alf of which would have made its
appearance had they dined in private. The Queen looked significantly at
me, and I withdrew. In the evening she asked me why I had seemed so
astonished when she ordered me to add to her dinner, saying that I ought
instantly to have seen that she was giving the King of Sweden a lesson for
his presumption. I owned to her that the scene had appeared to me so much
in the bourgeois style, that I involuntarily thought of the cutlets on the
gridiron, and the omelette, which in families in humble circumstances
serve to piece out short commons. She was highly diverted with my answer,
and repeated it to the King, who also laughed heartily at it.

The peace with England satisfied all classes of society interested in the
national honour. The departure of the English commissary from Dunkirk,
who had been fixed at that place ever since the shameful peace of 1763 as
inspector of our navy, occasioned an ecstasy of joy.

[By the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) it was stipulated that the fortifications
and port of Dunkirk should be destroyed. By the Treaty of Paris (1763) a
commissary was to reside at Dunkirk to see that no attempt was made to
break this treaty. This stipulation was revoked by the Peace of
Versailles, in 1783.--see DYER'S "Modern Europe," 1st edition, vol. i.,
pp. 205-438 and 539.]

The Government communicated to the Englishman the order for his departure
before the treaty was made public. But for that precaution the populace
would have probably committed some excess or other, in order to make the
agent of English power feel the effects of the resentment which had
constantly increased during his stay at that port. Those engaged in trade
were the only persons dissatisfied with the treaty of 1783. That article
which provided for, the free admission of English goods annihilated at one
blow the trade of Rouen and the other manufacturing towns throughout the
kingdom. The English swarmed into Paris. A considerable number of them
were presented at Court. The Queen paid them marked attention; doubtless
she wished them to distinguish between the esteem she felt for their noble
nation and the political views of the Government in the support it had
afforded to the Americans. Discontent was, however, manifested at Court
in consequence of the favour bestowed by the Queen on the English
noblemen; these attentions were called infatuations. This was illiberal;
and the Queen justly complained of