Quick, mademoiselle, let us begin my
toilet."
And with a liveliness and a zeal which, in her threatened situation,
had something touching in it, Marie Antoinette arrayed herself for
the public, for the good Parisians.
The news that the queen was to appear that evening at the theatre
had quickly run through all Paris; the officer on duty told it at
his relief to some of the guards, they to those whom they met, and
it spread like wildfire. It was therefore very natural that, long
before the curtain was raised, the great opera-house was completely
filled, parquette, boxes, and parterre, with a passionately-excited
throng. The friends of the queen went in order to give her a long-
looked-for triumph; her enemies--and these the poor queen had in
overwhelming numbers--to fling their hate, their malice, their
scorn, into the face of Marie Antoinette.
And enemies of the queen had taken places for themselves in every
part of the great house. They even sat in the boxes of the first
rank, on those velvet-cushioned chairs which had formerly been
occupied exclusively by the enthusiastic admirers of the court, the
ladies and gentlemen of the aristocracy. But now the aristocracy did
not dare to sit there. The most of them, friends of the queen, had
fled, giving way before her enemies and persecutors; and in the
boxes where they once sat, now were the chief members of the
National Assembly, together with the leading orators of the clubs,
and the societies of Jacobins.
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