Theresa, aimed at making themselves beloved by their pupils by the common
and blamable practice of indulgence, so fatal to the future progress and
happiness of children. Marie Antoinette was the cause of her governess
being dismissed, through a confession that all her copies and all her
letters were invariably first traced out with pencil; the Comtesse de
Brandes was appointed to succeed her, and fulfilled her duties with great
exactness and talent. The Queen looked upon having been confided to her
care so late as a misfortune, and always continued upon terms of
friendship with that lady. The education of Marie Antoinette was
certainly very much neglected. With the exception of the Italian
language, all that related to belles lettres, and particularly to history,
even that of her own country, was almost entirely unknown to her. This
was soon found out at the Court of France, and thence arose the generally
received opinion that she was deficient in sense. It will be seen in the
course of these "Memoirs" whether that opinion was well or ill founded.
The public prints, however, teemed with assertions of the superior talents
of Maria Theresa's children. They often noticed the answers which the
young Princesses gave in Latin to the harangues addressed to them; they
uttered them, it is true, but without understanding them; they knew not a
single word of that language.

Mention was one day made to the Queen of a drawing made by her, and
presented by the Empress to M. Gerard, chief clerk of Foreign Affairs, on
the occasion of his going to Vienna to draw up the articles for her
marriage-contract. "I should blush," said she, "if that proof of the
quackery of my education were shown to me. I do not believe that I ever
put a pencil to that drawing." However, what had been taught her she knew
perfectly well. Her facility of learning was inconceivable, and if all
her teachers had been as well informed and as faithful to their duty as
the Abbe Metastasio, who taught her Italian, she would have attained as