reign. He was kept studiously in the background, discountenanced and
depressed, till he contracted an awkward timidity and reserve which
throughout his life he could never shake off; while a still more
unfortunate defect, which was another result of this system, was an
inability to think or decide for himself, or even to act steadily on the
advice of others after he had professed to adopt it.

But these deficiencies in his character had as yet hardly had time to
display themselves; and, had they been ever so notorious, they were not of
a nature to divert Maria Teresa from her purpose. For her political
objects, it would not, perhaps, have seemed to her altogether undesirable
that the future sovereign of France should be likely to rely on the
judgment and to submit to the influence of another, so long as the person
who should have the best opportunity of influencing him was her own
daughter. A negotiation for the success of which both parties were equally
anxious did not require a long time for its conclusion; and by the
beginning of July, 1769, all the preliminaries were arranged; the French
newspapers were authorized to allude to the marriage, and to speak of the
diligence with which preparations for it were being made in both
countries; those in which the French king took the greatest interest being
the building of some carriages of extraordinary magnificence, to receive
the archduchess as soon as she should have arrived on French ground; while
those which were being made in Germany indicated a more elementary state
of civilization, as the first requisite appeared to be to put the roads
between Vienna and the frontier in a state of repair, to prevent the
journey from being too fatiguing.

By the spring of the next year all the necessary preparations had been
completed; and on the evening of the 10th of April, 1770, a grand court
was held in the Palace of Vienna. Through a double row of guards of the
palace, of body-guards, and of a still more select guard, composed wholly
of nobles, M. de Durfort was conducted into the presence of the Emperor
Joseph II., and of his widowed mother, the Empress-queen, still, though
only dowager-empress, the independent sovereign of her own hereditary
dominions; and to both he proffered, on the part of the King of France, a
formal request for the hand of the Archduchess Marie Antoinette for the
dauphin. When the Emperor and Empress had given their gracious consent to
the demand, the arch