[7] Lord Stormont, the English Embassador at Vienna, from which city he was removed to Paris.  In the preceding September Maria Teresa had complained to him of being “animated against her cabinet, from indignation at the partition of Poland.”

[8] That is, sisters-in-law—­the Princesses Clotilde and Elizabeth.

[9] The Hotel-Dieu was the most ancient hospital in Paris.  It had already existed several hundred years when Philip Augustus enlarged it, and gave it the name of Maison de Dieu.  Henry IV. and his successors had further enlarged it, and enriched it with monuments; and even the revolutionists respected it, though when they had disowned the existence of God they changed its name to that of L’Hospice de l’Humanite.  It had been almost destroyed by fire a fortnight before the date of this letter, on the night of the 29th of December.

[10] St. Anthony’s Day was June 14th, and her name of Antoinette was regarded as placing her under his especial protection.

CHAPTER VII

[1] They have not, however, been preserved.

[2] Mercy to Maria Teresa, June 16th, 1773, Arneth, i., p. 467.

[3] “Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI., et la Famille Royale”, p. 23.

[4] Marie Antoinette to Maria Theresa, July 17th, Arneth, ii., p. 8.

[5] “Histoire de Marie Antoinette,” par M. de Goncourt, p. 50.  Quoting an unpublished journal by M.M.  Hardy, in the Royal Library.

[6] It is the name by which she is more than once described in Madame du Deffand’s letters.  See her “Correspondence,” ii., p. 357.

[7] Mercy to Maria Teresa, December 11th, 1773, Arneth, ii., p. 81.

[8] “Memoires de Besenval,” i., p. 304.

CHAPTER VIII

[1] Mercy to Maria Teresa, August 14th, 1773, Arneth, ii., p. 31.

[2] The money was a joint gift from herself as well as from him.  Great distress, arising from the extraordinarily high price of bread, was at this time prevailing in Paris.

[3] The term most commonly used by Marie Antoinette in her letters to her mother to describe Madame du Barri.  She was ordered to retire to the Abbey of Pont-aux-Dames, near Meaux.  Subsequently she was allowed to return to Luciennes, a villa which her royal lover had given her.

[4] Madame de Mazarin was the lady who, by the fulsomeness of her servility to Madame du Barri, provoked Madame du Deffand (herself a lady not altogether sans reproche) to say that it was not easy to carry “the heroism of baseness and absurdity farther.”

[5] Lorraine had become a French province a few years before, on the death of Stanislaus Leczinsky, father of the queen of Louis XV.

[6] Maria Teresa to Marie Antoinette, May 18th, and to Mercy on the same day, Arneth, ii., p. 149.

[7] See his letter of 8th May to Maria Teresa.  “Il faut que pour la suite de son bonheur, elle commence a s’emparer de l’autorite que M. le Dauphin n’exercera jamais que d’une facon convenable, et ... ce serait du dernier danger et pour l’etat et pour le systeme general que qui ce soit s’emparat de M. le Dauphin et qu’il fut conduit par autre que par Madame la Dauphine.”—­ARNETH, ii., p. 137.