n
an instant he was surrounded--all the scissors in the room were at
work; in short, in a few moments the coat was stripped of its laces,
its galoons, its tassels, its fringes; and the poor duke,
notwithstanding his vexation, was forced by _politeness_ to laugh and
praise the dexterity of the fair hands that robbed him."

But what a solace did that passion for needlework, which the queen
indulged in herself and encouraged in others, become to her during her
fearful captivity. This unhappy princess was born on the day of the
Lisbon earthquake, which seemed to stamp a fatal mark on the era of
her birth; and many circumstances occurred during her life which have
since been considered as portentous.

"'Tis certain that the soul hath oft foretaste
Of matters which beyond its ken are placed."

One circumstance, simple in itself and easily explained, is recorded
by Madame Campan as having impressed Marie with shuddering
anticipations of evil:--

"One evening, about the latter end of May, she was sitting in the
middle of her room, relating several remarkable occurrences of the
day. Four wax candles were placed upon her toilet; the first went out
of itself--I relighted it; shortly afterwards the second, and then the
third, went out also: upon which the queen, squeezing my hand with an
emotion of terror, said to me, 'Misfortune has power to make us
superstitious; if the fourth taper go out like the first, nothing can
prevent my looking upon it as a fatal omen!'--The fourth taper went
out."

At an earlier period Goethe seems, with somewhat of a poet's
inspiration, to have read a melancholy fate for her. When young he was
completing his studies at Strasburg. In an isle in the middle of the
Rhine a pavilion had been erected, intended to receive Marie
Antoinette and her suite, on her way to the French court.

"I was admitted into it," says Goethe, in his Memoirs: "on my entrance
I was struck with the subject depicted in the tapestry with which the
principal pavilion was hung, in which were seen Jason, Creusa, and
Medea; that is to say, a representation of the most fatal union
commemorated in history. On the left of the throne the bride,
surrounded by friends and distracted attendants, was struggling with a
dreadful death; Jason, on the other side, was starting back, struck
with horror at the sight of his murdered children; and the Fury was
soaring into the air in her chariot drawn by dragons. Superstition
apart, this