The Queen did not confine her admiration to the lofty style of the French and Italian operas; she greatly valued Gretry’s music, so well adapted to the spirit and feeling of the words.  A great deal of the poetry set to music by Gretry is by Marmontel.  The day after the first performance of “Zemira and Azor,” Marmontel and Gretry were presented to the Queen as she was passing through the gallery of Fontainebleau to go to mass.  The Queen congratulated Gretry on the success of the new opera, and told him that she had dreamed of the enchanting effect of the trio by Zemira’s father and sisters behind the magic mirror.  Gretry, in a transport of joy, took Marmontel in his arms, “Ah! my friend,” cried he, “excellent music may be made of this.”—­“And execrable words,” coolly observed Marmontel, to whom her Majesty had not addressed a single compliment.

The most indifferent artists were permitted to have the honour of painting the Queen.  A full-length portrait, representing her in all the pomp of royalty, was exhibited in the gallery of Versailles.  This picture, which was intended for the Court of Vienna, was executed by a man who does not deserve even to be named, and disgusted all people of taste.  It seemed as if this art had, in France, retrograded several centuries.

The Queen had not that enlightened judgment, or even that mere taste, which enables princes to foster and protect great talents.  She confessed frankly that she saw no merit in any portrait beyond the likeness.  When she went to the Louvre, she would run hastily over all the little “genre” pictures, and come out, as she acknowledged, without having once raised her eyes to the grand compositions.

There is no good portrait of the Queen, save that by Werthmuller, chief painter to the King of Sweden, which was sent to Stockholm, and that by Madame Lebrun, which was saved from the revolutionary fury by the commissioners for the care of the furniture at Versailles.

[A sketch of very great interest made when the Queen was in the Temple and discovered many years afterwards there, recently reproduced in the memoirs of the Marquise de Tourzel (Paris, Plon), is the last authentic portrait of the unhappy Queen.  See also the catalogue of portraits made by Lord Ronald Gower.]

The composition of the latter picture resembles that of Henriette of France, the wife of the unfortunate Charles I., painted by Vandyke.  Like Marie Antoinette, she is seated, surrounded by her children, and that resemblance adds to the melancholy interest raised by this beautiful production.

While admitting that the Queen gave no direct encouragement to any art but that of music, I should be wrong to pass over in silence the patronage conferred by her and the Princes, brothers of the King, on the art of printing.

[In 1790 the King gave a proof of his particular good-will to the bookselling trade.  A company consisting of the first Parisian booksellers, being on the eve of stopping payment, succeeded in laying before the King a statement of their distressed situation.  The monarch was affected by it; he took from the civil list the sum of which the society stood in immediate need, and became security for the repayment of the remainder of the 1,200,000 livres, which they wanted to borrow, and for the repayment of which he fixed no particular time.]