"But, your majesty, there is a theatre in Trianon!"

"Not this indefinite phrase, duke; there is a theatre in Trianon, but I the queen, the princess of the royal family, and the guests I invite, support a theatre in Trianon. Let me say this once for all: you cannot have the direction where we are the actors. Besides, I have had occasion several times to give you my views respecting Trianon. I have no court here. I live here as a private person. I am here but a land owner, and the pleasures and enjoyments which I provide here for myself and my friends shall never be supervised by any one but myself alone." [Footnote: The very words of the queen.-- See Goncourt, "Histoire de Marie Antoinette"]

"Your majesty," said the duke, with a cold smile, "it is no single person that supervises you; it is public opinion, and I think that this will speak on my side."

The duke bowed, and, without waiting for a sign from the queen to withdraw, he turned around and began to descend the terrace.

"He is a shameless man!" muttered the queen, with pale cheeks and flashing eyes, as she followed him with her looks.

"He is ambitious," whispered Besenval; "he implores your majesty in this way, and risks his life and his office, in the hope of being received into the court society."

"No, no," answered Marie Antoinette, eagerly; "there is nothing in me that attracts him. The king's aunts have set him against me, and this is a new way which their tender care has conjured up to irritate me, and make me sick.

Yet let us leave this, baron. Let us forget this folly, and only remember that we are in Trianon. See, we are now entering my dear English garden. Oh, look around you, baron, and then tell me is it not beautiful here, and have I not reason to be proud of what I have called here into being?"

While thus speaking, the queen advanced with eager, flying steps to the exquisite beds of flowers which beautifully variegated the surface of the English garden.

It was in very truth the creation of the queen, this English garden, and it formed a striking contrast to the solemn, stately hedges, the straight alleys, the regular flower beds, the carefully walled pools and brooks, which were habitual in the gardens of Versailles and Trianon. In the English garden every thing was cosy and natural. The waters foamed here, and there they gathered themselves together and stood still; here and there were plants which grew just where the wind had scattered the seed. Hundreds of the finest trees--willows, American oaks, acacias, firs--threw their shade abroad, and wrought a rich diversity in the colors of the foliage. The soil here rose into gentle hillocks, and there sank in depressions and natural gorges. All things seemed without order or system, and where art had done its work, there seemed to be the mere hand of free, unfettered Nature.

The farther the queen advanced with her companion into the garden, the more glowing became her countenance, and the more her eyes beamed with their accustomed fire.

"Is it not beautiful here?" asked she, of the baron, who was walking silently by her side.

"It is beautiful wherever your majesty is," answered he, with an almost too tender tone. But the queen did not notice it. Her heart was filled with an artless joy; she listened with suspended breath to the trilling song of the birds, warbling their glad hymns of praise out from the thickets of verdure. How could she have any thought of the idle suggestions of the voice of the baron, who had been chosen as her companion because of his forty-five years, and of his hair being tinged with gray?

"It seems to me, baron," she said, with a charming laugh, while looking at a bird which, its song just ended, soared from the bushes to the heavens--" it seems to me as if Nature wanted to send me a greeting, and deputed this bird to bring it to me. Ah," she went on to say, with quickly clouded brow, "it is really needful that I should at times hear the friendly notes and the sweet melodies of such a genuine welcome. I have suffered a great deal today, baron, and the welcome of this bird of Trianon was the balm of many a wound that I have received since yesterday."

"Your majesty was in Paris?" asked Besenval, hesitatingly, and with a searching glance of his cunning, dark eyes, directed to the sad countenance of Marie Antoinette.

"I was in Paris," answered she, with a flush of joy; "and the good Parisians welcomed the wife of the king and the mother of the children of France with a storm of enthusiasm."

"No, madame," replied the baron, reddening, "they welcomed with a storm of enthusiasm the most beautiful lady of France, the adored queen, the mother of all poor and suffering ones."

"And yet there was a dissonant note which mingled with all these jubilee tones," said the queen, thoughtfully. "While all were shouting, there came one voice which sounded to my ear like the song of the bird of misfortune. Believe me, Besenval, every thing is not as it ought to be. There is something in the air which fills me with anxiety and fear. I cannot drive it away; I feel that the sword of Damocles is hanging over my head, and that my hands are too weak to remove it."

"A woe to the traitors who have dared to raise the sword of Damocles over the head of the queen!" cried the baron, furiously.

"Woe to them, but woe to me too!" replied the queen, with gentle sadness. "I have this morning had a stormy interview with Madame Adelaide. It appears that my enemies have concocted a new way of attacking me, and Madame Adelaide was the herald to announce the beginning of the tournament."

"Did she venture to bring any accusations against your majesty?" asked Besenval. The queen replying in the affirmative with a nod, he went on. "But what can they say? Whence do they draw the poisoned arrows to wound the noblest and truest of hearts?"

"They draw them from their jealousy, from their hatred against the house of Austria, from the rage with which they look upon the manner in which the king has bestowed his love. 'What can they say?' They make out of little things monstrous crimes. They let a pebble grow into a great rock, with which they strive to smite me down. Oh, my friend, I have suffered a great deal to-day, and, in order to tell you this, I chose you as my companion. I dare not complain before the king," Marie Antoinette went on, while two tears rolled slowly down her cheeks, "for I will not be the means of opening a breach in the family, and the king would cause them to feel his wrath who have drawn tears from the eyes of his wife. But you are my friend, Besenval, and I confide in your friendship and in your honor. Now, tell me, you who know the world, and who are my senior in experience of life, tell me whether I do wrong to live as I do. Are the king's aunts right in charging it upon me as a crime, that I take part in the simple joys of life, that I take delight in my youth and am happy? Is the Count de Provence right in charging me, as with a crime, that I am the chief counsellor of the king, and that I venture to give him my views regarding political matters? Am I really condemned to stand at an unapproachable distance from the people and the court, like a beautiful statue? Is it denied to me to have feeling, to love and to hate, like everybody else? Is the Queen of France nothing but the sacrificial lamb which the dumb idol etiquette carries in its leaden arms, and crushes by slowly pressing it to itself? Tell me, Besenval; speak to me like an honorable and upright man, and remember that God is above us and hears our words!"

"May God be my witness," said Besenval, solemnly. "Nothing lies nearer my heart than that your majesty hear me. For my life, my happiness, and my misery, all lie wrapped up in the heart of your majesty. No, I answer--no; the aunts of the king, the old princesses, look with the basilisk eye of envy from a false point. They have lived at the court of their father; they have seen Vice put on the trappings of Virtue; they have seen Shamelessness array itself in the garments of Innocence, and they no longer retain their faith in Virtue or Innocence. The purity of the queen appears to them to be a studied coquetry, her unconstrained cheerfulness to be culpable frivolity. No, the Count de Provence is not right in bringing the charge against the king that it is wrong in him to love his wife with the intensity and self surrender with which a citizen loves the wife whom he has himself selected. He is not right in alleging it as an accusation against you, that you are the counsellor of the king, and that you seek to control political action. Your whole offence lies in the fact that your political views are different from his, and that, through the influence which you have gained over the heart of the king, his aunts are driven into the background. Your majesty is an Austrian, a friend of the Duke de Choiseul. That is your whole offence. Now you would not be less blameworthy in the eyes of these enemies were you to live in exact conformity with the etiquette books of the Queen of France, covered with the dust of a hundred years. Your majesty would therefore do yourself and the whole court an injury were you to allow your youth, your beauty, and your innocence, to be subjected to these old laws. It were folly to condemn yourself to ennui and solitude. Does not the Queen of France enjoy a right which the meanest of her subjects possesses, of collecting her own chosen friends around her and taking her pleasure with them. We live, I know, in an age of reckless acts; but may there not be some recklessness in dealing with the follies of etiquette? They bring it as a charge against your majesty that you adjure the great court circles, and the stiff set with which the royal family of France used to martyr itself. They say that by giving up ceremony you are undermining the respect which the people ought to cherish toward royalty. But would it not be laughable to think that the obedience of the people depends upon the number of the hours which a royal family may spend in the society of tedious and wearisome courtiers? No, my queen, do not listen to the hiss of the hostile serpents which surround you. Go, courageously, your own way--the way of innocence, guilelessness, and love."

"I thank you--oh, I thank you!" cried Marie Antoinette. "You have lifted heavy doubts from my heart and strengthened my courage. I thank you!"

And, with beaming eyes and a sweet smile, she extended both her hands to the baron.

He pressed them tightly within his own, and, sinking upon his knee, drew the royal hands with a glow to his lips.

"Oh, my queen, my mistress!" he cried, passionately, "behold at your feet your most faithful servant, your most devoted slave. Receive