To peremptory demands were added perfidious insinuations.

“Such ways, Sir,” said one of these remonstrances, “have no place in your heart, such samples of proceeding are not the principles of your Majesty, they come from another source.”  For the first time the queen was thus held up to public odium by the Parliament which had dealt her a fatal blow by acquitting Cardinal Rohan; she was often present at the king’s conferences with his ministers, reluctantly and by the advice of M. de Brienne, for and in whom Louis XVI. never felt any liking or confidence.  “There is no more happiness for me since they have made me an intriguer,” she said sadly to Madame Campan.  And when the latter objected:  “Yes,” replied the queen, “it is the proper word:  every woman who meddles in matters above her lights and beyond the limits of her duty, is nothing but an intriguer; you will remember, however, that I do not spare myself, and that it is with regret I give myself such a title.  The other day, as I was crossing the Bull’s Eye (Eil de Boeuf), to go to a private committee at the king’s, I heard one of the chapel-band say out loud, ‘A queen who does her duty remains in her rooms at her needlework.’  I said to myself:  ’Thou’rt quite right, wretch; but thou know’st not my position; I yield to necessity and my evil destiny.’” A true daughter of Maria Theresa in her imprisonment and on the scaffold, Marie Antoinette had neither the indomitable perseverance nor the simple grandeur in political views which had restored the imperial throne in the case of her illustrious mother.  She weakened beneath a burden too heavy for a mind so long accustomed to the facile pleasures of youth.  “The queen certainly has wits and firmness which might suffice for great things,” wrote her friend, the Count of La Marck, to M. de Mercy Argenteau, her mother’s faithful agent in France; “but it must be confessed that, whether in business or in mere conversation, she does not always exhibit that degree of attention and that persistence which are indispensable for getting at the bottom of what one ought to know, in order to prevent errors and to insure success.”

The same want of purpose and persistence of which the Count of La Marck complained was strikingly apparent everywhere and in all matters; the Duke of Orleans was soon tired of banishment; he wrote to the queen, who obtained his recall.  The ministers were making mysterious preparations for a grand stroke.  The Parliament, still agitated and anxious, had at last enregistered the edict relating to non-Catholics.  Public opinion, like the government, supported it eagerly; the principles of tolerance which had prompted it were henceforth accepted by all; certain bishops and certain bigots were still trying to hinder this first step towards a legal status for a long while refused to Protestants.  M. d’Espremesnil, an earnest disciple of the philosophe inconnu, the mystic St. Martin, just as he had been the dupe