delight, as well as in her eyes
her chief duty--the task of watching over the early promise, the opening
talents and virtues of those who were destined, as she hoped, to have a
predominant influence on the future welfare of the nation. Especially she
made a rule of taking the little princess with her on the different
errands of humanity and benevolence, which, wherever she might be, and
more particularly while she was at Versailles, formed an almost habitual
part of her occupations. She saw that much of the distress which now
seemed to be the normal condition of the humbler classes, and much of the
discontent, which was felt by all classes but the highest, were caused by
the pride of the princes and nobles, who, in France, drew a far more
rigorous and unbending line of demarkation between themselves and their
inferiors than prevailed in other countries; and she desired from their
earliest infancy to imbue her children with a different principle, and to
teach them by her own example that none could be so lowly as to be beneath
the notice even of a sovereign; and that, on the contrary, the greater the
depression of the poor, the greater claim did it give them on the
solicitude and protection of their princes and rulers.

Nor were these lessons, which even worldly policy might have dictated, the
only ones which she sought to inculcate on the little princess before the
more exciting pursuits of society should have rendered her less
susceptible to good impressions. Unfriendly as her husband's aunts had
always been to herself, and little as there was that was really amiable in
their characters, there was yet one, the Princess Louise, the Nun of St.
Denis, whose renunciation of the world seemed to point her out to her
family as a model of holiness and devotion; and as, above all things,
Marie Antoinette desired to inspire her little daughter with a deep sense
of religious obligation, she soon began to take her with her in all her
visits to the convent, and to encourage her to converse with the other
Sisters of the house. Nor did she abandon the practice even when it was
suggested to her that such an intercourse with those who were notoriously
always on the watch to attract recruits of rank or consideration, might
have the result of inclining the child to follow her great-aunt's example;
and perhaps, by renouncing the world, to counteract plans which her
parents might have preferred for her establishment in life. Marie
Antoinett