onsistent, but it is not
bad. Pens and tongues utter a great many things which are not in their
heart. The proof that they do not cherish hatred is that on the very
slightest occasion they speak well of one, and even praise one much more
than one deserves. I have just this moment myself had experience of this.
There had been a terrible fire in Paris in the Palace of Justice, and the
same day I was to have gone to the opera, so I did not go, but sent two
hundred louis to relieve the most pressing cases of distress;[8] and ever
since the fire, the very same people who had been circulating libels and
songs against me[9] have been extolling me to the skies."

These revelations of her inmost thoughts to her mother show how real and
warm was her affection for the French as a nation, as well as how little
she claimed any merit for her endeavors to benefit them; though a
subsequent passage in the same letter also shows that she had been so much
annoyed by some pasquinades and libels, of which she had been the subject,
that she had become careful not to furnish fresh opportunities to her
enemies: "We have had here such a quantity of snow as has not been seen
for many years, so that people are going about in sledges, as they do at
Vienna. We were out in them yesterday about this place; and to-day there
is to be a grand procession of them through Paris. I should greatly have
liked to be able to go; but, as a queen has never been seen at such
things, people might have made up stories if I had gone, and I preferred
giving up the pleasure to being worried by fresh libels."

She was still as eager as ever in the pursuit of amusement, and especially
of novelties in that way, when not restrained by considerations such as
those which she here mentions. When at Choisy, she gave water parties on
the river in boats with awnings, which she called gondolas, rowing down as
far as the very entrance to the city. It was not quite a prudent diversion
for her, for at this time her health was not very strong. She easily
caught cold, and the reports of such attacks often caused great uneasiness
at Vienna; but the watermen were highly delighted, looking on her act in
putting herself under their care as a compliment to their craft; and some
of them, to increase her pleasure, jumped overboard and swam about. Their
well-meant gallantry, however, was nearly having an unfavorable effect;
unaware that it was not an accident, she thought that their lives were