Her liveliness had, as it were, given a new tone to the whole court; and though the dauphin held out longer against the genial influence of his wife’s disposition than most people, it at last in some degree thawed even his frigidity.  She ascribed his apathy and apparent dislike to female society rather to the neglect or malice of his early tutors than to any natural defect of capacity or perversity of disposition; and often lectured him on his deficiencies, and even on some of his favorite pursuits, which she looked upon as contributing to strengthen his shyness with ladies.  She was not unacquainted with English literature, in which the rusticity and coarseness of the fox-hunting squires formed a piquant subject for the mirth of dramatists and novelists; and if Squire Western had been the type of sportsmen in all countries, she could not have inveighed more vigorously than she did against her husband’s addiction to hunting.  One evening, when he did not return from the field till the play in the theatre was half over, she not only frowned upon him all the rest of the entertainment, but when, after the company had retired, he began to enter into an explanation of the cause of his delay, a scene ensued which it will be best to give in the very words of Mercy’s report to the empress.

“The dauphiness made him a short but very energetic sermon, in which she represented to him with vivacity all the evils of the uncivilized kind of life he was leading.  She showed him that no one of his attendants could stand that kind of life, and that they would like it the less that his own air and rude manners made no amends to those who were attached to his train; and that, by following this plan of life, he would end by ruining his health and making himself detested.  The dauphin received this lecture with gentleness and submission, confessed that he was wrong, promised to amend, and formally begged her pardon.  This circumstance is certainly very remarkable, and the more so because the next day people observed that he paid the dauphiness much more attention, and behaved toward her with a much more lively affection than usual.[16]”

We do not, however, find in reality that the severity of her admonitions produced any permanent diminution of his fondness for hunting and shooting; but the gentleness of her general manners, and the delight which he saw that all around her took in her graciousness, so far excited his admiration that he began to follow her example.  He said that “she had such native grace that every thing which she did succeeded to perfection; that it must be admitted that she was charming.”  And before the end of the winter he had come to take an active part both in her Monday balls, and in those which her ladies occasionally gave in her honor; “dancing himself the whole of the evening, and conversing with all the company with an air of cheerfulness and good-nature of which no one before had ever thought him capable.[17]” The happy change in his demeanor was universally attributed to the dauphiness; and, as the character of their future king was naturally watched with anxiety as a matter of the highest importance, it greatly increased the attachment of all who had the welfare of the nation at heart to the princess, whose general example had produced so beneficial an effect.