"It's the Tumbrel!" she murmured softly, and to her awed fancy the
graceful, slim-necked figures in flowered gowns drooped dreadfully
or stiffened in a last pathetic defiance as they rolled by.
"Courage, my sister, courage!" whispered the brave gentleman, while
the hoarse crowd shouted.... "_And I am Marie Antoinette!_" cried
Caroline in a burst of inspiration.
Dismounting, she walked proudly beside her wheel; scornfully she
held her head above that vulgar, cruel mob; the driver, poor in
illusions, drowsed stupidly in front of the baleful wagon-load he
knew not of, and clattered down the hill. To the ill-fated Queen,
who followed the curving line of the twelve-foot iron fence that had
sprung up at her side, ten minutes seemed but one. Lost in tragic
musing, she wandered swiftly on; had you, meeting her suddenly,
asked her where she was going, there is little doubt that she would
have told you she was escaping to her palace. And all at once, as
she halted a moment opposite a clear space in the shrubbery and
thickly planted trees that followed the inside line Of the iron
fence, she beheld the palace, high on a terraced knoll. It was of
clean-cut gray stone, rising into a square tower at one corner, from
which the flag drooped in bright folds of red and blue.
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