ption beneath to
testify that 12 and 4 made 16.

In the spring of 1775, Marie Antoinette received a great pleasure in a
visit from her younger brother, Maximilian. He was the only member of her
family whom she had seen in the five years that had elapsed since she left
Vienna. But, eagerly as she had looked forward to his visit, it did not
bring her unmixed satisfaction, being marred by the ill-breeding of the
princes of the blood, and still more by the approval of their conduct
displayed by the citizens of Paris, which seemed to afford a convincing
evidence of the small effect which even the queen's virtues and graces had
produced in softening the old national feeling of enmity to the house of
Austria. The archduke, who was still but a youth, did not assert his royal
rank while on his travels, but preserved such an _incognito_ as princes on
such occasions are wont to assume, and took the title of Count de Burgau.
The king's brothers, however, like the king himself, paid no regard to his
disguise, but visited him at the first instant of his arrival; but the
princes of the blood stood on their dignity, refused to acknowledge a rank
which was not publicly avowed, or to recollect that the visitor was a
foreigner and brother to their queen, and insisted on receiving the
attention of the first visit from him. The excitement which the question
caused in the palace, and the queen's indignation at the slight thus
offered, as she conceived, to her brother, were great. High words passed
between her and the Duc d'Orleans, the chief of the recusants, on the
subject; and one part of her remonstrance throws a curious additional
light on the strange distance which, as has been already pointed out, the
etiquette of the French court had established between the sovereigns and
the very highest of their subjects, even the nearest of their relations.
The duke had insisted on the _incognito_ as debarring Maximilian from all
claim to attention from a prince like himself whose rank was not
concealed. She urged that the king and his brothers had not regarded it in
that light. "The duke knew," she said, "that the king had treated
Maximilian as a brother; that he even invited him to sup in private with
himself and her, an honor to which no prince of the blood had ever
pretended." And, finally, warming with her subject, she told him that,
though her brother would be sorry not to make the acquaintance of the
princes of the blood, he had many other th