Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/569

Rh M A R M A K 541 It is hard to speak of Marie Antoinette with justice ; her faults were caused by her education and position rather than her nature, and she expiated them far more bitterly than was deserved. She was thoroughly imbued with the imperial and absolutist ideas of Maria Theresa, and had neither the heart nor the understanding to sympathize with the aspirations of the lower classes. Her love of pleasure and of display ruined both her character and her reputation in her prosperous years, and yet, after a careful examination of many of the libels against her, it may be asserted with confidence that she was personally a virtuous woman, though always appearing to be the very reverse. Innocence is not always its own protection, and circumspection is as necessary for a queen as for any other woman. Her conduct throughout the Revolution is heart-rending ; we, who live after the troubled times, can see her errors and the results of her pride and her caprice, but at the time she was the only indi vidual of the royal family who could inspire the devotion which is always paid to a strong character. In the Marie Antoinette who suffered on the guillotine we pity, not the pleasure-loving queen, not the widow, who had kept her husband against his will in the wrong course, not the woman, who throughout her married life did not scruple to show her contempt for her slow and heavy but good-natured and loving king, but the little princess, sacrificed to state policy, and cast uneducated and without a helper into the frivolous court of France, not to be loved, but to be suspected by all around her, and eventually to be hated by the whole people of France. For lives and memoirs of Marie Antoinette before 186-3, as well as engravings of her, the student is referred to a complete and careful bio-bibliography, con tained in M. de Lescure s La Vraie Marie Antoinette, Paris, 1863. This work, however, contains many forged letters, purporting to be hers, and leads to the question of Marie Antoinette s published letters. There can be no doubt that very many fabrications by autograph makers for autograph collectors are published as authentic in D Hunolstein, Correspondence in&lite de Marie Antoinette, Paris, 1^64; and in Keuillet des Conches, Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, et Madame Elisabeth, lettres et documents inedites, Paris, 1865. The falsity of these letters was shown by Professor Von Sybel and by M. Geffroy in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and still more clearly in the latter s appendix to his Gustaee III. et la four de France, Paris, 1867. To study Marie Antoinette as she really lived, the student inu.it consult Von Arneth s numerous publications on her and her mother and brothers, and particularly Arneth and Geffroy, Marie Antoinette: Corre- fpondance secrete entre Marie-Therese et le Comte de Mercy-Argenteau, Paris, 3 vols., 1874, in which Marie Antoinette s daily life for ten years, from 1770-80, is described for her mother s own eyes. For the affair of the necklace read Carlyle s Essay. For her imprisonment, trial, and execution, see Campardon s Tribunal Reeolutionnaire, vol. i., and the same author s Marie Antoinette a la Conciergerie, Paris, 1863. (H. M. S.) MARIE DE FRANCE is one of the most interesting figures in the literary history of the Middle Ages. She is also one of the most mysterious. Nothing is known of her except from her own statements, which amount to little more than that her name was Marie and her country France, that she dedicated one of her works to an unnamed king, and another to a certain Count William. She is mentioned by Denis Pyramus, who was her contemporary, and who says that she was very popular, but gives no particulars. Attempts have been made to identify con- jecturally the king and the count, the most probable hypotheses being that the former was Henry III. of England, and the latter William Longsword of Salisbury ; that is to say, Marie lived in the first half of the 13th century, and rather towards the beginning than the end of that half. Her work which remains to us is entirely poetical, and by no means inconsiderable in extent. It falls naturally into three divisions. The first consists of luis or narrative poems in octosyllabic couplets. There are fourteen of them, the titles being Gagemer, Equitan, Le frene, Le Bisdavaret, Lanval, Les deux amants, Ywenec, Le Laustic ( * the Nightingale &quot;), Milan, Le Chaitivel ( &quot; the Unhappy One &quot;),Le Ckevrefouille, Elidiic, Graelent, L Epine. The longest of these contains nearly twelve hundred lines ; the shortest only just exceeds a hundred. The term lai is of Breton origin, and is believed to have had reference originally to the kind of music to which it was performed. But in Marie it is simply a short romance, generally of an amatory character. The merits of these poems are very great. They have much tenderness and delicacy of expression, flowing and melodious verse, and not a little descriptive power. The dialect is decidedly Norman in character, and English words occasionally occur, but are invariably explained in French. Some of these poems were paraphrased by the late Mr O Shaughnessy in his Lays of France (London, 1872), but the translator indulged to such au t xtent in amplification that the effect is very dissimilar to that of the original. The second division of Marie s work is of less poetical but of greater general interest. It consists of an Ysopet (a general term in the Middle Ages for a collection of fables) of one hundred and three fables, of which Marie tells us that Henry Beauclerk translated it from Latin into English, and that for the love of Count William, &quot; the most valiant of this realm,&quot; she herself rhymed it from English into French. The fables are exceedingly well told, with a liveliness, elegance of verse, and ingenious aptness of moral which make Marie a worthy forerunner of La Fontaine. The question has been debated whether the great fabulist was acquainted with her work. All that can be said is that, though it is by no means impossible, and from internal evidence not even wholly improbable, it cannot be said to be very likely. The third of Marie s works is a poem of two thousand three hundred verses, describing the purgatory of Saint Patrick, written at the request of an unidentified &quot; prudom,&quot; or man of worship. Marie has been longer and better known than most of the poets of mediaeval France, and perhaps, she has been relatively a little overvalued, but her positive excellence is very considerable. Her style is a good example of the pure and highly organized language of the 13th century; and despite its great age it can be read by any person acquainted with modern French with a very small expense of attention, and with but slight use of glossaries. The standard edition of Marie s works is by B. de Roquefort, 2 vols., Paris, 1820. MARIENBAD, one of the prettiest and most frequented watering-places on the Continent of Europe, with a station (about If miles S;E. of the town) on the Kaiser Franz Josephs Railway, lies in a pleasant valley in the district of Tepl, in the north-west of Bohemia, about 18 miles south of Carlsbad, and nearly 2000 feet above the level of the Plan of Marienbad. sea. The gently-sloping hills which enclose it on all sides except the south are picturesquely wooded with fragrant pine forests. The town has an attractive and clean ap pearance, and is amply provided with buildings for the lodging and amusement of its thirteen thousand annual visitors, including a theatre and a large kurhaus. The handsome Roman Catholic church and the tasteful little