“This Princess was remarkably well-educated; she possessed a great deal of good, sound sense, and had profited by the instructions of some of the best German tutors during her very early years.  It was the policy of her father, the Duke of Wirtemberg, who had a large family, to educate his children as ‘quietists’ in matters of religion.  He foresaw that the natural charms and acquired abilities of his daughters would one day call them to be the ornaments of the most distinguished Courts in Europe, and he thought it prudent not to instil early prejudices in favour of peculiar forms of religion which might afterwards present an obstacle to their aggrandisement.

[The first daughter of the Duke of Wirtemberg was the first wife of the present Emperor of Austria.  She embraced the Catholic faith and died very young, two days before the Emperor Joseph the Second, at Vienna.  The present Empress Dowager, late wife to Paul, became a proselyte to the Greek religion on her arrival at Petersburg.  The son of the Duke of Wirtemburg, who succeeded him in the Dukedom, was a Protestant, it being his interest to profess that religion for the security of his inheritance.  Prince Ferdinand, who was in the Austrian service, and a long time Governor of Vienna, was a Catholic, as he could not otherwise have enjoyed that office.  He was of a very superior character to the Duke, his brother.  Prince Louis, who held a commission under the Prussian Monarch, followed the religion of the country where he served, and the other Princes, who were in the employment of Sweden and other countries, found no difficulty in conforming themselves to the religion of the Sovereigns under whom they served.  None of them having any established forms of worship, they naturally embraced that which conduced most to their aggrandisement, emolument, or dignity.]

“The notorious vices of the King of Denmark, and his total neglect both of his young Queen, Carolina Matilda, and of the interest of his distant dominions, while in Paris, created a feeling in the Queen’s mind towards that house which was not a little heightened by her disgust at the King of Sweden, when he visited the Court of Versailles.  This King, though much more crafty than his brother-in-law, the King of Denmark, who revelled openly in his depravities, was not less vicious.  The deception he made use of in usurping part of the rights of his people, combined with the worthlessness and duplicity, of his private conduct, excited a strong indignation in the mind of Marie Antoinette, of which she was scarcely capable of withholding the expression in his presence.

“It was during the visit of the Duke and Duchess of the North, that the Cardinal de Rohan again appeared upon the scene.  For eight or ten years he had never been allowed to show himself at Court, and had been totally shut out of every society where the Queen visited.  On the arrival of the illustrious, travellers at Versailles, the Queen, at her own expense, gave them a grand fete at her private palace, in the gardens of Trianon, similar to the one given by the Comte de Provence—­[Afterwards Louis XVIII.]—­to Her Majesty, in the gardens of Brunoi.