it the moment that her circumstances changed.

And a probability of an early change was already apparent. During the last
months of 1772 there was a general idea that the king's health and mental
faculties were both giving away; and all the different parties about
Versailles began to show their sense of her approaching authority. It was
remarked that both the ministers and the mistress had become very guarded
in their language, and in their behavior to her and her husband. The Count
de Provence took a curious way of showing his expectation of a change, by
delivering her a long paper of counsels for her guidance, the chief object
of which was to warn her against holding such frequent conversations with
Mercy. She apparently thought that the writer's desire was to remove the
embassador from her confidence that he himself might occupy the vacant
place, and she showed her opinion of the value of the advice by reading it
to Mercy and then putting it into the fire.

Some extracts from the first letter which she wrote to her mother in 1773
will serve to give us a fair idea of her feelings at this time, both from
what it does and from what it does not mention. The intelligence which has
reached her about her sister recalls to her mind her own anxiety to become
a mother, her disappointment in this matter being, indeed, one of the most
constant topics of lamentation in the letters of both daughter and mother,
till it was removed by the birth of the princess royal. But that is her
only vexation. In every other respect she seems perfectly contented with
the course which affairs are taking; while we see how thoroughly unspoiled
she is both in the warmth of the affection with which she speaks of her
family and greets the little memorials of home which have been sent her;
and still more in the continuance of her acts of charity, and in her
design that her benevolence should be unknown.