“The Queen often made signs to the Emperor to desist from thus exposing every member of his family, and seemed to feel mortified; but the more Her Majesty endeavoured to check his freedom, and make him silent, the more he enlarged upon the subject.  He did not even omit Maria Theresa, who, he said, in consequence of some papers found on persons arrested as spies from the Prussian camp, during the seven years’ war, was reported to have been greatly surprised to have discovered that her husband, the Emperor Francis I., supplied the enemy’s army with all kinds of provision from her stores.

“The King scarcely ever answered excepting when the Emperor told the Queen that her staircase and antechamber at Versailles resembled more the Turkish bazars of Constantinople

[It was an old custom, in the passages and staircase of all the royal palaces, for tradespeople to sell their merchandise for the accommodation of the Court.]

than a royal palace.  ‘But,’ added he, laughing, ’I suppose you would not allow the nuisance of hawkers and pedlars almost under your nose, if the sweet perfumes of a handsome present did not compensate for the disagreeable effluvia exhaling from their filthy traffic.’

“On this, Louis XVI., in a tone of voice somewhat varying from his usual mildness, assured the Emperor that neither himself nor the Queen derived any advantage from the custom, beyond the convenience of purchasing articles inside the palace at any moment they were wanted, without being forced to send for them elsewhere.

“‘That is the very reason, my dear brother,’ replied Joseph, ’why I would not allow these shops to be where they are.  The temptation to lavish money to little purpose is too strong; and women have not philosophy enough to resist having things they like, when they can be obtained easily, though they may not be wanted.’

“‘Custom,’ answered the King—­

“‘True,’ exclaimed the Queen, interrupting him; custom, my dear brother, obliges us to tolerate in France many things which you, in Austria, have. long since abolished; but the French are not to be:  treated like the Germans.  A Frenchman is a slave to habit.  His very caprice in the change of fashion proceeds more from habit than genius or invention.  His very restlessness of character is systematic; and old customs and national habits in a nation virtually spirituelle must not be trifled with.  The tree torn up by the roots dies for want of nourishment; but, on the contrary, when lopped carefully only of its branches the pruning makes it more valuable to the cultivator and more pleasing to the beholder.  So it is with national prejudices, which are often but the excrescences of national virtues.  Root them out and you root out virtue and all.  They must only be:  pruned and turned to profit.  A Frenchman is more easily killed than subdued.  Even his follies generally spring from a high sense of national dignity and honour, which foreigners cannot but respect.’