The Trianon was now more than ever delightful to her.  The new plantations, which contained no fewer than eight hundred different kinds of trees, rich with every variety of foliage, were beginning, by their effectiveness, to give evidence of the taste with which they had been laid out; while with a charity which could not bear to keep her blessings wholly to herself, she had set apart one corner of the grounds for a row of picturesque cottages, in which she had established a number of pensioners whom age or infirmity had rendered destitute, and whom she constantly visited with presents from her dairy or her fruit-trees.  Roaming about the lawns and walks, which she had made herself, in a muslin gown and a plain straw hat, she could forget that she was a queen.  She did not suspect that the intriguers, who from time to time maligned her most innocent actions, were misrepresenting even these simple and natural pleasures, and whispering in their secret cabals that her very dress was a proof that she still clung as resolutely as ever to her Austrian preferences; that she discarded her silk gowns because they were the work of French manufacturers, while they were her brother’s Flemish subjects who supplied her with muslins.

But, far beyond her plantations and her flowers, her child was to her a source of unceasing delight.  She could be carried by her side about the garden a great part of the day.  For, as in her anticipations and preparations she had told her mother long before, French parents kept their children as much as possible in the open air,[8] a fashion which fully accorded with her own notions of what was best calculated to give an infant health and strength.  And before the babe was five months old,[9] she flattered herself that it already distinguished her from its nurses.  That nothing might be wanting to her comfort, peace was re-established between Austria and Prussia; and if at this time the war with England did make her in some degree uneasy, she yet felt a sanguine anticipation of triumph for the French arms, in the event of a battle between the hostile fleets; a result of which, when the antagonists did come within sight of each other, it appeared that the French and Spanish admirals felt far less confident.  Her anxieties and hopes are vividly set forth in a letter which, in the course of the summer, she wrote to her mother, which is also singularly interesting from its self-examination, and from the substantial proof it supplies of the correctness of those anticipations which were based on the salutary effect which her novel position as a mother might be expected to have upon her character.

“Versailles, August 16th.

“My Dearest Mother,—­I can not find language to express to my dear mamma my thanks for her two letters, and for the kindness with which she expresses her willingness to exert herself to the utmost to procure us peace.[10] It is true that that would be a great happiness, and my heart desires it more than any thing in the world; but, unhappily, I do not see any appearance of it at present.  Every thing depends on the moment.  Our fleets, the French and Spanish, being now united, we have a considerable superiority.[11]