It was a melancholy winter that the queen now passed.  So far as she was able, she diverted her mind from political anxieties by devoting much of her time to the education of her children.  A little plot of ground was railed off in the garden of the Tuileries for the dauphin’s[6] amusement; and one of her favorite relaxations was to watch him working at the flower-beds himself with his little hoe and rake; though, as if to mark that they were in fact prisoners, both she and he were followed wherever they went by grenadiers of the city-guard, and were not allowed to dispense with their attendance for a single moment.  Marie Antoinette had reason to complain that she was watched as a criminal[7].  Sad as she was at heart, she was not allowed the comfort of privacy and retirement.  She was forced to hold receptions for the nobles and chief citizens, and as the court was now formally established at the Tuileries, she dined every week in public with the king; but she steadily resisted the entreaties of some of the ministers and courtiers to visit the theatres, thinking, with great justice, that an attendance at public spectacles of that character would have had an appearance of gayety, as unbecoming at such a period of anxiety, as it was inconsistent with her feelings; and before the end of the winter she sustained a fresh affliction in the loss of her brother the emperor[8]; whose death bore with it the additional aggravation of depriving her of a counselor whose advice she valued, and of an ally on whose active aid she believed that she could rely far more than she could on that of their brother Leopold, who now succeeded to the imperial throne.

Not that Leopold can be charged with indifference to his sister’s welfare.  In the very week of his accession to the throne he wrote to her with great affection, assuring her of his devotion to her interests, and expressing his desire to correspond with her in the most unreserved confidence.  But the same letter shows that as yet he knew but very little of her;[9] and that he regarded the difficulties in which some of Joseph’s recent measures had involved the Imperial Government as sufficiently serious to engross his attention.  A few extracts from her reply are worth preserving, as proving how steadily in her conduct and language to every one she adhered to her rule of concealing her husband’s defects, and putting him forward as the first person on whose wishes and directions her own conduct most depend.  It also shows what advances she was herself making in the perception of the true character of the crisis, so far as the objects of the few honest members who still remained in the Assembly were concerned, and the extent to which she was trying to reconcile herself to some curtailment of her husband’s former authority.

Thanking him for the assurance of his friendship, she says:  “Believe me, my dear brother, we shall always be worthy of it.  I say we, because I do not separate the king from myself.  He was touched by your letter, as I was myself, and bids me assure you of this.  His heart is loyalty and honesty itself; and if ever again we become, I do not say what we have been, but at least what we ought to be, you may then depend on the entire fidelity of a good ally.