Her father's consent gained, Louise still tarried at Versailles. Perhaps
the King's daughter shrank from voluntarily beginning a life of
imprisoned drudgery. We know that at this period she passed many hours
reading contemporary history, knowing that, once within the convent
walls, the study of none but sacred literature would be permitted.

Then came an April morning when Louise, who had kept her intention
secret from all save her father, left the Palace never to return.
France, in a state of joyous excitement, was eagerly anticipating the
arrival of Marie Antoinette, who was setting forth on the first stage of
that triumphal journey which had so tragic an ending. Already the gay
clamour of wedding-bells filled the air; and Louise may have feared
that, did she linger at Versailles, the enticing vanities of the world
might change the current of her thoughts.

Chief among the impalpable throng that people the state galleries is
Marie Antoinette, and her spirit shows us many faces. It is charming,
haughty, considerate, headstrong, frivolous, thoughtful, degraded,
dignified, in quick succession. We see her arrive at the Palace amid the
tumultuous adoration of the crowd, and leave amidst its execrations.
Sometimes she is richly apparelled, as befits a queen; anon she sports
the motley trappings of a mountebank. The courtyard that saw the
departure of Madame Louise witnesses Marie Antoinette, returning at
daybreak in company with her brother-in-law from some festivity
unbecoming a queen, refused admittance by the King's express command.

[Illustration: Louis Quatorze]

Many of the attendant spirits who haunt Marie Antoinette's ghostly
footsteps as they haunted her earthly ones are malefic. Most are women,
and all are young and fair. There is Madame Roland, who, taken as a
young girl to the Palace to peep at the Royalties, became imbued by that
jealous hatred which only the Queen's death could appease.

"If I stay here much longer," she told that kindly mother who sought to
give her a treat by showing her Court life, "I shall detest these people
so much that I shall be unable to hide my hatred."

It is easy to fancy the girl's evil face scowling at the unconscious
Queen, before she leaves to pen those inflammatory pamphlets which are
to prove the Sovereign's undoing and her own. For by some whim of fate
Madame Roland was executed on the very scaffold to which her envenomed
writings had driven Marie Antoinette.

A spe