of honor.

Diana de Polignac was the channel through whom all these addressed
themselves to the queen; she was the loved friend who asked whether
the queen could not grant their demands. Louis granted all the
requests to the queen, and Marie Antoinette then went to her loved
friend Diana, in order to gratify her wishes, to receive a kiss, and
to be rewarded with a smile.

The great noble families saw with envy and displeasure this
supremacy of the Polignacs and the favorites of Trianon. They
withdrew from the court; gave the "Queen of Trianon" over to her
special friends and their citizen pleasures and sports, which, as
they asserted, were not becoming to the great nobility. They gave
the king over to his wife who ruled through him, and who, in turn,
was governed by the Polignacs and the other favorites. To them and
to their friends belonged all places, all honors; to them all
applied who wanted to gain any thing for the court, and even they
who wanted to get justice done them. Around the royal pair there was
nothing but intrigues, cabals, envy, and hostility. Every one wanted
to be first in the favor of the queen, in order to gain influence
and consideration; every one wanted to cast suspicion on the one who
was next to him, in order to supplant him in the favor of Marie
Antoinette.

The fair days of fortune and peace, of which the queen dreamed in
her charming country home, thinking that her realizations were met
when the sun had scarcely risen upon them, were gone. Trianon was
still there, and the happy peasant-girl of Trianon had been
unchanged in heart; but those to whom she had given her heart, those