e masked
balls at the opera, in midnight parades and mystifications on the
terrace at Versailles, in insensate gambling. 'The court of France is
turned into a gaming-hell,' said the Emperor Joseph, the Queen's own
brother: 'if they do not amend, the revolution will be cruel.' These
vices or follies were less mischievous than her intervention in affairs
of state. Here her levity was as marked as in the paltry affairs of the
boudoir and the ante-chamber, and here to levity she added both
dissimulation and vindictiveness. It was the Queen's influence that
procured the dismissal of the two virtuous ministers by whose aid the
King was striving to arrest the decay of the government of his kingdom.
Malesherbes was distasteful to her for no better reason than that she
wanted his post for some favourite's favourite. Against Turgot she
conspired with tenacious animosity, because he had suppressed a
sinecure which she designed for a court parasite, and because he would
not support her caprice on behalf of a worthless creature of her
faction. These two admirable men were disgraced on the same day. The
Queen wrote to her mother that she had not meddled in the affair. This
was a falsehood, for she had even sought to have Turgot thrown into the
Bastille. 'I am as one dashed to the ground,' cried the great Voltaire,
now nearing his end. 'Never can we console ourselves for having seen the
golden age dawn and vanish. My eyes see only death in front of me, now
that Turgot is gone. The rest of my days must be all bitterness.' What
hope could there be that the personage who had thus put out the light of
hope for France in 1776, would welcome that greater flame which was
kindled in the land in 1789?

When people write hymns of pity for the Queen, we always recall the poor
woman whom Arthur Young met, as he was walking up a hill to ease his
horse near Mars-le-Tour. Though the unfortunate creature was only
twenty-eight, she might have been taken for sixty or seventy, her figure
was so bent, her face so furrowed and hardened by toil. Her husband, she
said, had a morsel of land, one cow, and a poor little horse, yet he had
to pay forty-two pounds of wheat and three chickens to one Seigneur, and
one hundred and sixty pounds of oats, one chicken, and one franc to
another, besides very heavy tailles and other taxes; and they had seven
children. She had heard that 'something was to be done by some great
folks for such poor ones, but she did not know