Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 March 1898 — A Spy in a Royal Court. [ARTICLE]

A Spy in a Royal Court.

“Marie Antoinette as Dauphine” • is the title of an article In the Century, by Miss Anna L. Bicknell. Miss Bicknell says: Marla Theresa had a strong desire to give suitable guidance to her daughter. She consequently arranged with the German ambassador, Comte de Merey-Argenteau, a secret correspondence, by which she was to be told of everything concerning the young Dauphine. Mercy kept a journal, which was regularly sent to the Empress, in which the most minute details of the daily life of the Princess are jotted down; every act, every Incautious word, is registered. Being in utter ignorance of this agreement, Marie Antoinette treated Mercy with full confidence, often expressing astonishment at the Information possessed by the Empress concerning her, but never dreaming that Mercy, whom she entirely trusted, was in fact an accredited spy through whom everything was revealed. There is, it must be owned, something revolting in the part played by Mercy. True, the revelations were made only to her mother; but she was Empress of Germany, and while Marie Antoinette ought henceforward to have been devoted to t.he Interests of France, the country over which her husband was to reign, t.he one idea of Marla Theresa was the prosperity and welfare of her own empire.