often happens that he does not speak to me about matters of importance
even when he has not the least wish to conceal them from me. He answers me
when I speak to him about them, but he scarcely ever opens the subject;
and when I have learned a quarter of the business, I am then forced to use
some address to make the ministers tell me the rest, by letting them think
that the king has told me every thing. When I reproach him for not having
spoken to me of such and such matters, he is not annoyed, but only seems a
little embarrassed, and sometimes answers, in an off-hand way, that he had
never thought of it. This distrust, which is natural to him, was at first
strengthened by his govern--or before my marriage. M. de Vauguyon had
alarmed him about the authority which his wife would desire to assume over
him, and the duke's black disposition delighted in terrifying his pupil
with all the phantom stories invented against the house of Austria. M. de
Maurepas, though less obstinate and less malicious, still thought it
advantageous to his own credit to keep up the same notions in the king's
mind. M. de Vergennes follows the same plan, and perhaps avails himself of
his correspondence on foreign affairs to propagate falsehoods. I have
spoken plainly about this to the king more than once. He has sometimes
answered me rather peevishly, and, as he is never fond of discussion, I
have not been able to persuade him that his minister was deceived, or was
deceiving him. I do not blind myself as to the extent of my own influence.
I know that I have no great ascendency over the king's mind, especially in
politics; and would it be prudent in me to have scenes with his ministers
on such subjects, on which it is almost certain that the king would not
support me? Without ever boasting or saying a word that is not true, I,
however, let the public believe that I have more influence than I really
have, because, if they did not think so, I should have still less. The
avowals which I am making to you, my dear brother, are not very flattering
to my self-love; but I do not like to hide any thing from you, in order
that you may be able to judge of my conduct as correctly as is possible at
this terrible distance from you, at which my destiny has placed me.[5]"

A melancholy interest attunes to sentences such as these, from the
influence which the defects in her husband's character, when joined to
those of his minister, had on the future destinies of both,