the dauphiness; but the severity of the winter had brought it back with
aggravated intensity till it reached even to the palace, and compelled a
curtailment of some of the festivities with which it had been intended to
celebrate the marriage of the Count de Provence, which was fixed for the
approaching May.

Distress is the sure parent of discontent, unless the people have a very
complete confidence in their government. And this was so far from being
the case in France at this time, that the distrust of and contempt for
those in the highest places increased daily more and more. The influence
which Madame du Barri exerted over the king became more rooted as he
became more used to submit to it, and more notorious as he grew more
shameless in his avowal of it. She felt her power, and her intrigues
became in the same proportion more busy and more diversified in their
objects. In the vigorous description of Mercy, Versailles was wholly
occupied by treachery, hatred, and vengeance; not one feeling of honesty
or decency remained; while the people, ever quick-witted to perceive the
vices of their rulers, especially when they are indulged at their expense,
revenged themselves by bitter and seditious language, and by satires and
pasquinades in which neither respect nor mercy was shown even to the
sacred person of the sovereign himself. He was callous to all marks of
contempt displayed for himself; but was, or was induced to profess
himself, deeply annoyed at the conduct of the dauphin, who showed a fixed
aversion for the mistress, which, however, his grandfather did not regard
as dictated by his own feelings. Louis rather believed that it was
fostered by Marie Antoinette, and that she, in encouraging her husband,
was but following the advice of her aunts; and he threatened to
remonstrate with the dauphiness on the subject, though, as Mercy correctly
divined, he could not nerve himself to the necessary resolution.