some months the
mother mourned bitterly over her "little angel," as she called her. Her
eldest boy, too, was getting rapidly and visibly weaker in health: his
spine seemed to diseased, Marie Antoinette's only hope of saving him
rested on the fact that his father had also been delicate at the same age.
Luckily his brother gave her no cause for uneasiness; as she wrote to the
emperor[3]--"he had all that his elder wanted; he was a thorough peasant's
child, tall, stout, and ruddy.[4]" She had also another comfort, which, as
her troubles thickened, became more and more precious to her, in the warm
affection that had sprung up between her and her sister-in-law, the
Princess Elizabeth. A letter[5] has been preserved in which the princess
describes the death of the little Sophie to one of her friends, which it
is impossible to read without being struck by the sincerity of the
sympathy with which she enters into the grief of the bereaved mother. In
these moments of anguish she showed herself indeed a true sister, and, the
two clinging to one another the more the greater their dangers and
distresses became, a true sister she continued to the end.

Meanwhile the embarrassments of the Government were daily assuming a more
formidable appearance. Calonne had for some time endeavored to meet the
deficiency of the revenue by raising fresh loans, till he had completely
exhausted the national credit; and at last had been forced to admit that
the scheme originally propounded by Turgot, and subsequently in a more
modified degree by Necker, of abolishing the exemptions from taxation
which were enjoyed by the nobles--the privileged classes, as they were
often called--was the only expedient to save the nation from the disgrace
and ruin of total bankruptcy. But, as it seemed probable that the nobles
would resist such a measure, and that their resistance would prove too
strong for him, as it had already been found to be for his predecessors,
he proposed to the king to revive an old assembly which had been known by
the title of the Notables; trusting that, if he succeeded in obtaining the
sanction of that body to his plans, the nobles would hardly venture to
insist on maintaining their privileges in defiance of the recorded
judgment of so respectable a council. His hopes were disappointed. He
might fairly have reckoned on obtaining their concurrence, since it was
the unquestioned prerogative of the king to nominate all the members; but,
even wh