urt. But now the royal apartments
were generally empty, the king being alone in his private cabinet, while
the queen was passing her time at some small private party of young
people, by her presence often seeming to countenance intrigues of which
she did not in her heart approve, and giddy conversation which was hardly
consistent with her royal position; though Mercy, in reporting these
habits to the empress, adds that the queen's own demeanor, even in the
moments of apparently unrestrained familiarity, was marked by such uniform
self-possession and dignity, that no one ever ventured to take liberties
with her, or to approach her without the most entire respect.[2]

It was hardly strange, then, that those who were not members of this
society should feel offended at finding the court, as it were, closed
against them, and should cease to frequent the palace when they had no
certainty of meeting any thing but empty rooms. They even absented
themselves from the queen's balls, which in consequence were so thinly
attended that sometimes there were scarcely a dozen dancers of each sex,
so that it was universally remarked that never within the memory of the
oldest courtiers had Versailles been so deserted as it was this winter;
the difference between the scene which the palace presented now from what
had been witnessed in previous seasons striking the queen herself, and
inclining her to listen more readily to the remonstrances which, at
Mercy's instigation, the empress addressed to her. Her mother pointed out
to her, with all the weight of her own long experience, the
incompatibility of a private mode of life, such as is suitable for
subjects, with the state befitting a great sovereign; and urged her to
recollect that all the king's subjects, so long as their rank and
characters were such as to entitle them to admission at court, had an
equal right to her attention; and that the system of exclusiveness which
she had adopted was a dereliction of her duty, not only to those who were
thus deprived of the honors of the reception to which they were entitled,
but also to the king, her husband, who was injured by any line of conduct
which tended to discourage the nobles of the land from paying their
respects to him.

In the midst of all her giddiness, Marie Antoinette always listened with
good humor, it may even be said with docility, to honest advice. No one
ever in her rank was so unspoiled by authority; and more than one
conversat