he gentlemen in attendance
the heavy wagons laden with logs. The queen more gladly took part in the
charities than in the smithy. She distributed alms bountifully; in a
moment of gratitude the inhabitants of Rue St. Honore had erected in her
honor a snow pyramid bearing these verses:

Fair queen, whose goodness is thy chiefest grace,
With our good king, here occupy thy place;
Though this frail monument be ice or snow,
Our warm hearts are not so.

[Illustration: "There are my Sledges, Sirs."----458]

Bursts of kindness and sympathy, sincere as they may be, do not suffice
to win the respect and affection of a people. The reign of Louis XV.
had used up the remnants of traditional veneration, the new right of the
public to criticise sovereigns was being exercised malignantly upon the
youthful thoughtlessnesses of Marie Antoinette.

In the home circle of the royal family, the queen had not found any
intimate; the king's aunts had never taken to her; the crafty ability of
the Count of Provence and the giddiness of the Count of Artois seemed in
the prudent eye of Maria Theresa to be equally dangerous; Madame
Elizabeth, the heroic and pious companion of the evil days, was still a
mere child; already the Duke of Chartres, irreligious and debauched,
displayed towards the queen, who kept him at a distance, symptoms of a
bitter rancor which was destined to bear fruit. Marie Antoinette,
accustomed to a numerous family, affectionately united, sought friends
who could "love her for herself," as she used to say: an illusive hope,
in one of her rank, for which she was destined to pay dearly. She formed
an attachment to the young Princess of Lamballe, daughter-in-law of the
Duke of Penthievre, a widow at twenty years of age, affectionate and
gentle, for whom she revived the post of lady-superintendent, abolished
by Mary Leczinska. The court was in commotion, and the public murmured;
the queen paid no heed, absorbed as she was in the new delights of
friendship; the intimacy, in which there was scarcely any inequality,
with the Princess of Lamballe, was soon followed by a more perilous
affection. The Countess Jules de Polignac, who was generally detained
in the country by the narrowness of her means, appeared at court on the
occasion of a festival; the queen was pleased with her, made her remain,
and loaded her, her and her family, not only with favors, but with
unbounded and excessive fam