jealously warned away. The fine ladies and
gentlemen, with the king and queen, collected
round Vaudreuil, whom they appointed high
priest of the party, and who was said to fulfil
his functions with much humour and spirit.
There was a kind of mimic altar, dressed, and a
sort of mock solemnity maintained. The essential
part of the rite lay in pairing off the ladies
and gentlemen; a duty which the high priest
was held to perform with exquisite tact and
knowledge of the court atmosphere; but it was
remarked that he usually allotted her majesty to
himself. Suddenly the mystic word is
pronounced. "Descampativos!" Clap hands! and
hi presto! the noble company have fled, are
utterly invisible, swallowed up in those intricate
walks and bosquets, bound under heaviest
fulminations not to reappear for some hours. This
questionable diversion scandalised that easily
scandalised people, the people of Paris. True,
his majesty was there by way of conjugal
chaperon, shambling with his ungainly limbs away
down the walks with an allotted partner, but,
it is to be feared that this show of decency
did not satisfy those who looked on from afar off,
and to whose ears whispers of the gambols
were borne upon the gale. We, who look backward,
can have no reasonable doubt but that these
were most indiscreet games. The queen had all
the foolhardiness of virtue, and, it must be
conceded, all the coarseness which the rubbing of
skirts with the Dubarrys and those of her
cloth in a daily familiarity, would induce. That
living in an atmosphere of unwholesome allusion,
and of jest and earnest all based on that
one gross basis, as a thing to be accepted and
perfectly understood, must have brushed away
the fine delicate bloom lying on the surface.
Here seems to be the true key to her
character.

Gossip Wraxall has us again by the buttonhole,
in a corner at one of these brilliant assemblies.

"See that plain, faded, worn-out youth, but
with a fine figure? That is Dillon le Beau.
Whisper——"

Listeners' cheeks shrink inwards with an
inhaling motion almost like a whistle.

"Hush, my dear sir! Only the other night,
at a ball, her majesty became faint and tired.
'Only feel how my heart palpitates,' she
remarked to his gracious majesty; who did feel.
'Does it not, count?' she said to Beau Dillon,
also standing by, and actually, my dear sir—
stoop down—put that spark's hand on her
side."

How exactly that story of the baronet
supports that view of the very effrontery of virtue.
This dear and unrivalled baronet—who was,
later in life, cruelly fined and imprisoned in
the Queen's Bench for a naughty little story
à propos of her Majesty of all the Russias—can
point us out other noble figures whose beaux
yeux the queen delights to honour. There is
De Coigny, tall, graceful, insinuating; De
Vaudreuil, the high priest; the Count d'Artois, who
would have been good-looking if he could only
have been got to keep his mouth shut; and the
brave Fersen. Our own countryman, Lord
Whitworth—for whose hand three noble ladies of the
highest rank did bid thereafter in money and
jewels—was greatly favoured on account of his
fine person and stately presence. Our ambassador,
le Duc de Dorset, was noticed prodigiously;
and years after, when the "descampativos" had
found a bloody atonement, used to take out, with
a regretful fondness, an old letter-case full of
little notes and hasty billets, from which the
scent had not yet passed away, and would read
them over with our baronet. They were harmless
little despatches—mainly commissions for
English purchases, needles and the like—sent the
night before he would be setting out. The
Honourable Hugh Conway, a very personable
man, and one of six gigantic brethren,
was similarly distinguished. But, says this
incorrigible old scandal chiffonnier, "IF ever
there was one—mark, I say IF—and do not for
a moment misunderstand me—but still, on the
remote hypothesis that there was what we may
pleasantly—ha, ha!—call a slight discoloration
in the peach, why I should say—stoop down—
Vaudreuil was the man!"

All this while it was literally raining, hailing
pamphlets. They came down in a pitiless
pestilent storm, and choked the streets. There
was a craze—a frantic mania for this shape of
writing: and these vile broadsheets, each running
over with horrid songs and terrible lampoons,
had but one aim—the luckless Marie Antoinette.
They were printed on the coarsest paper, and
were sold for a few sous in the open streets. So
came forth the Historical Essays on the Life of
Marie Antoinette of AUSTRIA! Followed by The
She-Iscariot of France, printed at Versailles,
Hôtel des Courtisanes! The Life of Louis
XVI.: London, at the printing-press of Saint
James! Lives of Orleans—of Everybody. In
the first, the queen is made to unfold her own
adventures, and the she-Iscariot relates her
failings with a startling candour.

Meanwhile the old heavy berline of the
monarchy rambles on nearer and nearer to the edge.
The causes of the final toppling over, furnish a
trite theme to every schoolboy and mutual
improvement class. All through these premonitory
growlings of the populace, the same fat
unwieldy figure, the good-hearted round-cheeked
onion-headed and generally inefficient "countryman
king" is conspicuous shambling on from
one limb to the other. Angry parliaments come
to wait on him, and he is fetched out from his
forge and his files and his locks and his keys,
reputed to be the worst in Paris, and
confronts them all, grimed and heated, a royal
smith. He made a progress down to Cherbourg
to see the works, and was delighted with his
expedition. Long afterwards, his parrot question
was said to be "Ever been at Cherbourg?" a
negative answer being received with such
disfavour, that adroit courtiers soon found out they
must actually make the journey. If he fancied
a dish specially at dinner, the bonhomme would
give orders that what was left should be kept