nt: "I
trust," she wrote to her daughter in November, "that God will grant me the
comfort of knowing that you are safely delivered. Every thing else is a
matter of indifference. Boys will come after girls.[2]" And the same
feeling was shared by the Parisians in general, and embodied by M. Imbert,
a courtly poet, whose odes were greatly in vogue in the fashionable
circles, in an epigram which was set to music and sung in the theatres.

"Pour toi, France, un dauphin doit naitre,
Une Princesse vient pour en etre temoin,
Sitot qu'on voit une grace paraitre,
Croyez que l'amour n'est pas loin.[3]"

Marie Antoinette herself was scarcely disappointed at all. When the
attendants brought her her babe, she pressed it to her bosom. "Poor little
thing," said she, "you are not what was desired, but you shall not be the
less dear to me. A son would have belonged to the State; you will be my
own: you shall have all my care, you shall share my happiness and sweeten
my vexations.[4]"

The Count de Provence made no secret of his joy. He was still heir
presumptive to the throne. And, though no one shared his feelings on the
subject, for the next few weeks the whole kingdom, and especially the
capital, was absorbed in public rejoicings. Her own thankfullness was
displayed by Marie Antoinette in her usual way, by acts of benevolence.
She sent large sums of money to the prisons to release poor debtors; she
gave dowries to a hundred poor maidens; she applied to the chief officers
of both army and navy to recommend her veterans worthy of especial reward;
and to the curates of the metropolitan parishes to point out to her any
deserving objects of charity; and she also settled pensions on a number of
poor children who were born on the same day as the princess; one of whom,
who owed her education to this grateful and royal liberality, became
afterward known to every visitor of Paris as Madame Mars, the most
accomplished of comic actresses.[5]

One portion of the rejoicings was marked by a curious incident, in which
the same body whose right to a special place of honor at ceremonies
connected with the personal happiness of the royal family we have already
seen admitted--the ladies of the fish-market--again asserted their
pretensions with triumphant success. On Christmas-eve the theatres were
opened gratuitously, but these ladies, who, with their friends, the
coal-heavers, selected the most aristocratic theatre, La Comedie
Francaise