“The coronation was perfect in every respect.  It was made plain that every one was highly delighted with the king, and so he deserves that all his subjects should be.  Great and small, all displayed the greatest interest in him; and at the moment of placing the crown on his head the ceremonies of the church were interrupted by the most touching acclamations.  I could not restrain myself; my tears flowed in spite of all my efforts, and the people were pleased to see them.  During the whole time of our journey I did my best to correspond to the earnestness of the people; and although the heat was great, and the crowd immense, I do not regret my fatigue, which, moreover, has not injured my health.  It is a very astonishing circumstance, but at the same time a very pleasant one, to be so well received only two months after the revolt, and in spite of the high price of bread, which unhappily still continues.  It is a strange peculiarity in the French character to allow themselves to be so easily led away by mischievous suggestions, and then immediately to return to good behavior.  It is very certain that when we see people, even in times of distress, treating us so well, we are the more bound to labor for their happiness.  The king seems to me penetrated with this truth.  As for me, I feel that all my life, even if I were to live a hundred years, I shall never forget the coronation day.”

But all the tumultuous pomp and exultation only made her return with renewed pleasure to her quiet retreat of the Trianon, which, with the assistance of the illustrious Buffon, then superintendent of the king’s gardens, and of Bernard de Jussieu, Director of the Jardin des Plantes, and celebrated as one of the first botanists of Europe, she was laying out with a delicate taste that long rendered it one of the chief attractions to all the inhabitants of the district.  For the sentiment which she expressed in the letter to the empress, which has just been quoted, was not the mere formal utterance of a barren philanthropy, but was dictated and carried out by an active benevolence.  She felt in her inmost heart the duty which she there professed, of exerting herself to promote the happiness of the people, and was far too unselfish to desire to keep to herself the whole of the delight her gardens were calculated to afford.  The Trianon was a possession exactly calculated to gratify her taste for innocent rural pleasure.  As she said herself, at Versailles she was a queen; here she was a plain country lady, superintending not only her flowers, but her farm-yard and her dairy, taking pride in her stock and her produce.  She would invite the king and the rest of the royal family to garden parties, where, at a table set out under a bower of honeysuckle, she would pour out their coffee with her own hands, boasting of the thickness of her cream, the freshness of her eggs, the ruddiness and flavor of her strawberries, as so many proofs of her skill in managing her establishment;