misrepresented to him, though he disappointed their malice by regarding
such things as childish ebullitions natural to a girl of her age, and was
far more inclined to humor than to reprove her. With the same object, they
tried to induce her to interfere in appointments in which she had no
concern; but she remembered her mother's advice, and on this point kept
steadily in the path which that affectionate adviser had marked out for
her. They even ventured to make disparaging observations on her manners,
as inexperienced and unformed, to the dauphin himself, till he silenced
them by the warmth of his praises alike of her beauty and of her
disposition; and they were so afraid of any addition to her popularity
with the nation at large, that, when the city of Paris and the states of
Languedoc presented her with an address, they recommended her to make no
reply, assuring her that on similar occasions they themselves had never
given any answers. Luckily, she had a better adviser, who on this occasion
was the Abbe de Vermond. He told her truly that in this matter the conduct
which the older princesses had pursued was a warning, not a pattern: that
they had made all France discontented; and at his suggestion Marie
Antoinette gave to each address "an answer full of graciousness, with
which the public was enchanted."

Thus in the first year of her marriage, by her kindness of heart, guided
by the advice of Mercy and the abbe, to which she listened with the
greatest docility, she had won general affection, and had made no enemies
but those whose enmity was an honor. She was, as she wrote to her mother,
perfectly happy, though, had she not wished to make the best of matters,
she was not, in fact, wholly free from disappointments and vexations, some
of which continued for years to cause her uneasiness and anxiety, though
others were comparatively trivial or temporary, while one was of an almost
comical nature.

She had conceived a great desire to learn to ride. Her mother had been a
great horsewoman; and, as the dauphin, like the king, was passionately
addicted to hunting, which hitherto she had only witnessed from a
carriage, Marie Antoinette not unnaturally desired to be mistress of an
accomplishment which would enable her to give him more of her
companionship. Unluckily Mercy disapproved of the idea. It is impossible
to read his correspondence with the empress, and in subsequent years with
Marie Antoinette herself, without being fo