gh still the main body of the
people cheered with sincere respect, a gang of ruffians, among whom were
several women,[3] shouted out "Long live the Duke of Orleans!" in her ear,
with so menacing an accent that, she nearly fainted with terror. By a
strong mastery over herself she shook off the agitation, which was only
perceived by her immediate attendants; but the disloyal feeling thus shown
toward her at the outset was a sad omen of the spirit in which one party
at least was prepared to view the measures of the Government; and, so far
as she was concerned, of the degree in which her enemies had succeeded in
poisoning the minds of the people against her, as the person whose
resistance to their meditated encroachments on the royal authority was
likely to prove the most formidable.

It was a significant hint, too, of the projects already formed by the
worthless prince whose adherents these ruffians proclaimed themselves. The
Duc d'Orleans conceived himself to have lately received a fresh
provocation, and an additional motive for revenge. His eldest son, the Duc
de Chartres,[4] was now a boy of sixteen, and he had proposed to the king
to give him Madame Royale in marriage; an idea which the queen, who held
his character in deserved abhorrence, had rejected with very decided marks
of displeasure. He was also stimulated by views of personal ambition. The
history of England had been recently studied by many persons in France
besides the king and queen; and there were not wanting advisers to point
out to the duke that the revolution which had taken place in England
exactly a century before had owed its success to the dethronement of the
reigning sovereign and the substitution of another member of the royal
family in his place. As William of Orange was, after the king's own
children, the next heir to James II., so was the Duc d'Orleans now the
next heir, after the king's children and brothers, to Louis XVI.; and for
the next five months there can be no doubt that he and his partisans, who
numbered in their body some of the most influential members of the States-
general, kept constantly in view the hope of placing him on the throne
from which they were to depose his cousin.

The next day the States were formally opened by Louis in person. The place
of meeting was a spacious hall which, two years before, had been used for
the meeting of the Notables. It had been the scene of many a splendid
spectacle in times past, but had never