High words passed between her and the Duc d’Orleans, the chief of the recusants, on the subject; and one part of her remonstrance throws a curious additional light on the strange distance which, as has been already pointed out, the etiquette of the French court had established between the sovereigns and the very highest of their subjects, even the nearest of their relations.  The duke had insisted on the incognito as debarring Maximilian from all claim to attention from a prince like himself whose rank was not concealed.  She urged that the king and his brothers had not regarded it in that light.  “The duke knew,” she said, “that the king had treated Maximilian as a brother; that he even invited him to sup in private with himself and her, an honor to which no prince of the blood had ever pretended.”  And, finally, warming with her subject, she told him that, though her brother would be sorry not to make the acquaintance of the princes of the blood, he had many other things in Paris to see, and would manage to do without it.[2] Her expostulation was fruitless.  The princes adhered to their resolution, and she to hers.  They were not admitted to any of the festivities of the palace during the archduke’s stay, and were even excluded from all the private entertainments which were given in his honor, since she made it known that the king and she would refuse to attend any to which they were invited.  But, though their conduct was surely both discourteous to a foreigner and disrespectful to their sovereign, the Parisian populace took their part; and some of them who showed themselves ostentatiously in the streets of the city on days on which there were parties at Versailles were loudly applauded by a crowd which was not entirely drawn from the lower classes.  It was noticed that the Duc de Chartres, the son of the Duc d’Orleans, was one of the foremost in exciting this anti-Austrian feeling, the outbreak of which was especially remarkable as the first instance in which the enthusiasm of the citizens for Marie Antoinette seemed to have cooled, or at least to have been interrupted.  And this change in their feelings produced so painful an impression on her mind, that, after her brother’s departure, she abandoned her intention of going to the opera, though Gluck’s “Orfeo” was to be performed, lest she should meet with a reception less cordial than that to which she had hitherto been accustomed.

This ebullition against the house of Austria, however, was at the moment dictated rather by discontent with the Home Government than by any settled feeling on the subject of foreign politics.  Corn had been at a rather high price in Paris and its neighborhood throughout the winter; and the dearness was taken advantage of by the enemies of Turgot, and employed by them as an argument to prove the impolicy of his measures to introduce freedom of trade.  They even organized[3] formidable riots at Paris and Versailles, which, however, Turgot, whose resolution was equal