The Counts de Besenval and
Coigny, the Marquis de Lauzun, and Baron d'Adhemar, all the
privileged friends of the summer days at Trianon and the winter days
of Versailles, all, all, were gone.
They had fled to Coblentz, and were at the court of the French
princes. There they spun their intrigues, sought to excite a
European war against France; from there they hurled their flaming
torches into France, their calumnies against Queen Marie Antoinette,
the Austrian woman. She alone was accountable for all the
misfortunes and the disturbances of France, she alone had given
occasion for the distrust now felt against royalty. On her head fell
the curse and the burden of all the faults and sins which the French
court had for a hundred years committed. There must be a sacrificial
lamb, to be thrown into the arms glistening with spears and daggers,
of a revolution which thirsted for blood and vengeance, and Marie
Antoinette had to be the victim. In her bleeding heart the spirits
glowing with hate might cool themselves, and there the evil which
her predecessors had done, was to be atoned for. Many a wrong had
been done, and the French nation had, no doubt, a right to be angry
and to rage as does the lion for a long time kept in subjection,
when at last, touched too much by the iron of its keeper, it rises
in its wildness, and with withering greed, tears him in pieces from
whom it has suffered so long and so much.
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