[Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette<br> Queen Of France by Madame Campan]@TWC D-Link book
Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette
Queen Of France

PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR
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When the work was completed the private drawing-room was decorated with her Majesty's work; and the firm persuasion of this good Queen that she had painted it herself was so entire that she left this cabinet, with all its furniture and paintings, to the Comtesse de Noailles, her lady of honour.

She added to the bequest: 'The pictures in my cabinet being my own work, I hope the Comtesse de Noailles will preserve them for my sake.' Madame de Noailles, afterwards Marechale de Mouchy, had a new pavilion constructed in her hotel in the Faubourg St.Germain, in order to form a suitable receptacle for the Queen's legacy; and had the following inscription placed over the door, in letters of gold: 'The innocent falsehood of a good princess.' "Maria Leczinska could never look with cordiality on the Princess of Saxony, who married the Dauphin; but the attentive behaviour of the Dauphiness at length made her Majesty forget that the Princess was the daughter of a king who wore her father's crown.

Nevertheless, although the Queen now saw in the Princess of Saxony only a wife beloved by her son, she never could forget that Augustus wore the crown of Stanislaus.
One day an officer of her chamber having undertaken to ask a private audience of her for the Saxon minister, and the Queen being unwilling to grant it, he ventured to add that he should not have presumed to ask this favour of the Queen had not the minister been the ambassador of a member of the family.

'Say of an enemy of the family,' replied the Queen, angrily; 'and let him come in.' "Comte de Tesse, father of the last Count of that name, who left no children, was first equerry to Queen Maria Leczinska.

She esteemed his virtues, but often diverted herself at the expense of his simplicity.


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