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The "Princes in the Tower " was greatly applauded. "Have you asked about my picture?" said Nora, who stood beside Daisy. "No, I have not had a chance." "Do, Daisy! I want that to be the last." Daisy thought she was unreasonable. Why should Nora have the best place, if it was the best? She was not pleased with her. The next picture was Marie Antoinette; and that drew down the house.
"The riotous faction, for the purpose of accelerating this denouement, had contrived, by buying up all the corn and sending it out of the country, to reduce the populace to famine, and then to make it appear that the King and Queen had been the monopolisers, and the extravagance of Marie Antoinette and her largesses to Austria and her favourites, the cause.
We have already seen what changes had been made in the Temple. Marie Antoinette had been separated from her sister, her daughter, and her Son, by virtue of a decree which ordered the trial and exile of the last members of the family of the Bourbons.
His first impulse was to close his eyes, turn over, and go to sleep again. Antoinette came and laid her hand gently on her brother's shoulder, and she said in a low voice: "Olivier, dear, it is time to get up." He sighed, opened his eyes, saw his sister's face leaning over him: she smiled sadly and caressed his face with her hand. She said: "Come!" He got up.
I was certainly somewhat prepared for a difference of feeling between the two Princesses, as the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, in the letters to the Queen of Naples, always wrote, "To my much beloved sister, the Queen of the two Sicilies, etc.," and to the other, merely, "To the Duchess of Parma, etc."
She resolved to incur the utmost risk rather than owe her deliverance to d'Artois and his followers. Marie Antoinette was right in her estimate of feeling in the émigré camp. Gustavus III. spoke for many when he said, "The king and queen, personally, may be in danger; but that is nothing to a danger that threatens all crowned heads."
"And yet of all the extra expenditure which the dignity and circumstances of Marie Antoinette exacted, not a franc came from the public Treasury; but everything out of Her Majesty's private purse and savings from the above three hundred thousand francs, which was an infinitely less sum than Louis XIV. had lavished yearly on the Duchesse de Montespan, and less than half what Louis XV. had expended on the last two favourites, De Pompadour and Du Barry.
"I will tell you, Antoinette," began the Vicomtesse; "it was as you said. Mr. Ritchie and I found him at Lamarque's. He had not taken your money; he did not even know that Auguste had gone to see you. He did not even know," she said, bending over the girl, "that he was on your father's plantation. When we told him that, he would have left it at once." "Yes," she said.
In spite of their precautions, they could not conceal these preparations from Antoinette. She courageously assisted them, almost thankful for the perils that menaced their safety, since they detained Philip at the château.
Andre and another lifted me out, and they gathered around me, these kind people and devoted friends, Antoinette calling me, with exquisite shyness, by name; Madame de St. Gre giving me a grave but gentle welcome, and asking anxiously how I stood the journey. Another took my hand, held it for the briefest space that has been marked out of time, and for that instant I looked into her eyes.