its complicated mazes.

Judgment and prudence were not the qualities most naturally to be expected
in a young princess not yet fifteen years old. The best prospect which
Marie Antoinette had of surmounting the numerous and varied difficulties
which beset her lay in the affection which she speedily conceived for her
husband, and in the sincerity, we can hardly say warmth, with which he
returned her love. Maria Teresa had bespoken his tenderness for her in a
letter which she wrote to him on the day on which her daughter left
Vienna, and which has often been quoted as a composition worthy of her
alike as a mother and as a Christian sovereign; and as admirably
calculated to impress the heart of her new son-in-law by claiming his
attachment for his bride, on the ground of the pains which she had taken
to make her worthy of her fortune.

"Your bride, my dear dauphin, has just left me. I do hope that she will
cause your happiness. I have brought her up with the design that she
should do so, because I have for some time forseen that she would share
your destiny.

"I have inspired her with an eager desire to do her duty to you, with a
tender attachment to your person, with a resolution to be attentive to
think and do every thing which may please you. I have also been most
careful to enjoin her a tender devotion toward the Master of all
Sovereigns, being thoroughly persuaded that we are but badly providing for
the welfare of the nations which are intrusted to us when we fail in our
duty to Him who breaks sceptres and overthrows thrones according to his
pleasure.

"I say, then, to you, my dear dauphin, as I say to my daughter: 'Cultivate
your duties toward God. Seek to cause the happiness of the people over
whom you will reign (it will be too soon, come when it may). Love the
king, your grandfather; be humane like him; be always accessible to the
unfortunate. If you behave in this manner, it is impossible that happiness
can fail to be your lot.' My daughter will love you, I am certain, because
I know her. But the more that I answer to you for her affection, and for
her anxiety to please you, the more earnestly do I entreat you to vow to
her the most sincere attachment.

"Farewell, my dear dauphin. May you be happy. I am bathed in tears.[2]"

The dauphin did not falsify the hopes thus expressed by the Empress-queen.
But his was not the character to afford his wife either the advice or
support which she needed, while, strange