the hartshorn, she said it was to prevent her first Lady of Honour from falling into hysterics when the calls of nature were uncivil enough to exclude her from being of the party.  This, as may be presumed, had its desired effect, and Marie Antoinette was ever afterwards allowed free access at least to one of her apartments, and leave to perform that in private which few individuals except Princesses do with parade and publicity.

“These things, however, planted the seeds of rancour against Marie Antoinette, which Madame de Noailles carried with her to the grave.  It will be seen that she declared against her at a crisis of great importance.  The laughable title of Madame Etiquette, which the Dauphine gave her, clung to her through life; though conferred only in merriment, it never was forgiven.

“The Dauphine seemed to be under a sort of fatality with regard to all those who had any power of doing her mischief either with her husband or the Court.  The Duc de Vauguyon, the Dauphin’s tutor, who both from principle and interest hated everything Austrian, and anything whatever which threatened to lessen his despotic influence so long exercised over the mind of his pupil, which he foresaw would be endangered were the Prince once out of his leading-strings and swayed by a young wife, made use of all the influence which old courtiers can command over the minds they have formed (more generally for their own ends than those of uprightness) to poison that of the young Prince against his bride.

“Never were there more intrigues among the female slaves in the Seraglio of Constantinople for the Grand Signior’s handkerchief than were continually harassing one party against the other at the Court of Versailles.  The Dauphine was even attacked through her own tutor, the Abbe Vermond.  A cabal was got up between the Abbe and Madame Marsan, instructress of the sisters of Louis XVI. (the Princesses Clotilde and Elizabeth) upon the subject of education.  Nothing grew out of this affair excepting a new stimulus to the party spirit against the Austrian influence, or, in other words, the Austrian Princess; and such was probably its purpose.  Of course every trifle becomes Court tattle.  This was made a mighty business of, for want of a worse.  The royal aunts naturally took the part of Madame Marsan.  They maintained that their royal nieces, the French Princesses, were much better educated than the German Archduchesses had been by the Austrian Empress.  They attempted to found their assertion upon the embonpoint of the French Princesses.  They said that their nieces, by the exercise of religious principles, obtained the advantage of solid flesh, while the Austrian Archduchesses, by wasting themselves in idleness and profane pursuits, grew thin and meagre, and were equally exhausted in their minds and bodies!  At this the Abbe Vermond, as the tutor of Marie Antoinette, felt himself highly offended, and called on Comte de Mercy, then the Imperial