was this innocent sacrifice, overwhelmed with all the iniquities of thrones, and destined to be immolated as a chastisement for royalty.

Such was the king.
XII.
The queen seemed to be created by nature to contrast with the king, and to attract for ever the interest and pity of ages to one of those state dramas, which are incomplete unless the miseries and misfortunes of a woman mingle in them.

Daughter of Maria Theresa, she had commenced her life in the storms of the Austrian monarchy.

She was one of the children whom the Empress held by the hand when she presented herself as a supplicant before her faithful Hungarians, and the troops exclaimed, "We will die for our king, Maria Theresa." Her daughter, too, had the heart of a king.

On her arrival in France, her beauty had dazzled the whole kingdom,--a beauty then in all its splendour.