“The picture of this representation is in all the collections of the period,” says M. de Lomenie.  “It is one of the best known reminiscences of the eighteenth century; all Paris hurrying early in the morning to the doors of the Theatre Francais, the greatest ladies dining in the actresses’ dressing-room in order to secure places.”  “The blue ribands,” says Bachaumont, “huddled up in the crowd, and elbowing Savoyards; the guard dispersed, the doors burst, the iron gratings broken beneath the efforts of the assailants.”  “Three persons stifled,” says La Harpe, “one more than for Scudery; and on the stage, after the rising of the curtain, the finest collection of talent that had probably ever had possession of the Theatre Francais, all employed to do honor to a comedy scintillating with wit, irresistibly lively and audacious, which, if it shocks and scares a few of the boxes, enchants, rouses, and fires an electrified pit.”  A hundred representations succeeding the first uninterruptedly, and the public still eager to applaud, such was the twofold result of the audacities of the piece and the timid hesitations of its censors.  The Mariage de Figgaro bore a sub-title, la Folle Journee.  “There is something madder than my piece,” said Beaumarchais, “and that is its success.”  Figaro ridiculed everything with a dangerously pungent vigor; the days were coming when the pleasantry was to change into insults.  Already public opinion was becoming hostile to the queen:  she was accused of having remained devoted to the interests of her German family; the people were beginning to call her the Austrian.  During the American war, M. de Vergennes had managed to prevail upon the king to remain neutral in the difficulties that arose in 1778 between Austria and Prussia on the subject of the succession to the elector palatine; the young queen had not wanted or had not been able to influence the behavior of France, as her mother had conjured her to do.  “My dear lady—­ daughter,” wrote Maria Theresa, “Mercy is charged to inform you of my cruel position, as sovereign and as mother.  Wishing to save my dominions from the most cruel devastation, I must, cost what it may, seek to wrest myself from this war, and, as a mother, I have three sons who are not only running the greatest danger, but are sure to succumb to the terrible fatigues, not being accustomed to that sort of life.  By making peace at this juncture, I not only incur the blame of great pusillanimity, but I render the king of Prussia still greater, and the remedy must be prompt.  I declare to you, my head whirls and my heart has for a long time been entirely numb.”  France had refused to engage in the war, but she had contributed to the peace of Teschen, signed on the 13th of May, 1779.  On the 29th of November, 1780, Maria Theresa died at the age of sixty-three, weary of life and of that glory to which she “was fain to march by all roads,” said the Great Frederick, who added:  “It was thus that a woman executed designs worthy of a great man.”