allow your youth, your beauty, and your innocence, to be subjected
to these old laws. It were folly to condemn yourself to ennui and
solitude. Does not the Queen of France enjoy a right which the
meanest of her subjects possesses, of collecting her own chosen
friends around her and taking her pleasure with them. We live, I
know, in an age of reckless acts; but may there not be some
recklessness in dealing with the follies of etiquette? They bring it
as a charge against your majesty that you adjure the great court
circles, and the stiff set with which the royal family of France
used to martyr itself. They say that by giving up ceremony you are
undermining the respect which the people ought to cherish toward
royalty. But would it not be laughable to think that the obedience
of the people depends upon the number of the hours which a royal
family may spend in the society of tedious and wearisome courtiers?
No, my queen, do not listen to the hiss of the hostile serpents
which surround you. Go, courageously, your own way--the way of
innocence, guilelessness, and love."

"I thank you--oh, I thank you!" cried Marie Antoinette. "You have
lifted heavy doubts from my heart and strengthened my courage. I
thank you!"

And, with beaming eyes and a sweet smile, she extended both her
hands to the baron.

He pressed them tightly within his own, and, sinking upon his knee,
drew the royal hands with a glow to his lips.

"Oh, my queen, my mistress!" he cried, passionately, "behold at your
feet your most faithful servant, your most devoted slave. Receive