Marie Antoinette walked rapidly toward the chateau, revolving the subject of Mirabeau’s letter in her mind. The advice he gave was bitter as wormwood to her; and had she stood first in power, it would have been trampled under her feet. But now she felt that all its gall would be forced upon her. In his fear of bloodshed, Louis was sometimes almost pusillanimous. His kind heart was filled with infinite pity and love of the people, who were hunting him down like bloodhounds, and with his own hands he sometimes tore away those barriers of dignity which should have been his defence, and trusted to the magnanimity of a people who could not comprehend the word. Would he submit to the humiliation prepared for him? In her heart of hearts the queen knew that he would; not that he was a coward—no braver man ever lived; but because he really wished to act rightly, and was willing to make great sacrifices in atonement for the wrongs his ancestors had heaped upon a people who had at last been driven frantic by oppression. She remembered, with a pang of shame, that in a contest with the people Louis had always been forced to yield, and that yielding only increased the audacity of their demands. This thought wounded Marie Antoinette like a poisoned sword. The blood burned hotly in her cheeks. Oh! if she only had the power to act out the imperial thoughts within her! The monarchy of France might fall, but it would be with her husband and herself at the head of a struggling army, and amid the clash of unsheathed swords, as her mother had fought when she took her child in her arms and appealed to her Hungarian subjects on the heights of Presburg. But she was only a woman, and must eat her heart out with vain wishes. Her mother wore an imperial diadem, while her head ached under a crown which only gave the power of suffering. On entering the chateau, she went directly to the cabinet of the king—this was his work-shop, where he filed iron and made locks with the assiduity of a blacksmith’s apprentice, for in every palace he inhabited, a room of this kind was fitted up as a refuge from the perils and tumults that tore his kingdom like the first heave of an earthquake. Louis was at the forge, with one hand on the bellows, in the other he held a spike of iron in a blast of burning coals, where it was reaching a white heat. The queen laid her hand on his arm. Her face was pale, and her lips trembled. Was this work for a monarch whose power was threatened? How calm and serene he seemed toiling there at his useless locks. If they were only swords, now! “Louis, leave this heat and smoke awhile—a message has come from Paris.” The king heaved a deep sigh, dropped his hand from the bellows, and left the red-hot spike to cool in the embers in which it was buried. Then he shook the black dust from his hands, and drenched them in a silver bowl that stood ready, from which they came out delicately white, and heavy with jewels.