. 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 power, she took on a dignity which recalled the
dignity of her imperial mother. At first a flirt, she fell deeply in
love when she met a man who was worthy of that love. She lived for most
part like a mere cocotte. She died every inch a queen.

One finds a curious resemblance between the fate of Marie Antoinette
and that of her gallant lover, who outlived her for nearly twenty
years. She died amid the shrieks and execrations of a maddened populace
in Paris; he was practically torn in pieces by a mob in the streets of
Stockholm. The day of his death was the anniversary of the flight to
Varennes. To the last moment of his existence he remained faithful to
the memory of the royal woman who had given herself so utterly to him.

THE STORY OF AARON B