The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France

.-Maria Teresa's Letter of Advice.-The Comte de Mercy is sent as Embassador to France to act as the Adviser of the Dauphiness.-The Princesse de Lorraine at the State Ball.-A Great Disaster takes plac

party at Vienna,[1] and (a circumstance of far greater influence on the fortunes of the young couple) there was a strong anti-Austrian party in France, which was not without its supporters even in the king's palace. That the marriage should have been so earnestly desired at the imperial court is a strange instance of the extent to which political motives overpowered every othe

ly conceived for her husband, and in the sincerity, we can hardly say warmth, with which he returned her love. Maria Teresa had bespoken his tenderness for her in a letter which she wrote to him on the day on which her daughter left Vienna, and which has often been quoted

se your happiness. I have brought her up with the design that she should do

which may please you. I have also been most careful to enjoin her a tender devotion toward the Master of all Sovereigns, being thoroughly persuaded that we are but badl

. Love the king, your grandfather; be humane like him; be always accessible to the unfortunate. If you behave in this manner, it is impossible that happiness can fail to be your lot.' My daughter will love

hin. May you be happy.

e, he had never been able to summon courage to give verbal orders or reproofs to his own children,[3] but had intimated his pleasure or displeasure by letters. He had been gradually falling lower and lower, both in his own vices and in the estimation of the world; and was now, still more than when Lord Chesterfield first drew his picture,[4] both hated and despised. The dauphin's brothers, for such mere boys, were singul

t. Full of health and spirits, she was naturally eager in the pursuit of enjoyment, and anxious to please every one, from feeling nothing but kindness toward every one; she was frank, open, and sincere; and, being perfectly guileless herself, she was, as through her whole life she continued to be, entirely unsuspicious of unfriendliness, much more of treachery in others. Her

nobly or more beneficially. It never led her to think herself above the very meanest of her subjects. It never made her indifferent to the interests, to the joys or sorrows, of a single individual. The idea with which it inspired her was, that a princess of her race was never to commit an unworthy act, was never to fail in purity of virtue, in truth, in courage; that she was to be careful to set an example of these virtues to those who would naturally look up to her; and that she herself was to kee

ve command; the whole letter showing not only the most experienced wisdom and the most affectionate interest in her daughter's happiness, but likewise a thorough insight into her character, so precisely are some of the errors against which the letter most emphatically warns her those into which she most frequently fell. And she appointed a statesman in whom she deservedly placed great confidence, the Count de Mercy-Argenteau, her embassador to the court at Versailles, with the express design that he should always be at hand to afford the dauphiness his advice in all the difficulties which she could not avoid foreseeing for her; and who should also keep the Empress-queen herself fully informed of every particular of her conduct, and of every transaction by which she was in any way affected. This part of his commission was wholly unsuspected by the young princess; but the count discharged such portions of the delicate duty thus imposed upon him with rare discretion, contriving in its performance to combine the strictest fidelity to his imperial mistress with the most entire devotion to the interests of his pupil, and to preserve the unqualified regard and esteem of both mother and

at occasion, next to the princes of the blood. It did not seem a great stretch of courtesy to show to a foreigner, even had she not been related to the princess in whose honor the ball was given; but the dukes and peers fired up at the arrangement, as if an insult had been offered them. They held a meeting at which they resolved that no member of their families should attend, and carried out their resolution so obstinately that at five o'clock, when the dancing was to commence, except the royal princesses there wer

ple of Hymen, which seemed to lean for support on the well-known statue of the king, in front of which it was constructed; and which was, as it were, to be carried up to the skies by above three thousand rockets and fire-balls into which it was intended to dissolve. The whole square was packed with spectators, the pedestrians in front, the carriages in the rear, when one of the explosions set fire to a portion of the platforms on which the different figures had been constructed. At first the increase of the blaze was regarded only as an ingenious surprise on the part of the artist. But soon it became clear that the conflagration was undesigned and real; panic-succeeded to delight, and the terror-stricken crowd, seeing themselves surrounded with flames, began to make frantic efforts to escape from the danger; but there was only one side of the square uninclosed, and that was blocked up by carriag

ition of their claims to be sympathized with as fellow-creatures awakened was fixed still more deeply in their hearts a short time afterward, when, at one of the hunting-parties which took place at Fontainebleau, the stag charged a crowd of the spectators and severely wounded a peasant with his horns. Marie Antoinette sprung to the ground at the sight, helped to bind up the wound, and had the man driven in her own carriage to his cabin, whither she followed him herself to see that every proper attention was paid to him.[8] And the affection which she thus inspired among the poor was fully shared by the chief personage in the kingdom, the sovereign himself. A life of profligacy had not rendered Louis wholly insensible to the superior attractions of innocence and virtue. Perhaps a secret sense of shame at the slavery in which his vices held him, and which, as he well knew, excited the contempt of even his most dissolute courtiers, though he had not sufficient energy to shake it off, may have for a moment quickened his better feelings; and the fresh beauty of the young princess, who, from the first moment of her arrival at the court, treated him with the most affectionate and caressing respect, awakened in him a genuine admiration and good-will. He praised her beauty and her grace to all his nobles with a warmth t

graciousness with which she said kind things to all who approached her. Though the well-informed embassador had already discovered signs of the cabals which the mistress and her partisans were forming against her, and had been rendered a little uneasy by the handle which she had more than once afforded to her secret enemies, when, "in gayety of heart and without the slightest ill-will," she had allowed herself to jest on some persons and circumstances which struck her as ridiculous, her jests being