chose to enjoy life without regard to ceremony. Her escapades at
first would have been thought mild enough had she not been a
"daughter of France"; but they served to shock the old French
king, and likewise, perhaps even more, her own imperial mother,
Maria Theresa.

When a report of the young girl's conduct was brought to her the
empress was at first mute with indignation. Then she cried out:

"Can this girl be a child of mine? She surely must be a
changeling!"

The Austrian ambassador to France was instructed to warn the
Dauphiness to be more discreet.

"Tell her," said Maria Theresa, "that she will lose her throne,
and even her life, unless she shows more prudence."

But advice and remonstrance were of no avail. Perhaps they might
have been had her husband possessed a stronger character; but the
young Louis was little more fitted to be a king than was his wife
to be a queen. Dull of perception and indifferent to affairs of
state, he had only two interests that absorbed him. One was the
love of hunting, and the other was his desire to shut himself up
in a sort of blacksmith shop, where he could hammer away at the
anvil, blow the bellows, and manufacture small trifles of
mechanical inventions. From this smudgy den he would emerge, sooty
and greasy, an object of distaste to his frivolous princess, with
her foamy laces and perfumes and pervasive daintiness.