Marie Antoinette by Hilaire Belloc — Read

IT was no longer night; it was near day, the brightening air smelt of morning. The links of the harness-chains clattered a little as the relay horses were hacked against the pole of the big carriage. Fersen sauntered to the carriage window of that side upon which the Queen sat. He called out loudly her supposed mistress's assumed name, "Madame Korff," saluted her and turned to go on his lonely cross-country ride to Bourget and the Brussels road, by which he also purposed to fly. But, even as he turned, they say that she held his hand a moment and slipped upon his finger a ring. It was a ring of yellowish gold, broad and heavy, and having set in it an unknown stone. It is still preserved. Here is the story of the ring: -

It was again the 20th of June-the summer solstice that strikes, and strikes again and again, at the Bourbons and at the soldiers of the Bourbons. Nineteen years had passed since the dawn when Fersen had left the Queen at Bondy, seventeen since he had broken his heart at her death and had become silent. His campaigns had forbidden him to show prematurely the effect of advancing age; indeed, as men now count age, he had not reached the limits of decline-his fifty-fifth year was not accomplished. But emotions so inhuman and so deep had so torn him in his vigour that there had followed a complete and an austere silence of the soul: he had long seemed apart from living men. His face preserved a settled severity, his eyes a contempt for the final moment of danger: that moment had come.