saddle-horses to accompany him in his hunting and shooting excursions.
Like a true wife, she boasted to her mother of his skill as a shot: the
very day that she wrote he had killed forty head of game. (She did not
mention that a French sportsman's bag was not confined to the larger game,
but that thrushes, blackbirds, and even, red-breasts, were admitted to
swell the list.) And the increased facilities for companionship with him
that her riding afforded increased his tenderness for her, so that she was
happier than ever. Except that as yet she saw no prospect of presenting
the empress with a grandchild, she had hardly a wish ungratified.

Her taste for open-air exercise of this kind added also to the attachment
felt for her by the lower classes, from the opportunities which arose out
of it for showing her unvarying and considerate kindness. The contrast
which her conduct afforded to that of previous princes, and indeed to that
of all the present race except her husband, caused her actions of this
sort to be estimated rather above their real importance. But how great was
the impression which they did make on those who witnessed them may be seen
in the unanimity with which the chroniclers of the time record her
forbidding her postilions to drive over a field of corn which lay between
her and the stag, because she would rather miss the sight of the chase
than injure the farmer; and relate how, on one occasion, she gave up
riding for a week or two, and sent her horses back from Compiègne to
Versailles, because the wife of her head-groom was on the point of her
confinement, and she wished her to have her husband near her at such a
moment; and on another, when the horse of one of her attendants kicked
her, and inflicted a severe bruise on her foot, she abstained from
mentioning the hurt, lest it should bring the rider into disgrace by being
attributed to his awkward management.

Not that the intrigues of the mistress and her adherents were at all