s a misfortune, and always continued upon terms of
friendship with that lady. The education of Marie Antoinette was
certainly very much neglected. With the exception of the Italian
language, all that related to belles lettres, and particularly to history,
even that of her own country, was almost entirely unknown to her. This
was soon found out at the Court of France, and thence arose the generally
received opinion that she was deficient in sense. It will be seen in the
course of these "Memoirs" whether that opinion was well or ill founded.
The public prints, however, teemed with assertions of the superior talents
of Maria Theresa's children. They often noticed the answers which the
young Princesses gave in Latin to the harangues addressed to them; they
uttered them, it is true, but without understanding them; they knew not a
single word of that language.

Mention was one day made to the Queen of a drawing made by her, and
presented by the Empress to M. Gerard, chief clerk of Foreign Affairs, on
the occasion of his going to Vienna to draw up the articles for her
marriage-contract. "I should blush," said she, "if that proof of the
quackery of my education were shown to me. I do not believe that I ever
put a pencil to that drawing." However, what had been taught her she knew
perfectly well. Her facility of learning was inconceivable, and if all
her teachers had been as well informed and as faithful to their duty as
the Abbe Metastasio, who taught her Italian, she would have attained as
great a superiority in the other branches of her education. The Queen
spoke that language with grace and ease, and translated the most difficult
poets. She did not write French correctly, but she spoke it with the
greatest fluency, and even affected to say that she had lost German. In
fact she attempted in 1787 to learn her mother-tongue, and took lessons
assiduously for six weeks; she was obliged to relinquish them, finding all
the difficulties which a Frenchwoman, who should take up the study too
late, would have to encounter. In the same manner she gave up English,
which I had taught her for some time, and in which she had made rapid
progress. Music was the accomplishment in which the Queen most delighted.
She did not play well on any instrument, but she had become able to read
at sight like a first-rate professor. She attained this degree of
perfection in France, this branch of her education having been neglected
at Vienna