She had conceived a great desire to learn to ride. Her mother had been a
great horsewoman; and, as the dauphin, like the king, was passionately
addicted to hunting, which hitherto she had only witnessed from a
carriage, Marie Antoinette not unnaturally desired to be mistress of an
accomplishment which would enable her to give him more of her
companionship. Unluckily Mercy disapproved of the idea. It is impossible
to read his correspondence with the empress, and in subsequent years with
Marie Antoinette herself, without being forcibly impressed with respect
for his consummate prudence, his sound judgment in matters of public
policy, and his unswerving fidelity to the interests of both mother and
daughter. But at the same time it is difficult to avoid seeing that he was
too little inclined to make allowance for the youthful eagerness for
amusements which was natural to her age, and that at times he carried his
supervision into matters on which his statesman-like experience and
sagacity had hardly qualified him to form an opinion. He was proud of his
princess's beauty; and, considering himself in charge of her figure as
well as of her conduct, he had made himself very uneasy by the fancied
discovery that she was becoming crooked. He was sure that one shoulder was
growing higher than the other; he earnestly recommended stays, and was
very much displeased with her aunts for setting her against them, because
they were not fashionable in Paris. And when the horse exercise was
proposed, he set his face against it; he wrote to Maria Teresa, who agreed
with him in thinking it ruinous to the complexion, injurious to the shape,
and not to be safely indulged in under thirty years of age[8]; and, lest
distance should weaken the authority of the empress, he enlisted Madame de
Noailles and Choiseul on his side, and Choiseul persuaded the king that it
was a very objectionable pastime for a young bride.

There was not as yet the slightest prospect of the dauphiness becoming a
mother (a circumstance which was, in fact, the most serious of her