equently only answered him with a
shrug of the shoulders. He therefore determined on writing to Louis XVI.,
and intimating that he owed his situation at Court solely to the
confidence with which the late King had honoured him; and that as habits
contracted during the Queen's education placed him continually in the
closest intimacy with her, he could not enjoy the honour of remaining near
her Majesty without the King's consent. Louis XVI. sent back his letter,
after writing upon it these words: "I approve the Abbe de Vermond
continuing in his office about the Queen."

CHAPTER V.

At the period of his grandfather's death, Louis XVI. began to be
exceedingly attached to the Queen. The first period of so deep a mourning
not admitting of indulgence in the diversion of hunting, he proposed to
her walks in the gardens of Choisy; they went out like husband and wife,
the young King giving his arm to the Queen, and accompanied by a very
small suite. The influence of this example had such an effect upon the
courtiers that the next day several couples, who had long, and for good
reasons, been disunited, were seen walking upon the terrace with the same
apparent conjugal intimacy. Thus they spent whole hours, braving the
intolerable wearisomeness of their protracted tete-a-tetes, out of mere
obsequious imitation.

The devotion of Mesdames to the King their father throughout his dreadful
malady had produced that effect upon their health which was generally
apprehended. On the fourth day after their arrival at Choisy they were
attacked by pains in the head and chest, which left no doubt as to the
danger of their situation. It became necessary instantly to send away the
young royal family; and the Chateau de la Muette, in the Bois de Boulogne,
was selected for their reception. Their arrival at that residence, which
was very near Paris, drew so great a concourse of people into its
neighbourhood, that even at daybreak the crowd had begun to assemble round
the gates. Shouts of "Vive le Roi!" were scarcely interrupted for a
moment between six o'clock in the morning and sunset. The unpopularity the
late King, had drawn upon himself during his latter years, and the hopes
to which a new reign gives birth, occasioned these transports of joy.

A fashionable jeweller made a fortune by the sale of mourning snuff-boxes,
whereon the portrait of the young Queen, in a black frame of shagreen,
gave rise to the pun: "Consolation in c