to his daughter, the
dauphiness, who had recently died, and also with a very magnificent
collar of pearls, of a single row, the smallest of which was as large
as a filbert. The king, her husband, had, not long before, presented
her with a set of rubies and diamonds of a fine water, and with a pair
of bracelets which cost forty thousand dollars. Boehmer, the crown
jeweler, had collected, at a great expense, six pear-formed diamonds,
of prodigious size. They were perfectly matched, and of the finest
water. They were arranged as ear-rings. He offered them to the queen for
eighty thousand dollars. The young and royal bride could not resist the
desire of adding them, costly as they were, to her casket of gems. She,
however, economically removed two of the diamonds which formed the
tops of the clusters, and replaced them by two of her own. The jeweler
consented to this arrangement, and received the reduced price of
seventy-two thousand dollars, to be paid in equal installments for five
years, from the private purse of the queen. Still the queen felt rather
uneasy in view of her unnecessary purchase. Murmurs of her extravagance
began to reach her ears. Satiated with gayety and weary of jewels, as a
child throws aside its play-things, Maria Antoinette lost all fondness
for her costly treasures, and began to seek novelty in the utmost
simplicity of attire, and in the most artless joys of rural life. Her
gorgeous dresses hung neglected in their wardrobes. Her gems, "of purest
ray serene," slept in the darkness of the unopened casket. The queen had
become a mother, and all those warm and noble affections which had been
diffused and wasted upon frivolities, were now concentrated with
intensest ardor upon her children. A new era had dawned upon Maria
Antoinette. Her soul, by nature exalted, was beginning to find objects
worthy of its energies. Rapidly she was groping her way from the
gloom of the most wretched of all lives--a life of pleasure and of
self-indulgence--to the true and ennobling happiness of benevolence
and self-sacrifice.

Boehmer, the jeweler, unaware of the great change which had taken
place in the character of the queen, resolved to form for her the most
magnificent necklace which was ever seen in Europe. He busied himself
for several years in collecting the most valuable diamonds circulating
in commerce, and thus composed a necklace of several rows, whose
attractions, he hoped, would be irresistible to the queen. I