gardens, parks,
and fountains, a temple of pleasure dedicated to lawless passion. The
king had totally neglected the interests of his majestic empire,
consecrating every moment of time to his own sensual gratification. The
revenues of the realm were squandered in the profligacy and carousings
of his court. The people were regarded merely as servants who were to
toil to minister to the voluptuous indulgence of their masters. They
lived in penury, that kings, and queens, and courtiers might revel in
all imaginable magnificence and luxury. This was the ultimate cause of
that terrible outbreak which eventually crushed Maria Antoinette beneath
the ruins of the French monarchy. Louis XV., in his shameless
debaucheries, not only expended every dollar upon which he could lay his
hands, but at his death left the kingdom involved in a debt of four
hundred millions of dollars, which was to be paid from the scanty
earnings of peasants and artisans whose condition was hardly superior to
that of the enslaved laborers on the plantations of Carolina and
Louisiana. But I am wandering from my story.

In a chamber of the palace of the Little Trianon we left the king dying
of the confluent small-pox. The courtiers have fled in consternation.
It is the hour of midnight, the 10th of May, 1774. The monarch of
France is alone as he struggles with the king of terrors. No attendants
linger around him. Two old women, in an adjoining apartment,
occasionally look in upon the mass of corruption upon the royal couch,
which had already lost every semblance of humanity. The eye is blinded.
The swollen tongue can not articulate. What thought of remorse or terror
may be rioting through the soul of the dying king, no one knows, and--no
one cares. A lamp flickers at the window, which is a signal to those at
a safe distance that the king still lives. Its feeble flame is to be
extinguished the moment life departs. The courtiers, from the windows of
the distant palace, watch with the most intense solicitude the
glimmering of that midnight taper. Should the king recover, they dreaded
the reproach of having deserted him in the hour of his extremity. They
hope, so earnestly, that he may not live. Should he die, they are
anxious to be the first in their congratulations to the new king and
queen. The hours of the night linger wearily away as expectant courtiers
gaze impatiently through the gloom upon that dim torch. The horses are
harnessed in the carriages, and