In the evening she asked me why I had seemed so astonished when she ordered me to add to her dinner, saying that I ought instantly to have seen that she was giving the King of Sweden a lesson for his presumption.  I owned to her that the scene had appeared to me so much in the bourgeois style, that I involuntarily thought of the cutlets on the gridiron, and the omelette, which in families in humble circumstances serve to piece out short commons.  She was highly diverted with my answer, and repeated it to the King, who also laughed heartily at it.

The peace with England satisfied all classes of society interested in the national honour.  The departure of the English commissary from Dunkirk, who had been fixed at that place ever since the shameful peace of 1763 as inspector of our navy, occasioned an ecstasy of joy.

[By the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) it was stipulated that the fortifications and port of Dunkirk should be destroyed.  By the Treaty of Paris (1763) a commissary was to reside at Dunkirk to see that no attempt was made to break this treaty.  This stipulation was revoked by the Peace of Versailles, in 1783.—­see DYER’S “Modern Europe,” 1st edition, vol. i., pp. 205-438 and 539.]

The Government communicated to the Englishman the order for his departure before the treaty was made public.  But for that precaution the populace would have probably committed some excess or other, in order to make the agent of English power feel the effects of the resentment which had constantly increased during his stay at that port.  Those engaged in trade were the only persons dissatisfied with the treaty of 1783.  That article which provided for, the free admission of English goods annihilated at one blow the trade of Rouen and the other manufacturing towns throughout the kingdom.  The English swarmed into Paris.  A considerable number of them were presented at Court.  The Queen paid them marked attention; doubtless she wished them to distinguish between the esteem she felt for their noble nation and the political views of the Government in the support it had afforded to the Americans.  Discontent was, however, manifested at Court in consequence of the favour bestowed by the Queen on the English noblemen; these attentions were called infatuations.  This was illiberal; and the Queen justly complained of such absurd jealousy.

The journey to Fontainebleau and the winter at Paris and at Court were extremely brilliant.  The spring brought back those amusements which the Queen began to prefer to the splendour of fetes.  The most perfect harmony subsisted between the King and Queen; I never saw but one cloud between them.  It was soon dispelled, and the cause of it is perfectly unknown to me.