A Versailles Christmas-Tide

a Reine, those tiny rooms whose grey old-world furniture might have been in use yesterday, to me hold more

n of those dainty rooms overlooking the dank inner courtyard to the frigid grandeur of their State chambers. Therein it was that Marie Leczinska was wont to instruct her yo

at his blacksmith forge below while his wife flirted above. But in truth the petits appartements are instinct with memories of Marie Antoinette, and it is difficult to think of any save only her occupying them. The beautiful coffre present

an alcove wherein stands a couch garlanded with flowers, betrays no sinister qualities. But any visitor who approaches looking at his reflection where at the left the side panels meet the angle of the wall, w

ully introduced into a palace, that Marie Antoinette fled on that fate

s of the enemy, when the idea of a secret staircase suggested itself. A little judicious inquiry elicited the information that one

r a space it seemed as though our desire would be ungratified. Happily the knowledge of our interest awoke a kindly reciprocity in our guide, who, hurrying off, quickly returned with the venerable

ws, we saw nothing but a vision of Marie Antoinette, half clad in dishevelled wrappings of petticoat and

brothers and antecedents. Finding that, when a delicate infant, he had been sent to the country to nurse, I rushed to the conclusion that the royal infant had died, and that his foster-mother, fe

is younger brothers. He was honest, sincere, pious, a faithful husband, a devoted father; amply endowed, indeed, with the middle-class virtues which at that period wer

I used to revel. It showed the unknown mother, who had discovered that by her own act she had condemned her innocent son to suffer for the sins of past generations of royal profligates, journeying to Paris (in my dreams she always wore sabots and walked the entire distance in a state of extreme physical exhaustion) with the intention of preventing his exe

, and I almost found them feasible. What an amazing irony of fate it would

ng Sunday several years ago, when in the wake of a cluster of market folks we wandered into the old Cathedral of St. Denis. Deep in the sombre shadows of the crypt a light gl

blue-bloused marketers cast curious glances. Yet within these grim coffins lie two bodies with th