long before she was impelled thither by events and her consciousness of its necessity.  She would often exclaim to me:  ’How happy I was during the lifetime of Louis XV.!  No cares to disturb my peaceful slumbers!  No responsibility to agitate my mind!  No fears of erring, of partiality, of injustice, to break in upon my enjoyments!  All, all happiness, my dear Princess, vanishes from the bosom of a woman if she once deviate from the prescribed domestic character of her sex!  Nothing was ever framed more wise than the Salique Laws, which in France and many parts of Germany exclude women from reigning, for few of us have that masculine capacity so necessary to conduct with impartiality and justice the affairs of State!’

“To this feeling of the impropriety of feminine interference in masculine duties, coupled with her attachment to France, both from principle and feeling, may be ascribed the neglect of her German connexions, which led to many mortifying reproaches, and the still more galling espionage to which she was subjected in her own palace by her mother.  These are, however, so many proofs of the falsehood of the allegations by which she suffered so deeply afterwards, of having sacrificed the interests of her husband’s kingdom to her predilection for her mother’s empire.

“The subtle Rohan designed to turn the anxiety of Maria Theresa about the Dauphine to account, and he was also aware that the ambition of the Empress was paramount in Maria Theresa’s bosom to the love for her child.  He was about to play a deep and more than double game.  By increasing the mother’s jealousy of the daughter, and at the same time enhancing the importance of the advantages afforded by her situation, to forward the interests of the mother, he, no doubt, hoped to get both within his power:  for who can tell what wild expectation might not have animated such a mind as Rohan’s at the prospect of governing not only the Court of France but that of Austria?—­the Court of France, through a secret influence of his own dictation thrown around the Dauphine by the mother’s alarm; and that of Austria, through a way he pointed out, in which the object that was most longed for by the mother’s ambition seemed most likely to be achieved!  While he endeavoured to make Maria Theresa beset her daughter with the spies I have mentioned, and which were generally of his own selection, he at the same time endeavoured to strengthen her impression of how important it was to her schemes to insure the daughter’s co-operation.  Conscious of the eagerness of Maria Theresa for the recovery of the rich province which Frederick the Great of Prussia had wrested from her ancient dominions, he pressed upon her credulity the assurance that the influence of which the Dauphine was capable over Louis XV., by the youthful beauty’s charms acting upon the dotard’s admiration, would readily induce that monarch to give such aid to Austria as must insure the restoration of what