least gleam of
happiness around us; as for ourselves, that is at an end forever, happen
what will. I know that it is the duty of a king to suffer for others; and
it is one which we are discharging thoroughly."

She had indeed at this time sufferings to which it is characteristic of
her undaunted courage that she never makes the slightest allusion in her
letters. Of all the Jacobin party, one of the most blood-thirsty was a
wretch named Marat.[7] At the very outset of the Revolution he had
established a newspaper to which he gave the name of _The People's
Friend_, and the staple topic of which was the desirableness of bloodshed
and massacre. He had been exasperated at the receptions given to the royal
family at the festival of July; and for some weeks afterward his efforts
were directed to inflame the populace to a new riot, in which the king and
queen should be dragged into Paris from St. Cloud, as in 1789 they had
been dragged in from Versailles, and which should end in the murder of the
queen, the ministers, and several hundreds of other innocent persons; and
his denunciations very nearly bore a part of their intended fruit. The
royal family had hardly returned to St. Cloud, when a man named Rotondo
was apprehended in the inner garden, who confessed that he had made his
way into it with the express design of assassinating Marie Antoinette, a
design which was only balked by the fortunate accident of a heavy shower
which prevented her from leaving the house; and a week or two afterward a
second plot was discovered, the contrivers of which designed to poison
her. Her attendants were greatly alarmed; and her physician furnished
Madame Campan with an antidote for such poisons as seemed most likely to
be employed. But Marie Antoinette herself cared little for such
precautions. Assassination was not the end which she anticipated. On one
occasion, when she found Madame Campan changing some powdered sugar which,
it was suspected, might have been tampered with, she thanked her, and
praised M. Vicq-d'Azyr, the physician by whose instructions Madame Campan
was acting, but told her that she was giving herself needless trouble.
"Depend upon it," she added, "they will not employ a grain of poison
against me. The Brinvilliers[8] do not belong to this age; people now use
calumny, which is much more effectual for killing people; and it is by
calumny that they will work my destruction.[9] But even thus, if my death
only secures the thro