You may easily suppose how much this extraordinary dress sets off and improves the natural ugliness with which God Almighty has been pleased to endow them all generally.  Even the lovely empress herself is obliged to comply, in some degree, with these absurd fashions, which they would not quit for all the world.  I had a private audience (according to ceremony) of half an hour, and then all the other ladies were permitted to come make their court.  I was perfectly charmed with the empress:  I cannot, however, tell you that her features are regular; her eyes are not large, but have a lively look, full of sweetness; her complexion the finest I ever saw; her nose and forehead well-made, but her mouth has ten thousand charms that touch the soul.  When she smiles, ’tis with a beauty and sweetness that force adoration.  She has a vast quantity of fine fair hair; but then her person!—­one must speak of it poetically to do it rigid justice; all that the poets have said of the mien of Juno, the air of Venus, comes not up to the truth.  The Graces move with her; the famous statue of Medicis was not formed with more delicate proportion; nothing can be added to the beauty of her neck and hands.  Till I saw them, I did not believe there were any in nature so perfect, and I was almost sorry that my rank here did not permit me to kiss them; but they are kissed sufficiently; for every body that waits on her pays that homage at their entrance, and when they take leave.

When the ladies were come in, she sat down to Quinze.  I could not play at a game I had never seen before, and she ordered me a seat at her right hand, and had the goodness to talk to me very much, with that grace so natural to her.  I expected every moment when the men were to come in to pay their court; but this drawing-room is very different from that of England; no man enters it but the old grand-master, who comes in to advertize the empress of the approach of the emperor.  His imperial majesty did me the honour of speaking to me in a very obliging manner; but he never speaks to any of the other ladies; and the whole passes with a gravity and air of ceremony that has something very formal in it.

The empress Amelia, dowager of the late emperor Joseph, came this evening to wait on the reigning empress, followed by the two archduchesses her daughters, who are very agreeable young princesses.  Their imperial majesties rise and go to meet her at the door of the room, after which she is seated in an armed chair, next the empress, and in the same manner at supper, and there the men had the permission of paying their Court.  The archduchesses sit on chairs with backs without arms.  The table is entirely served, and all the dishes set on by the empress’s maids of honour, which are twelve young ladies of the first quality.  They have no salary, but their chambers at court, where they live in a sort of confinement, not being suffered to go to the assemblies or public places in town, except in compliment to the wedding