she has done? Close by the railing which separates the park from St. Cloud, and near the entrance, she has had a tablet put up, on which are written the conditions on which the public are allowed to enter the park."

"Well, that is nothing new," said the cobbler, impatiently." They have such a board put up at all the royal gardens, and everywhere the public is ordered, in the name of the king, not to do any injury, and not to wander from the regular paths."

"Well, that is just; it is ordered in the name of the king; but in St. Cloud, it runs in the name of the queen. Yes, yes, there you may see in great letters upon the board; 'In the name of the queen.' [Footnote: "De par la reine" was the expression which was then in the mouth of all France and stirred everybody's rage.] It is not enough for us that a king sits upon our neck, and imposes his commands upon us and binds us. We have now another ruler in France, prescribing laws and writing herself sovereign. We have a new police regulation in the name of the queen, a state within the state. Oh, the spider is making a jolly mesh of it! In the Trianon she made the beginning. There the police regulations have always been in the name of the queen; and because the policy was successful there, it extends its long finger still further, issues a new proclamation against the people, appropriates to itself new domain, and proposes to gradually encompass all France with its cords."

"That is rascally, that is wrong," cried the cobbler, raising his clinched fists in the air.

"But that is not all, brother. The queen goes still further. Down to the present time we have been accustomed to see the men who stoop to be the mean servants of tyrants array themselves in the monkey- jackets of the king's livery; but in St. Cloud, the Swiss guards at the gates, the palace servants, in one word, the entire menial corps, array themselves in the queen's livery; and if you are walking in the park of St. Cloud, you are no longer in France and on French soil, but in an Austrian province, where a foreigner can establish her harem and make her laws, and yet a virtuous and noble people does not rise in opposition to it."

"It does not know anything about it, brother Marat," said Simon, eagerly. "It knows very little about the vices and follies of the queen."

"Well, tell the people, then; report to them what I have told yon, and make it your duty that it be talked over among other friends, and made generally known."

"Oh! that shall be, that shall certainly be," said Simon, cheerily," but you have not given me the name of that third lover yet."

"Oh! the third-that is Lord Besenval, the inspector general of the Swiss guard, the chief general of the army, and the commander of the Order of Louis. You see it is a great advantage for a man to be a lover of the queen, for in that way he comes to a high position. While King Louis the Fifteenth, that monster of vice, was living, Besenval was only colonel of the Swiss guard, and all he could do was once in a while to take part in the orgies at the Eoil de Boeuf. But now the queen has raised him to a very high place. All St. Cloud and Trianon form the Eoil de Boeuf, where Marie Antoinette celebrates her orgies, and General Besenval is made one of the first directors of the sports. Now you know every thing, do you not?"

"Yes, Doctor Marat, now I have a general run of every thing, and I thank you; but I hope that you will tell me more this evening, for your stories are vastly entertaining."

"Yes, indeed, I shall tell you plenty more of the same sort, for the queen takes good care that we shall always have material for such stories. Yet, unfortunately, I have no time now, for—"

"I know, I know, you have got to visit your sick people," said Simon, nodding confidentially to him. "I will not detain you any longer. Good-by, my dear Doctor Marat. We shall meet this evening."

He sprang quickly away, and soon disappeared round the next corner. Marat looked after him with a wicked, triumphant expression in his features.

"So far good, so far good," muttered he, shaking his head with choler. " In this way I have got to win over the soldiers and the people to freedom. The cobbler will make an able and practicable soldier, and with his nice little stories, he will win over a whole company. Triumph on, you proud Bourbons; go on dreaming in your gilded palaces, surrounded by your Swiss guards. Keep on believing that you have the power in your hands, and that no one can take it from you. The time will come when the people will disturb your fine dream, and when the little, despised, ugly Marat, whom no one now knows, and who creeps around in your stables like a poisonous rat, shall confront you as a power before which you shall shrink away and throw yourselves trembling into the dust. There shall go by no day in which I and my friends shall not win soldiers for our side, and the silly, simple fool, Marie Antoinette, makes it an easy thing for us. Go on committing your childish pranks, which, when the time shall threaten a little, will justify the most villanous deeds and the most shameless acts, and I will keep the run of all the turns of the times, and this fine young queen cannot desire that we should look at the world with such simple eyes as she does. Yes, fair Queen Marie Antoinette, thou hast thy Swiss guards, who fight for thee, and thou must pay them; but I have only one soldier who takes ground for me against thee, and whom I do not have to pay at all. My soldier's name is Calumny. I tell thee, fair queen, with this ally I can overcome all thy Swiss guards, and the whole horde of thy armies. For, on the earth there is no army corps that is so strong as Calumny. Hurrah! long life to thee, my sworn ally, Calumny!"

CHAPTER II.

MADAME ADELAIDE.

Queen Marie Antoinette had returned, after her Paris ride, to her own Versailles. She was silent the whole of the way, and the Duchess de Polignac had sought in vain to cheer her friend with light and pleasant talk, and drive away the clouds from her lofty brow. Marie Antoinette had only responded by enforced smiles and half-words, and then, settling back into the carriage, had gazed with dreamy looks into the heavens, whose cheerful blue called out no reflection upon the fair face of the queen.

As they drew into the great court of the palace at Versailles, the drum-beat of the Swiss guards, presenting arms, and the general stir which followed the approach of the queen, appeared to awaken her from her sorrowful thoughts, and she straightened herself up and cast her glances about. They fell quite accidentally upon the child which was in the arms of the nurse opposite, and which, with great wide-open eyes, was looking up to the heavens, as its mother had done before.

In the intensity of her motherly love, the queen stretched out her arms to the child and drew it to her heart, and pressed a burning kiss upon its lips.

"Ah! my child, my dear child," said she, softly, "you have to-day, for the first time, made your entry into Paris, and heard the acclamations of the people. May you, so long as you live, always be the recipient of kindly greetings, and never again hear such words as that dreadful man spoke to us to-day!"

She pressed the little Duke of Normandy closely to her heart, and quite forgot that she was all this while in the carriage; that near the open portal the hostlers and lackeys were awaiting in a respectful posture the dismounting of the queen; that the drums were all the while beating, and that the guards were standing before the gates in the fixed attitude of presenting arms.

The Duchess de Polignac ventured to suggest in softly-spoken words the necessity of