low stool; Marie Antoinette began to spin. How quickly the wheel
began to turn, as if it were the wheel of fortune--to-day bringing
joy, and to-morrow calamity!

The evening has not yet come, and the wheel of fortune is yet
turning, yet calamity is there.

Marie Antoinette does not yet know it; her eye still beams with joy,
a happy smile still plays upon her rosy lips. She is sitting now
with her company by the lake, with the hook in her hand, and looking
with laughing face and fixed attention at the rod, and crying aloud
as often as she catches a fish. For these fishes are to serve as
supper for the company, and the queen has ceremoniously invited her
husband to an evening meal, which she herself will serve and
prepare. The queen smiles still and is happy; her spinning-wheel is
silent, but the wheel of fate is moving still.

The king is no longer there. He has withdrawn into the mill to rest
himself.

And yet there he is not alone. Who ventures to disturb him? It must
be something very serious. For it is well known that the king very
seldom goes to Trianon, and that when he is there he wishes to be
entirely free from business.

And yet he is disturbed today; yet the premier, Baron de Breteuil,
is come to seek the miller of Little Trianon, and to beseech him
even there to be the king again.