vexations, and that which lasted longest): but the king on this point
agreed with his minister, and after some discussion a compromise was hit
upon, and it was decided that she might ride a donkey. The whole country
was immediately ransacked for a stud of quiet donkeys.[9] In September the
court moved to Compiègne, and day after day, while the king and the
dauphin were shooting in one part of the woods, on the other side a
cavalcade of donkey-riders, the aunts and the king's brothers all swelling
Marie Antoinette's train, trotted up and down the glades, and sought out
shady spots for rural luncheons out-of-doors; and, though even this
pastime was occasionally found liable to as much danger as an expedition
on nobler steeds, the merry dauphiness contrived to extract amusement for
herself and her followers from her very disasters. It was long a standing
joke that on one occasion, when her donkey and herself came down in a soft
place, her royal highness, before she would allow her attendants to
extricate her from the mud, bid them go to Madame de Noailles, and ask her
what the rules of etiquette prescribed when a dauphiness of France failed
to keep her seat upon a donkey.

She had also another annoyance which was even of a less royal character
than being doomed to ride on a donkey. She had absolutely no pocket-money.
For many generations the princes of the country had been accustomed to dip
their hands so unrestrainedly into the national treasury, that their
legitimate appointments had been fixed on a very moderate, if not scanty,
scale; so that any one who, like the dauphin and dauphiness, might be
scrupulous not to exceed their income (though that scruple had probably
affected no one before) could not fail to be greatly straitened. The
allowance of Marie Antoinette was fixed at no higher amount than six
thousand francs a month; and of this small sum, according to a report
which, in the course of the autumn, Mercy made to the empress, not a
single crown really reached the princess for her private use.[10] Nearly