After a long time she let her hands fall from her face, and looked
around with a pained, confused look. The sun had gone down, it began
to grow dark, and Marie Antoinette shuddered within herself.
"By this time the sentence has been pronounced," she muttered,
softly. "By this time it is known whether the Queen of France can be
slandered and insulted with impunity. Oh! if I only could be sure.
Did not Campan say--I will go to Campan." And the queen rose
quickly, went with a decisive step out of her cabinet; then through
the toilet-room close by, and opened the door which led to the
chamber of her first lady-in-waiting, Madame de Campan.
Madame de Campan stood at the window, and gazed with such a look of
intense expectation out into the twilight, that she did not notice
the entrance of the queen till the latter called her loudly by name.
"The queen!" cried she, drawing back terrified from the window. "The
queen! and--here, in my room!"
Marie Antoinette made a movement of impatience. "You want to say
that it is not becoming for a queen to enter the room of her trusted
waiting-maid, that it is against etiquette. I know that indeed, but
these are days, my good Campan, when etiquette has no power over us,
and when, behind the royal purple, the poor human heart, in all its
need, comes into the foreground.
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