at the doors, declaring that the house was full, and that there was not a seat vacant.  They declared that in any event room must be made for them.  “Who were in the boxes of the king and queen? for on such occasions those places were theirs of right.”  Even they, however, were full, and the guards demurred to the ladies’ claim to be considered, though for this night only, as the representatives of royalty, and to have the existing occupants of the seats demanded turned out to make room for them.  The box-keeper and the manager were sent for.  The registers of the house confirmed the validity of the claim by former precedents, and a compromise was at last effected.  Rows of benches were placed on each side of the stage itself.  Those on the right were allotted to the coal-heavers as representatives of Louis; the ladies of the fish-market sat on the left as the deputies of Marie Antoinette.  Before the play was allowed to begin, his majesty the king of the coal-heavers read the bulletin of the day announcing the rapid progress of the queen toward recovery; and then, giving his hand to the queen of the fish-wives, the august pair, followed by their respective suites, executed a dance expressive of their delight at the good news, and then resumed their seats, and listened to Voltaire’s “Zaire” with the most edifying gravity.[6] It was evident that in some things there was already enough, and rather more than enough, of that equality the unreasonable and unpractical passion for which proved, a few years later, the most pregnant cause of immeasurable misery to the whole nation.

But the demonstration most in accordance with the queen’s own taste was that which took place a few weeks later, when she went in a state procession to the great national cathedral of Notre Dame to return thanks; one most interesting part of the ceremony being the weddings of the hundred young couples to whom she had given dowries, who also received a silver medal to commemorate the day.  The gayety of the spectacle, since they, with the formal witnesses of their marriage, filled a great part of the antechapel; and the blessings invoked on the queen’s head as she left the cathedral by the prisoners whom she had released, and by the poor whose destitution she had relieved, made so great an impression on the spectators, that even the highest dignitaries of the court added their cheers and applause to those of the populace who escorted her coach to the gates on its return to Versailles.

She was now, for the first time since her arrival in France, really and entirely happy, without one vexation or one foreboding of evil.  The king’s attachment to her was rendered, if not deeper than before, at least far more lively and demonstrative by the birth of his daughter; his delight carrying him at times to most unaccustomed ebullitions of gayety.  On the last Sunday of the carnival, he even went alone with the queen to the masked opera ball, and was highly amused at finding that not one of the company recognized