MARIE ANTOINETTE'S TALISMAN.
BY MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS.
[Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by Mrs. Ann S. Stephens, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York.]
CONTINUED FROM VOLUME LV., PAGE 469.
CHAPTER XI.
THE woman who had given Dame Tillery so much anxiety sat in the chamber she had so resolutely possessed herself of, waiting for the dinner ordered an hour before, and consuming the time as she best might with oppressive and exciting memories, which became peculiarly vivid and harassing in that place. With the royal chateau almost in sight, it was impossible te forget the time when its inmates were almost her slaves; when the daughters of France, in all their royal pride, had been compelled to receive her with honors, while all the assembled nobility of the court witnessed her triumph. Even the haughty and beautiful queen who reigned there now, had, as Dauphiness, submitted to her companionship at the royal table.
No wonder the woman walked to and fro in the mingled triumph and arrogance of these thoughts. If they brought some relief to her vanity, they were also full of bitterness, for never again could such honors and power return to her. Even now, with the scenes of her former grandeur in sight, she felt herself to be an intruder in that commonplace house, where the lowest mechanic in the town had a right to come. ‘She knew well enough that one glimyse of her through the window might bring a mob about the house who would be glad to hunt her down. People who would formerly have considered it an honor to be soiled by the mud from her carriage-wheels, would, she felt sure, be among the first to hoot her out of town, and follow her with all sorts of coarse revilings. She knew this well, and felt it keenly, for, depraved and despotic as this woman had been, she still possessed some good impulses, and had not yet outlived that first great want of woman- hood, a desire to be loved.
For once in her life, Madame Du Barry was possessed of a noble object. She had never liked Marie Antoinette in the days of her supreme popularity; but as years wore on, and troubles gathered about the throne, this woman’s sympathies grew strong in her behalf. She had tasted too deeply of the sweets of power not to feel ro those who were struggling that it might not be wrested from them. Perhaps some memory of the old monarch, who had been more than generous to her, had aroused a loyal feeling for his grandson. In a wayward creature like her, it is impossible to give any act an undivided motive; but that day she had come to Versailles in a spirit of noble self-sacrifice, and was anxious to give back to the heirs of Louis the Fifteenth a portion of the wealth his prodigal hand had bestowed upon her. In the mockery of her own royal state she had become deeply enamored with the prerogative of kings.
Filled with these generous ideas, anxious to fulfill them, she walked the floor to and fro, waiting impatiently for the return of her messenger, who had found his way to the palace. The dinner was brought in, but she could not force herself to eat. The very atmosphere of the place excited so many emotions that she could neither conquer nor fling them off. For the time this woman was both loyal and munificent.
A noise in the street brought her as near the window as she dared to venture. She looked out and saw two females approaching the hotel. One was Dame Tillery, who swept her portly figure forward with a pompous swell of importance calculated to dazzle the citizens who had seen her sail through the palace-gates, where the guards saluted her with all honor; for up to that point the young Duke de Richelieu had accompanied the party. The other was Marguerite, modest, quiet, and so preoccupied with her own great happiness, that she scarcely heeded the crowd that gathered after them, or cared that Dame Tillery was making herself so absurdly conspicuous with her gorgeous compilations of dress, and by the solemn spread of her great fan, which she used as a screen or baton, as she wished to lay down a law, or keep the sun from her face.
Du Barry broke into an immoderate fit of laughter as she saw the landlady thus coming through the streets of Versailles in all the inflated glory of a reception at court. A keen sense of the ridiculous, and a coarse relish of fun, had been one of the principal charms this woman had carried with her through life. It
