thought herself bound to take upon herself the real superintendence of their education, and, having this view, she preferred a governess who would be content that her children’s minds should receive their color from herself.  Her own idea of education, as we shall see it hereafter described by herself,[3] was that example was more powerful than precept, and that love was a better teacher than fear; and, acting on this principle, from the moment that her little daughter was old enough to comprehend her intentions and wishes, she began to make her her companion; abandoning, or at least relaxing, her pursuit of other pleasures for that which was now her chief delight, as well as in her eyes her chief duty—­the task of watching over the early promise, the opening talents and virtues of those who were destined, as she hoped, to have a predominant influence on the future welfare of the nation.  Especially she made a rule of taking the little princess with her on the different errands of humanity and benevolence, which, wherever she might be, and more particularly while she was at Versailles, formed an almost habitual part of her occupations.  She saw that much of the distress which now seemed to be the normal condition of the humbler classes, and much of the discontent, which was felt by all classes but the highest, were caused by the pride of the princes and nobles, who, in France, drew a far more rigorous and unbending line of demarkation between themselves and their inferiors than prevailed in other countries; and she desired from their earliest infancy to imbue her children with a different principle, and to teach them by her own example that none could be so lowly as to be beneath the notice even of a sovereign; and that, on the contrary, the greater the depression of the poor, the greater claim did it give them on the solicitude and protection of their princes and rulers.

Nor were these lessons, which even worldly policy might have dictated, the only ones which she sought to inculcate on the little princess before the more exciting pursuits of society should have rendered her less susceptible to good impressions.  Unfriendly as her husband’s aunts had always been to herself, and little as there was that was really amiable in their characters, there was yet one, the Princess Louise, the Nun of St. Denis, whose renunciation of the world seemed to point her out to her family as a model of holiness and devotion; and as, above all things, Marie Antoinette desired to inspire her little daughter with a deep sense of religious obligation, she soon began to take her with her in all her visits to the convent, and to encourage her to converse with the other Sisters of the house.  Nor did she abandon the practice even when it was suggested to her that such an intercourse with those who were notoriously always on the watch to attract recruits of rank or consideration, might have the result of inclining the child to follow her great-aunt’s example; and perhaps, by renouncing the world, to counteract plans which her parents might have preferred for her establishment in life.  Marie Antoinette declared that should the princess express such a desire, far from being annoyed, “she should feel flattered by it;[4]” she would, it may be presumed, have regarded it as a convincing testimony of the soundness of her own system of education, and of the purity of the instruction which she had given.