CHAPTER XVI.
IN ST. CLOUD.
The winter was passed--a sad dismal winter for the royal family, and
for Marie Antoinette in particular! None of those festivities, those
diversions, those simple and innocent joys, which are wont to adorn
the life of a woman and of a queen!
Marie Antoinette is no more a queen who commands, who sees around
her a throng of respectful courtiers, zealously listening to every
word that falls from her lips; Marie Antoinette is a grave solitary
woman, who works much, thinks much, makes many plans for saving the
kingdom and the throne, and sees all these plans shipwrecks on the
indecision and weakness of her husband.
Far away from the queen lay those happy times when every day brought
new joys and new diversions; when the dawn of a summer morning made
the queen happy, because it promised her a delightful evening, and
one of those charming idyls at Trianon. The brothers of the king,
the schoolmaster and mayor of Trianon, had left France and had
located themselves at Coblentz on the Rhine; the Polignacs had fled
to England; the Princess Lamballe, too, had, at the wish of the
queen, gone to negotiate with Pitt, in order to implore the all-
powerful minister of George III. to give to the oppressed French
crown more material and effectual support than was afforded by the
angry and bitter words which he hurled in Parliament against the
riotous and rebellious French nation.
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