Here close upon her forever
the doors of home; and here open to her the doors of history, which too
often admits its guests only to immolate them in splendid chambers, as
it immolated her. From this time we miss the pure womanliness of her
character, in which she is so lovely, and see her imperial beauty and
her regal intellect in all their autocratic power, until that time when
her husband, home, child, power, and hope were all forever gone, and her
womanhood again shone out, like a mellow and beauteous sunset, when
life's day drew near its close.
Nothing had become more certain than that the monarchy would undergo
radical constitutional changes. Of this every one was conscious except
the king and the nobility. They were struck with that blindness which
foreruns ruin. They constituted one party, and this party was the common
object of attack by two political and revolutionary divisions, the
Girondists and the Jacobins. The Gironde wished reform, a constitution,
a monarchy, but one limited and constitutional, equality in taxes. They
did not wish to destroy utterly, but they were willing to dislocate and
then readjust, the machinery of state. The Jacobins at first said much,
but proposed little. They aspired to the abolition of the throne and the
establishment of a republic; they wished to overthrow the altar; they
promised, vaguely, to wreak upon the rich and titled full revenge for
the wrongs of the poor and lowly. Every political and social dream which
had found expression for twenty years, every skeptical attack upon
things ancient and holy, found in this body of men a party and an
exponent.
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