The Dauphine is much changed since I last saw her, and the care and sorrow of her childhood have left their traces on her countenance.  I never saw so melancholy a face, and the strength of intellect which characterises it renders it still more so, by indicating that the marks of sorrow so visible were not indented on that brow without many an effort from the strong mind to resist the attacks of grief.

I remember reading years ago of the melancholy physiognomy of King Charles I, which when seen in his portrait by a Florentine sculptor, to whom it was sent in order that a bust should be made from it, drew forth the observation that the countenance indicated that its owner would come to a violent death.

I was reminded of this anecdote by the face of the Duchesse d’Angouleme; for though I do not pretend to a prescience as to her future fate, I cannot help arguing from it that, even should a peaceful reign await her, the fearful trials of her youth have destroyed in her the power of enjoyment; and that on a throne she can never forget the father and mother she saw hurried from it, to meet every insult that malice could invent, or cruelty could devise, before a violent death freed them from their sufferings.

Who can look on this heroic woman without astonishment at the power of endurance that has enabled her to live on under such trials?  Martyr is written in legible characters on that brow, and on those lips; and her attempt to smile made me more sad than the tears of a mourner would have done, because it revealed “a grief too deep for tears.”

Must she not tremble for the future, if not for the present, among a people so versatile as those among whom she is now thrown?  And can she look from the windows of the palace she has been recalled to inhabit, without seeing the spot where the fearful guillotine was reared that made her an orphan?

The very plaudits that now rend the skies for her uncle must remind her of the shouts that followed her father to the scaffold:  no wonder, then, that she grows pale as she hears them; and that the memory of the terrible past, written in characters of blood, gives a sombre hue to the present and to the future.

The sight of her, too, must awaken disagreeable recollections in those over whom her husband may be soon called to reign, for the history of the crimes of the Revolution is stamped on her face, whose pallid lint and rigid muscles tell of the horror and affliction imprinted on her youth; the reminiscence of which cannot be pleasant to them.

The French not only love their country passionately, but are inordinately proud of it; hence, aught that reminds them of its sins—­and cruelty is one of a deep dye—­must be humiliating to them; so that the presence of the Duchesse d’Angouleme cannot be flattering to their amor patriae or amour propre.  I thought of all this to-day, as I looked on the face of Madame la Dauphine; and breathed a hope that the peace of her life’s evening may console her for the misfortunes of its morning and its noon.