the moles busy in the earth secretly to undermine her.  Nay, had not Louis XV. died at the moment he did, there is scarcely a doubt, from the number and the quality of the hostile influences working on the credulity of the young Dauphin, that Marie Antoinette would have been very harshly dealt with,—­even the more so from the partiality of the dotard who believed himself to be reigning.  But she has been preserved from her enemies to become their sovereign; and if her crowned brow has erewhile been stung by thorns in its coronal, let me not despair of their being hereafter smothered in yet unblown roses.”

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: 

Embonpoint of the French Princesses
Few individuals except Princesses do with parade and publicity
Frailty in the ambitious, through which the artful can act
Laughed at qualities she could not comprehend
Mind well stored against human casualties
Policy, in sovereigns, is paramount to every other
Quiet work of ruin by whispers and detraction
Ridicule, than which no weapon is more false or deadly
Salique Laws
Thank Heaven, I am out of harness
Traducing virtues the slanderers never possessed
Underrated what she could not imitate
Where the knout is the logician