offered, as she conceived, to her brother, were great. High words passed
between her and the Duc d'Orléans, the chief of the recusants, on the
subject; and one part of her remonstrance throws a curious additional
light on the strange distance which, as has been already pointed out, the
etiquette of the French court had established between the sovereigns and
the very highest of their subjects, even the nearest of their relations.
The duke had insisted on the _incognito_ as debarring Maximilian from all
claim to attention from a prince like himself whose rank was not
concealed. She urged that the king and his brothers had not regarded it in
that light. "The duke knew," she said, "that the king had treated
Maximilian as a brother; that he even invited him to sup in private with
himself and her, an honor to which no prince of the blood had ever
pretended." And, finally, warming with her subject, she told him that,
though her brother would be sorry not to make the acquaintance of the
princes of the blood, he had many other things in Paris to see, and would
manage to do without it.[2] Her expostulation was fruitless. The princes
adhered to their resolution, and she to hers. They were not admitted to
any of the festivities of the palace during the archduke's stay, and were
even excluded from all the private entertainments which were given in his
honor, since she made it known that the king and she would refuse to
attend any to which they were invited. But, though their conduct was
surely both discourteous to a foreigner and disrespectful to their
sovereign, the Parisian populace took their part; and some of them who
showed themselves ostentatiously in the streets of the city on days on
which there were parties at Versailles were loudly applauded by a crowd
which was not entirely drawn from the lower classes. It was noticed that
the Duc de Chartres, the son of the Duc d'Orléans, was one of the foremost
in exciting this anti-Austrian feeling, the outbreak of which was
especially remarkable as the first instance in which the enthusiasm of the
citizens for Marie Antoinette seemed to have cooled, or at least to have