was upon his lips, and mirthful words were
falling upon the ears of the executioners, when the slide fell, and he
was silent in death. That soul must indeed be ignoble which can thus
enter the dread unseen of futurity.

There is no end to these acts of injustice inflicted upon the queen.
The influences which had ever surrounded her had made her very fond of
dress and gayety. She was devoted to a life of pleasure, and was hardly
conscious that there was any thing else to live for. In fetes, balls,
theaters, operas, and masquerades, she passed night after night. Such
was the only occupation of her life. The king, on the contrary, had no
taste for any of these amusements. Uncompanionable and retiring, he
lived with his books, and in his workshop making trinkets for children.
Always retiring to rest at the early hour of eleven o'clock precisely,
he left the queen to pursue her pleasures until the dawn of the morning,
unattended by him. It was very imprudent in Maria Antoinette thus to
expose herself to the whispers of calumny. She was young, inexperienced,
and had no judicious advisers.

One evening, she had been out in her carriage, and was returning at
rather a late hour, the lady of the palace being with her, when her
carriage broke down at her entrance into Paris. The queen and the
duchess were both masked and, stepping into an adjoining shop, as they
were unknown, the queen ordered one of the footmen to call a common
hackney-coach, and they, both entering, drove to the opera-house, with
very much the same sense of the ludicrous in being found in so plebeian
a vehicle, as a New York lady would feel on passing through Broadway
in a hand-cart or on a wheel-barrow. The fun-loving queen was so
entertained with the whimsical adventure, that she could not refrain
from exclaiming, as soon as she entered the opera-house, to the intimate
friends she met there, "Only think! I came to the opera in a
hackney-coach! Was it not droll? was it not droll?" The news of the
indiscretion spread. All Paris was full of the adventure. Rumor, with
her thousand tongues, added innumerable embellishments. Neither the
delicacy nor the dignity of the queen would allow her seriously to
attempt the refutation of the calumny that, neglected by her husband,
she had been out in disguise to meet a nobleman renowned for his
gallantries.

Nothing can be more irksome than the frivolities of fashionable life. To
spend night after night, of months and year