queen, unwilling to break off
friendly relations with her unpolished allies, complained to the British
ambassador of the arrogant style of the English documents.

"They do not," said the queen, "disturb me, but they give great offense
to others, and endanger the amity existing between the two nations. I
would wish that more courtesy might mark our intercourse."

But the amenities of polished life, the rude islanders despised. The
British ambassador at Vienna, Sir Robert Keith, a gentlemanly man, was
often mortified at the messages he was compelled to communicate to the
queen. Occasionally the messages were couched in terms so peremptory and
offensive that he could not summon resolution to deliver them, and thus
he more than once incurred the censure of the king and cabinet, for his
sense of propriety and delicacy. These remonstrances were all
unavailing, and at length the Austrian cabinet began to reply with equal
rancor.

This state of things led the Austrian cabinet to turn to France, and
seek the establishment of friendly relations with that court. Louis XV.,
the most miserable of debauchees, was nominally king. His mistress,
Jeanette Poisson, who was as thoroughly polluted as her regal paramour,
governed the monarch, and through him France. The king had ennobled her
with the title of Marchioness of Pompadour. Her power was so boundless
and indisputable that the most illustrious ladies of the French court
were happy to serve as her waiting women. Whenever she walked out, one
of the highest nobles of the realm accompanied her as her attendant,
obsequiously bearing her shawl upon his arm, to spread it over her
shoulders in case it should be needed. Ambassadors and ministers she
summoned before her, assuming that air of royalty which she had
purchased with her merchantable charms. Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu,
waited in her ante-chambers, and implored her patronage. The haughty
mistress became even weary of their adulation.

"Not only," said she one day, to the Abbe de Bernis, "have I all the
nobility at my feet, but even my lap-dog is weary of their fawning."

With many apologies for requiring of the high-minded Maria Theresa a
sacrifice, Kaunitz suggested to her the expediency of cultivating the
friendship of Pompadour. Silesia was engraved upon the heart of the
queen, and she was prepared to do any thing which could aid her in the
reconquest of that duchy. She stooped so low as to write a letter with
her own