CHAPTER VIII
[1] Mercy to Maria Teresa, August 14th, 1773, Arneth, ii., p. 31.
[2] The money was a joint gift from herself as well as from him. Great distress, arising from the extraordinarily high price of bread, was at this time prevailing in Paris.
[3] The term most commonly used by Marie Antoinette in her letters to her mother to describe Madame du Barri. She was ordered to retire to the Abbey of Pont-aux-Dames, near Meaux. Subsequently she was allowed to return to Luciennes, a villa which her royal lover had given her.
[4] Madame de Mazarin was the lady who, by the fulsomeness of her servility to Madame du Barri, provoked Madame du Deffand (herself a lady not altogether sans reproche) to say that it was not easy to carry "the heroism of baseness and absurdity farther."
[5] Lorraine had become a French province a few years before, on the death of Stanislaus Leczinsky, father of the queen of Louis XV.
[6] Maria Teresa to Marie Antoinette, May 18th, and to Mercy on the same day, Arneth, ii., p. 149.
[7] See his letter of 8th May to Maria Teresa. "Il faut que pour la suite de son bonheur, elle commence à s'emparer de l'autorité que M. le Dauphin n'exercera jamais que d'une façon convenable, et … ce serait du dernier danger et pour l'état et pour le système général que qui ce soit s'emparât de M. le Dauphin et qu'il fut conduit par autre que par Madame la Dauphine."—ARNETH, ii., p. 137.
[8] "Je parle à l'amie, à la confidente du roi."—Maria Teresa to Marie Antoinette, May 30th, 1770, Arneth, ii., p. 155.
[9] "Jusqu'à présent l'étiquette de cette cour a toujours interdit aux reines et princesses royales de manger avec des hommes."—Mercy to Maria Teresa, June 7th, 1774, Arneth, ii, p. 164
[10] "Elle me traite, à mon arrivée, comme tous les jeunes gens qui composaient ses pages, qu'elle comblait de bontés, en leur montrant une bienveillance pleine de dignité, mais qu'on pouvait aussi appeler maternelle."—Marie Thérèse, Mémoires de Tilly, i., p. 25.
[11] Le don, ou le droit, de joyeux avènement.
[12] La ceinture de la reine. It consisted of three pence (deniers) on each hogs-head of wine imported into the city, and was levied every three years in the capital.—ARNETH, ii, p. 179.
[13] The title "ceinture de la reine" had been given to it because in the old times queens and all other ladies had carried their purses at their girdles.