A view of the exterior of the tower
TOWER OF JOAN OF ARC, ROUEN.
The fisher’s hymn which Ernest Wynn gave the Club at its first meeting was asked for here by Master Lewis, and was procured. It is sungbefore the departure of ships and during great storms in the fishing season, being a part of the mass for seamen, or themesse d’equipage.
The Class left Étretat for Rouen.
“O Rouen! Rouen! it is here I must die, and here shall be my last resting-place!” said Joan of Arc at the stake. Rouen was hardly the resting-place of the heroic peasant girl, for her ashes were thrown into the Seine. But the thought of the stranger on coming to Rouen is less associated with its history under the sea-kings of the North, the Norman dukes and the English invaders, than with the hard fate and the public memorials of the simple shepherdess, who seems to have been called from her flocks to change the destiny of France.
Joan leading her flock of sheep
THE MAID OF ORLEANS.
The Class entered Rouen after a series of short, zigzag journeys, partly in coaches and partly on foot, going leisurely from town to town through roads that presented to view continuous landscapes of shining orchards, ripening gardens, and resplendent poppy-fields; stopping atAmiens, the birthplace of Peter the Hermit, meeting here and there a ruin, and finding everywhere the connecting historical links between the present and the past.
At Amiens the Class was brought into the presence of a relic which greatly excited the boys’ wonder.
“This church,” said their guide, taking the Class to a side chapel of the cathedral, “contains a very rare relic,—a part of the head of John the Baptist!”
Passing into the beautiful chapel the Class was shown the shrine containing the precious treasure, which consists of the supposed frontal bone, and the upper jaw of the saint.
Thevalet de placewho accompanied the Class from the hotel seemed to have no doubt of the genuineness of the relic, or of the propriety of adoring it, if indeed it were real,—and he bowed reverently before the shrine.
“A very rare relic,” he said.
“Wonderful!” said Frank. “I did not know that such sacred remains were anywhere to be found as are shown us in the churches of France.”
“Quitea rare relic,” said Master Lewis, coolly. “I believe that, previous to the French Revolution, several whole heads of John the Baptist were to be seen in France.”
“You do not think that a church like this would be guilty of imposture, do you?” asked Ernest Wynn.
“Not wilfully. Most of these French relics were brought from Constantinople at the time of the Crusades. They may be genuine,—the people believe them so; but, in the absence of direct historic evidence, it is probable that the Crusaders were deceived in them by others, who in their turn may have been deceived.
“You will be shown wonderful relics or shrines supposed to contain them, in nearly all the great churches of France. The French people were taught their reverence for relics by St. Louis, who sought to enrich the churches of his country with such treasures.”
“Who was St. Louis?” asked Ernest.
“I am glad to have you ask the question,” said Master Lewis. “His name meets you everywhere in France.
“St. Louis was one of the best men that ever sat on a throne. But he was influenced by the superstitions of the times in which he lived.
“His mother was a most noble and pious woman, and he was a dutiful and affectionate son.
“It was regarded as very pious at this time for a prince to go on a crusade. St. Louis was taken sick, and he made a vow that, if he recovered, he would become a crusader. On his recovery, he appointed his mother regent, and sailed with forty thousand men for Cyprus, where he proceeded against Egypt, thinking by the conquest of that country to open a triumphant way to Palestine. He was defeated, and returned to France.
“He was a model prince among his own people. He used to spend a portion of each day in charity, and to feed an hundred or more paupers every time he went to walk. He visited his own domestics when they were sick; he founded charities, which have multiplied, and to-day cause his name to be remembered with gratitude almost everywhere in France. He made it the aim of his life to relieve suffering wherever it might be found.
“It is related of him, among a multitude of stories, that he was once accosted by a poor woman standing at the door of her cottage, who held in her hand a loaf, and said,—
“‘Good king, it is of this bread that comes of thine alms that my poor, sick husband is sustained.’
“The king took the loaf and examined it.
“‘It is rather hard bread,’ said he; and he then visited the sick man himself and gave the case his personal sympathy.
The king examines the old woman's bread
“IT IS RATHER HARD BREAD.”
“Going out on a certain Good Friday barefoot to distribute alms, he saw a leper on the other side of a dirty pond. He waded through it to the wretched man, gave him alms, then, taking his hand in his own, kissed it. The act greatly astonished his attendants, but the disease was not communicated to him.
St. Louis prays in his bed, surrounded by clerics and attendants
DEATH OF ST. LOUIS.
“In 1270 he started on a new crusade, but died in Tunis of the pestilence. Visions of the conquest of the Holy City seemed to fill his mind to the last. He was heard to exclaim on his death-bed in his tent, ‘Jerusalem! Jerusalem! We will go up to Jerusalem!’”
One of the first places which the Class sought out in Rouen was the statue of Joan of Arc. It is placed on a street fountain near the spot where the unfortunate maid was burned. It disappointed our tourists, and seemed an unworthy tribute to such an heroic character. The great tower, called the Tower of Joan of Arc, seemed a more fitting reminder of her achievements.
The streets of Rouen are narrow, but are full of life. Rouen has been called a New Paris, and Napoleon said that Havre, Rouen, and Paris were one city of which the river Seine was the highway. The gable-faced, timber-fronted mansions are interspersed with evidences of modern thrift, and the Rouen of romance seems everywhere disappearing in the Rouen of trade.
The Cathedral of Rouen is a confusing pile of art; it has beautiful rose windows, and its spire is four hundred and thirty-six feet high. The old church of St. Ouen, which is larger and more splendid than the cathedral, is regarded as one of the most perfect specimens of Gothic art in the world. It is 443 feet long.
INTERIOR OF ST. OUEN.
The Palais de Justice, as the old province houseor parliament house is called, is an odd but picturesque structure. It lines three sides of a public square.
Courtyard and building exterior
PALAIS DE JUSTICE, ROUEN.
“To-morrow,” said Master Lewis, after a day of sight-seeing in Rouen, “we go to the most beautiful city in all the world.”
“I wish I knew more about the history of Paris,” said Ernest Wynn, “now that it is so near to us. I think of it as a place of gayety and splendor, the scene of St. Bartholomew’s Massacre, of the Revolution, and the Commune. It was the city that Napoleon seemed to love more than any thing else in the world. What is its early history?”
“You will read in Julius Cæsar’s Commentaries, in your course in Latin,” said Master Lewis, “a brief account of Lutetia, the chief town of the Parisii, a Gallic tribe that the Romans conquered. This, I think, is the oldest historical allusion to Paris, as Lutetia came to be called. It was probably an old town at the time of the Roman invasion; it waschosen by Clovis as the seat of his empire in the sixth century; it began to grow when the Northmen came sailing up the Seine in their strange ships to its gates, and made it their prey. In the tenth century it became the residence of Hugh Capet, the founder of the Capetian line of kings, and soon after increased so rapidly that it doubled in size and population. Under Henri of Navarre, in 1589, the city began to be famous for its tendencies to gayety and splendor. Louis the Great lavished the wealth of France upon it, converting the old ramparts into picturesque public walks or boulevards, and enlarging and adorning its palaces so that they rivalled the royal structures of the East. Then Napoleon I. enriched it with the spoils of Europe, spending on it more than £4,000,000 in twelve years. Napoleon III. completed the work of his predecessors by introducing into the city all modern improvements, and making Paris in every respect the most magnificent capital in Europe.
The northmen row towards the shoreline
NORTHMEN ON AN EXPEDITION.
“I have given you in the story of Charlemagne and in the visit to Aix-la-Chapelle a view of the early French Empire; in the story of St. Louis you have had a glance at France at the time of the Crusades; I think I will here tell you a story which will present to you another period of the nation’s history.
THE BARQUES OF THE NORTHMEN BEFORE PARIS.
“Charles IX., the twelfth king of the family of Valois, came to the French throne when only ten years of age, under the regency of his mother, that terrible woman, Catharine de Medici. He was an impulsive youth, restless and vacillating, and was left wholly to the evil influences of his mother. The first years of his reign were disturbed by the struggles between the Protestant and Catholic parties in France. These difficulties were apparently settled in 1569.
“The queen-mother, who was a Catholic, seemed to entertain kind feelings towards the Protestant leaders. The Protestant King of Navarre was promised the hand of the king’s sister Marguerite, and marked courtesy and apparent kindness of feeling were shown by the royal household to many of the leading men of the great Protestant party. The latter were thus rendered unsuspicious of danger, and became almost wholly disarmed.
A head and shoulders drawing
CATHARINE DE MEDICI.
“But Catharine de Medici, full of craft and wickedness, had resolved to destroy the Protestant power. She was fully versed in crime, and the passion for dark deeds grew upon her with years. One day she went to the boy-king, Charles, and disclosed a plot for the massacre of the Protestants of France. He listened with a feeling of horror. He had learned to love the Protestant statesmen, and to call their greatleader, Coligny, ‘father.’ His young heart recoiled from such a deed. But his mother gave him no rest. She confided her plot to the Catholic leaders, who joined hand in hand with her to accomplish the crime. Church and State united to persuade the young king that the stability of the throne, the glory of his family, and the advancement of religious truth demanded the slaughter of the Huguenots, as the Protestant party were called. Still he hesitated; but after a little while exhibited his characteristic weakness under the influence of persuasion, and the conspirators knew his final assent was certain.
“St. Bartholomew’s Day was at hand, the time appointed by the Catholic leaders, the Guises, for the work of death. Paris was full of Huguenots from the principal provincial cities, who had been drawn hither by the magnificent wedding of the Protestant King of Navarre. The preparations for the massacre were nearly complete, but the young king still hesitated to issue the fatal order.
“His mother now used every art in her power to make him place himself boldly with the Guises. As he was king, she wished the sanction of a royal edict to do her bloody work. With this the preparations for the destruction of the Huguenots would be complete. Her appeals at length so wrought upon his mind that he excitedly exclaimed, ‘Well, then, kill them! kill them all, that not a single Huguenot may live to reproach me!’ This frantic remark was construed as an order.
“The massacre was appointed to begin on St. Bartholomew’s Eve, at the tolling of a bell. The young king was fearfully nervous and agitated during the preceding day. Just before the fatal hour, his conscience had so affected his better feelings, that he despatched orders to the Duc de Guise, countermanding the slaughter. The duke received the message as he was in the act of mounting his horse to lead the assassins.
“‘Il est trop tard!’ ‘It is too late!’ said the duke to the bearer, and at once rode away.
A full portrait of the statesman
COLIGNY.
“It was a still night, August 24, 1572. The defenceless Huguenotswere unsuspicious of danger, while armed assassins were lurking in every house. At last the heavy clang of a great bell fell on the breathless evening air, and the slaughter began.
“All that summer night the streets ran with blood. The young and the old, the daughter, the mother, the nobleman and the beggar,—all who bore the name of Huguenot,—were cut off without mercy. None were spared. Even women murdered women, and children, it is said, impelled by the maddening example, applied the dagger to other children in their beds. The streets of Paris ran with blood. From thirty to seventy thousand persons were slain in the city and in the towns of France on this night and a few days following it.
“The new Queen of Navarre, Marguerite de Valois, had gone to bed on the fatal eve, by the express order of Catharine. Just as she was going to sleep, she says, a man knocked with hands and feet at her door, shouting ‘Navarre! Navarre!’ The nurse, thinking it was the king, opened the door. A Protestant gentleman, bleeding, and pursued by four archers, threw himself on her bed for protection. The archers rushed after him, but were stayed by the appearance of the captain of the guard. The young queen hid the wounded Huguenot in one of her closets, and cared for him until he was able to escape. Such scenes took place in nearly all the houses of the nobility.
“Coligny was rudely murdered, and his body thrown out of the window of his apartments into the courtyard, where it is said to have been kicked by the Duc de Guise. The young king was in a court of the palace of the Louvre, with his mother, when the great bell began to toll. At first he trembled with fear and horror. He recovered presently from his fear, and, running to the palace window, became so excited at the sight of blood that he fired upon the wretched fugitives who were attempting to escape by swimming across the Seine.
“But the young king never knew a happy hour after that dreadful night. He grew pale and thin, and his tortured conscience and shattered brain called up in his solitary hours the images of the slain.
“Two years after the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Eve the young king lay dying. His disease, it has been said, was caused by poison, which had been applied to the leaves of one of his favorite books for the purpose, by his unnatural mother. His sufferings were dreadful in the extreme. Historians tell us that he sweat drops of blood. His mental anguish was as fearful as his bodily distress. He would cry out to his nurse, ‘Ah, nourrice, ma mie, ma bonne! que du sang, que d’assassinats! Oh quels mauvais conseils j’ai suivis! Oh Seigneur Dieu, pardonnez moi, et faites moi misericorde!’ ‘Ah, nurse, my good nurse! What blood! What murders! Oh what bad counsels I followed! Lord God, pardon me! Have mercy on me!’
“Historians cover the memory of Charles IX. with infamy, but his first impulses were usually kind, and his first intentions good. He does not seem to have inherited the disposition of that monster of wickedness, his mother. His most evil acts could hardly be called his own. Left to himself he would have been deemed a most polished and amiable prince, though wanting in decision. As a victim of bad counsellors, pity should mingle with the censure that follows his name.”
Catharine stands behind the seated king
CHARLES IX. AND CATHARINE DE MEDICI.
Paris the Beautiful.—Notre Dame.—Tuileries and Louvre.—Garden of the Tuileries.—Bois de Boulogne.—Church of the Invalides.—Napoleon’s Tomb.—Place de la Concorde.—Story of the Man of the Iron Mask.—Versailles and the Trianons.—Story of the Dauphin.—Fontainebleau.—The Seine.—Water-Omnibuses.—A Wonderful Boat.—Tommy’s French.—A Surprise.—St. Eustache.—Molière.—Young French Heroes.—Wyllys Wynn’s Poem.
Paris the Beautiful.—Notre Dame.—Tuileries and Louvre.—Garden of the Tuileries.—Bois de Boulogne.—Church of the Invalides.—Napoleon’s Tomb.—Place de la Concorde.—Story of the Man of the Iron Mask.—Versailles and the Trianons.—Story of the Dauphin.—Fontainebleau.—The Seine.—Water-Omnibuses.—A Wonderful Boat.—Tommy’s French.—A Surprise.—St. Eustache.—Molière.—Young French Heroes.—Wyllys Wynn’s Poem.
PARIS the beautiful!
City of light hearts, smiling faces, charming courtesies, and gay scenes everywhere!
City of dark tragedies of history that have hardly left behind a scar! The tropical forest gives no warning of poison lurking under the flowers; the bright Southern sky wears no trace of the tempest. Paris says to the stranger, “I am beautiful: I have ever been beautiful, and I wear loveliness like a crown.”
The streets are as gay as the summer sunshine in them; the boulevards, as the wide streets and avenues for pleasure walks are called, seem channels of happiness, through which the tides of life run as brightly as they glimmer along the Seine. “La belle Paris!” says the stranger as he comes, and “La belle Paris!” he utters respectfully as he goes.
We do not wonder that the French love it; that Napoleon gloried in it, and that Mary Queen of Scots left it with a heavy heart. Here human nature has light, warmth, and glow; and love, sympathy, and patriotism are everywhere to be seen.
“Where are the ruins caused by the siege and the Commune?” asked Frank Gray, after the Class had been driven through a numberof streets. “I do not see the first sign of there having been a recent war and revolution.”
“In the fall of 1870,” said Master Lewis, “shot and shell for a long period fell around the city and into it like rain. In the following spring the Commune was declared the government of Paris, and it seemed bent on destroying the city’s beauty, and overturning its monuments of art. The Vendôme Column, which celebrated the victories of Napoleon the Great, was pulled down as a monument of tyranny; the Palace of the Tuileries and the Hotel de Ville were set on fire; and the wealthy citizens who had endured the siege by a foreign foe fled from their own countrymen. To-day most of the houses destroyed by the war and the Commune are rebuilt, and the streets are as splendid as in the gay days of the Empire.”
The Class took rooms in theGrand Hotel, one of the largest and finest houses for public entertainment in Europe. Its first visit was to the ancient Cathedral of Notre Dame, whose history is as old as Christianity in France, and which even before that period was a Pagan temple. HereTe Deumsfor all of the nation’s victories have been sung; funeral orations of kings have been pronounced, confessions of sin for a thousand years have been made, and masses innumerable celebrated. Here Napoleon the Great was crowned, and Napoleon III. was married. Here the Goddess of Reason, after being borne through the streets in state, was enthroned during the Revolution of 1793. It has thirty-seven chapels.
In entering the cathedral the Class seemed to be in a new world. The rose-colored windows flooded the edifice with a soft light; and beyond it was a blaze of candles amid clouds of incense, for the priests in their gorgeous vestments were administering at the altar.
Crowds watch as the procession goes past
THE GODDESS OF REASON CARRIED THROUGH THE STREETS OF PARIS.
The boys passed through the waves of light reverently, and stood near the altar. A choir of altar boys suddenly rose amid the smoke and lights and glitter of priestly robes, and sang most melodiously. It seemed very solemn and grand, but the thought of the associations ofthe place was even more awe-inspiring. The scene was one that had been enacted for more than a thousand years, under the groined roof of the same stately edifice, and the past seemed to hang, a weight of gloom, in the very air.
On each one’s paying half a franc, the Class was admitted into the sacristy, where the sacred relics, purchased in the East by St. Louis himself, are kept. Among them is a supposed piece of the true cross and a pretended part of the Crown of Thorns which was put upon the Saviour’s head before the Crucifixion.
The second day that the Class spent in Paris was the most delightful of the whole tour.
“I shall go with you to-day,” said Master Lewis, “to the most beautiful place in Europe, the most beautiful garden in Europe, and one of the most beautiful picture-galleries in the world.”
“The Tuileries?” asked Frank.
“The Louvre?” asked Ernest.
“Both,” said Master Lewis.
“The Tuileries and the Louvre are now one. Francis I. began the building of the Louvre in 1541; Catharine de Medici commenced the Tuileries in 1564; Napoleon III. united the two palaces in the four years following 1852. The two palaces have been growing about three hundred years. The Tuileries was partly burned by the Commune. The united palaces cover twenty-four acres. Think of it! Twenty-four acres of art, ornament, pictures, and splendor!”
The garden of the Tuileries is the favorite promenade of wealthy and fashionable Parisians, and seemed to the boys too beautiful for reality. Graceful statues rise on every hand from flower-beds, bowers, by cool fountains, and in the shade of grand old trees,—statues in marble, stone, and bronze; Grecian, Roman, French. Airy terraces, basins bordered with rich foliage and gorgeous flowers carry the eye hither and thither, and call out some new expression of admiration at almost every step.
“How happy the life of a French king must have been!” said Tommy Toby.
“How unhappy the lives of French kings have been!” said Master Lewis. “If you would have a view of royalty that makes a peasant’s life seem desirable, read the history of the old French kings.”
The beautiful forests of France extend to the very outskirts of the city. One of these, the Bois de Boulogne, is the favorite park of Paris. It contains more than two thousand acres. It has an immense aquarium, pavilions of birds, and a garden for ostriches and cassowaries, and its principal avenue is one hundred yards wide.
The Class visited this park on a beautiful afternoon, passing through the Champs Elysées, a splendid avenue filled with equipages. In this walk the boys saw the famousArc de Triompheand thePalais de l’Industrie, in which the World’s Fair was held in 1855, when nearly two million strangers beheld Paris in her glory. The Arc de Triomphe was begun in 1806, the year of the battle of Austerlitz, and was finished by Louis Philippe. It commemorates the victories of Napoleon, and is the most magnificent imperial monument in the world.
No scene in Paris seemed to inspire a part of the Class with so much awe as the tomb of Napoleon. At the entrance to the crypt of the dome of the church of the Invalides, containing the conqueror’s remains, are these words: “I desire that my ashes may rest on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people whom I have loved so well.”
From a balustrade above the tomb under the beautiful dome the boys looked down in silence on the sarcophagus, or stone coffin, which is of Finland granite. The monolith on which it rests is porphyry, and weighs 130,000 pounds. The monument cost nine million francs.
A beautifully tinted light fell upon the sarcophagus.
“Look,” said Tommy, “see—”
An armed guard approached, with a solemn gesture of the hand. He simply said,—
“Be reverent.”
Part of the gardens with the house in the background
GARDEN OF THE TUILERIES.
The Hotel des Invalides, an asylum for disabled soldiers, of which the church and dome are a part, was founded by Louis XIV. The dome is gilded, and is three hundred and thirty feet high.
FOUNTAIN IN THE CHAMPS ELYSÉES.
Ernest Wynn, who seemed to have a part of some old ballad always upon his lips, repeated some fine lines to Master Lewis as they went out of the church,—a quotation from an old song, entitled “Napoleon’s Grave.” (At St. Helena.)
“Though nations may combat and war’s thunders rattle,No more on thy steed wilt thou sweep o’er the plain;Thou sleep’st thy last sleep, thou hast fought thy last battle,No sound can awake thee to glory again.”
“Though nations may combat and war’s thunders rattle,No more on thy steed wilt thou sweep o’er the plain;Thou sleep’st thy last sleep, thou hast fought thy last battle,No sound can awake thee to glory again.”
The delightfulPlace de la Concorde, which is between the Garden of the Tuileries and the Champs Elysées, and which has been called the most delightful spot in any European city, had been passed through by the Class in their walk to the park, and it was decided to give an afternoon to a visit to it. Here stands the obelisk of Luxor, brought from the ruins of Thebes.
Features include imposing buildings, an obelisk and a fountain
PLACE DE LA CONCORDE.
Here stood the guillotine, or rather the guillotines, on which Louis XIV. and Marie Antoinette and nearly three thousand persons perished. Here revolutionists cut off the heads of the royal family, and the people the heads of the revolutionists.
An ornate doorway with balconies on the floors above
ENTRANCE TO THE LOUVRE.
Two beautiful fountains were playing on the afternoon when the Class made their visit. The sky was all rose and gold; the Seine flowed calmly along; the aspect of every thing seemed as foreign to any past association of war, tragedy, and pangs of human suffering as the figures of the Tritons and Nereids that were spouting water from the fishes in their hands.
The ornate fountain featuring mythological figures
FOUNTAIN, PLACE DE LA CONCORDE.
Leaving the Place de la Concorde, which Master Lewis said he believed was constructed in part of stones of the old Bastile, the Class went to the public square where the Bastile had stood.
“The Place of the Bastile,” said Master Lewis, “now adorned bythe Column of Liberty, is the site of the old Castle of Paris, which was built as a defence against the English. The castle became a prison for people who offended the French kings. The Man of the Iron Mask was confined here. It was regarded as an obstacle to liberty, and it was stormed by the people during the Revolution, and destroyed.”
“Who was the Man of the Iron Mask?” asked Tommy Toby.
“That is a question that used to be asked by all the statesmen of Europe, and that has been repeated and always will be by every reader of history. It has been answered in many different ways. Books, pamphlets, and essays have been written upon the subject. It is still a secret, and seems destined always to remain so. I will give you briefly the strange history of this State prisoner.”
“During the reign of that voluptuous old monarch, Louis XIV. of France, there appeared on one of the Marguerite Islands, in the Mediterranean, a prisoner of State closely guarded, and entrusted to the especial care of a French governmental officer, De Saint Mars.
“Although confined in this obscure spot in the sea, where but little was seen or heard save a distant sail and the dashing of waters, he became a marked man among the few who chanced to meet him, and the circumstance of his concealment was in danger of being noised abroad. He was consequently removed to Paris, and immured in the cells of the Bastile.
“From the time that he began to attract attention on the island in the Mediterranean to the close of his protracted life, no one but his appointed attendants is known to have seen his face.
“His head was enveloped in a black-velvet mask, confined by springs of steel, and so arranged that he could not reveal his features without immediate detection.
The prisoner looks out of a barred window, watched by two guards
MAN OF THE IRON MASK.
“His guardian, De Saint Mars, had been instructed by a royal order, or by an order from certain of the king’s favorites, to take his life immediately, should he attempt to reveal his identity.
“During his confinement on the Marguerite island, De Saint Mars ate and slept in the same room with him, and was always provided with weapons with which to despatch him, should he attempt to discover the secret of his history. If report is true, De Saint Mars might well exercise caution, for it is asserted that he was to forfeit his own life if by any want of watchfulness he allowed the prisoner to reveal his identity.
“The prisoner himself seemed anxious to make the forbidden discovery. He once wrote a word on some linen, and succeeded in communicating what he wished to an individual not in the secret of the mystery. But therusewas discovered, and the person that received the linen died suddenly, being taken off, it was supposed, by poison. He once engraved something, probably his name, on a piece of silver plate. The person to whom it was conveyed was detected in his knowledge of the secret, and soon after died, as suddenly and mysteriously as the one who had received the linen.
“These incidents indicate that the prisoner was a man of shrewdness and learning.
“He was attended, during his imprisonment in the Bastile, by the governor of the fortress, who alone administered to his wants; and when he attended mass he was always followed by a detachment of invalides (French soldiers), who were instructed to fire upon him in case he should speak or attempt to uncover his face.
“These circumstances, and many others of like character, show that he was a person of very eminent rank, and that those who thus shut him out from mankind were conscious that they were committing a crime of no ordinary magnitude.
“Who, then, was this person of mystery, familiarly known as the Man of the Iron Mask?
“He is supposed by many to have been a son of Anne of Austria and the Duke of Buckingham, and consequently a half-brother of Louis XIV., and a co-heir to the throne of France. If so, it would appear, that, while Louis XIV. was luxuriating amid the splendors of the palace of Versailles, his brother was suffering the miseries of exile, or languishing in a dungeon, shut out not only from the outward world, but from all intercourse with mankind. But other writers think him to have been some less remarkable person.
“The iron mask, of which frequent mention has been made in sensational books, was a very simple contrivance of velvet and springs of steel.”
The Class made two excursions from Paris, one to Versailles and the other to Fontainebleau.
Versailles, a town of 30,000 inhabitants, which has grown up around one of the finest palaces and parks of Europe, was originally the hunting-lodge of Louis XIII. Louis XIV. chose the place for a palace, and employed almost an army of men for eleven years upon the structure. He spent upon this palace nearly £40,000,000 sterling. Thither in 1680 he removed his gay court, and here he passed in gloomy grandeur his melancholy old age.
It is a place of beautiful gardens, wonderful fountains, fine statues, and walks associated with the history of kings, queens, statesmen, and scholars. The palace to the visitor seems a vast picture gallery, wherein is shown the conquests of France. It is a long journey through the glittering rooms. Here you see the representation of a king in his moment of triumph, adored as a god, and there you see the same king overthrown or stretched upon his bed of death. The fountains murmur, the orange trees fill the air with perfume, and you turn from the exhibition of the glowing and faded pomps of history to the gardens, feeling that after all man’s only nobility and kingship and hope of a crown lies in his soul, and it is virtue alone that makes one royal.
Two small palaces or villas in the Park of Versailles, called Great Trianon and Little Trianon, recalled to Master Lewis the happy days of the life of Marie Antoinette, which she spent here while the unseen cloud of the Revolution was gathering, and the calm settled down on Paris before the storm.
The palace seen from the gardens
VERSAILLES.
“We have seen the places where Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette lived and were beheaded. What became of their children?” asked Frank Gray.
“The oldest son of Louis XVI. died at the beginning of the Revolution. As it may give you a picture of the stormy times of the period, let me tell you
“He was born at Versailles in 1785. He was a most affectionate child, and was ardently attached to his mother. He used to sport about the gardens of the palace; the very place where we are now was his play-ground.
“He would sometimes rise early in the morning to gather flowers from the gardens to lay on his mother’s pillow.
“‘Ah!’ he would say, when weary of play, ‘I have not earned the first kiss from mother to-day.’
The house seen from the gardens
LITTLE TRIANON.
THE DAUPHIN WITH THE ROYAL FAMILY IN THE ASSEMBLY.
“The Revolution came and cast a shadow over Versailles, with all its glory. The royal family was surrounded with enemies, and was in constant terror, and the little dauphin was made unhappy by the sight of his mother’s tears.
“One day a serving-woman told him that if he would procure some favor for her she would be happy as a queen.
“‘As happy as a queen!’ he answered: ‘I know of one queen who does nothing but weep.’
“The Revolutionists overthrew the Bastile and the throne, and the members of the royal family were obliged to seek protection in the National Assembly. They were then confined in an old French prison, called the Temple.
“The king was tried by the Assembly, was condemned and executed. He deeply loved the dauphin, and parted from him with bitter grief.
“After the king’s death the dauphin was the principal solace of the queen in her imprisonment. He was at last removed from the queen’s apartment by an order of the Committee of Public Safety. It is related that when the guards came to take him away, his mother fought for him until her strength was exhausted, and she fell senseless upon the floor.
“After the execution of his mother he was given over to the care of a brutal shoemaker, named Simon, who endeavored to cause his death without committing palpable murder. He was ill-fed, beaten and abused, and received the name of the ‘She-wolf’s Whelp,’ referring to Marie Antoinette.
“At this period the police were in the habit of distributing in the streets songs against ‘Madame Veto,’ as the queen had been called. One of the most infamous of these, as vulgar as it was brutal, had been preserved by Simon.
“One day, for the want of a new torture for the child, Simon resolved to make him sing this obscene song against his mother.
“‘Come along, Capet,’ said he, ‘here is a new song which you must sing to me.’
“He handed the song to the dauphin. The boy saw its meaning, and with all the instincts of a susceptible nature he recoiled from the thought of reviling his mother. He laid it down on the table without saying a word.
“Simon arose in wrath.
“‘I thought I said you must sing.’
“‘I never will sing such a song.’
“‘I declare to you that I will kill you if you refuse to obey me.’
“‘Never!’
“Simon caught up an andiron, and threw it at the child with a force that would have proved fatal had he not missed his aim. His passion then gradually subsided, but the boy refused to sing.
“One day, after a system of abuses too shocking to relate, Simon seized the dauphin by the ear, and drawing him to the middle of the apartment, said,—
“‘Capet, if the Vendéans were to set you at liberty, what would you do to me?’
“‘I would forgive you,’ replied the noble boy.
“His situation at last became wretched in the extreme. He was placed in a filthy cell where he could neither receive pure air nor have exercise; his food was scanty, his bed was not made for six months, and his clothes were not changed for a year. He became covered with vermin, and the mice used to nibble at his feet. He passed the days in utter silence, wishing only to die. Once, when he had attempted to pray kneeling, he had been discovered and terribly punished, and he felt that it was not safe for him to speak even to his God.
“After the overthrow of the Revolutionary government under Robespierre, he was assigned to more merciful keepers. But his body and mind were in ruins, and all efforts to restore him proved in vain.
“It was a lovely June day in the summer of 1795. He was dying; without, the air was full of sunshine, of birds and roses.
“‘Are you in pain?’ asked his attendant.
“‘Yes,’ he said; ‘but not in so much as I was, the music is so sweet.’
“He presently added; ‘Do you not hear the music?’
“‘From whence does it come?’
“‘From above.’
“His eyes became luminous; he seemed happy and peaceful, and he fancied that among the voices that seemed to be singing around him he could distinguish that of his mother. It may have been all but a dream or fancy, but it grew out of the filial devotion of his heart.”