"
She must have been a lovely vision. The Emperor thought so, for
(according to the Queen) forgetting that it is not "good form" for a man
to admire or compliment his own wife, he exclaimed, as she appeared:
"_Comme tu es belle! _" ("How beautiful you are!")
I am afraid he was not always so polite. During her first season at the
Tuileries, which she called "a beautiful prison," and which is now as
much a thing of the past as the Bastile, she often in her gay, impulsive
way offended against the stern laws of Court etiquette, and was reproved
for a lack of dignity. Once at a reception she suddenly perceived a
little way down the line an old school-friend, and, hurrying forward,
kissed her affectionately. It was nice for the young lady, but the
Emperor frowned and said, in that cold marital tone which cuts like an
east wind: "Madame, you forget that you are the Empress!"
In a letter from the Prince to his uncle Leopold I find this suggestive
sentence in reference to the ball at Versailles: "Victoria made her
toilette in Marie Antoinette's boudoir." It would almost seem the English
Queen might have feared to see in her dressing-glass a vision of the
French Queen's proud young head wearing a diadem as brilliant as her own,
or perhaps that cruel crown of silver--her terror-whitened hair.
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