esteemed by both king and queen, since Louis, though he had been unwillingly dragged into the war by the ambition of the Count de Vergennes and the popular enthusiasm, naturally, when once engaged in it, took as vivid an interest in the prowess of his forces as if he had never been troubled with any misgivings as to the policy which had set them in motion; and Marie Antoinette was at all times excited to enthusiasm by any deed of valor, and, as we have seen, took an especial interest in the achievements of the navy.

The King of Sweden, the chivalrous Gustavus III., had already made the acquaintance of Louis and Marie Antoinette in a short visit which he had paid to France the year after their marriage; and the queen now wrote to him in warm praise of M. de Stedingk, and all his countrymen who had come under her notice, while the king rewarded the count’s valor and the wounds which had been incurred in its exhibition by an order of knighthood,[6] and the more substantial gift of a pension.  But the Swede who soon outran all his compatriots in the race for the royal favor of both king and queen was the Count Axel de Fersen, a descendant, it was believed, of one of the Scotch officers of the great Macpherson clan, who, in the stormy times of the Thirty Years’ War, had sought fame and fortune under the banner of Gustavus Adolphus.  The beauty of his countess was celebrated throughout both Sweden and France, and his own was but little inferior to it.  If she was known as “The Rose of the North,” his name was rarely mentioned without the addition of “The handsome.”  He was a perfect master of all noble and knightly accomplishments, and was also distinguished for a certain high-souled and romantic[7] enthusiasm, which lent a tinge to all his conversation and demeanor; and this combination won for him the marked favor of Marie Antoinette.  The calumniators, whom the condition and prospects of the royal family made more busy than ever at this time, insinuated that he had touched her heart; but those who knew best the manners of life and characters of both denounced it as the vilest of libels.  The count’s was a loyal attachment, doing nothing but honor to him who felt it, and to the queen who inspired it; and it was marked by a permanence which distinguishes no devotion but that which is pure and noble, as he showed ten years later by the well-planned and courageous, though unsuccessful, efforts which he made for the deliverance of the queen and all her family.

That Marie Antoinette, who from early youth had shown an intuitive accuracy of judgment in her estimate of character, should, from the very first, honorably distinguish a man capable of such devotion to her service was not unnatural; but there was another circumstance in his favor, which he shared with the other foreign nobles, English and German, who in these years were well received by the queen.  Their disinterestedness presented a striking contrast to the rapacity of the