she would have been totally isolated, for, excepting the old King, who
became more and more enraptured with the grace, beauty, and vivacity of
his young granddaughter, not another individual in the Royal Family was
really interested in her favour. The kindness of a personage so
important was of too much weight not to awaken calumny. It was, of
course, endeavoured to be turned against her. Possibilities, and even
probabilities, conspired to give a pretext for the scandal which already
began to be whispered about the Dauphine and D'Artois. It would have
been no wonder had a reciprocal attachment arisen between a virgin wife,
so long neglected by her husband, and one whose congeniality of character
pointed him out as a more desirable partner than the Dauphin. But there
is abundant evidence of the perfect innocence of their intercourse. Du
Barry was most earnest in endeavouring, from first to last, to establish
its impurity, because the Dauphine induced the gay young Prince to join
in all her girlish schemes to tease and circumvent the favourite. But
when this young Prince and his brother were married to the two Princesses
of Piedmont, the intimacy between their brides and the Dauphine proved
there could have been no doubt that Du Barry had invented a calumny, and
that no feeling existed but one altogether sisterly. The three stranger
Princesses were indeed inseparable; and these marriages, with that of the
French Princess, Clotilde, to the Prince of Piedmont, created
considerable changes in the coteries of Court.

"The machinations against Marie Antoinette could not be concealed from
the Empress-mother. An extraordinary Ambassador was consequently sent
from Vienna to complain of them to the Court of Versailles, with
directions that the remonstrance should be supported and backed by the
Comte de Mercy, then Austrian Ambassador at the Court of France. Louis
XV. was the only person to whom the communication was news. This old
dilettanti of the sex was so much engaged between his seraglio of the
Parc-aux-cerfs and Du Barry that he knew less of what was passing in his
palace than those at Constantinople. On being informed by the Austrian
Ambassador, he sent an Ambassador of his own to Vienna to assure the
Empress that he was perfectly satisfied of the innocent conduct of his
newly acquired granddaughter.

"Among the intrigues within intrigues of the time I mention, there was
one which shows that perhaps Du Barry's