Politics were, indeed, taking such a hold over Marie Antoinette that they begin to furnish some topics for her letters to her mother, one of which shows that she had already formed that opinion of French fickleness which she had afterward too abundant cause to maintain.  “I do hope,” she says, “that the good intelligence between our two nations will last.  One good thing in this country is, that if ill-natured feelings are quick to arise, they disappear with equal rapidity.  The King of Prussia is innately a bad neighbor, but the English will also always be bad neighbors to France, and the sea has never prevented them from doing her great mischief.”  We might, firstly, demur to any actions of our statesmen being classed with the treacherous aggressions of Frederick of Prussia, nor did many years of her husband’s reign pass over before the greatest of English ministers proposed and concluded a treaty between the two countries, which he fondly and wisely hoped would lay the foundations of a better understanding, if not of a lasting peace, between the two countries.  But even before that treaty was framed, and before Pitt’s voice had become predominant in the State, Marie Antoinette’s complaint that the sea had never disarmed us of power to injure France had received the strongest exemplification that as yet the history of the two nations afforded in Rodney’s great victory.  However, she soon turns to more agreeable subject, and proceeds to speak of a pleasure to which she was looking forward, and which, as we have already seen, had been unaccountably deferred till this time, in defiance of all propriety and of all precedent.  “I hope that the dauphin and I shall make our entry into Paris next month, which will be a great delight to me.  I do not venture to speak of it yet, though I have the king’s promise:  it would not be the first time that they had made him change his mind.”

The most elaborate exposure of the cabals and intrigues which ever since her marriage had been persistently directed against Marie Antoinette could not paint them so forcibly as the simple fact that three years had now elapsed since her marriage; and that, though the state entrance of the heir of the crown and his bride into the metropolis of the kingdom ought to have been a prominent part of the marriage festivities, it had never yet taken place.  Nor, though Louis had at last given his formal promise that it should be no longer delayed, did the young pair even yet feel sure that an influence superior to theirs might not induce him to recall it.  However, at last the intrigues were baffled, and, on the 8th of June, the visit, which had been expected by the Parisians with an eagerness exceeding that of the dauphiness herself, was made.  It was in every respect successful; and it is due to Marie Antoinette to let the outline of the proceeding be described by herself.

“Versailles, June 14th.