Burke as "just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in, glittering like the morning star, full of life and splendour and joy."
It is curious to remember that these two women, born in such opposite ranks—the one on a throne, the other in a workshop—destined one day to play such opposite parts in the approaching political tragedy, both destined to perish amid the clash of warring social forces—were for a short time at this, the spring-time of their lives, lodged in the same palace, where Marie Antoinette reigned in the lustre of royalty, while Marie Jeanne looked on critically from the back-stairs. It gives one some food for reflection to compare these two natures, and to observe that the daughter of a long line of sovereigns was a mere giddy, frivolous, thoughtless school-girl, while the daughter of the enameller had matured her mind by long hours of study and meditation, and, even at this early age, showed an irrepressible interest in public affairs, whenever they came within her ken. If faculty demand function, surely one of these two girls was by nature anointed Queen of France—and that one was not Marie Antoinette. But from the round men stuck into three-cornered holes, and three-cornered men jammed into round holes, springs half the mischief of the world. Marie Jeanne might have made an incomparable ruler; Marie Antoinette's cravings for pleasure might have remained the harmless vagaries of a beautiful woman. But these vagaries, in the position to which circumstances had condemned her, assumed the proportions of a crime. So far from any yearning of compassion for Kaffirs or Caribbeans, what cared Marie Antoinette for the French people, who, ground
