had given fatal proof of the truth of the words wrung from her by
nervous excitement at the moment of the late king's death, when she
declared that Louis and she were too young to reign; and the best excuse
that can be found for her is that she was not yet one-and-twenty. It was
not, however, wholly from submission to the interested malevolence of
others that she had shown herself the enemy of the great financier and
statesman. She had a spontaneous dislike to the retrenchments which
necessarily formed a great portion of his economical measures; not as
interfering with the indulgence of any extravagant tastes of her own, but
as restraining her power of gratifying her friends. For she was entirely
impressed with the idea that no person or body could have any right to
call in question the king's disposal of the national revenue; and that
there was no prerogative of the crown of which the exercise was more
becoming to the royal dignity than that of granting pensions or creating
sinecures with no limitations but such as might be imposed by his own will
or discretion. And on this point her husband fully shared her feelings.
"What," said he, on one occasion to Turgot, who was urging him to refuse
an utterly unwarrantable application for a pension. "What are a thousand
crowns a year?" "Sire," replied the minister, "they are the taxation of a
village." The king acquiesced for the moment, but probably not without
some secret wincing at the control to which he seemed to be subjected; and
we may, perhaps, suppose that even the queen's disapproval of the minister
would have been less effectual had it not been re-enforced by the king's
own feelings.

In fact, that the part which she took against the great minister was the
fruit of mere inconsiderateness and ignorance of the feelings and
necessities of the nation, and that, if she had known the depth of the
people's distress, and the degree in which it was caused by the
viciousness of the whole existing system of government, she would gladly
have promoted every measure which could tend to their relief, we may find
abundant proof in a letter which she had written to her mother, a few
weeks earlier. Maria Teresa had spoken with some harshness of the French
fickleness. Marie Antoinette replies:[7]

"You are quite right in all you say about French levity, but I am truly
grieved that on that account you should conceive an aversion for the
nation. The disposition of the people is very inc