an admiration of them as vivid as that of the warm-hearted and more poetical Irishman.  He saw her, as he reports to Lady Ossory, first at a state court hall,[7] given on the occasion of the marriage of the Princess Clotilde, in the theatre of the palace; and he would have desired to give his correspondent some description of the beauty of the building; “the bravest in the universe, and yet one in which taste predominates over expense;” but he was absorbed by the still more powerful attractions of the princess whom he had seen in it:  “What I have to say I can tell your ladyship in a word, for it was impossible to see any thing but the queen.  Hebes, and Floras, and Helens, and Graces are street-walkers to her.  She is a statue and beauty when standing or sitting; grace itself when she moves.”  As he is writing to a lady, he proceeds to describe her dress, which to ladies of the present day may still have its interest:  “She was dressed in silver, scattered over with laurier roses; few diamonds; and feathers, much lower than the monument.”  He proceeds to describe the ball itself, and some of the company, which was, however, very select; but at every sentence or two he comes back to the queen, so deep and so real was the impression which she had made on him.  “Monsieur is very handsome.  The Comte d’Artois is a better figure and a better dancer.  Their characters approach to those of two other royal dukes.[8] There were but eight minuets, and, except the queen and princesses, only eight lady dancers; I was not so much struck with the dancing as I expected.  For beauty I saw none, or the queen effaced all the rest.  After the minuets were French country-dances, much incumbered by the long trains, longer tresses, and hoops.  In the intervals of dancing, baskets of peaches, china oranges (a little out of season), biscuits, ices, and wine-and-water were presented to the royal family and dancers.  The ball lasted just two hours.  The monarch did not dance, but for the first two rounds of the minuet even the queen does not turn her back to him.  Yet her behavior is as easy as divine.”

Such was a French court ball on days of most special ceremony, a somewhat solemn affair, which required graciousness such as that of Marie Antoinette to make admission to every one a very enviable privilege; even though its stiffness had been in some degree relieved by a new regulation of the queen, that the invitations, which had hitherto been confined to matrons, should be extended to unmarried girls.  Scarcely any change produced greater consternation among the admirers of old customs.  The dowagers searched all the registers of those who had been admitted to the court balls since the beginning of the century to fortify their objections.  But, to their dismay, some of the early festivities in the time of Marie Leczinska proved to have been shared by one or two noble maidens.  The discovery was of little importance, since Marie Antoinette had shown that she was not afraid of making precedents.  But still it in some degree silenced the grumblers, and for the rest of the reign no one contested the queen’s right to decide who should, and who should not, be admitted to her society.