“They do not,” said the queen, “disturb me, but they give great offense to others, and endanger the amity existing between the two nations.  I would wish that more courtesy might mark our intercourse.”

But the amenities of polished life, the rude islanders despised.  The British ambassador at Vienna, Sir Robert Keith, a gentlemanly man, was often mortified at the messages he was compelled to communicate to the queen.  Occasionally the messages were couched in terms so peremptory and offensive that he could not summon resolution to deliver them, and thus he more than once incurred the censure of the king and cabinet, for his sense of propriety and delicacy.  These remonstrances were all unavailing, and at length the Austrian cabinet began to reply with equal rancor.

This state of things led the Austrian cabinet to turn to France, and seek the establishment of friendly relations with that court.  Louis XV., the most miserable of debauchees, was nominally king.  His mistress, Jeanette Poisson, who was as thoroughly polluted as her regal paramour, governed the monarch, and through him France.  The king had ennobled her with the title of Marchioness of Pompadour.  Her power was so boundless and indisputable that the most illustrious ladies of the French court were happy to serve as her waiting women.  Whenever she walked out, one of the highest nobles of the realm accompanied her as her attendant, obsequiously bearing her shawl upon his arm, to spread it over her shoulders in case it should be needed.  Ambassadors and ministers she summoned before her, assuming that air of royalty which she had purchased with her merchantable charms.  Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, waited in her ante-chambers, and implored her patronage.  The haughty mistress became even weary of their adulation.

“Not only,” said she one day, to the Abbe de Bernis, “have I all the nobility at my feet, but even my lap-dog is weary of their fawning.”

With many apologies for requiring of the high-minded Maria Theresa a sacrifice, Kaunitz suggested to her the expediency of cultivating the friendship of Pompadour.  Silesia was engraved upon the heart of the queen, and she was prepared to do any thing which could aid her in the reconquest of that duchy.  She stooped so low as to write a letter with her own hand to the marchioness, addressing her as “our dear friend and cousin.”

This was a new triumph for Pompadour, and it delighted her beyond measure.  To have the most illustrious sovereign of Europe, combining in her person the titles of Queen of Austria and Empress of Germany, solicit her friendship and her good offices, so excited the vanity of the mistress, that she became immediately the warm friend of Maria Theresa, and her all powerful advocate in the court of Versailles.  England was now becoming embroiled with France in reference to the possessions upon the St. Lawrence and Ohio in North America.  In case of war, France would