Marie Antoinette, with the humility natural to her on such subjects, made
light of her own share in the act of benevolence, turning off the
compliments which were paid to her with a playful jest, that it was
impossible for a queen to affix a purse to her girdle, now that girdles
had gone out of fashion.[13]

On another subject, also, not wholly unconnected with politics, Since the
nobleman concerned had once been the chief minister, but in which Marie
Antoinette's interest was personal, she broke through her usual rule of
not beginning the discussion with the king, and requested the recall from
banishment of the Due de Choiseul. An unfounded prejudice based upon
calumnies set on foot by the cabal of Madame du Barri, had envenomed
Louis's mind against the duke. He bad been led to suspect that his own
father, the late dauphin, had been poisoned, and that Choiseul had been
accessory to the crime. There was nothing more certain than that the
dauphin's death had been natural; but a dislike of the accused duke
lingered in the king's mind, and he eluded compliance with his wife's
request till she put it on entirely personal grounds, by declaring it to
be humiliating to herself that one to whom she was under the deepest
obligations as the negotiator of her own happy marriage should be under
the king's displeasure without her being able to procure his pardon. Louis
felt the force of the appeal thus made to him. "If she used that argument,
he could deny her nothing," and the duke's sentence was remitted, though
his royal patroness was unable to procure his re-admission to office. Nor
did Maria Teresa regret that she failed in that object; since she feared
his restless character, and felt the alliance between the two countries
safer in the hands of the new foreign secretary, the Count de Vergennes.