“’Ever, ever, and forever,

“’Your affectionate,

“’Marie Antoinette!

“There was another hurried and abrupt note from Her Majesty among these papers, obviously written later than the first.  It lamented the cruel privations to which she was doomed at the Tuileries, in consequence of the impeded flight, and declared that what the Royal Family were forced to suffer, from being totally deprived of every individual of their former friends and attendants to condole with, excepting the equally oppressed and unhappy Princesse Elizabeth, was utterly insupportable.

“On the receipt of these much esteemed epistles, I returned, as my duty directed, to the best of Queens, and most sincere of friends.  My arrival at Paris, though so much wished for, was totally unexpected.

“At our first meeting, the Queen was so agitated that she was utterly at a loss to explain the satisfaction she felt in beholding me once more near her royal person.  Seeing the ring on my finger, which she had done me the honour of sending me, she pointed to her hair, once so beautiful, but now, like that of an old woman, not only gray, but deprived of all its softness, quite stiff and dried up.

“Madame Elizabeth, the King, and the rest of our little circle, lavished on me the most endearing caresses.  The dear Dauphin said to me, ’You will not go away again, I hope, Princess?  Oh, mamma has cried so since you left us!’

“I had wept enough before, but this dear little angel brought tears into the eyes of us all.”

“When I mentioned to Her Majesty the affectionate sympathy expressed by the King and Queen of England in her sufferings, and their regret at the state of public affairs in France, ’It is most noble and praiseworthy in them to feel thus,’ exclaimed Marie Antoinette; ’and the more so considering the illiberal part imputed to us against those Sovereigns in the rebellion of their ultramarine subjects, to which, Heaven knows, I never gave my approbation.  Had I done so, how poignant would be my remorse at the retribution of our own sufferings, and the pity of those I had so injured!  No.  I was, perhaps, the only silent individual amongst millions of infatuated enthusiasts at General La Fayette’s return to Paris, nor did I sanction any of the fetes given to Dr. Franklin, or the American Ambassadors at the time.  I could not conceive it prudent for the Queen of an absolute monarchy to countenance any of their newfangled philosophical experiments with my presence.  Now, I feel the reward in my own conscience.  I exult in my freedom from a self-reproach, which would have been altogether insupportable under the kindness of which you speak.’