She was gracious in demeanour, but she kept her smiles for those only who deserved her frowns.

She had unbounded influence over her husband, and she persuaded him to falsehood, dishonesty, and treachery." "Do not deny that she has courage," said St.Just.

"She has borne her adversity well, though she could not bear her prosperity." "She has courage," said Lebas, "and how has she used it?
in fighting an ineffectual battle against the country who had received her with open arms.

We must all be judged by posterity, but no historian will dare to say that Marie Antoinette did not deserve the doom which now awaits her." How little are men able to conceive what award posterity will make in judging of their actions, even when they act with pure motives, and on what they consider to be high principles; and posterity is often as much in error in its indiscriminate condemnation of actions, as are the actors in presuming themselves entitled to its praise.
When years have rolled by, and passions have cooled, the different motives and feelings of the persons concerned become known to all, and mankind is enabled to look upon public acts from every side.

Not so the actors; they are not only in ignorance of facts, the knowledge of which is necessary to their judging rightly, but falsehoods dressed in the garb of facts are studiously brought forward to deceive them, and men thus groping in darkness are forced to form opinions, and to act upon them.
Public men are like soldiers fighting in a narrow valley: they see nothing but what is close around them, and that imperfectly, as everything is in motion.