When the convalescence of the Princes was perfectly established, the excursions to Marly became cheerful enough.  Parties on horseback and in calashes were formed continually.  The Queen was desirous to afford herself one very innocent gratification; she had never seen the day break; and having now no other consent than that of the King to seek, she intimated her wish to him.  He agreed that she should go, at three o’clock in the morning, to the eminences of the gardens of Marly; and, unfortunately, little disposed to partake in her amusements, he himself went to bed.  Foreseeing some inconveniences possible in this nocturnal party, the Queen determined on having a number of people with her; and even ordered her waiting women to accompany her.  All precautions were ineffectual to prevent the effects of calumny, which thenceforward sought to diminish the general attachment that she had inspired.  A few days afterwards, the most wicked libel that appeared during the earlier years of her reign was circulated in Paris.  The blackest colours were employed to paint an enjoyment so harmless that there is scarcely a young woman living in the country who has not endeavoured to procure it for herself.  The verses which appeared on this occasion were entitled “Sunrise.”

The Duc d’Orleans, then Duc de Chartres, was among those who accompanied the young Queen in her nocturnal ramble:  he appeared very attentive to her at this epoch; but it was the only moment of his life in which there was any advance towards intimacy between the Queen and himself.  The King disliked the character of the Duc de Chartres, and the Queen always excluded him from her private society.  It is therefore without the slightest foundation that some writers have attributed to feelings of jealousy or wounded self-love the hatred which he displayed towards the Queen during the latter years of their existence.

It was on this first journey to Marly that Boehmer, the jeweller, appeared at Court,—­a man whose stupidity and avarice afterwards fatally affected the happiness and reputation of Marie Antoinette.  This person had, at great expense, collected six pear-formed diamonds of a prodigious size; they were perfectly matched and of the finest water.  The earrings which they composed had, before the death of Louis xv., been destined for the Comtesse du Barry.

Boehmer; by the recommendation of several persons about the Court, came to offer these jewels to the Queen.  He asked four hundred thousand francs for them.  The young Princess could not withstand her wish to purchase them; and the King having just raised the Queen’s income, which, under the former reign, had been but two hundred thousand livres, to one hundred thousand crowns a year, she wished to make the purchase out of her own purse, and not burthen the royal treasury with the payment.  She proposed to Boehmer to take off the two buttons which formed the tops of the clusters, as they could