But she would by no means admit her excuses for giving the Hungarian prince a cold reception.

"How," she said, "could she forget that her little Antoinette, when not above twelve or thirteen years old, knew how to receive people publicly, and say something polite and gracious to every one, and how could she suppose that the same daughter, now that she was dauphiness, could feel embarrassment?
Embarrassment was a mere chimera." But the truth was that it was not a mere chimera.

Mercy had more than once deplored, as one among the mischievous effects of Madame Adelaide's constant interference and domineering influence, that it had bred in Marie Antoinette a timidity which was wholly foreign to her nature.

And indeed it was hardly possible for one still so young to be aware that she was surrounded by unfriendly intriguers and spies, and to preserve that uniform presence of mind which her rank and position made so desirable for her, and which was in truth so natural to her that she at once recovered it the moment that her circumstances changed.
And a probability of an early change was already apparent.

During the last months of 1772 there was a general idea that the king's health and mental faculties were both giving away; and all the different parties about Versailles began to show their sense of her approaching authority.