Maria Teresa had warned her daughter against extravagance, a warning which would have been regarded as wholly misplaced by any other of the French princes, who were accustomed to treat the national treasury as a fund intended to supply the means for their utmost profusion, but which certainly coincided with the views of Marie Antoinette herself, who, as we have seen, vindicated herself from the charge of prodigality, and declared that she took great care that her improvements at the Trianon should not be beyond her means.  Yet it would not have been surprising if they had been found to be so, since, even after she became queen, her income continued to be far too narrow for her rank.  The nominal allowance of all former kings and queens had been fixed at an unreasonably low rate, from the pernicious custom of drawing on the treasury for all deficiencies; but this mode of proceeding was inconsistent with the notions of propriety entertained by the new sovereigns, and with those of the new finance minister.

Maurepas himself had never been distinguished for ability, but he was sufficiently clear-sighted to be aware that the principal difficulties of the State arose from the disorder into which the profligacy and prodigality of the late reign, ever since the death of the wise Fleury, had thrown its finances; and he had made a most happy choice for the office of comptroller-general of finance, appointing to it a man named Turgot, who, as Intendant of the Limousin, had brought that province into a condition of prosperity which had made it a model for the rest of the kingdom.  In his new and more enlarged sphere of action, Turgot’s abilities expanded; or, perhaps it should rather be said, had a fairer field for their display.  He showed himself equally capable in every department of his duties; as a financial reformer, as an administrator, and as a legislator.  No minister in the history of the nation had ever so united large-minded genius with disinterested integrity.  He had not accepted office without a full perception of its difficulties.  He saw all that had to be done, and applied himself to putting the finances of the nation on a healthy footing, as an indispensable preface to other reforms equally necessary.  He easily secured the co-operation of the king and queen, Louis cheerfully adopting the retrenchments which he recommended, though some of them, such as the reduction in the hunting establishment, touched his personal tastes.  But at the same time, as there was no illiberality in his economy, or, rather, as he saw that real economy could only be practiced if the sovereigns had a fixed income really adequate to the call upon it, he placed their allowances on a more satisfactory footing than had ever been fixed for them before, the queen’s privy purse being settled at a sum which Mercy agreed with him would prove sufficient for all her expenses, though it was but 200,000 francs a year.