preventing license, and even the suspicion of scandal; and, as she desired
that her household as well as her family should set an example of
regularity and propriety to the nation, she exercised a careful
superintendence over the behavior of those who had hitherto been among the
least-considered members of the royal establishment. Even the king's
confessor had thought the morals of the royal pages either beneath his
notice or beyond his control; but Marie Antoinette took a higher view of
her duties. She considered her pages[10] as placed under her charge, and
herself as bound to extend what one of themselves calls a maternal care
and kindness to them, restraining as far as she could, and when she could
not restrain, reproving their boyish excesses, softening their hearts and
winning their affections by the gentle dignity of her admonitions, and by
the condescending and hopeful indulgence with which she accepted their
expressions of contrition and their promises of amendment. In one matter,
too, which, if not exactly political, was at all events of public
interest, she acted in a manner of which none of her predecessors had set
an example. By a custom of immemorial antiquity, at the accession of a new
sovereign, a tax had been levied on the whole kingdom as an offering to
the king, known as "the gift of the happy accession;[11]" when there was a
queen, a similar tax was imposed upon the Parisians, to provide what was
called "the girdle of the queen.[12]" It has already been mentioned that
the distress which existed in Paris at this time was so severe that, just
before the death of the late king, Louis and Marie Antoinette had relieved
it by a munificent gift from their private purse; and to lay additional
burdens on the people at such a time was not only repugnant to their
feelings, but seemed especially inconsistent with their recent generosity.
Accordingly, the very first edict of the new reign announced that neither
tax would be imposed. The people felt the kindness which dictated such a
relief more than even the relief itself, and repaid it with expressions of
gratitude such as no French sovereign had heard for above a century; but