A Versailles Christmas-Tide

-place. Then conscripts, in clumsy, ill-fitting uniforms, tread noisily over the shining parqueterie floors, and burgesses gossip amicably in the daz

at the Chateau gates, and take a hurried walk through the empty galleries to restore the

lagging energy, and the air resounds with the hoarse staccato cries of "Un! Deux! Trois!" wherewith they accompan

by the great log fire in the bedroom of Louis XIV., where the warm firelight playing on the rich trappings lends such an air of occupation to the chamber, that-forgetting how time has turned to grey the once

epulture of St. Denis, visible from his former residence, seemed to threaten him. And here it was that Death, after long

ame, my child?"

rs later we see the child, his wasted life at an end, dying of virulent

ked. How infinitely easier it is to make a good bad reputation than to achieve even a bad good one! "Tell us stories about naughty children," we used to be

, the three fair and short-lived sisters de Mailly-Nesle, the frail Pompadour who mingled scheming with debauchery, and the fascinating but irresponsible Du Barry. Even the most minute details of Marie Antoinette's tragic career are fresh in our m

y at a little town in Alsace. It is easy to picture the shabby room wherein the unforeseeing Marie sits content between her mother and grandmother, all three diligently

and the na?ve question reveals that many years of banishment have not quenc

o be Queen of France," replies

ng or a curse that the refugees, kneeling in that meag

King, in selecting this obscure maiden from the list of ninety-nine marriageable princesses that had been drawn up at Versailles. A dowerless damsel possessed of no infl

will admit that she was seven years older than her handsome husband, whose years did not then number seventeen. Yet is there indubitable charm in the simple grace wherewith Marie accepted her marvellous transformation from pauper to qu

has possessed. And that Marie was wholly content there is little doubt. She was no gadabout. Versailles satisfied her. Three years passed before she visited Paris, and then the visit was more of the nature of a pilgrimage

andmother, the future Queen had broidered altar cloths. Marie Leczinska was an adoring mother; possibly her devotion to their rapidly increasing family wearied him. Being little more than a child himself, the King is scarcely li

rly years promised so well. It is pitiful to look at the magnificent portrait, still hanging in the palace where he reigned, of the child-king seated in his robes of State, the sceptre in his hand, looking

Elizabeth, who never lost the love of her old home, and, though married, before entering her teens, to the Infanta of Spain, retired, after a life of disappointment, to her be

rock. Good Nattier! there is a later portrait of himself in complacent middle age surrounded by his wife and children; but I like to think that,

ters meekly endured their banishment. From this instance of childish character one would have anticipated a career for Madame Adelaide, and I hate being obliged to think of her merely dev

of peace on the motley throng. It is Louise, the youngest sister of all, who, deeply grieved by her father's infatuation for the Du Barry-an infatuation which, beginning within a month of Marie Leczinska

s of convent life, torturing her delicate skin by wearing coarse serge, and bur

ly beginning a life of imprisoned drudgery. We know that at this period she passed many hours reading contemporary

as eagerly anticipating the arrival of Marie Antoinette, who was setting forth on the first stage of that triumphal journey which had so tragic an ending. Already the gay clam

ccession. We see her arrive at the Palace amid the tumultuous adoration of the crowd, and leave amidst its execrations. Sometimes she is richly apparelled, as befits a queen; anon she sports the motley trappings of a mountebank.

e malefic. Most are women, and all are young and fair. There is Madame Roland, who, taken as a young girl to the

ght to give her a treat by showing her Court life, "I shall detes

inflammatory pamphlets which are to prove the Sovereign's undoing and her own. For by some whim of fate M

that secluded grove that her tool, Cardinal de Rohan, had his pretended interview with the Queen. Poor, perfidious Contesse! what an existence of alternate beggarly poverty and beggarly riches was hers befo

aving quitted the grub stage, she desires to be as brilliant a butterfly as possible. Close in attendance on her moves an ebon shadow-Zamora, the ingrate foundling who, reared by the Duchesse, swore that he would make his benefactre

e method wherewith, under the cloak of religion, she wormed her way into high places, ousting-always in the name of propriety-those who had helped her. Her stepping-stone to Royal favour was handsome, impetuous Madame de Montespan,

with years; that the dying Queen declared that she owed the King's kindness to her during the last twenty years of her life entirely to Madame de Maintenon. But we know also that six months after the Queen's death an unwonted light showed at midnight in the Chapel Royal, where Madame de Maintenon-the child of a prison