me eminently impolitic, since it struck
down a foreign princess, the most sacred of hostages; a crime beyond
measure, since the victim was a woman who possessed honors without
power."

Because Marie Antoinette played a romantic role in French history, it
is quite natural to find conflicting and contradictory opinions among
her biographers. The most conflicting may be summed up in these
words: the queen's influence upon the Revolution was great--her
extravagances, her haughty bearing, her scorn of the etiquette of
royalty, her enemies, her prejudices, the arrests which she caused,
etc. Then her pernicious influence upon the king, after the breaking
out of the Revolution--she caused his hesitancy, which led to such
disastrous results, and his plan of annihilating the States Assembly;
the gathering of the foreign troops and his many contradictory
and uncertain commands were all laid at her door, making of her an
important and guilty party to the Revolution. Another estimate is more
humane and, probably, is the result of cooler reflection, yet is not
always accepted by Frenchmen or the world at large. It represents her
as neither saint nor sinner, but as a pure, fascinating woman, always
chaste, though somewhat rash and frivolous. Proud and energetic, if
inconsiderate in her political actions and somewhat too impulsive in
the selection of friends upon whom to bestow her favors, she is yet
worthy of the title of queen by the very dignity of her bearing;
always a true woman, seductive and tender of heart, she became a
martyr "through the extremity of her trials and her triumphant death."

Although history makes Marie Antoinette a central figure during the
reign of Louis XVI. and the period of the Revolution, yet her personal
influence was practically limited to the domain of the social world of
customs and manners; her political influence issued mainly from or was
due to the concatenation of conditions and circumstances, the results
of her friends' doings, while her social triumphs were products of
her own activity. The two women--her intimate friends--who during
this period were of greatest prominence, who owed their elevation
and standing entirely to the queen, were women of whom little has
survived. In her time, Mme. de Polignac was an influential woman,
wielding tremendous power, contributing largely to the shaping and
climaxing of France's fate; yet this influence was centred in reality
in the Polignac set, which was c