average for the year round, 12,500 pounds. It was by saving out of this
allowance that she paid for the pair of diamond ear-rings which she
bought soon after her marriage; but it took six years' savings to pay
for that one ornament. She was young and giddy when she bought those
jewels, and she paid for them out of her own pocket-money; but, as has
been seen, the purchase did not sound well in the ears of peasants who
boiled nettles for food when they could get no bread, from the pressure
of the taxes. Whether the discontented knew it or not, a good deal of
this monthly gold went in charity--charity, however, which did not do
half the good that self-denial would have done.

Her majesty was waited on at dinner by her ladies. She dined early,
generally eating chicken, and drinking water only. She supped on broth,
or the wing of a fowl, and biscuits which she steeped in water. She
spent the afternoons among her ladies, or with her two most intimate
friends--the Duchess de Polignac, for some time governess to the royal
children, and the Princess de Lamballe, superintendent of the household.
After a time the friendship with both these ladies cooled; but while it
lasted, the pleasantest hours the queen passed were when working and
conversing with these ladies. After the private theatre was given up,
the evenings were commonly spent in small dull card-parties, but
sometimes in more agreeable parties in the apartments of one or other of
her two friends. It was thoughtless and undignified of the queen to act
plays, to which the captains of the guard, and various other persons,
were in time admitted as spectators; but though her best friends would
have been glad that she should have abstained from such performances, it
is not surprising that she inclined to an amusement that gave her
something to think of and to do, and from which she really learned more
of literature than she could otherwise have done. Amidst the deplorable
dulness of such a life as hers, we cannot wonder that studying some of
the best French dramatic poetry, and feeling for the hour that she was
the companion and not the queen, should have been a pleasure which she
was sorry to forego. She sorely lamented afterwards that she had ever
indulged in it.

But, it may be said, she had children and she had friends. Could she
not make herself happy with them? Alas! She found herself disappointed
there,--as she was whichever way she turned for happiness.