Note 3 — THE PRISONER OF CHILLON
Reading edition
{13} Ludovico Sforza, and others.—The same is asserted of Marie Antoinette's, the wife of Louis the Sixteenth, though not in quite so short a period. Grief is said to have the same effect; to such, and not to fear, this change in hers was to be attributed.
[It has been said that the Queen's hair turned grey during the return from Varennes to Paris; but Carlyle (French Revolution, 1839, i. 182) notes that as early as May 4, 1789, on the occasion of the assembly of the States-General, "Her hair is already grey with many cares and crosses."
Compare "Thy father's beard is turned white with the news" (Shakespeare, I Henry IV., act ii. sc. 4, line 345); and—
"For deadly fear can time outgo, And blanch at once the hair."
Marmion, Canto I. stanza xxviii. lines 19, 20.]