duke was disposed to think that he should be a gainer by the
exchange, it is not very easy to explain how it was that the original
project was given up, and that St. Cloud was eventually sold to the crown
for a sum of money, Choisy and La Muette being also retained.

St. Cloud was bought; and Marie Antoinette, still eager to prevent her own
acquisition from being too costly, proposed to the king that it should he
bought in her name, and called her property; since an establishment for
her would naturally lie framed on a more moderate scale than that of any
palace belonging to the king, which was held always to require the
appointment of a governor and deputy-governors, with a corresponding staff
of underlings, while she should only require a porter at the outer gate.
The advantage of such a plan was so obvious that it was at once adopted.
The porters and servants wore the queen's livery; and all notices of the
regulations to be observed were signed "In the queen's name.[1]" Yet so
busy were her enemies at this time, that even this simple arrangement,
devised solely for the benefit of the people who were intimately concerned
in every thing that tended to diminish the royal expenditure, gave rise to
numberless cavils. Some affirmed that the issue of such notices in the
name of the queen instead of in that of the king was an infringement on
his authority. One most able and influential counselor of the Parliament,
Duval d'Espremesnil, who in more than one discussion in subsequent years
showed that in general he fully appreciated the principles of
constitutional government, but who at this time seems to have been
animated by no other feeling than that of hatred for the existing
ministers, even went the length of affirming that there was "something not
only impolitic but immoral in the idea of any palace belonging to a queen
of France.[2]" But when the arrangements had once been made, Marie
Antoinette not unnaturally thought her honor concerned in not abandoning
it in deference to clamor so absurd, as well as so disrespectful to
herself; and St. Cloud, to which she had always been partial, continued
hers, and for the next five years divided her attention with the Trianon.

But though she herself disregarded all such attacks with the calm dignity
which belonged to her character, her friends were not free from serious
apprehensions as to the power of persistent detraction and calumny. It was
one of the penalties which the nation