autumn it had been relieved by a fall in the price of bread, which the unreasoning gratitude of the populace had attributed to the benevolence of the dauphiness; but the severity of the winter had brought it back with aggravated intensity till it reached even to the palace, and compelled a curtailment of some of the festivities with which it had been intended to celebrate the marriage of the Count de Provence, which was fixed for the approaching May.

Distress is the sure parent of discontent, unless the people have a very complete confidence in their government.  And this was so far from being the case in France at this time, that the distrust of and contempt for those in the highest places increased daily more and more.  The influence which Madame du Barri exerted over the king became more rooted as he became more used to submit to it, and more notorious as he grew more shameless in his avowal of it.  She felt her power, and her intrigues became in the same proportion more busy and more diversified in their objects.  In the vigorous description of Mercy, Versailles was wholly occupied by treachery, hatred, and vengeance; not one feeling of honesty or decency remained; while the people, ever quick-witted to perceive the vices of their rulers, especially when they are indulged at their expense, revenged themselves by bitter and seditious language, and by satires and pasquinades in which neither respect nor mercy was shown even to the sacred person of the sovereign himself.  He was callous to all marks of contempt displayed for himself; but was, or was induced to profess himself, deeply annoyed at the conduct of the dauphin, who showed a fixed aversion for the mistress, which, however, his grandfather did not regard as dictated by his own feelings.  Louis rather believed that it was fostered by Marie Antoinette, and that she, in encouraging her husband, was but following the advice of her aunts; and he threatened to remonstrate with the dauphiness on the subject, though, as Mercy correctly divined, he could not nerve himself to the necessary resolution.

It was true that Marie Antoinette did often allow herself to be far too much influenced by those princesses.  She confessed to Mercy that she was afraid to displease or thwart them; a feeling which he regarded as the more unfortunate because, when she was not actuated by that consideration, her own judgment and her own impulses would always guide her aright; and because, too, the elder princesses were the most unsafe of all advisers.  They were notoriously jealous of one another, and each at times tried to inspire her niece with her feelings toward the other two; and they often, without meaning it, played into the hands of the mistress’s cabal, intriguing for selfish objects of their own with as much malice and meanness as could be practiced by Madame du Barri herself.