At the Little Trianon, Madame Vigee Lebrun made, in 1787, the painting of Marie Antoinette with her children, which the Queen’s intimates counted the truest likeness among all her portraits.  Two years later, on the fifth day of October, the Queen was at Trianon when news came of the approach of the mob of starving, angry women that stormed the road from Paris, swept across the Place d’Armes, and surged about the doors of the despised palace.  On that day, Marie Antoinette left her “little house,” never to see it again.

For many months the clouds had been gathering on the horizon of the Bourbon King, whose extravagance and weak will were matched by the childish indiscretions of his Austrian consort.

In November, 1787, the Notables assembled at Versailles in the grand hall of the palace guards.  In May, 1789, the Salon of Hercules witnessed the presentation of the twelve hundred deputies elected by the people in all parts of France to the States-General.  The Assembly, “the true era of the birth of the French people,” opened on May fifth in the immense Salle des Menus, on the Paris Avenue, outside the gates of the palace.  During the thirty days that the deputies sat inactive under the oratory of the King, of Necker, Mirabeau and Robespierre, work ceased throughout the kingdom.  “He who had but his hands, his daily labor, to supply the day, went to look for work, found none, begged, got nothing, robbed.  Starving gangs over-ran the country; wherever they found any resistance, they became furious, killed, and burned.  Horror spread far and near; communications ceased, and famine went on increasing.”  At last the Assembly was founded, but the nation remained in tumult, the King vacillating, the Queen in retirement, mourning the death of the little Dauphin.  On June twentieth, the people’s representatives gathered, in spite of the King, in the bare tennis-court, without the walls of the chateau, and made oath as citizens of France never to adjourn until they had given their country a constitution.  On the same day Marie Antoinette inscribed a letter from Versailles whose import was in piteous contrast to the prattling epistles of her girlhood.  “The Chambre Nationale is declared,” she wrote.  “They are deliberating, but I am in despair to see nothing come of their deliberations; every one is greatly alarmed.  The nobility may be wiped out forever.  But the kingdom will be calm; if not, one cannot estimate the evils by which we shall be menaced. . . .  Not far away civil war exists, and, besides, bread is lacking.  God give us courage!” Three days later the King read to the deputies an arbitrary declaration that had been composed by interested advisers.  He commanded the assembly to disperse, and met a calm and silent resistance.  Workmen entered to demolish the amphitheater, but laid down their tools on the declaration of Mirabeau that “whoever laid hands on a deputy was a traitor, infamous and worthy of death.”  At last the King, wearied and confused, commanded, “Let them alone.”