glad to have your advice at this time, which is so embarrassing. I should
be enchanted to be able to please you, and to show by my conduct all my
attachment and the gratitude which I feel for your kindness in giving me
your daughter, with whom I am as well satisfied as possible."

P.S. by the queen: "The king would not let my letter go without adding a
word from himself. I am quite aware that it would not have been too much
for him to do to write an entire letter. But I must beg my dear mamma to
excuse him, in consideration of the mass of business with which he is
occupied, and also a little on account of his timidity and the embarrassed
manner which is natural to him. You see, my dear mamma, by his compliment
at the end, that, though he has great affection for me, he does not spoil
me by insipid flatteries."

It is almost equally remarkable that the empress herself, though thus to
see her favorite daughter on the throne of France had been her most ardent
wish, was far from regarding the consummation of her desires with
unalloyed pleasure. She was so completely a politician above all things,
that, though she was well aware that Louis XV. had been one of the most
infamous kings that ever dishonored a throne, she looked upon him solely
as an ally; described him to her daughter as "that good and tender
prince;" declared that she should never cease to regret him, and that she
would wear mourning for him all the rest of her life. At the same time,
she did not conceal from herself that he had left his kingdom in a most
deplorable condition. She had, as she declared, herself experienced how
heavy is the burden of an empire; she reflected how young her daughter
was; and expressed a sad fear that "her days of happiness were over." "She
was now in a position in which there was no half-way between complete
greatness and great misery.[6]" The best hopes for her future the empress
saw in the character for purity and kindness which Marie Antoinette had