MAMMA QUEEN.
"Every thing passes over, every thing has an end; one must only have courage and think of that," said Marie Antoinette, with a gentle smile, as on the morning after her arrival in Paris, she had risen from her bed and drunk her chocolate in the improvised sitting-room. "Here we are installed in the Tuileries, and have slept, while we yesterday were thinking we were lost, and that only death could give us rest and peace again."
"It was a fearful day," said Madame de Campan, with a sigh, "but your majesty went through it like a heroine."
"Ah, Campan," said the queen, sadly, "I have not the ambition to want to be a heroine, and I should be very thankful if it were allowed me from this time on to be a wife and mother, if it is no longer allowed me to be a queen."
At this instant the door opened; the little dauphin, followed by his teacher, the Abbe Davout, ran in and flew with extended arms to Marie Antoinette.
"Oh, mamma queen!" cried he, with winning voice, "let us go back again to our beautiful palace; it is dreadful here in this great, dark house."
"Hush, my child, hush!" said the queen, pressing the boy close to her. "You must not say so; you must accustom yourself to be contented everywhere."
"Mamma queen," whispered the child, tenderly nestling close to his mother, "it is true it is dreadful here, but I will always say it so low that nobody except you can hear. But tell me, who owns this hateful house? And why do we want to stay here, when we have such a fine palace and a beautiful garden in Versailles?"
"My son," answered the queen with a sigh, "this house belongs to us, and it is a beautiful and famous palace. You ought not to say that it does not please you, for your renowned great-grandfather, the great Louis XIV., lived here, and made this palace celebrated all over Europe."
"Yet I wish that we were away from here," whispered the dauphin, casting his large blue eyes with a prolonged and timid glance through the wide, desolate room, which was decorated sparingly with old-fashioned, faded furniture.