find her precautions effectual.  Louis’s judgment was always at the mercy of the last speaker.  She assured her brother that “he had abundant reason to be contented with the king’s personal feelings on the subject.  When he received the emperor’s letter, he spoke to her about it in a way that delighted her.  He regarded Joseph’s demands as just, and his motives as most reasonable.  Yet—­she blushed to own it even to her brother—­after he had seen his minister, his tone was no longer the same; he was embarrassed; he shunned the subject with her, and often found some new objection to weaken the effect of his previous admissions.”

At one time she even feared a rupture between the two countries.  Vergennes was urging the king to send an army of observation to the frontier; and, if it were sent, the proximity of such a force to the Austrian troops in the Netherlands would, to her apprehension, be full of danger.  There was sound political acuteness in her remark that the dispatch of an army of observation was not “in itself a declaration of war, but that when two armies are so near to one another an order to advance is very soon executed;” and, with a shrewd perception of the argument which was most likely to influence the humane disposition of her husband, she pressed upon him that “the delays and shuffling of his ministers might very probably involve him in war, in spite of his own intentions.”  However, eventually the clouds which had caused her anxiety were dissipated; the mediation of France had even some share in leading to a conclusion of these disputes in a manner in which Joseph himself acquiesced; and the good understanding between the two crowns, on which, as Marie Antoinette often declared, her happiness greatly depended, was preserved, or, as she hoped, even strengthened, by the result of these negotiations.

But on one occasion of real moment to the personal comfort and credit of the queen, Louis behaved with a clear good sense, and, what was equally important, with a firmness which she gratefully acknowledged,[6] and contrasted remarkably with the pusillanimous advice that had been given by more than one of the ministers.  That the affair in which he exhibited these qualities should for a moment have been regarded as one of political importance, is another testimony to the diseased state of the public mind at the time; and that it should have been possible so to use it as to attach the slightest degree of discredit to the queen, is a proof as strange as melancholy how greatly the secret intrigues of the basest cabal that ever disgraced a court had succeeded in undermining her reputation, and poisoning the very hearts of the people against her.[7]