thed; it was the soul of her existence. The slightest
infringement of the rules of etiquette annoyed her almost beyond
endurance. "One day," says Madame Campan, "I unintentionally threw the
poor lady into a terrible agony. The queen was receiving, I know not
whom--some persons just presented, I believe. The ladies of the
bed-chamber were behind the queen. I was near the throne, with the two
ladies on duty. All was right; at least I thought so. Suddenly I
perceived the eyes of Madame de Noailles fixed on mine. She made a sign
with her head, and then raised her eyebrows to the top of her forehead,
lowered them, raised them again, and then began to make little signs
with her hand. From all this pantomime, I could easily perceive that
something was not as it should be; and as I looked about on all sides
to find out what it was, the agitation of the countess kept increasing.
Maria Antoinette, who perceived all this, looked at me with a smile. I
found means to approach her, and she said to me, in a whisper, 'Let down
your lappets, or the countess will expire.' All this bustle rose from
two unlucky pins, which fastened up my lappets, while the etiquette of
costume said _lappets hanging down_."

One can easily imagine the contempt with which Maria, reared in the
freedom of the Austrian court, would regard these punctilios. She did
not refrain from treating them with good-natured but unsparing ridicule,
and thus she often deeply offended those stiff elderly ladies, who
regarded these trifles, which they had been studying all their lives,
with almost religious awe. She gave Madame de Noailles the nickname of
Madame Etiquette, to the great merriment of some of the courtiers and
the great indignation of others. The more grave and stately matrons were
greatly shocked by these indiscretions on the part of the mirth-loving
queen.

On one occasion, when a number of noble ladies were presented to Maria,
the ludicrous appearance of the venerable dowagers, with their little
black bonnets with great wings, and the entire of their grotesque dress
and evolutions, appealed so impressively to Maria's sense of the
ridiculous, that she, with the utmost difficulty, refrained from open
laughter. But when a young marchioness, full of fun and frolic, whose
office required that she should continue standing behind the queen,
being tired of the ceremony, seated herself upon the floor, and,
concealed behind the fence of the enormous hoops of the attend