One other detail in the accounts of Marie Antoinette’s conduct, which from time to time reached Vienna, had also vexed the empress, and it should be kept in mind by any one who would fairly estimate the truth of the charge brought against her, and urged with such rancor after she had become queen—­of postponing the interests of France to those of her native land, of being Austrian at heart.  Maria Teresa had heard, on the contrary, that she had given those Austrians who had presented themselves at Versailles but a cold reception, and she did not attempt to conceal her discontent.  With a natural and becoming pride in and jealousy for her own loyal and devoted subjects, she entreated her daughter never to feel ashamed of them, or ashamed of being German herself, even if, comparatively speaking, the name should imply some deficiency in polish.  “The French themselves would esteem her more if they saw in her something of German solidity and frankness.[5]”

The daughter answered the mother with some adroitness.  She took no notice of the advice about her behavior to Madame du Barri.  It was the one topic on which her own feelings of propriety, as well as those of the dauphin, coincided with the suggestions of the aunts, and she did not desire to vex or provoke the empress by a prolonged discussion of the question; but the charge of coldness to her own countrymen she denied earnestly.  “She should always glory in being a German.  Some of those nobles whom the empress had expressly named she had treated with careful distinction, and had even danced with them, though they were not men of the very highest character.  She well knew that the Germans had many good qualities which she could wish that the French shared with them;” and she promised that, whenever any of her mother’s subjects of such standing and merit as to be worthy of her attention came to the court, they should have no cause to complain of her reception of them.  Her language on the subject is so measured and careful as to lead us almost inevitably to the inference that the reports which had excited such dissatisfaction at Vienna were not without foundation, but that the French gayety, even if often descending to frivolity, was more to her taste than the German solidity which her mother so highly esteemed, and that she had been at no great pains to hide a preference which must naturally he acceptable to those among whom her future life was to be spent.

In the middle of May, the Count de Provence was married to the Princess Josephine Louise of Savoy, and the court went to Fontainebleau to receive the bride.  The necessity for leaving Madame du Barri behind threw the king more into the company of the dauphiness than he had been on any previous occasion, and her unaffected graces seemed for the moment to have made a complete conquest of him.  He came in his dressing-gown to her apartments for breakfast, and spent a great portion of the day there.  The courtiers again