any mode of paying
attention to the king, and of anticipating his wishes as far as I can. I
hope that he is pleased with me. It is my duty to please him, my duty and
also my glory, if by such means I can contribute to maintain the alliance
of the two houses....[3]"

The empress was but half pacified about the riding and hunting. She owned
that, if both the king and the dauphin approved of it, she had nothing
more to say, though she still blamed the dauphiness for forgetting a
promise which she understood to have been made to herself. At the same
time, no language could be kinder than that in which she asked "whether
her daughter could believe that she would wish to deprive her of so
innocent a pleasure, she who would give her very life to procure her one,
if she were not apprehensive of mischievous consequences;" her
apprehensions being solely dictated by her anxiety to see her daughter
bear an heir to the throne. But she would by no means admit her excuses
for giving the Hungarian prince a cold reception. "How," she said, "could
she forget that her little Antoinette, when not above twelve or thirteen
years old, knew how to receive people publicly, and say something polite
and gracious to every one, and how could she suppose that the same
daughter, now that she was dauphiness, could feel embarrassment?
Embarrassment was a mere chimera."

But the truth was that it was not a mere chimera. Mercy had more than once
deplored, as one among the mischievous effects of Madame Adelaide's
constant interference and domineering influence, that it had bred in Marie
Antoinette a timidity which was wholly foreign to her nature. And indeed
it was hardly possible for one still so young to be aware that she was
surrounded by unfriendly intriguers and spies, and to preserve that
uniform presence of mind which her rank and position made so desirable for
her, and which was in truth so natural to her that she at once recovered
it the moment that her circumstances changed.

And a probability of an early change was already apparent. During the last
months of 1772 there was a general idea that the king's health and mental
faculties were both giving away; and all the different parties about
Versailles began to show their sense of her approaching authority. It was
remarked that both the ministers and the mistress had become very guarded
in their language, and in their behavior to her and her husband. The Count
de Provence took a curious way of