One deputation, consisting of members of the fairer sex, received even higher honors.  Fifty ladies of the fish-market vindicated the long-acknowledged claims of their body by forming a separate procession.  Each dame was dressed in a gown of rich black silk, their established court-dress, and nearly every one had diamond ornaments.  To them, the celebrated antechamber, from the oval window at the end known as the Bull’s Eye, was opened;[6] and three of their body were admitted even into the queen’s room, and to the side of the bed.  The popular poet La Harpe, whom the partiality of Voltaire had designated as the heir of his genius, had composed an address, which the spokeswoman of the party had written out on the back of her fan, and now read with a sweet voice, which had procured her the honor of being so selected,[7] and with very appropriate delivery.  The queen made a brief but most gracious answer, and then, on their retirement, the whole company, with a train of fish-women of the lower class, was entertained at a grand banquet, which they enlivened with songs composed for the occasion.  One of them so hit the fancy of the king and queen that they quoted it more than once in their letters to their correspondents, and Marie Antoinette even sung it occasionally to her harp: 

  “Ne craignez pas,
  Cher papa,
  D’ voir augmenter vot’ famille,
  Le Bon Dieu z’y pourvoira: 
  Fait’s en tant qu’ Versailles en fourmille
  Y eut-il cent Bourbons chez nous,
  Y a du pain, du laurier pour tous.”

The body-guard celebrated the auspicious event by giving a grand ball in the concert-room of the palace to the queen on her recovery; it was attended by the whole court, and Marie Antoinette opened it herself, dancing a minuet with one of the troop, whom his comrades had selected for the honor, and whom the king promoted, as a memorial of the occasion and as a testimony of his approval of the loyalty of that gallant regiment.

Amidst all the troubles of later years, the fidelity of those noble troops never wavered.  They had even in one hour of terrible danger the honor, in the same palace, of saving the life of their queen.  But it is a melancholy proof of the fleeting character and instability of popular favor which is supplied by the recollection that these very artisans who were now so vociferous, and undoubtedly at this moment so sincere in their profession of loyalty, were afterward her foul and ferocious enemies.  And yet between 1781 and 1789 there had been no change in the character or conduct of the king and queen, or rather, it may be said, the intervening years had been a period during which a countless series of acts of beneficence had displayed their unceasing affection for their subjects.