n married
an Englishman.

Fersen served in America for a time, returning, however, at the end of
three years. He was one of the original Cincinnati, being admitted
to the order by Washington himself. When he returned to France he was
received with high honors and was made colonel of the royal Swedish
regiment.

The dangers threatening Louis and his court, which were now gigantic and
appalling, forbade him to forsake the queen. By her side he did what
he could to check the revolution; and, failing this, he helped her to
maintain an imperial dignity of manner which she might otherwise have
lacked. He faced the bellowing mob which surrounded the Tuileries.
Lafayette tried to make the National Guard obey his orders, but he was
jeered at for his pains. Violent epithets were hurled at the king. The
least insulting name which they could give him was "a fat pig." As for
the queen, the most filthy phrases were showered upon her by the men,
and even more so by the women, who swarmed out of the slums and sought
her life.

At last, in 1791, it was decided that the king and the queen and their
children, of whom they now had three, should endeavor to escape from
Paris. Fersen planned their flight, but it proved to be a failure. Every
one remembers how they were discovered and halted at Varennes. The royal
party was escorted back to Paris by the mob, which chanted with insolent
additions:

"We've brought back the baker, the baker's wife, and the baker's boy!
Now we shall have bread!"

Against the savage fury which soon animated the French a foreigner like
Fersen could do very little; but he seems to have endeavored, night and
day, to serve the woman whom he loved. His efforts have been described
by Grandat; but they were of no avail. The king and queen were
practically made prisoners. Their eldest son died. They went through
horrors that were stimulated by the wretch Hebert, at the head of his
so-called Madmen (Enrages). The king was executed in January, 1792. The
queen dragged out a brief existence in a prison where she was for ever
under the eyes of human brutes, who guarded her and watched her and
jeered at her at times when even men would be sensitive. Then, at last,
she mounted the scaffold, and her head, with its shining hair, fell into
the bloody basket.

Marie Antoinette shows many contradictions in her character. As a young
girl she was petulant and silly and almost unseemly in her actions. As
a queen, with waning po