I do not believe that I ever put a pencil to that drawing." However, what had been taught her she knew perfectly well.

Her facility of learning was inconceivable, and if all her teachers had been as well informed and as faithful to their duty as the Abbe Metastasio, who taught her Italian, she would have attained as great a superiority in the other branches of her education.

The Queen spoke that language with grace and ease, and translated the most difficult poets.

She did not write French correctly, but she spoke it with the greatest fluency, and even affected to say that she had lost German.

In fact she attempted in 1787 to learn her mother-tongue, and took lessons assiduously for six weeks; she was obliged to relinquish them, finding all the difficulties which a Frenchwoman, who should take up the study too late, would have to encounter.