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These were Madame Roland's; but the other woman, without eloquence, without literature, and without any judicial sense of history, addresses no mere congregation of readers. Marie Antoinette's unrecorded pangs pass into the treasuries of the experience of the whole human family.
Miss Sophonisba is within la belle insulaire! buying a bag of marrons glacés, for which Boissier is renowned throughout civilization. The shop is a miracle of taste. The white and gold are worthy of Marie Antoinette's bedroom at St. Cloud occupied, by the way, by our English queen, when she was the guest of the French Emperor in 1855. The front of the shop is ornamented with rich and rare caskets.
Ask David what her name is." Antoinette's lips moved, but she shirked the question. And Nick seized me roughly. "Tell her," he said, "tell her! My God, how can I do it? Tell her, David." For the life of me I could not frame the speech at once, my pity and a new-found and surprising respect for her making it doubly hard to pronounce her sentence.
At times, too, a compassionate guard who had to inspect the prison brought her tidings of her son, told her that he was well, that he had learned to play ball, and that by his friendly nature he won every one's love. Then Marie Antoinette's countenance would lighten, a smile would play over her features and linger on her pale lips as long as they were speaking of her boy.
With me he saw shining lakes, and crossed miniature bridges guarded by mild stone lions, at which he smelled curiously; with me he sadly visited the Queen's bathing-place, and the pretty little dairy and farm, reminiscent of poor Marie Antoinette's beloved Trianon; and when we were joined by his mistress and the others he was ungrateful enough to pretend that I had not amused him.
So great had been Marie Antoinette's mental sufferings that in those few days her hair had turned white; and fresh and studied humiliations were yet in store for her.
She wanted nothing but Marie Antoinette's love and friendship for herself; but if the Queen, in her goodness, chose to extend her favour to Madame's relatives well, that was another matter. Thus it was that Comte Jules soon blossomed into a Duke, and Madame perforce became a Duchess, with a coveted tabouret at Court.
A mother or a husband alone would have had the right to do it; and the King threw no impediment in the way of Marie Antoinette's inclinations. His long indifference had been followed by admiration and love. He was a slave to all the wishes of the Queen, who, delighted with the happy change in the heart and habits of the King, did not sufficiently conceal the ascendency she was gaining over him.
And their exultation was fully shared by the better-intentioned class of courtiers, and by all Marie Antoinette's real friends, who felt assured that the birth of this second son had given her the security which had hitherto been wanting to her position.
The hope of approaching happiness did much to assuage Antoinette's grief, and Philip was scarcely gone before she began to forget the past in dreams of the future. The six weeks that followed Philip's departure were weeks of constant anxiety and alarm. Antoinette could not close her eyes to the perils that threatened Philip on every side.
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