“Du Barry was by when this was said, and she never forgave it.  To this, and to the letter, her rancour may principally be ascribed.  To all those of the Court party who owed their places and preferments to her exclusive influence, and who held them subject to her caprice, she, of course, communicated the venom.

“Meanwhile, the Dauphin saw Marie Antoinette mimicking the monkey tricks with which this low Sultana amused her dotard, without being aware of the cause.  He was not pleased; and this circumstance, coupled with his natural coolness and indifference for a union he had been taught to deem impolitic and dangerous to the interests of France, created in his virtuous mind that sort of disgust which remained so long an enigma to the Court and all the kingdom, excepting his royal aunts, who did the best they could to confirm it into so decided an aversion as might induce him to impel his grandfather to annul the marriage and send the Dauphine back to Vienna.”

“After the Dauphin’s marriage, the Comte d’Artois and his brother Monsieur—­[Afterwards Louis XVIII., and the former the present Charles X.]—­returned from their travels to Versailles.  The former was delighted with the young Dauphine, and, seeing her so decidedly neglected by her husband, endeavoured to console her by a marked attention, but for which she would have been totally isolated, for, excepting the old King, who became more and more enraptured with the grace, beauty, and vivacity of his young granddaughter, not another individual in the Royal Family was really interested in her favour.  The kindness of a personage so important was of too much weight not to awaken calumny.  It was, of course, endeavoured to be turned against her.  Possibilities, and even probabilities, conspired to give a pretext for the scandal which already began to be whispered about the Dauphine and D’Artois.  It would have been no wonder had a reciprocal attachment arisen between a virgin wife, so long neglected by her husband, and one whose congeniality of character pointed him out as a more desirable partner than the Dauphin.  But there is abundant evidence of the perfect innocence of their intercourse.  Du Barry was most earnest in endeavouring, from first to last, to establish its impurity, because the Dauphine induced the gay young Prince to join in all her girlish schemes to tease and circumvent the favourite.  But when this young Prince and his brother were married to the two Princesses of Piedmont, the intimacy between their brides and the Dauphine proved there could have been no doubt that Du Barry had invented a calumny, and that no feeling existed but one altogether sisterly.  The three stranger Princesses were indeed inseparable; and these marriages, with that of the French Princess, Clotilde, to the Prince of Piedmont, created considerable changes in the coteries of Court.