ith loyal and congratulatory addresses; at the Hotel-Dieu by the
prioress with a company of nuns; on the Quai Conti by the Provost of the
Mint with his officers; before the college bearing the name of its
founder, Louis le Grand, the Rector of the University, at the head of his
students, greeted them in a Latin speech, at the close of which he secured
the re-doubling of the acclamations of the pupils by promising them a
holiday. Not that the cheers required any increase. The citizens in their
ecstasy did not even think their voices sufficient. As the royal couple
moved slowly through the gardens of the Tuileries arm-in-arm, every hand
was employed in clapping, hats were thrown up, and every token of joy
which enthusiasm ever devised was displayed to the equally delighted
visitors. "Good heavens, what a crowd!" said Marie Antoinette to De
Brissac, who had some difficulty in keeping his place at her side.
"Madame," said the old warrior, as courtly as he was valiant, "if I may
say so without offending my lord the dauphin, they are all so many
lovers." When they had made the circuit of the garden and returned to the
palace, the most curious part of the day's ceremonies awaited them. A
banqueting-table was arranged for six hundred guests, and those guests
were not the nobles of the nation, nor the clergy, nor the must renowned
warriors, nor the municipal officers, but the fish-women of the city
market. A custom so old that its origin can not be traced had established
the right of these dames to bear an especial part in such festivities. In
the course of the morning they had made their future queen free of their
market, with an offering of fruits and flowers. And now, as, according to
a singular usage of the court, no male subject was ever allowed to sit at
table with a queen or dauphiness of France, the dinner party over which
the youthful pair, sitting side by side, presided, consisted wholly of
these dames whose profession is not generally considered as imparting any
great refinement to the manners, and who, before the close of the
entertainment, showed, in more cases than one, that they had imported some
of the notions and fashions of their more ordinary places of resort into
the royal palace.

It was characteristic of Marie Antoinette that, in her description of the
day to her mother, she had dwelt with special emphasis on the gracious
deportment of her husband. It was equally natural for Mercy to assure the
empress[2] th