THE NIGHT OF HORROR.
Marie Antoinette slept! The fearful excitement of the past day and
of the stormy evening, crowded with its events, had exhausted the
powers of the queen, and she had fallen into that deep, dreamless
sleep which sympathetic and gracious Nature sometimes sends to those
whom Fate pursues with suffering and peril.
Marie Antoinette slept! In the interior of the palace a deep calm
reigned, and Lafayette had withdrawn from the court in order to
sleep too. But below, upon this court, Revolution kept her vigils,
and glared with looks of hatred and vengeance to the dark walls
behind which the queen was sleeping.
The crown of France had for centuries sinned so much, and proved
false so much, that the love of the people had at last been
transformed into hate. The crown had so long sown the wind, that it
could not wonder if it had to reap the whirlwind. The crimes and
innovations which Louis XIV. and Louis XV. had sown upon the soil of
France, had created an abyss between the crown and the people, out
of which revolution must arise to avenge those crimes and sins of
the past upon the present. The sins of the fathers had to be visited
upon the children to the third and fourth generation.
Marie Antoinette did not know it; she did not see the abyss which
had opened between the crown and the people; the courtiers and
flatterers had covered it with flowers, and with the sounds of
festivity the cries of a distressed people had been drowned.
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