yet she
dared not sit down to any instrument in the presence of others. When she
first arrived at Versailles as the bride of the heir to the throne of
France, she was so deeply mortified at this defect in her education,
that she immediately employed a teacher to give her lessons secretly for
three months. During this time she applied herself to her task with the
utmost assiduity, and at the end of the time gave surprising proof of
the skill she had so rapidly attained. Upon all the subjects of history,
science, and general literature, the princess was left entirely
uninformed. The activity and energy of her mind only led her the more
poignantly to feel the mortification to which this ignorance often
exposed her. When surrounded by the splendors of royalty, she frequently
retired to weep over deficiencies which it was too late to repair. The
wits of Paris seized upon these occasional developments of the want of
mental culture as the indication of a weak mind, and the daughter of
Maria Theresa, the descendant of the Caesars, was the butt, in saloon and
cafe, of merriment and song. Maria was beautiful and graceful, and
winning in all her ways. But this imperfect education, exposing her to
contempt and ridicule in the society of intellectual men and women, was
not among the unimportant elements which conducted to her own ruin, to
the overthrow of the French throne, and to that deluge of blood which
for many years rolled its billows incarnadine over Europe.

Maria Theresa had sent to Paris for two teachers of French to instruct
her daughter in the literature of that country over which she was
destined to reign. From that pleasure-loving metropolis two play actors
were sent to take charge of her education, one of whom was a man of
notoriously dissolute character. As the connection between Maria
Antoinette and Louis, the heir apparent to the throne of France, was
already contemplated, some solicitude was felt by members of the court
of Versailles in reference to the impropriety of this selection, and the
French embassador at Vienna was requested to urge the empress to dismiss
the obnoxious teachers, and make a different choice. She immediately
complied with the request, and sent to the Duke de Choiseul, the
minister of state of Louis XV., to send a preceptor such as would be
acceptable to the court of Versailles. After no little difficulty in
finding one in whom all parties could unite, the Abbe de Vermond was
selected, a vai