Gustavus, who had a decided taste for matters which were in any way
connected with practical science, the "Marie Antoinette" made a successful
voyage to Chantilly. The date of another invention, if, indeed, it
deserves so respectable a title, is also fixed by this royal visit. Mesmer
had recently begun to astonish or bewilder the Parisians with his theory
of animal magnetism; and Gustavus spent some time in discussing the
question with him, and seems for a moment to have flattered himself that
he comprehended his principles. But the only durable result which arose
from his stay in France was the sincere regard and esteem which he and the
queen mutually conceived for each other. They established a
correspondence, in which Marie Antoinette repeatedly showed her eagerness
to gratify his wishes and to attend to his recommendations; and when, at a
later period, unexpected troubles fell on her and her husband, there was
no one whom their troubles inspired with greater eagerness to serve them
than Gustavus, whose last projects, before he fell by the hand of an
assassin, were directed to their deliverance from the dangers which,
though neither he nor they were as yet fully alive to their magnitude,
were on the point of overwhelming them.

CHAPTER XX.

St. Cloud is purchased for the Queen.--Libelous Attacks on her.--Birth of
the Duc de Normandie.--Joseph presses her to support his Views in the Low
Countries.---The Affair of the Necklace.--Share which the Cardinal de
Rohan had in it.--The Queen's Indignation at his Acquittal.--Subsequent
Career of the Cardinal.

Marie Antoinette had long since completed her gardens at the Trianon, but
the gradual change in the arrangements of the court had made a number of
alterations requisite at Versailles, with which the difficulty of finding
money rendered it desirable to proceed slowly. It was reckoned that it
would be necessary to give up the greater part of the palace to workmen
for ten years; and as the other palaces which the king possessed in the
neighborhood of Paris were hardly suited for the permanent residence of
the court, the queen proposed to her husband to obtain St. Cloud from the
Duc d'Orleans, giving him in exchange La Muette, the Castle of Choisy, and
a small adjacent forest. Such an arrangement would have produced a
considerable saving by the reduction of the establishments kept up at
those places, at which the court only spent a few days in each year. And
as the