ed shepherd to his shepherdess Queen. In the Temple
of Love they basked on summer days among rosy vines, while the music of
Court players wafted through the trees from a nearby pavilion. Every
Sunday during the summer season there was a ball in the park, where any
one might dance whose clothes and behavior were respectable. The Queen,
sensing the need to propitiate a disgruntled populace, shared in the
afternoon's revelries, petted the children that flocked about her knees,
chatted with their nurses and parents. Often, Marie Antoinette resided
for weeks at a time at her favorite dwelling, fishing in the lake,
tending her herd, picking berries in her garden patch. The King and the
princes came every day for supper, and were received by a Queen dressed
in white with a fichu of net--sometimes in a "rumpled gown of cotton." A
score of favorites composed the Court of the Little Trianon. All others
were excluded. Heavy silks and towering head-dresses were forgotten in
the simple life of the Petit Trianon. Tiresome etiquette was banished,
together with thoughts of international matters of portent and impending
calamity. Occasionally, comedies were given, or groves and canal were
illuminated in honor of a visitor of high degree--the Emperor Joseph of
Austria (brother of the Queen), the King of Sweden, ambassadors, princes,
archduchesses.

Surrounded by the persons and the objects she most loved--free to go and
come unattended by a train of attendants--those were the least unhappy
days in the life of Marie Antoinette at Versailles.

At the Little Trianon, Madame Vigee Lebrun made, in 1787, the painting of
Marie Antoinette with her children, which the Queen's intimates counted
the truest likeness among all her portraits. Two years later, on the
fifth day of October, the Queen was at Trianon when news came of the
approach of the mob of starving, angry women that stormed the road from
Paris, swept across the Place d'Armes, and surged about the doors of the
despised palace. On that day, Marie Antoinette left her "little house,"
never to see it again.

For many months the clouds had been gathering on the horizon of the
Bourbon King, whose extravagance and weak will were matched by the
childish indiscretions of his Austrian consort.

In November, 1787, the Notables assembled at Versailles in the grand hall
of the palace guards. In May, 1789, the Salon of Hercules witnessed the
presentation of the twelve hundred deputie