THREE:The Comtesse de Noailles was a most unfortunate choice to have made for the post in question; for although a woman of the highest character, religious, charitable, and honourable, she was so stiff, precise, [187] and absolutely the slave of every detail of court etiquette that she only tormented and estranged the young girl, who was ready to be conciliated, and whom she might have influenced and helped. The Dauphine, however, an impetuous, thoughtless girl of fifteen, accustomed to the freedom of her own family life at the court of Vienna, hated and ridiculed the absurd restrictions of the French Court, called the Countess Madame lEtiquette, and took her own way.In reading the history of these events one cannot help feeling that all ones sympathy is for Marie Antoinette and her children, but that a King whose conduct was so despicable, who shrank from shedding the blood of infamous traitors and murderers, while he allowed them to massacre his faithful soldiers and friends, was not worth dying for.
