expectations which its partisans and champions entertained that her every
movement was to be regulated by it. And its requirements were sufficiently
burdensome to tax a far better-trained patience that was natural to one
who though a queen, was not yet nineteen. Not only was no guest of the
male sex, except the king, allowed to sit at table with her, but no
man-servant, no male officer of her household, might be present when the
king and she dined together, as indeed usually happened; even his
presence could not sanction the introduction of any other man. The lady
of honor, on her knees, though in full dress, presented him the napkin
to wipe his fingers and filled his glass; ladies in waiting in the same
grand attire changed the plates of the royal pair; and after dinner, as
indeed throughout the day, the queen could not quit one room in the
palace for another, unless some of her ladies were at hand in complete
court dress to attend upon her.[5] These usages, which were in reality
so many chains to restrain all freedom, and to render comfort
impossible, were abolished in the first few months of the new reign;
but, little as was the foundation which they had in common sense, and
equally little as was the addition which they made to the royal dignity,
it is certain that many of the courtiers, besides Madame de Noailles,
were greatly disconcerted at their extinction. They regarded the queen's
orders on the subject as a proof of a settled preference for Austrian
over French fashions. They began to speak of her as "the Austrian," a
name which, though Madame Adelaide had more than once chosen it to
describe her during the first year of her marriage, had since that time
been almost forgotten, but which was now revived, and was continually
reproduced by a certain party to cast odium on many of her most simple
tastes and most innocent actions. Her enemies oven affirmed that in
private she was wont to call the Trianon her "little Vienna,[6]" as if
the garden, which she was laying out with a taste that long made it the
admiration of all the visitors to Versailles, were dear to her, not as