Marie Antoinette herself was inclined to be delighted with all that befell her, and to make light of what she could hardly regard as pleasant or becoming; and two of her first letters to her mother, written in the early part of July,[1] give us an insight into the feelings with which she regarded her new family and her own position, as well as a picture of her daily occupations and of the singular customs of the French court, strangely inconsistent in what it permitted and in what it disallowed, and, in the publicity in which its princes lived, curiously incompatible with ordinary ideas of comfort and even delicacy.

“The king,” she says, “is full of kindnesses toward me, and I love him tenderly.  But it is pitiable to see his weakness for Madame du Barri, who is the silliest and most impertinent creature that it is possible to conceive.  She has played with us every evening at Marly,[2] and she has twice been seated next to me; but she has not spoken to me, and I have not attempted to engage in conversation with her; but, when it was necessary, I have said a word or two to her.

“As for my dear husband, he is greatly changed, and in a most advantageous manner.  He shows a great deal of affection for me, and is even beginning to treat me with great confidence.  He certainly does not like M. de la, Vauguyon; but he is afraid of him.  A curious thing happened about the duke the other day.  I was alone with my husband, when M. de la Vauguyon stole hurriedly up to the doors to listen.  A servant, who was either a fool or a very honest man, opened the door, and there stood his grace the duke planted like a sentinel, without being able to retreat.  I pointed out to my husband the inconvenience that there was in having people listening at the doors, and he took my remark very well.”

She did not tell the empress the whole of this occurrence; she had been too indignant at the duke’s meanness to suppress her feelings, and she reproved the duke himself with a severity which can hardly be said to have been misplaced.

“Duke de la Vauguyon,” she said, “my lord the dauphin is now of an age to dispense with a governor; and I have no need of a spy.  I beg you not to appear again in my presence.[3]”

Between the writing of her first and second letters she had heard from Maria Teresa; and she “can not describe how the affection her mother expresses for her has gone to her heart.  Every letter which she has received has filled her eyes with tears of regret at being separated from so tender and loving a mother, and, happy as she is in France, she would give the world to see her family again, if it were but for a moment.  As her mother wishes to know how the days are passed; she gets up between nine and ten, and, having dressed herself and said her morning prayers, she breakfasts, and then she goes to the apartments of her aunts, whose she usually finds the king.  That lasts till half-past ten; then at eleven she has her hair dressed.