in and marry the slighted bride
himself. Perhaps it is fortunate that Rohan did not know this. A brain
so fertile in mischief as his might have converted such a circumstance to
baneful uses. But the death of Louis XV. put an end to all the then
existing schemes for a change in her position. It was to her a real,
though but a momentary triumph. From the hour of her arrival she had a
powerful party to cope with; and the fact of her being an Austrian,
independent of the jealousy created by her charms, was, in itself, a
spell to conjure up armies, against which she stood alone, isolated in
the face of embattled myriads! But she now reared her head, and her foes
trembled in her presence. Yet she could not guard against the moles busy
in the earth secretly to undermine her. Nay, had not Louis XV. died at
the moment he did, there is scarcely a doubt, from the number and the
quality of the hostile influences working on the credulity of the young
Dauphin, that Marie Antoinette would have been very harshly dealt
with,--even the more so from the partiality of the dotard who believed
himself to be reigning. But she has been preserved from her enemies to
become their sovereign; and if her crowned brow has erewhile been stung
by thorns in its coronal, let me not despair of their being hereafter
smothered in yet unblown roses."

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Embonpoint of the French Princesses
Few individuals except Princesses do with parade and publicity
Frailty in the ambitious, through which the artful can act
Laughed at qualities she could not comprehend
Mind well stored against human casualties
Policy, in sovereigns, is paramount to every other
Quiet work of ruin by whispers and detraction
Ridicule, than which no weapon is more false or deadly
Salique Laws
Thank Heaven, I am out of harness
Traducing virtues the slanderers never possessed
Underrated what she could not imitate
Where the knout is the logician

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI.,
Volume 3, by Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

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