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Whilst the Viscountess Josephine de Beauharnais, the empress of the future, was living in enforced widowhood, the life of Marie Antoinette, the queen of the present, resembled a serene, golden, sunny dream; her countenance, beaming with youth, beauty, and grace, had never yet been darkened with a cloud; her large blue eyes had not yet been dimmed with tears. In Fontainebleau, whither Josephine had retired with her father-in- law, who through unfortunate events had lost the greatest part of his fortune--in Fontainebleau lived the future Empress of France in sad monotony; in Versailles, in Trianon, lived the present Queen of France in the dazzling splendor of her glory, of her youth, and of her beauty. In Trianon--this first gift of love from the king to his wife--the Queen of France dreamed life away in a pleasant idyl, in a joyous pastoral amusement; there, she tried to forget that she was queen, that is to say, that she was the slave of etiquette; there she tried to indemnify herself for the tediousness, the emptiness, the heartlessness of the great festivals in the Tuileries and in Versailles. In Trianon, Marie Antoinette desired to be the domestic wife, the pleasant, youthful woman, as in the Tuileries and at Versailles she was the proud and lofty queen. Marie Antoinette felt her days obscured by the splendors of royalty; the crown weighed heavily on her beautiful head, which seemed made for a crown of myrtle and roses; life's earnestness had not yet cast its breath on those rosy cheeks and robbed of youth's charm the smile on those crimson lips. And why should not Marie Antoinette have smiled and been joyous? Every thing shone round about her; every thing seemed to promise an enduring harvest of felicity, for the surface of France was calm and bright, and the queen's vision had not yet been made keen enough by experience to penetrate below this shining surface and see the precipices already hidden underneath. These precipices were yet covered with flowers, and the skies floating above them seemed yet cloudless. The French people appeared to retain yet for the royal family that enthusiastic devotedness which they had manifested for centuries; they fondly proclaimed to the queen, whenever she appeared, their affection, their admiration; they were not weary with the expressions of their rapture and their worship, and Marie Antoinette was not weary of listening to these jubilant manifestations with which she was received in the theatre, on the streets, in the gardens of the Tuileries, on the terraces of Versailles; she was not weary of returning thanks with a friendly nod or with a gracious smile. All the Parisians seemed still to be, as once, at the arrival of the Dauphin, they had been called by the Baron de Vesenval, "the queen's lovers," and also to rival one another in manifesting their allegiance. Even the fish-women of Paris shared the general enthusiasm; and when, in 1781, the queen had given to her husband a son, and to his people a future monarch, the ladies of "the Halls" were amongst the most enthusiastic friends of the queen. They even came to Versailles to congratulate the royal couple on the dauphin's birth, to salute the young dauphin as the heir to the crown of France, and to sing under the window of the king some songs, one of which so pleased the king that oftentimes afterward, in his quiet and happy hours, he used to sing a verse of it with a smile on his lip. This Terse, which even Marie Antoinette sang, ran thus:
"Ne craignez pas, cher papa, [Footnote: Madaine ile Carapan, "Histoire de Marie Antoinette," vol. i., p. 218.] In Trianon, Marie Antoinette passed her happiest hours and days; there, the queen changed herself into a shepherdess; there, vanished from her the empty splendors of purple and ermine, of etiquette and ceremonial; there, she enjoyed life in its purity, in its innocency, in its naturalness; such was the ideal Marie Antoinette wished to realize in Trianon. A simple dress of white muslin, a light kerchief of gauze, a straw hat with a gayly-colored ribbon, such was the attire of the queen and of the princesses whom Marie Antoinette invited. For the only etiquette which prevailed at Trianon was this: that no one from the court, even princes or princesses, should come to Trianon without having received an invitation from the queen to that effect. Even the king submitted to this ceremonial, and had expressly promised his consort never to come to Trianon without an invitation, and, so as to please the queen, no sooner did she announce her intention of retiring to her country-residence, than he was always the first who hastened to obtain the favor of an invitation. In Trianon, Louis ceased to be king as well as Marie Antoinette ceased to be queen. There Louis XVI. was but the farmer of the lady of the castle; the Count d'Artois was the miller, and the learned Count de Provence, the schoolmaster. For each of them had been erected in the gardens of Trianon a separate house suited to their respective avocations. The farmer Louis had his farm-house built in Swiss style, with a balcony of finely-carved wood at the gable-end, and with stalls attached to the house, and where bellowed the stately red cows of Switzerland; behind the house was a small garden in which the variegated convolvulus and the daisy shed their fragrance. The Count d'Artois had, near the stream which flowed through the park, his miller's house, with an enormous wheel, made of wooden spokes joined together, and which moved lustily in the water, and adorned the clear brook with wavelets of foam. The Count de Provence had, under the shadow of a mulberry-tree, his house, with a large school-room in it; and oftentimes the whole court-society were converted into scholars of both sexes, who took their seats on the benches of the school-room, whilst the Count de Provence, in a long coat with lead buttons and with an immense rod in his hand, ascended the cathedra and delivered to his school- children a humorous and piquant lecture, all sparkling with wit.
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