cessible to all. She had accustomed the peasantry
to accost her in her walks; she had visited their cottages to inquire into
and relieve their wants. And the little Antoinette, who, more than any
other of her children, seems to have taken her for an especial model, had
thus, from her very earliest childhood, learned to feel a friendly
interest in the well-doing of the people in general; to think no one too
lowly for her notice, to sympathize with sorrow, to be indignant at
injustice and ingratitude, to succor misfortune and distress. And these
were habits which, as being implanted in her heart, she was not likely to
forget; but which might be expected rather to gain strength by indulgence,
and to make her both welcome and useful to any people among whom her lot
might be cast.

CHAPTER II.

Proposal for the Marriage of Marie Antoinette to the Dauphin.--Early
Education of the Dauphin.--The Archduchess leaves Vienna in April, 1770.--
Her Reception at Strasburg.--She meets the King at Compiegne.--The
Marriage takes place May 16th, 1770.

Royal marriages had been so constantly regarded as affairs of state, to be
arranged for political reasons, that it had become usual on the Continent
to betroth princes and princesses to each other at a very early age; and
it was therefore not considered as denoting any premature impatience on
the part of either the Empress-queen or the King of France, Louis XV.,
when, at the beginning of 1769, when Marie Antoinette had but just
completed her thirteenth year, the Duc de Choiseul, the French Minister
for Foreign Affairs, who was himself a native of Lorraine, instructed the
Marquis de Durfort, the French embassador at Vienna, to negotiate with the
celebrated Austrian prime minister, the Prince de Kaunitz, for her
marriage to the heir of the French throne, who was not quite fifteen
months older. Louis XV. had had several daughters, but only one son. That
son, born in 1729, had been married at the age of fifteen to a Spanish
infanta, who, within a year of her marriage, died in her confinement, and
whom he replaced in a few months by a daughter of Augustus III., King of
Saxony. His second wife bore him four sons and two daughters. The eldest
son, the Duc de Bourgogne, who was born in 1750, and was generally
regarded as a child of great promise, died in his eleventh year; and when
he himself died in 1765, his second son, previously known as the Duc de
Berri, succeeded him in his title of