In spite of all the efforts of the cabal, the king's regard for her increased daily. He had not for many years been used to being treated with respect, and she, not from any artfulness, but from her native propriety of feeling, which forbade her ever to forget that he was her husband's grandfather and her king, united a tone of the most loyal respect with her filial caresses. She called him papa, and even paid him the tacit compliment of grounding occasional requests on considerations of humanity and justice, little as such motives had ever influenced Louis, and rarely as their names had of late been heard in the precincts of the palace. She even induced him to pardon Madame de Grammont; insisting on such a concession as due to herself, when she demanded it for one of her own retinue, till he laughed, and replied, "Madame, your orders shall be executed." And the steadiness she thus showed in protecting her own servants won her many hearts among the courtiers, at the same time that it filled her aunts with astonishment, who, while commending her firmness, could not avoid adding that "it was easy to see that she did not belong to their race.[12]" And how strong as well as how general was of respect and good-will which she had thus diffused was seen in a remarkable manner at some of the private theatricals, which were a frequent diversion of the king, when the actor, at the end of one of his songs, introduced some verses which he had composed in her honor, and the whole body of courtiers who were present showed their approbation by a vehement clapping of their hands, in defiance of a standing order of the court, which prohibited any such demonstrations being made in the sovereign's presence.[13]
It, however, more than counterbalanced these triumphs that, before the end of the year, the cabal of the mistress succeeded in procuring the dismissal of the Choiseul, and the appointment of the Duc d'Aiguillon as minister. For Choiseul had been not only a faithful, but a most judicious, friend to her. If others showed too often that they regarded her as a foreigner, he only remembered it as a reason for giving her hints as to the feelings of the nation or of individuals which a native would not have required. And she thankfully acknowledged that his suggestions had always been both kind and useful, and expressed her sense of her obligations to him, and her concern at his dismissal to her mother, who fully shared her feelings on the subject.
And, encouraged by this victory over her most powerful adherent, the cabal began to venture to attack Marie Antoinette herself. They surrounded her with spies; they even spread a report that Louis had begun to see through and to distrust her, in the hope that, when it should reach the king's own ears, it might perhaps lay the foundation of the alienation which it pretended to assert; and they grew the bolder because the king's next brother was about to be married to a Savoyard princess, of whose favor De la Vauguyon flattered himself that he was already assured. Under these circumstances Marie Antoinette behaved with consummate prudence, as far at least as her enemies were concerned. She despised the efforts made to lower her in the general estimation so completely that she seemed wholly unconscious of them. She did not even allow herself to be provoked into treating the authors of the calumnies with additional coldness; but gave no handle to any of them to complain of her, so that the critical and anxious eyes of Mercy himself found nothing to wish altered in her conduct toward them.[14] And throughout the winter she pursued the even tenor of her way, making herself chiefly remarkable by almost countless acts of charity, which she dispensed with such judgment as showed that they proceeded, not from a heedless disregard of money, but from a thoughtful and vigilant kindness, which did not think the feelings any more than the necessities of the poor beneath her notice.
Circumstances to which she contributed only indirectly enhanced her popularity and weakened the effects of the mistress's hostility. Versailles had not been so gay for many winters, and the votaries of mere amusement, always a strong party at every court, rejoiced at the addition to the royal family to whom the gayety was owing. Louis roused himself to gratify the young princess, who enlivened his place with the first respectable pleasures which it or he had known for years. When he saw that she liked dramatic performances, he opened the private theatre of the palace twice a week. Because she was fond of dancing, he encouraged her to have a weekly ball in her own apartments, at which she herself was the principal attraction, not solely by the elegance of her every movement, but still more by the graciousness with which she received and treated her guests, having a kind smile and an affable word for all, apparently forgetting her rank in the frankness of her condescension, yet at the same time bearing herself with an innate dignity which prevented the most forward from presuming on her kindness or venturing on any undue familiarity.[15]
The winter of 1770 was one of unusual severity; and she found resources for a further enlivenment of the court in the frost itself. Sledging on the snow was an habitual pastime at Vienna, where the cold is more severe than at Paris; nor in former years had sledges been wholly unknown in the Bois de Boulogne. And now Marie Antoinette, whose hardy habits made exercise in the fresh air almost a necessity for her, had sledges built for herself and her attendants; and the inhabitants of Versailles and the neighborhood, as fond of novelty as all their countrymen, were delighted at the merry sledging-parties which, as long as the snow lasted, explored the surrounding country, while the woods rang with the horses' bells, and, almost as loudly and still more cheerfully, with the laughter of the company.
Her liveliness had, as it were, given a new tone to the whole court; and though the dauphin held out longer against the genial influence of his wife's disposition than most people, it at last in some degree thawed even his frigidity. She ascribed his apathy and apparent dislike to female society rather to the neglect or malice of his early tutors than to any natural defect of capacity or perversity of disposition; and often lectured him on his deficiencies, and even on some of his favorite pursuits, which she looked upon as contributing to strengthen his shyness with ladies. She was not unacquainted with English literature, in which the rusticity and coarseness of the fox-hunting squires formed a piquant subject for the mirth of dramatists and novelists; and if Squire Western had been the type of sportsmen in all countries, she could not have inveighed more vigorously than she did against her husband's addiction to hunting. One evening, when he did not return from the field till the play in the theatre was half over, she not only frowned upon him all the rest of the entertainment, but when, after the company had retired, he began to enter into an explanation of the cause of his delay, a scene ensued which it will be best to give in the very words of Mercy's report to the empress.
"The dauphiness made him a short but very energetic sermon, in which she represented to him with vivacity all the evils of the uncivilized kind of life he was leading. She showed him that no one of his attendants could stand that kind of life, and that they would like it the less that his own air and rude manners made no amends to those who were attached to his train; and that, by following this plan of life, he would end by ruining his health and making himself detested. The dauphin received this lecture with gentleness and submission, confessed that he was wrong, promised to amend, and formally begged her pardon. This circumstance is certainly very remarkable, and the more so because the next day people observed that he paid the dauphiness much more attention, and behaved toward her with a much more lively affection than usual.[16]"