her rank as
daughter of the Queen; and that her situation would be far preferable to
that of queen of any other country; and that there was nothing in Europe
to be compared to the Court of France; and that it would be necessary, in
order to avoid exposing a French Princess to feelings of deep regret, in
case she should be married to a foreign prince, to take her from the
palace of Versailles at seven years of age, and send her immediately to
the Court in which she was to dwell; and that at twelve would be too late;
for recollections and comparisons would ruin the happiness of all the rest
of her life. The Queen looked upon the destiny of her sisters as far
beneath her own; and frequently mentioned the mortifications inflicted by
the Court of Spain upon her sister, the Queen of Naples, and the necessity
she was under of imploring the mediation of the King of France.

She showed me several letters that she had received from the Queen of
Naples relative to her differences with the Court of Madrid respecting the
Minister Acton. She thought him useful to her people, inasmuch as he was
a man of considerable information and great activity. In these letters
she minutely acquainted her Majesty with the nature of the affronts she
had received, and represented Mr. Acton to her as a man whom malevolence
itself could not suppose capable of interesting her otherwise than by his
services. She had had to suffer the impertinences of a Spaniard named Las
Casas, who had been sent to her by the King, her father-in-law, to
persuade her to dismiss Mr. Acton from the business of the State, and from
her intimacy. She complained bitterly to the Queen, her sister, of the
insulting proceedings of this charge d'affaires, whom she told, in order
to convince him of the nature of the feelings which attached her to Mr.
Acton, that she would have portraits and busts of him executed by the most
eminent artists of Italy, and that she would then send them to the King of
Spain, to prove that nothing but the desire to retain a man of superior
capacity had induced her to bestow on him the favour he enjoyed. This Las
Casas dared to answer her that it would be useless trouble; that the
ugliness of a man did not always render him displeasing; and that the King
of Spain had too much experience not to know that there was no accounting
for the caprices of a woman.

This audacious reply filled the Queen of Naples with indignation, and her
emotion caused her t