them.  The grand duchess, however, was generally regarded as greatly superior to her husband in every respect.  He was almost repulsive in his ugliness.  She was extremely handsome in feature, though disfigured by a stoutness extraordinary in one so young.  She had also a high reputation for accomplishments and general ability, though that too was disguised by a coldness or ungraciousness of manner that gave strangers a disagreeable impression of her; which, however, a more intimate acquaintance greatly removed.

Their characters had preceded them, and Marie Antoinette, for perhaps the first time in her life, felt very uneasy as to her own power of receiving them with the dignity which became both her and them.  As she afterward explained her feelings to Madame de Campan, “she found the part of a queen much move difficult to play in the presence of other sovereigns, or of princes who were born to become sovereigns, than before ordinary courtiers.[7]” She even fortified her courage before dinner with a glass of water, and the medicine proved effectual.  Even if it cost her an effort to preserve her habitual gayety, her difficulty was unperceived, and indeed, after the few first moments, ceased to be a difficulty.  Paul himself cared but little for female attractions or graces; but the archduchess was charmed with her union of liveliness and dignity, which surpassed all her previous experiences of courts; and one of her ladies, Madame d’Oberkirch, who has left behind her some memoirs, to which all succeeding writers have been indebted for many particulars of this visit, could scarcely find words to describe the impression the queen’s beauty had made upon her and all her fellow-travelers.  “The queen was marvelously beautiful; she fascinated every eye.  It was absolutely impossible for any one to display a greater grace and nobility of demeanor.[8]” Madame d’Oberkirch, like herself, was German by birth; and Marie Antoinette begged her to speak German to her, that she might refresh her recollection of her native language; but she found that she had almost forgotten it.  “Ah,” said she, “German is a fine language; but French, in the mouths of my children, seems to me the finest language in the world.”  And in the same spirit of entire adoption of French feelings, and even of French prejudices, she declared to the baroness that though the Rhine and the Danube were both noble rivers, the Seine was so much more beautiful that it had made her forget them both.

But her preference for every thing French did not make her neglect the duties of hospitality to her foreign visitors; she wished rather that they should carry with them as fixed an idea as she herself entertained of the superiority of France to their own country, in this as in every other particular.  And she gave two magnificent entertainments in their honor at the Little Trianon, displaying the beauties of her garden by day, and also by night, by an illumination of extraordinary splendor.  They were highly delighted