e; and it was
only when the Queen begged her to stay, with arms around her neck and
with streaming tears, that she consented to remain by her side.

If the Queen ever had any doubt that she had at last found a friend who
loved her for herself, the doubt was now finally dissipated. Such an
unselfish love as this was a treasure to be prized; and from this moment
Queen and waiting-woman were inseparable. When they were not strolling
arm-in-arm in the corridors or gardens of Versailles, Her Majesty was
spending her days in Madame's apartments, where, as she said, "We are no
longer Queen and subject, but just dear friends."

So unhappy was Marie Antoinette apart from her new friend that, when
Madame de Polignac gave birth to a child at Passy, the Court itself was
moved to La Muette, so that the Queen could play the part of nurse by
her friend's bedside.

Such, now, was the Queen's devotion that there was no favour she would
not have gladly showered on the Comtesse; but to all such offers Madame
turned a deaf ear. She wanted nothing but Marie Antoinette's love and
friendship for herself; but if the Queen, in her goodness, chose to
extend her favour to Madame's relatives--well, that was another matter.

Thus it was that Comte Jules soon blossomed into a Duke, and Madame
perforce became a Duchess, with a coveted tabouret at Court. But they
were still poor, in spite of an equerry's pay, and heavily in debt, a
matter which must be seen to. The Queen's purse satisfied every
creditor, to the tune of four hundred thousand livres, and Duc Jules
found himself lord of an estate which added seventy thousand livres
yearly to his exchequer, with another annual eighty thousand livres as
revenue for his office of Director-General of Posts.

Of course, if the Queen _would_ be so foolishly generous, it was not the
Duchesse's fault, and when Marie Antoinette next proposed to give a
dowry of eight hundred thousand livres to the Duchesse's daughter on her
marriage to the Comte de Guiche, and to raise the bridegroom to a
dukedom--well, it was "very sweet of Her Majesty," and it was not for
her to oppose such a lavish autocrat.

Thus the shower of Royal favours grew; and it is perhaps little wonder
that each new evidence of the Queen's prodigality was greeted with
curses by the mob clamouring for bread outside the palace gates; while
even her father's minister, Kaunitz, in far Vienna, brutally dubbed the
Duchesse and her family, "a gang of t