Our queen likes
handsome men, and everybody knows that she is one of the laughing
kind, a merry fly, particularly since the carousals on the palace
terrace."
"Carousals! What was that?"
"Why, you poor innocent child, that is the name they give to those
nightly promenades that our handsome queen took a year ago in the
moonlight on the terrace at Versailles. Oh, that was a merry time!
The iron fences of the park were not closed, and the dear people had
a right to enter, and could walk near the queen in the moonlight,
and hear the fine music which was concealed behind the hedges. You
just ask the good-looking officer of the lancers, who sat one
evening on a bench between two handsome women, dressed in white, and
joked and laughed with them. He can tell you how Marie Antoinette
can laugh, and what fine nonsense her majesty could afford to
indulge in." [Footnote: See Madame de Campane. "Memoires," vol. i.]
"I wish I knew him, and he would tell me about it," cried cobbler
Simon, striking his fists together. "I always like to hear something
bad about this Austrian woman, for I hate her and the whole court
crowd besides. What right have they to strut and swell, and put on
airs, while we have to work and suffer from morning till night? Why
is their life nothing but jollity, and ours nothing but misery? I
think I am of just as much consequence as the king, and my woman
would look just as nice as the queen, if she would put on fine
clothes and ride round in a gilded carriage.
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