office without a full perception of its difficulties. He saw all that had
to be done, and applied himself to putting the finances of the nation on a
healthy footing, as an indispensable preface to other reforms equally
necessary. He easily secured the co-operation of the king and queen, Louis
cheerfully adopting the retrenchments which he recommended, though some of
them, such as the reduction in the hunting establishment, touched his
personal tastes. But at the same time, as there was no illiberality in his
economy, or, rather, as he saw that real economy could only be practiced
if the sovereigns had a fixed income really adequate to the call upon it,
he placed their allowances on a more satisfactory footing than had ever
been fixed for them before, the queen's privy purse being settled at a sum
which Mercy agreed with him would prove sufficient for all her expenses,
though it was but 200,000 francs a year.

And so it was generally found to be; for, with the exception of an
occasional fancy for some splendid jewel, Marie Antoinette had no
expensive tastes. Her economy was even far greater than her attendants
approved, extending to details which they would have wished her to regard
as beneath the dignity of a sovereign;[1] and so judiciously did she
manage her resources that she was able to defray out of her privy purse
the pensions which she occasionally conferred on men eminent in arts or
literature, whom she rightly judged it a royal duty to encourage.

One of her first acts of liberality of this kind was exercised in favor of
a countryman of her own, the celebrated Gluck. Music was one of her most
favorite accomplishments. She still devoted a portion of almost every day
in taking lessons on the harp; but the French music was not to her taste;
while, since the death of Handel, Gluck's superiority to all his other
musical contemporaries had been generally acknowledged in all countries.
She now, by the gift of a pension of 6000 francs, induced him to visit