2th of August, her sister-in-law, the
Countess d'Artois, presented her husband with a son.[2] She treated the
young mother with a sisterly kindness suited to the occasion, which
extorted the unqualified praise of Mercy himself; but she could not
restrain her feelings on the subject to her mother, and she expressed to
her frankly the extreme pain "which she suffered at thus seeing an heir to
the throne who was not her own child." Nor is it strange that at such
moments she should feel hurt at the coldness with which her husband
continued to behave toward her, or that she should ran eagerly after any
excitement which might aid in diverting her mind from a comparison of her
own position with that of her happier sister-in-law.[3]

It would have been well if she had confined her expressions of
disappointment to her mother. But since we may not disguise her occasional
acts of imprudence, it must be confessed that at times her mortification
led her to speak of her husband to strangers in a tone of disparagement
which was highly unbecoming. Maximilian had been accompanied by the Count
de Rosenburg, who had in consequence been admitted to the intimate society
of the court during the archduke's visit, and who had inspired Marie
Antoinette with so favorable an opinion of his character and judgment that
after his return to Vienna she more than once sent him an account of the
proceedings at the palace since her brother's departure. She describes to
him a series of concerts, at which she had sung herself with some of her
ladies. She gives him a list of the guests, remarking, with a
particularity which seems to show that she expects her words to be
reported to the empress, that the gentlemen, though amiable and well bred,
were not young. But she also complains that the king's tastes do not
resemble hers, that he cares for nothing but hunting and mechanical
employments; and, indulging in an unwonted bit of sarcasm, she proceeds:
"You will allow that I should not look well beside a forge. I could never
become a Vulcan; and the part of Venus would displease him more than my
real tastes, which he does not disapprove." In another letter she mentions
him in a tone of contemptuous pity, almost equally unbecoming, speaking of
him as "the poor man" whom she had made a tool of to further some views of
her own, though Mercy assured the empress that her assertion of having so
treated him was a mere fiction of her imagination, to impart a sort of
li