rtments was assigned to the lords and ladies of the court of
Vienna; the other was appropriated to the brilliant train which
had come from Paris to receive the bride. The two courts vied with
each other in the exhibition of wealth and magnificence. It was
an established law of French etiquette, always observed on such
occasions, that the royal bride should receive her wedding dress from
France, and should retain absolutely nothing belonging to a foreign
court. The princess was, consequently, in the pavilion appropriated to
the Austrian suite, unrobed of all her garments, excepting her body
linen and stockings. The door was then thrown open, and in this plight
the beautiful and blushing child advanced into the saloon. The French
ladies rushed to meet her. Maria threw herself into the arms of the
Countess de Noailles, and wept convulsively. The French were perfectly
enchanted with her beauty; and the proud position of her head and
shoulders betrayed to their eyes the daughter of the Caesars. She was
immediately conducted to the apartment appropriated to the French
court. Here the few remaining articles of clothing were removed from
her person, and she was re-dressed in the most brilliant attire which
the wealth of the French monarchy could furnish.

[Illustration: BRIDAL TOUR.]

And now, charioted in splendor, surrounded by the homage of lords and
ladies, accompanied by all the pomp of civic and military parade, and
enlivened by the most exultant strains of martial bands, Maria was
conducted toward Paris, while her Austrian friends bade her adieu and
returned to Vienna. The horizon, by night, was illumined by bonfires,
flaming upon every hill; the church bells rang their merriest peals;
cities blazed with illuminations and fire-works; and files of maidens
lined her way, singing their songs of welcome, and carpeting her path
with roses. It was a scene to dazzle the most firm and contemplative. No
dream of romance could have been more bewildering to the ardent and
romantic princess, just emerging from the cloistered seclusion of the
palace nursery.

Louis, then a young man about twenty years of age, came from Paris with
his grandfather, King Louis XV., and a splendid retinue of courtiers, as
far as Compiegne, to meet his bride. Uninfluenced by any emotions of
tenderness, apparently entirely unconscious of all those mysterious
emotions which bind loving hearts, he saluted the stranger with cold and
distant respect. He tho