place, her royal highness, before she would allow her attendants to
extricate her from the mud, bid them go to Madame de Noailles, and ask her
what the rules of etiquette prescribed when a dauphiness of France failed
to keep her seat upon a donkey.

She had also another annoyance which was even of a less royal character
than being doomed to ride on a donkey. She had absolutely no pocket-money.
For many generations the princes of the country had been accustomed to dip
their hands so unrestrainedly into the national treasury, that their
legitimate appointments had been fixed on a very moderate, if not scanty,
scale; so that any one who, like the dauphin and dauphiness, might be
scrupulous not to exceed their income (though that scruple had probably
affected no one before) could not fail to be greatly straitened. The
allowance of Marie Antoinette was fixed at no higher amount than six
thousand francs a month; and of this small sum, according to a report
which, in the course of the autumn, Mercy made to the empress, not a
single crown really reached the princess for her private use.[10] Nearly
half of the money was stopped to pay some pensions granted Marie
Leczinska, with which the dauphiness could by no possibility have the
slightest concern. Almost as much more was intrusted to the gentlemen of
her chamber for the expenses of the play table, at which she was expected
to preside, since there was no queen to discharge that duty; and whether
her royal highness's cards won or lost, the money equally disappeared,[11]
and the remainder was distributed in presents to her ladies, at the
discretion of Madame de Noailles. Had not Maria Teresa, when she first
quit Vienna, intrusted Mercy with a thousand pounds for her use, and had
she not herself been singularly economical in her ideas, she would have
been in the humiliating position of being unable to provide for her own
most ordinary wants, and, a matter about which she was even more anxious,
for her constant charities. Yet so inveterate was the mismanagement in
both the court and the government, that it was some time before Mercy
could succeed, by the strongest remonstrances supported by clear proofs of
the real situation of her royal highness, in getting her affairs and her
resources placed upon a proper footing.

In spite of all the efforts of the cabal, the king's regard for her
increased daily. He had not for many years been used to being treated with
respect, and she, not