When the reaction awakened by these horrors commenced in the public mind, the rigor of her captivity was somewhat abated. The death of her brother roused in her behalf, as the only remaining child of the wrecked and ruined family, such a feeling of sympathy, that the Assembly consented to regard her as a prisoner of war, and to exchange her with the Austrian government for four French officers whom they held as prisoners. Maria Theresa was led, pale, pensive, heart-broken, hopeless, from her cell, and placed in the hands of the relatives of her mother. But her griefs had been so deep, her bereavements so utter and heart-rending, that this change seemed to her only a mitigation of misery, and not an accession of joy. She was informed of the death of her mother and her aunt, and, weeping over her desolation, she emerged from her prison cell and entered the carriage to return to the palaces of Austria, where her unhappy mother had passed the hours of her childhood. As she rode along through the green fields and looked out upon the blue sky, through which the summer's sun was shedding its beams--as she felt the pure air, from which she had so long been excluded, fanning her cheeks, and realized that she was safe from insults and once more free, anguish gave place to a calm and settled melancholy. She arrived in Vienna. Love and admiration encircled her. Every heart vied in endeavors to lavish soothing words and delicate attentions upon this stricken child of grief. She buried her face in the bosoms of those thus soliciting her love, her eyes were flooded with tears, and she sobbed with almost a bursting heart. After her arrival in Vienna, one full year passed away before a smile could ever be won to visit her cheek. Woes such as she had endured pass not away like the mists of the morning. The hideous dream haunted her by day and by night. The headless trunks of her father, her mother, and her aunt were ever before her eyes. Her beloved brother, suffering and dying upon a beggar's bed, was ever present in her dreams while reposing under the imperial canopy of the Austrian kings. The past had been so long and so awful that it seemed an ever-living reality. The sudden change she could hardly credit but as the delirium of a dream.