The Queen, making monthly retrenchments from the expenditure of her privy
purse, and not having spent the gifts customary at the period of her
confinement, was in possession of from five to six hundred thousand
francs, her own savings. She made use of from two to three hundred
thousand francs of this, which her first women sent to M. Lenoir, to the
cures of Paris and Versailles, and to the Soeurs Hospitalieres, and so
distributed them among families in need.

Desirous to implant in the breast of her daughter not only a desire to
succour the unfortunate, but those qualities necessary for the due
discharge of that duty, the Queen incessantly talked to her, though she
was yet very young, about the sufferings of the poor during a season so
inclement. The Princess already had a sum of from eight to ten thousand
francs for charitable purposes, and the Queen made her distribute part of
it herself.

Wishing to give her children yet another lesson of beneficence, she
desired me on New Year's eve to get from Paris, as in other years, all the
fashionable playthings, and have them spread out in her closet. Then
taking her children by the hand, she showed them all the dolls and
mechanical toys which were ranged there, and told them that she had
intended to give them some handsome New Year's gifts, but that the cold
made the poor so wretched that all her money was spent in blankets and
clothes to protect them from the rigour of the season, and in supplying
them with bread; so that this year they would only have the pleasure of
looking at the new playthings. When she returned with her children into
her sitting-room, she said there was still an unavoidable expense to be
incurred; that assuredly many mothers would at that season think as she
did,--that the toyman must lose by it; and therefore she gave him fifty
Louis to repay him for the cost of his journey, and console him for having