great English dramatist, her contemporary, that true
wit was nearly allied to good-nature;[8] and she showed herself more
decided in nothing than in discouraging and checking every tendency to
disparagement of the absent, and diffusing a tone of friendly kindness
over society. On one occasion, when she heard some of her ladies laughing
over a spiteful story, she reproved them plainly for their mirth as "bad
taste." On another she asked some who were thus amusing themselves, "How
they would like any one to speak thus of themselves in their absence, and
before her?" and her precept, fortified by example (for no unkind comment
on any one was ever heard to pass her lips), so effectually extinguished
the habit of detraction that in a very short time it was remarked that no
courtier ventured on an ill-natured word in her presence, and that even
the Comte de Provence, who especially aimed at the reputation of a sayer
of good things, and affected a character for cynical sharpness, learned at
last to restrain his sarcastic tongue, and at least to pretend a
disposition to look at people's characters and actions with as much
indulgence as herself.

CHAPTER X.

Settlement of the Queen's Allowance.--Character and Views of Turgot.--She
induces Gluck to visit Paris.--Performance of his Opera of "Iphigenie
en Aulide."--The First Encore.--Marie Antoinette advocates the
Re-establishment of the Parliaments, and receives an Address from them.--
English Visitors at the Court.--The King is compared to Louis XII. and
Henri IV.--The Archduke Maximilian visits his Sister.--Factious Conduct of
the Princes of the Blood.--Anti-Austrian Feeling in Paris.--The War of
Grains.--The King is crowned at Rheims.--Feelings of Marie Antoinette.--
Her Improvements at the Trianon.--Her Garden Parties there.--Description
of her Beauty by Burke, and by Horace Walpole.

Maria Teresa had warned her daughter against extravagance, a warning which
would have been regarded as wholly misplaced by any other of the French
princes, who were accustomed to treat the national treasury as a fund
intended to supply the means for their utmost profusion, but which
certainly coincided with the views of Marie Antoinette herself, who, as we
have seen, vindicated herself from the charge of prodigality, and declared
that she took great care that her improvements at the Trianon should not
be beyond her means. Yet it would not have been surprising if they had
been found to