onally undignified levity was but the joyous outpouring of a
pure innocence of heart that, as it meant no evil, suspected none; while
it was ever blended with a kindness and courtesy which sprung from a
genuine benevolence. As queen, though still hardly beyond girlhood when
she ascended the throne, she set herself resolutely to work by her
admonitions, and still more effectually by her example, to purify a court
of which for centuries the most shameless profligacy had been the rule and
boast; discountenancing vice and impiety by her marked reprobation, and
reserving all her favor and protection for genius and patriotism, and
honor and virtue. Surrounded at a later period by unexampled dangers and
calamities, she showed herself equal to every vicissitude of fortune, and
superior to its worst frowns. If her judgment occasionally erred, it was
in cases where alternatives of evil were alone offered to her choice, and
in which it is even now scarcely possible to decide what course would have
been wiser or safer than that which she adopted. And when at last the long
conflict was terminated by the complete victory of her combined enemies--
when she, with her husband and her children, was bereft not only of power,
but even of freedom, and was a prisoner in the hands of those whose
unalterable object was her destruction--she bore her accumulated miseries
with a serene resignation, an intrepid fortitude, a true heroism of soul,
of which the history of the world does not afford a brighter example.

FOOTNOTES

PREFACE

[1] One entitled "Marie-Antoinette, correspondance secrete entre Marie-
Therese et le Comte Mercy d'Argenteau, avec des lettres de Marie-Therese
et de Marie-Antoinette." (The edition referred to in this work is the
greatly enlarged second edition in three volumes, published at Paris,
1875.) The second is entitled "Marie-Antoinette, Joseph II., and Leopold
II," published at Leipsic, 1866.

[2] Entitled "Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, et Madame Elizabeth," in six
volumes, published at intervals from 1864 to 1873.

[3] In his "Nouveau Lundi," March 5th, 1866, M. Sainte-Beuve challenged M.
Feuillet de Conches to a more explicit defense of the authenticity of his
collection than he had yet vouchsafed; complaining, with some reason, that
his delay in answering the charges brought against it "was the more
vexatious because his collection was only attacked in part, and in many
points remained solid and valuable." A