and the courtiers received a lesson, if they had been disposed to profit
by it, when on each Sunday morning they saw the royal pair repair to the
parish church for divine service, the day being closed by their public
supper in the queen's apartment.

And this appearance of domestic felicity was augmented by the introduction
of what may be called private parties, with which, at the queen's
instigation, Louis consented to vary the cold formality of the ordinary
entertainments of the court. In the autumn they followed the example of
Louis XV. by exchanging for a few weeks the grandeur of Versailles for the
comparative quiet of some of their smaller palaces; and, while they were
at Choisy, they issued invitations once or twice a week to several of the
Parisian ladies to come out and spend the day at the palace, when, as the
principal officers of the household were not on duty, they themselves did
the honors to their guests, the queen conversing with every one with her
habitual graciousness, while the king also threw off his ordinary reserve,
and seemed to enter into the pleasures of the day with a gayety and
cordiality which surprised the party, and which, from the contrast that it
presented to his manner when he was by himself, was very generally
attributed to the influence of the queen's example.

And these quiet festivities were so much to his taste that afterward, when
the court moved to Fontainebleau, and when they settled at Versailles for
the winter, he cheerfully agreed to a proposal of Marie Antoinette to have
a weekly supper party; adopting also another suggestion of hers which was
indispensable to render such reunions agreeable, or even, it may be said,
practicable. At her request he abolished the ridiculous rule which, under
the last two kings, had forbidden gentlemen to be admitted to sit at table
with any princess of the royal family. But natural as the idea seemed, it
was not carried out without opposition on the part of Madame Adelaide and
her sisters, who remonstrated against it as an infraction of all the old
observances of the court, till it became a contest for superiority between
the queen and themselves. Marie Antoinette took counsel with Mercy, and,
by his advice, pointed out to her husband that to abandon the plan after
it had been announced, in submission to an opposition which the princesses
had no right to make, would be to humiliate her in the eyes of the whole
court. Louis had not yet shaken of