rcibly impressed with respect
for his consummate prudence, his sound judgment in matters of public
policy, and his unswerving fidelity to the interests of both mother and
daughter. But at the same time it is difficult to avoid seeing that he was
too little inclined to make allowance for the youthful eagerness for
amusements which was natural to her age, and that at times he carried his
supervision into matters on which his statesman-like experience and
sagacity had hardly qualified him to form an opinion. He was proud of his
princess's beauty; and, considering himself in charge of her figure as
well as of her conduct, he had made himself very uneasy by the fancied
discovery that she was becoming crooked. He was sure that one shoulder was
growing higher than the other; he earnestly recommended stays, and was
very much displeased with her aunts for setting her against them, because
they were not fashionable in Paris. And when the horse exercise was
proposed, he set his face against it; he wrote to Maria Teresa, who agreed
with him in thinking it ruinous to the complexion, injurious to the shape,
and not to be safely indulged in under thirty years of age[8]; and, lest
distance should weaken the authority of the empress, he enlisted Madame de
Noailles and Choiseul on his side, and Choiseul persuaded the king that it
was a very objectionable pastime for a young bride.

There was not as yet the slightest prospect of the dauphiness becoming a
mother (a circumstance which was, in fact, the most serious of her
vexations, and that which lasted longest): but the king on this point
agreed with his minister, and after some discussion a compromise was hit
upon, and it was decided that she might ride a donkey. The whole country
was immediately ransacked for a stud of quiet donkeys.[9] In September the
court moved to Compiegne, and day after day, while the king and the
dauphin were shooting in one part of the woods, on the other side a
cavalcade of donkey-riders, the aunts and the king's brothers all swelling
Marie Antoinette's train, trotted up and down the glades, and sought out
shady spots for rural luncheons out-of-doors; and, though even this
pastime was occasionally found liable to as much danger as an expedition
on nobler steeds, the merry dauphiness contrived to extract amusement for
herself and her followers from her very disasters. It was long a standing
joke that on one occasion, when her donkey and herself came down in a soft