queen of; and so both once more — are become an astonishment and a by-word to all times.