A friend of Marie-Antoinette (Lady Atkyns)Barbey, Frédéric
History
A friend of Marie-Antoinette (Lady Atkyns)
Barbey, Frédéric
Atkyns, Charlotte Walpole, Lady, approximately 1758-1836; France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799; Louis XVII, of France, 1785-1795
He had not been two months at Saumur when he heard a rumour that the
Allies had entered Paris on March 31. He was not forgotten in his
dungeon, for three days later the Grand Duke urgently demanded that
his subject might be given back to him, “one of the many victims
of the reign which has just come to an end;” and the next day the
Minister replied that the order to set the Baron at liberty had been
issued three days ago. April 16 was a day never to be forgotten by
d’Auerweck and his companions. They were overcome with emotion, as can
be guessed from the following lines, written by Baron de Kolli, the
most extraordinary adventurer of the Imperial epoch. This person had
been confined for four years at Vincennes on account of an attempt to
deliver King Ferdinand VII. from Valençay, and at Vincennes he no doubt
met our Hungarian. The two of them could exchange their impressions
as captives by the good pleasure of the Emperor, both imprisoned
without trial, and condemned to an endless captivity, thanks to regular
_lettres-de-cachet_ dug up for this occasion only.
“I will try, though in vain, to describe this scene, which will be for
ever engraven upon my heart,” Kolli relates. “In the intoxication of
happiness and in tears, each one throws himself upon any one he meets,
and clasps him in his arms; there are forty persons, all strangers to
each other, and in a second they are united by the bonds of the most
tender friendship. As we emerge from our tombs, the townsmen press
around us, and, undismayed by the sight of our miserable state, drag
us to the bosoms of their families. In a single day we pass from want
to opulence.”
Those who witnessed d’Auerweck’s return to Elgersweier, prematurely
aged as he was by these seven years of misfortune, could hardly
recognize in him the talkative and active man of former days. They all
had a vivid recollection of that night in the month of July, 1807, when
trouble hurled itself upon this family.
However, in spite of confinement and the want of fresh air, the Barons
health was not as severely injured as one might have imagined. He lived
on in his village for fourteen years, and delightedly took up again the
old tasks of an agriculturist, a botanist, and a husbandman.... In his
leisure hours he related episodes of his strange past to his family
and his neighbours, and, when bragging got the upper hand of him, he
recalled the happy time when he had been raised by Fortune to the post
of “Ambassador to his Majesty the King of Great Britain!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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