begin a letter to the empress before the morning on which it was to be
sent, lest it should be read by those for whose eyes it was not intended.
For our knowledge, therefore, of her acts and feelings at this period of
her life, we still have to rely principally on Mercy's correspondence,
which is, however, a sufficiently trustworthy guide, so accurate was his
information, and so entire the frankness with which she opened herself to
him on all occasions and on all subjects.

The spring of 1771 opened very unfavorably for the new administration;
omens of impending dangers were to be seen on all sides. Ten or twelve
years before, Goldsmith, whose occasional silliness of manner prevented
him from always obtaining the attention to which his sagacity entitled
him, had named the growing audacity of the French parliaments as not only
an indication of the approach of great changes in that country, but as
likely also to be their moving cause.[1] And they had recently shown such
determined resistance to the royal authority, that, though in the most
conspicuous instance of it, their assertion of their right to pronounce an
independent judgment on the charges brought against the Duc d'Aiguillon,
they were unquestionably in the right; and though their pretensions were
supported by almost the whole body of the princes of the blood, some of
whom were immediately banished for their contumacy, Louis had been
persuaded to abolish them altogether. And Marie Antoinette, though she
carefully avoided mixing herself up with politics, was, as she reported to
her mother,[2] astonished beyond measure at their conduct, which she
looked upon as arising out of the grossest disloyalty, and which certainly
indicated the existence of a feeling very dangerous to the maintenance of
the royal authority on the part of those very men who were most bound to
uphold it. There was also great and general distress. For a moment in the
autumn it had been relieved by a fall in the price of bread, which the
unreasoning gratitude of the populace had attributed to the benevolence of