fined to the royal
family and those nobles whose posts entitled them to immediate attendance
on the king and queen. She was so anxious to perform her own part well,
though she did not take any of the principal characters, but preferred to
act the waiting-woman rather than the mistress, that she placed herself
under the tuition of Michu, a professional actor of reputation from one of
the Parisian theatres; but, though the audience was far too courtly to
greet her appearance on the stage without vociferous applause, the
preponderance of evidence must lead us to believe that her majesty was not
a good actress.[1] And perhaps we may think that as the parts which she
selected required rather an arch pertness than the grace and majesty which
were more natural to her, so, also, they were not altogether in keeping
with the stately dignity which queens should never wholly lay aside.

It was well, however, that she should have amusements to cheer her, for
the year was destined to bring her heavy troubles before its close: losses
in her own family, which would be felt with terrible heaviness by her
affectionate disposition, were impending over her; while the news from
America, where the English army at this time was achieving triumphs which
seemed likely to have a decisive influence on the result of the war,
caused her great anxiety. How great, a letter which she wrote to her
mother in July affords a striking proof. In June, when she heard of the
dangerous illness of her uncle, Prince Charles of Lorraine, now Governor
of the Low Countries, formerly the gallant antagonist of Frederick of
Prussia, she declared that "the intelligence overwhelmed her with an
agitation and grief such as she had never before experienced," and she
lamented with evidently deep and genuine distress the threatened
extinction of the male line of the house of Lorraine. But before she wrote
again, the news of Sir Henry Clinton's exploits in Carolina had arrived,
and, though almost the same post informed her of the prince's death, the
sorrow which that bereavement awakened in her mind was scarcely allowed,
even in its first freshness, an equal share of her lamentations with the
more absorbing importance of the events of the campaign beyond the
Atlantic.

"MY DEAREST MOTHER,--I wrote to you the moment that I received the sad
intelligence of my uncle's death; though, as the Brussels courier had
already started, I fear my letter may have arrived rather late. I wil