Marie Antoinette is anxious for the Maintenance of the Alliance between
France and Austria.--She, with the Dauphin, makes a State Entry into
Paris.--The "Dames de la Halle."--She praises the Courtesy of the
Dauphin.--Her Delight at the Enthusiasm of the Citizens.--She, with the
Dauphin, goes to the Theatre, and to the Fair of St. Ovide, and to St.
Cloud.--Is enthusiastically received everywhere.--She learns to drive.--
She makes some Relaxations in Etiquette.--Marriage of the Comte d'Artois.
--The King's Health grows Bad.--Visit of Marshal Lacy to Versailles.--The
King catches the Small-pox.--Madame du Barri quits Versailles.--The King
dies.


Politics were, indeed, taking such a hold over Marie Antoinette that they
begin to furnish some topics for her letters to her mother, one of which
shows that she had already formed that opinion of French fickleness which
she had afterward too abundant cause to maintain. "I do hope," she says,
"that the good intelligence between our two nations will last. One good
thing in this country is, that if ill-natured feelings are quick to arise,
they disappear with equal rapidity. The King of Prussia is innately a bad
neighbor, but the English will also always be bad neighbors to France, and
the sea has never prevented them from doing her great mischief." We might,
firstly, demur to any actions of our statesmen being classed with the
treacherous aggressions of Frederick of Prussia, nor did many years of her
husband's reign pass over before the greatest of English ministers
proposed and concluded a treaty between the two countries, which he fondly
and wisely hoped would lay the foundations of a better understanding, if
not of a lasting peace, between the two countries. But even before that
treaty was framed, and before Pitt's voice had become predominant in the
State, Marie Antoinette's complaint that the sea had never disarmed us of