It will be seen that as long as she was frivolous and imprudent, she was flattered and admired; as soon as she became absolutely irreproachable, she was overwhelmed with harsh judgments and expressions of ill will.  The first period was during the first years of the reign of Louis XVI., while he was still all-powerful and popular; the second phase of her character developed during the trying days of the king’s first fall into disfavor and his ultimate imprisonment and death.  From this account of her career, it will be seen that Marie Antoinette, as dauphiness and queen, was rather the victim of fate and the invidious intrigues of a depraved court than herself an instigator and promulgator of the extravagance and dissipation of which she was accused.

We must remember the atmosphere into which Marie Antoinette was thrust upon her arrival in France.  One of the first to sup with her was that most licentious of all royal mistresses, Mme. du Barry, who asked for the privilege of dining with the new princess—­a favor which the dissipated and weak king granted.  Louis XV. was nothing more than a slave to vice and his mistresses.  The king’s daughters—­Mmes.  Adelaide, Victoire, and Sophie—­were pious but narrow-minded women, resolutely hostile to Mme. du Barry and intriguing against her.  The Comtes de Provence and d’Artois were both pleasure-loving princes of doubtful character; their sisters—­Mmes.  Clotilde and Elisabeth—­had no importance.  The family was divided against itself, each member being jealous of the others.  The dauphin, being of a retiring disposition and of a close and self-contained nature, did little to add to the happiness of the young princess.  Thus, she was literally forced to depend upon her own resources for pleasure and amusement and was at the mercy of the court, which was never more divided than in about 1770—­the time of her appearance.

At that time there were two parties—­the Choiseul, or Austrian, party, and those who opposed the policy of Choiseul, especially in the expulsion of the Jesuits; the latter were called the party of the devots and were led by Chancellor Maupeau and the Duc d’Aiguillon.  This faction, with the mistress—­Mme. du Barry—­as the motive power, soon broke up the power of Choiseul.  The young and innocent foreign princess, unschooled in intrigue and politics, could not escape both political parties; upon her entrance into the French court, she was immediately classed with one or the other of these rival factions and thus made enemies by whatever turn she took, and was caught in a network of intrigues from which extrication was almost impossible.

Here, in this whirl of social excesses, her habits were formed; hers being a lively, alert, active nature, fond of pleasure and somewhat inclined toward raillery, she soon became so absorbed in the many distractions of court life that little time was left her for indulgence in reflection of a serious nature.  Her manner of life at this time in part explains her subsequent career of heedlessness, excessive extravagance, and gayety.