interest of France required, explained her view of her daughter's position
to be that she was "the friend and confidante of the king.[8]" And June
had hardly arrived before he began to discuss all his plans and
difficulties with her; while she spared his pride and won his further
confidence by avoiding all appearances of pressing for it, as if her
advice were necessary to him, but at the same time showing with what
satisfaction she received it. To those who solicited her intervention, her
language was most carefully guarded. "She did not," she said, "interfere
in any affair of state; she only coincided in all the wishes and
intentions of the king."

There were, however, matters which were strictly and exclusively within
her own province; and in them she at once began to exert her authority
most beneficially. Her first desire was to purify the court where
licentiousness in either sex had long been the surest road to royal favor.
She began by making a regulation, that she would receive no lady who was
separated from her husband; and she abolished a senseless and inexplicable
rule of etiquette which had hitherto prohibited the queen and princesses
from dining or supping in company with their husbands.[9] Such an
exclusion from the king's table of those who were its most natural and
becoming ornaments had notoriously facilitated and augmented the disorders
of the last reign; and it was obvious that its maintenance must at least
have a tendency to lead to a repetition of the old irregularities.
Fortunately, the king was as little inclined to approve of it as the
queen. All his tastes were domestic, and he gladly assented to her
proposal to abolish the custom. Throughout the reign, at all ordinary
meals, at his suppers when he came in late from hunting, when he had
perhaps invited some of his fellow-sportsmen to share his repast, and at
State banquets, Marie Antoinette took her seat at his side, not only
adding grace and liveliness to the entertainment, but effectually