many. She stood upon the balcony
as the imposing ceremony was performed, and was the first to shout "Long
live the Emperor Francis I." Like Napoleon, she had become the creator
of kings. Austria was now in the greatest prosperity, and Maria Theresa
the most illustrious queen in Europe. Her renown filled the civilized
world. Through her whole reign, though she became the mother of sixteen
children, she devoted herself with untiring energy to the aggrandizement
of her empire. She united with Russia and Prussia in the infamous
partition of Poland, and in the banditti division of the spoil she
annexed to her own dominions twenty-seven thousand square miles and two
millions five hundred thousand inhabitants.

From this exhibition of the character of Maria Theresa, the mother of
Maria Antoinette, the reader will not be surprised that she should have
inspired her children with awe rather than with affection. In truth,
their imperial mother was so devoted to the cares of the empire, that
she was almost a stranger to her children, and could have known herself
but few of the emotions of maternal love. Her children were placed under
the care of nurses and governesses from their birth. Once in every eight
or ten days the queen appropriated an hour for the inspection of the
nursery and the apartments appropriated to the children; and she
performed this duty with the same fidelity with which she examined the
wards of the state hospitals and the military schools.

The following anecdote strikingly illustrates the austere and inflexible
character of the empress. The wife of her son Joseph died of the
confluent small-pox, and her body had been consigned to the vaults of
the royal tomb. Soon after this event, Josepha, one of the daughters of
the empress, was to be married to the King of Naples. The arrangements
had all been made for their approaching nuptials, and she was just on
the point of leaving Vienna to ascend the Neapolitan throne, when she
received an order from her mother that she must not depart from the
empire until she had, in accordance with the established custom,
descended into the tomb of her ancestors and offered her parting prayer.
The young princess, in an agony of consternation, received the cruel
requisition. Yet she dared not disobey her mother. She took her little
sister, Maria Antoinette, whom she loved most tenderly, upon her knee,
and, weeping bitterly, bade her farewell, saying that she was sure she
should ta