promptitude in action.[11]"

And, however she from time to time caught at momentary hopes arising from
other sources, the only one on which she placed any permanent reliance
were the affection and power of her brother; and that hope, in the course
of the winter, was cut from under her by his death.[12] Yet so correct was
her judgment and appreciation of sound political principles, or, perhaps
we might say, so keen was her sense of what was due to the independence
and dignity of France, in spite of its present disloyalty, that a report
that the emperor and Prussia had, by implication, claimed a right to
dictate to France in matters of her internal government drew from her a
warm remonstrance. As sovereign and brother she conceived that Leopold had
a right to interfere to insure the safety of his own sister and of a
brother sovereign; but she never desired him to interpose for any other
object. From her childhood, as we have seen more than once, she had
learned to regard the Prussian character and Prussian designs with
abhorrence. And in a letter to Mercy of the 12th of September, after
expressing an earnest hope that the emperor will not allow himself to be
guided by "the cunning of Calonne, and the detestable policy of Prussia,"
she adds, "It is said here that in the agreement signed at Pilnitz,[13]
the two powers engage never to permit the new French Constitution to be
established. There certainly are things which foreign powers have a right
to oppose, but, as to what concerns the internal laws of a country, every
nation has a right to adopt those which suit it. They would be wrong,
therefore, to intervene in such a matter; and all the world would see in
such an act a proof of the intrigues of the emigrants.[14]"

She proceeds to tell him that all is settled. The king had adopted the
line which she had marked out for him in her former letter. The
Constitution had been presented to him on the 3d of September. He had
taken a few days to consider it, not with the idea of proposing the
slightest alteration, but in order to avoid the appearance of acting under
compulsion; and, on the same day on which she wrote to Mercy, he was
drawing up a letter to the Assembly, to announce his intention of visiting
the Assembly to give it his royal assent in due form. But, though she
would not have had him act otherwise, she can not announce this apparent
termination of the contest without some natural expressions of grief and
indignatio