Louis XV.

was dead, and two children, with the light-heartedness of youth and inexperience, stepped upon the throne which was to be a scaffold--Louis XVI., only twenty, and Marie Antoinette, his wife, nineteen.

He, amiable, kind, full of generous intentions; she, beautiful, simple, child-like, and lovely.

Instead of a debauched old king with depraved surroundings, here were a prince and princess out of a fairy tale.

The air was filled with indefinite promise of a new era for mankind to be inaugurated by this amiable young king, whose kindness of heart shone forth in his first speech, "We will have no more loans, no credit, no fresh burdens on the people;" then, leaving his ministers to devise ways of paying the enormous salaries of officials out of an empty treasury, and to arrange the financial details of his benevolent scheme of government, he proceeded with his gay and brilliant young wife to Rheims, there to be crowned with a magnificence undreamed of by Louis XIV.
In the midst of these rejoicings over the new reign, and of speculative dreams of universal freedom, there was wafted across the Atlantic news of a handful of patriots arrayed against the tyranny of the British Crown.