g but horse-racing, hunting too, and always
without the king and with a number of young people not over-select, which
disquiets me a great deal, loving you as I do so tenderly. I must say,
all these pleasures in which the king takes no part, are not proper. You
will tell me, 'he knows, he approves of them.' I will tell you, he is a
good soul, and therefore you ought to be circumspect and combine your
amusements with his; in the long run you can only be happy through such
tender and sincere union and affection."

[Illustration: MARIE ANTOINETTE 456]

The misfortune and cruel pangs of their joint lives were alone destined
to establish between Marie Antoinette and her husband that union and that
intimacy which their wise mother would have liked to create in the days
of tranquillity. Affectionate and kind, sincerely devoted to his wife,
Louis XVI. was abrupt and awkward; his occupations and his tastes were
opposed to all the elegant or frivolous instincts of the young queen.
He liked books and solid books; his cabinet was hung with geographical
charts which he studied with care; he had likewise a passion for
mechanical works, and would shut himself up for hours together in a
workshop in company with a blacksmith named Gamin. "The king used to
hide from the queen and the court to forge and file with me," this man
would remark in after days: "to carry about his anvil and mine, without
anybody's knowing anything about it required a thousand stratagems which
it would take no end of time to tell of." You will allow that I should
make a sorry figure at a forge," writes the queen to her brother Joseph
II.; "I should not be Vulcan, and the part of Venus might displease the
king more than those tastes of mine of which he does not disapprove."

Louis XVI. did not disapprove, but without approving. As he was weak in
dealing with his ministers, from kindliness and habit, so he was towards
the queen with much better reason. Whilst she was scampering to the
Opera ball, and laughing at going thither in a hackney coach one day when
her carriage had met with an accident, the king went to bed every evening
at the same hour, and the talk of the public began to mix up the name of
Marie Antoinette with stories of adventure. In the hard winter of 1775,
whilst the court amused themselves by going about in elegantly got-up
sledges, the king sent presents of wood to the poor. "There are my
sledges, sirs," said he as he pointed out to t