character, it is believed that he had had
the insolence to approach her with the language of gallantry; that he had
been rejected with merited indignation; and that he ever afterward
regarded her noble disdain as a provocation which it should be the chief
object of his life to revenge. In fact, on one occasion he did not scruple
to avow his resentment at the way in which, as he said, she had treated
him; though he did not mention the reason.[1]

Calumny was the only weapon which could be employed against her; but in
that he and his partisans had long been adept. Every old libel and pretext
for detraction was diligently revived. The old nickname of "The Austrian"
was repeated with pertinacity as spiteful as causeless; even the king's
aunts lending their aid to swell the clamor on that ground, and often
saying, with all the malice of their inveterate jealousy, that it was not
to be expected that she should have the same feelings as their father or
Louis XIV., since she was not of their blood, though it was plain that the
same remark would have applied to every Queen of France since Anne of
Brittany. Even the embarrassments of the revenue were imputed to her; and
she, who had curtailed her private expenses, even those which seemed
almost necessary to her position, that she might minister more largely to
the necessities of the poor--who had declined to buy jewels that the money
might be applied to the service of the State--was now held up to the
populace as being by her extravagance the prime cause of the national
distress. Pamphlets and caricatures gave her a new nickname of "Madame
Deficit;" and such an impression to her disfavor was thus made on the
minds of the lower classes, that a painter, who had just finished an
engaging portrait of her surrounded by her children, feared to send it to
the exhibition, lest it should be made a pretext for insult and violence.
Her unpopularity did not, indeed, last long at this time, but was
superseded, as we shall presently see, by fresh feelings of gratitude for
fresh labors of charity; nevertheless, the outcry now raised left its seed
behind it, to grow hereafter into a more enduring harvest of distrust and
hatred.

She had troubles, too, of another kind which touched her more nearly. A
second daughter, Sophie[2], had been born to her in the summer of 1786;
but she was a sickly child, and died, before she was a year old, of one of
the illnesses to which children are subject, and for