And there, too, Burke had that vision to which we owe one of the most gorgeous pages in our literature--Marie Antoinette, the young dauphiness, "decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in, glittering like the morning star, full of life and splendour and joy." The shadow was rapidly stealing on.

The year after Burke's visit, the scene underwent a strange transformation.

The king died; the mistress was banished in luxurious exile; and the dauphiness became the ill-starred Queen of France.

Burke never forgot the emotions of the scene; they awoke in his imagination sixteen years after, when all was changed, and the awful contrast shook him with a passion that his eloquence has made immortal.
Madame du Deffand wrote to Horace Walpole that Burke had been so well received, that he ought to leave France excellently pleased with the country.

But it was not so.