Mention was one day made to the Queen of a drawing made by her, and presented by the Empress to M. Gerard, chief clerk of Foreign Affairs, on the occasion of his going to Vienna to draw up the articles for her marriage-contract.  “I should blush,” said she, “if that proof of the quackery of my education were shown to me.  I do not believe that I ever put a pencil to that drawing.”  However, what had been taught her she knew perfectly well.  Her facility of learning was inconceivable, and if all her teachers had been as well informed and as faithful to their duty as the Abbe Metastasio, who taught her Italian, she would have attained as great a superiority in the other branches of her education.  The Queen spoke that language with grace and ease, and translated the most difficult poets.  She did not write French correctly, but she spoke it with the greatest fluency, and even affected to say that she had lost German.  In fact she attempted in 1787 to learn her mother-tongue, and took lessons assiduously for six weeks; she was obliged to relinquish them, finding all the difficulties which a Frenchwoman, who should take up the study too late, would have to encounter.  In the same manner she gave up English, which I had taught her for some time, and in which she had made rapid progress.  Music was the accomplishment in which the Queen most delighted.  She did not play well on any instrument, but she had become able to read at sight like a first-rate professor.  She attained this degree of perfection in France, this branch of her education having been neglected at Vienna as much as the rest.  A few days after her arrival at Versailles, she was introduced to her singing-master, La Garde, author of the opera of “Egle.”  She made a distant appointment with him, needing, as she said, rest after the fatigues of the journey and the numerous fetes which had taken place at Versailles; but her motive was her desire to conceal how ignorant she was of the rudiments of music.  She asked M. Campan whether his son, who was a good musician, could give her lessons secretly for three months.  “The Dauphiness,” added she, smiling, “must be careful of the reputation of the Archduchess.”  The lessons were given privately, and at the end of three months of constant application she sent for M. la Garde, and surprised him by her skill.

The desire to perfect Marie Antoinette in the study of the French language was probably the motive which determined Maria Theresa to provide for her as teachers two French actors:  Aufresne, for pronunciation and declamation, and Sainville, for taste in French singing; the latter had been an officer in France, and bore a bad character.  The choice gave just umbrage to our Court.  The Marquis de Durfort, at that time ambassador at Vienna, was ordered to make a representation to the Empress upon her selection.  The two actors were dismissed, and the Princess required that an ecclesiastic should be sent to her.  Several eminent ecclesiastics declined taking upon themselves so delicate an office; others who were pointed out by Maria Theresa (among the rest the Abbe Grisel) belonged to parties which sufficed to exclude them.