, for the honor of their visit, arrived with aristocratic
unpunctuality, so late that the guards stopped them at the doors,
declaring that the house was full, and that there was not a seat vacant.
They declared that in any event room must be made for them. "Who were in
the boxes of the king and queen? for on such occasions those places were
theirs of right." Even they, however, were full, and the guards demurred
to the ladies' claim to be considered, though for this night only, as the
representatives of royalty, and to have the existing occupants of the
seats demanded turned out to make room for them. The box-keeper and the
manager were sent for. The registers of the house confirmed the validity
of the claim by former precedents, and a compromise was at last effected.
Rows of benches were placed on each side of the stage itself. Those on the
right were allotted to the coal-heavers as representatives of Louis; the
ladies of the fish-market sat on the left as the deputies of Marie
Antoinette. Before the play was allowed to begin, his majesty the king of
the coal-heavers read the bulletin of the day announcing the rapid
progress of the queen toward recovery; and then, giving his hand to the
queen of the fish-wives, the august pair, followed by their respective
suites, executed a dance expressive of their delight at the good news, and
then resumed their seats, and listened to Voltaire's "Zaire" with the most
edifying gravity.[6] It was evident that in some things there was already
enough, and rather more than enough, of that equality the unreasonable and
unpractical passion for which proved, a few years later, the most pregnant
cause of immeasurable misery to the whole nation.

But the demonstration most in accordance with the queen's own taste was
that which took place a few weeks later, when she went in a state
procession to the great national cathedral of Notre Dame to return thanks;
one most interesting part of the ceremony being the weddings of the
hundred young couples to whom she had given dowries, who also received a
silver medal to commemorate the day. The gayety of the spectacle, since
they, with the formal witnesses of their marriage, filled a great part of
the antechapel; and the blessings invoked on the queen's head as she left
the cathedral by the prisoners whom she had released, and by the poor
whose destitution she had relieved, made so great an impression on the
spectators, that even the highest dignitaries o