Marie Antoinette had thus the honor of setting an example to the Government and the nation.  Her heart was getting lighter as the vexations under which she had so long fretted began to disappear.  The late card-parties were often superseded, throughout the autumn, by concerts on the terrace at Versailles, where the regimental bands were the performers, and to which all the well-dressed towns-people were admitted, while the queen, attended by the princesses and her ladies, and occasionally escorted by Louis himself, strolled up and down and among the crowd, diffusing even greater pleasure than they themselves enjoyed; Marie Antoinette, as usual, being the central object of attraction, and greeting all with a teaming brightness of expression, and an affability as cordial as it was dignified, which deserved to win all hearts.  One of the entertainments which she gave to the king at the Little Trianon may he recorded, not for any unusual sumptuousness of the spectacle, but as having been the occasion on which she made one more inroad on the established etiquette of the court in one of its most unaccountable restrictions:  to such royal parties the king’s ministers had never been regarded as admissible, but on this night Marie Antoinette commanded the company of the Count and Countess de Maurepas.  And the innovation was regarded not only by them as a singular favor, but by all their colleagues as a marked compliment to the whole body of ministers, and served to increase their desire to consult her inclinations in every matter in which she took an interest.

And the esteem which she thus conciliated was at this time not destitute of real importance, since the conduct of the other members of the royal family excited very different feelings.  The Count de Provence was generally distrusted as intriguing and insincere.  And the Count d’Artois, whose bad qualities were of a more conspicuous character, was becoming an object of general dislike, not so much from his dissipated mode of life as from the overbearing arrogance which he imparted into his pleasures.  No rank was high enough to protect the objects of his displeasure from his insolence; even ladies were not safe from it;[2] while his extravagance was beyond all bounds since he considered himself entitled to claim from, the national treasury whatever he might require in addition to his stated income.  He was at the same time repairing one castle, that of St. Germain, which the king had given him; rebuilding another large house which he had purchased in the same neighborhood; and pulling down and rebuilding a third, named Bagatelle, in the Bois de Boulogne, which he had just bought, and as to which he had laid an enormous wager that it should be completed and furnished in sixty days.  To win his bet nearly a thousand workmen were employed day and night, and, as the requisite materials could not be provided at so short a notice, he sent patrols of his regiment to scour the roads, and seize every