Our readers have seen Marie Antoinette years ago, and only for a moment—the girlish, beautiful, and lovely Dauphiness, burdened with no care heavier than that imposed by court etiquette, and anxious only about the day’s amusement. They see her again escaping from the anxieties that beset St. Cloud and Versailles, striving to bring back the light-hearted gayeties of her youth in _La Petite Trianon_, which of all places on earth seemed most likely to accomplish that object. On the day that Marguerite presented herself at the gates of Versailles, Marie Antoinette was making one of her rustic sojourns at the little palace, while the king, glad to escape from cares equally burdensome, had retreated into the private chamber, in which an anvil and a chest of tools promised him at least amusement equal to any she could hope for. It is true that matters of state called for royal attention; that the cries of a suffering and impatient people ought to have been heard, even among the click of locks and rasping of files; but it was the fault of this really good man, that he was always ready to put away troublesome cares, and permitted others to think for him, save where, with a stubborn sense of right, he would persist on a given point without understanding all its relations. Indeed, at this time the burdens of state were so heavy, that a greater man might have willingly laid them down, even for the primitive employment which Louis loved so well. That day Louis the Sixteenth was alone in his work-shop. A furnace was all aglow in the chimney, and a bench across one of the windows, was scattered over with tools. To this bench a vise was attached, and a heavy man, somewhat awkward in his movements, was hard at work there. His velvet coat, heavy with gold-lace and embroidery, hung across the back of a chair, and a diamond star on the breast shot out gorgeous rays of light, whenever a fitful flame from the furnace flashed up and quivered over it.