But if Louis XVI was awkward and unprepossessing he had the kindest manners in the world, and when Mr. Jefferson presented Mr. Calvert to His Majesty as “son jeune et bien-aime secretaire, qui avait servi dans la guerre de l’independence sous le drapeau de la France, commande par Monsieur de Lafayette, pour qu’il avait un respect le plus profond et une amitie la plus vive,” the young man was quite overcome by the graciousness of his reception and retained for the rest of his life a very lively impression of the King’s kind treatment of him.  He never had speech with that unhappy, but well-intentioned, ruler but once afterward, and very possibly ’twas as much the memory of the courtesy shown him as the wish to see justice done and royalty in distress succored that made him, on the occasion of his second interview, offer himself so ardently in the dangerous service of the King.

Perhaps it was the presence at his side of his beautiful consort that accentuated all of Louis’s awkwardness.  As Mr. Calvert bowed low before the Queen, Marie Antoinette, he thought to himself that surely there was no other princess in all Europe to compare with her, and but one beauty.  Certain it was that she bore herself with a pride of race, a majesty, a divine grace that were peerless.  It must have been some such queen as this who first inspired the artists with the idea of representing the princes of this earth as Olympic deities, for assuredly no goddess was ever more beautiful.  Though care and grief and humiliation had already touched her, though there were fine lines around the proudly curving lips and an anxious shadow in the large eyes, her complexion was still transcendently brilliant, her figure still youthful and marvellously graceful, and there was that in her carriage and glance that attracted all eyes.  She was dressed in a silver gauze embroidered in laurier roses so cunningly wrought that they looked as if fresh plucked and scattered over the lacy fabric.  Her hair, which was worn simply—­she had set the fashion for less extravagance in the style of head-dress—­was piled up in lightly powdered coils, ornamented only with a feather and a star of brilliants.

“Ainsi, Monsieur, vous connaissez notre cher de Lafayette” (she hated and feared him) “et tout jeune que vous etes vous avez deja vu la guerre—­la mort, la victorie, et la deroute!” She spoke with a certain sadness, and Calvert, bowing low again, and speaking only indifferent French in his agitation, told her that under Lafayette it had been “la mort et la victoire,” but never defeat.

She glanced around the assemblage.  “Monsieur de Lafayette is not come to-night,” she said, coldly, to the young man, and then, with a sudden accession of interest, she went on:  “We heard much of that America of yours from him when he returned from your war” (’twas she herself who had obtained his forgiveness from the King and a command for him in the Roi Dragons).  “I think he loves it and your General Washington better than he does his own King and country,” she said, smiling a little bitterly.  “Is it, then, so beautiful a country?”