The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-06-04
SCRAP FROM FRENCH HISTORY.
The Last Days Of Madame RoynIo.

4 itIOio III 'ho o. 0uVteS magazine, entitled IRE
follcctions of Madame Royale daughter of
queen Marie Antoinette:"-
4 In the prison of the Temple the orphan daugh-
er OF Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette was abb
Olutely alone. She was scarcely sixteen years
| kage, but she strove to bear the unprecedented
psery other position with resignation, though the
4 /Nprments OF suspense to which she was objected
#ehed her powers of silence when upon some
ew and far between occasions the municipal
:. uthOrlties OF the prison entered her cell on a
&Tiet visit of Inspection.
Tell me of my mother" she would then inn
lore, in tones of agony. Tell me of my
N bother! Tell me of my aunt IL Is frightiul,"
he at last one day exclaimed, thus to be
= parted from my mother for Just year. and from
by aunt for many weeks, without knowing
E. here they are, or what has become of them"
W ''You are not i'll p asked one of the officials.
4 "No. sir, she answered, 81 am not ILL., except
p. Tom sorrow; but the most cruel sickness is that
pf the heart
Hope, said he 'hope in the goodness and
W be justice of the French"
M What a hope at that time for this princess
Who knew that her father had fallen victim to
kuch goodness and justice; and who knew also
e. That under the same prison roof with her though
s far removed as If seas and mountains sepa-
fated them, was still her brother, he being muir
1ered by slow degrees, and a solitary captive
"A like herself. Through her barred windows she
#Obscrved the days grow shorter and shorter,
y until at last by counting them, she knew that
- her birthday had come round again. In
the depth of winter and alone in the
chill gloom of her cell, Madame Royale
remembered the brightness of her birthplace,
~ the glories of Versailles in her childhood; she
Remembered beloved and sunlit countenances
4here: che had no face in prison to smile upon
XbAer, but she remembered also how her father
Xbad bade her, at her first communion, hold fast
her faith in adversely.
To this faith she clung, whilst she being still
prisoner and alone, the months continued to
roll round and round to her most drearily, until
again her birthday came, and she knew that she
was seventeen years of age.
But that was the day of her deliyerance from
the prison of the Temple. She was to be sent
forthwith beyond the frontiers of France, and
then Gn an exchange of prisoners) to Vienna,
3there to claim shelter from strangers, for such
personally were her maternal kinsfolk to her.
Yes, after nineteen months of absolute isola-
ton from her fellow-creatures, she was to be set
at liberty. But what charm had liberty now to
R her? For, alas it had been told to her at last
that all those who had made life most dear to
her were dead. Her father her mother, her
aunt, her brother; and as yet it was scarcely
possible for her to certify whether the first play
mate of her childhood, the Due d'Angouleme,
still survived. She was child when she en-
tered her prison; she was woman, and a sor-
rowing woman, when she left it. Ere crossing
its threshold, however she turned to one of the
four drcary walls of the cell, where so long un-
seen by human eye, she had suffered torments,
and upon it she wrote, "Oh. my God! Forgive
those who caused the death of my parents.
Upon the 9th day of January, 1796, Madame
Royale arrived at the Imperial Palace of Vienna.
She was clothed in deepest mourning, and when,
after some weeks of seclusion, she appeared in
the midst of the Court as member of the
Imperial family of Austria, it was as though
a pale vision of what her mother was in
girlhood had risen up near the throne. To
Madame Royale herself, her new abode was
replete with recollections OF that mother,
for traditions of the early youth of Marie Antoi-
nette before her marriage still fingered there.
There too, the grandmother and namesake of
Madame Royale had reigned supreme and
although sixteen years had elapsedsinc the death
Sof that great Empress, Vienna was still rich in
memories of Maria Theresa.
Francis II (son of the late Emperor Leopold)
reigned over Austria when the orphan daughter
of Marie Antonette arrived. She had inherited
legacy from her aunt the Duchesse de Sake
Teschen, which, now restored to her, prevented
her being in a state of absolute dependence on
her maternal kinsfolk. Ahousehold was formed
for her on the same footing that of an Arch
duchess of Austria, and in time it was reported
that theEmperor and Empress desired TO wed hel
! to her cousin, the Archduke Charles. But what
ever pangs of regret the refusal caused her, the
orphan princess resolutely declined to acquiesct
in this proposal, for she knew now that the Dut
dAngouleme was still alive, and she remem
bered that, by the express wish of her martyret
parents she was betrothed to him. Personally ht
had become a stranger to her, and many years o
sorrow had elapsed since he had been her play
nate at the little Trianon. prison, scaffold
sea of blood had risen and surged up betweel
This her present time at Vienna and that far-of
time of her childhood at Versailles; and yet
though the princely Archduke Charles stooC
before her to WOO and to win her If he could, SHE
looked back through her tears to the past ant
resolved to be faithful to the promise that he
parents had made for her. And thus it came t
pass that when after rather more than thre
years residence at Vienna, her uncle the exieC
Louis XVIII (elder of the two brothers o
Louis XVD summoned her to Mittau, il
Courland there to meet the Due dAngou
eme as his intended bride, she was prepared
= to obey. But it is said that she shuddere
yisibly when at last she entered the ancien
palace of Mittau. Was it of prison that ii
gloomy aspect reminded her Be that as it may
she wept (some of her attendants declared,
Wept when entering her own apartments in tina
place, as though from a hopeless sense of drea
hality The recollections, however, of Madam
Royale were more than enough at that momen
to make her weep without imputing to ker tn
VI idea that from henceforth her own personf
hopes as woman were blighted; Tor the sight {
VII Aher uncle Louis XVIII, the king without king
DOM could not but recall to her, the Orphan {
the Temple, how it was by the martyrdom {
her own father and by the murder OF her ow
bother that he was King of France Mt all, eve
though only in name and by right of succession
She could not behold the Abbe Edgeworth-
1z..aE for he was then at Mittau toO-without remen
ltring how his face, upturned towards heaVel
had been stained with the blood OF her ow
&S father on the scaffold; whilst he there eXhorte
the King, as the son of st. Louis, to ascend
Heaven She could not look on Clery, for he
that time was also at Mittau without remembe
ing how, as the faithful servant OF his roy
master to the last, he was in some sort presel
at that dread farewell in the Temple when 81
W herself had tainted one dead at the IeeJ OF IN
father on the eve of his execution.
&1 And when the Due d'Angouleme at length b
held his future bride at Mittau, he too had mem
res more than sufficient to impart an air OF s.