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| THE BEDROOM OF MARIE ANTOINETTE - One may
easily judge that house-decoration has made no progress for many
centuries; otherwise it would be impossible to re-introduce the
styles of Henry VIII, Louis XIV, XV, and XVI. The scene on this page
represents a reproduction of Queen Marie Antoinette's bedroom at the
Little Trianon, in Versailles, which was shown in the French section
of the Manufactures Building by MM. Alavoine, leading manufactures of
Paris. All of this work on textiles was done by hand in silk, and
the skill and patience displayed by the French workman must evoke
astonishment. Even to the picture on the wall, all is the product of
needlework. From this luxurious room, thick carpeted, perfumed, and
beautified with every ingenuity, the French Queen, dragged by
fishwomen, who called her "the baker's wife," "the Austrian
she-wolf," was transferred to the Tuilleries, and later translated to
the prison of the Temple, where the head of her dearest friend, the
Princess de Lamballe, was shown on a pike at the window. Then, after
the beheadal of her husband, the king, she left her two children, a
widow, to undergo mock trial before Judge Fouquier-Tinville, to be
sentenced, and to mend her tattered garments with needle at the
prison of the Conciergerie, in order to go decently to the scaffold
in a republican cart. We look upon this one of her many
palace-rooms, and contemplate her dizzy and dreadful fall. |
