lection of
former happiness is the bitterest aggravation of present misery; and not
only to the fugitive monarch himself, but to those who still preserve
their fidelity to him, and to the foreign people to whom he is indebted
for his asylum, the recollection of his former greatness will ever be at
hand to add still further bitterness to his present humiliation. The most
friendly feeling his misfortunes can ever excite is a contemptuous pity,
such as noble and proud minds must find it harder to endure than the
utmost virulence of hatred and enmity.

From such a fate, at least, Marie Antoinette was saved. During the
remainder of her life her failure did indeed condemn her to a protraction
of trial and agony such as no other woman has ever endured; but she always
prized honor far above life, and it also opened to her an immortality of
glory such as no other woman has ever achieved.

CHAPTER XXXII.

Marie Antoinette's Feelings on her Return.--She sees Hopes of
Improvement.--The 17th of July.--The Assembly inquire into the King's
Conduct on leaving Paris.--They resolve that there is no Reason for taking
Proceedings.--Excitement in Foreign Countries.--The Assembly proceeds to
complete the Constitution.--It declares all the Members Incapable of
Election to the New Assembly.--Letters of Marie Antoinette to the Emperor
and to Mercy.--The Declaration of Pilnitz.--The King accepts the
Constitution.--Insults offered to him at the Festival of the Champ de
Mars.--And to the Queen at the Theatre.--The First or Constituent Assembly
is dissolved.

It was eminently characteristic of Marie Antoinette that her very first
act, the morning after her return, was to write to De Fersen, to inform
him that she was safe and well in health; but though she had roused
herself for that effort of gratitude and courteous kindness, for some days
she seemed stupefied by grief and disappointment, and unable to speak or
think for a single moment of any thing but the narrow chance which had
crushed her hopes, and changed success, when it had seemed to be secured,
into ruin; and, if ever she could for a moment drive the feeling from her
mind, her enemies took care to force it back upon her every hour. Before
they reached the Tuileries, La Fayette had obtained from the Assembly
authority to place guards wherever he might think fit; and no jailer ever
took more rigorous precautions for the safe-keeping of the most desperate
criminals than this man