her to conceal her feelings, but she openly reproached Herod with his barbarous commands. His mother and his sister Salome used every means to irritate him against his wife, and suborned the Icing's cup-bearer to accuse Mariamne of an attempt to poison her husband; she was also accused of infidelity to him. Herod, furious at these charges, had her tried for the attempt to poison him, and she was condemned and executed. Marianne met death with the greatest firmness, without even changing colour; but after her execution, which took place about B.C. 28, Herod's remorse and grief were so great, that he became for a time insane.
MARIE ANTOINETTE JOSEPHE JEANNE DE LORRAINE,
Archduchess of Austria and Queen of France, daughter of the Emperor Francis the First and Maria Theresa, was born at Vienna, November 2nd., 1755. She was carefully educated, and possessed an uncommon share of grace and beauty. Her hand was demanded by Louis the Fifteenth for his grandson, the dauphin, afterwards Louis the Sixteenth, to whom she was married in 1770, before she had attained her fifteenth year. A lamentable accident, which occurred during the festivities given by the city of Paris to celebrate the marriage, was looked upon as a sinister omen, which subsequent events having confirmed, has acquired undue importance. Owing to the injudicious arrangements for the exhibition of fireworks, a great number of people were thrown down and trodden to death, more than three hundred persons having been killed or wounded. In 1774 Louis the Sixteenth ascended the throne; in 1778 the queen became, for the first time, a mother. During the first years of her residence in France, Marie Antoinette was the idol of the people. After the birth of her second sou, when, according to usage, she went to church to return thanks, the populace wished to remove the horses from her carriage, and draw her through the streets; and when she alighted and walked, to gratify them, they flung themselves upon their knees, and rent the air with acclamations. Four years from this period, all was changed. The acts of kindness and benevolence which the queen had exhibited; her grace, beauty, and claims upon the nation as a woman and a foreigner, were all forgotten. Circumstances remote in their origin had brought about, in France, a state of feeling fast ripening to a fearful issue. The queen could no longer do with impunity what had been done by her predecessors. The extravagance and thoughtlessness of youth, and a neglect of the strict formality of court etiquette, injured her reputation. She became a mark for censure, and finally an object of hatred to the people, who accused her of the most improbable crimes. An extraordinary occurrence added fuel to the flame of calumny. The Countess de la Motte, a clever but corrupt woman, by a vile intrigue in which she made the Cardinal de Rohan her tool, purchased, in the queen's name, a magnificent diamond necklace, valued at an enormous sum. She imposed upon the cardinal by a feigned correspondence with the queen, and forged her signature to certain bills; obtained possession of the necklace, and sold it in England. The plot exploded. The queen, indignant at the cardinal, demanded a public investigation. The affair produced the greatest scandal throughout France, connecting as it did the name of the queen with such disgraceful proceedings; and though obviously the victim of an intrigue, she received as much censure as if she had been guilty. Accused of
