A banqueting-table was arranged for six hundred guests, and those guests were not the nobles of the nation, nor the clergy, nor the must renowned warriors, nor the municipal officers, but the fish-women of the city market.

A custom so old that its origin can not be traced had established the right of these dames to bear an especial part in such festivities.

In the course of the morning they had made their future queen free of their market, with an offering of fruits and flowers.

And now, as, according to a singular usage of the court, no male subject was ever allowed to sit at table with a queen or dauphiness of France, the dinner party over which the youthful pair, sitting side by side, presided, consisted wholly of these dames whose profession is not generally considered as imparting any great refinement to the manners, and who, before the close of the entertainment, showed, in more cases than one, that they had imported some of the notions and fashions of their more ordinary places of resort into the royal palace.
It was characteristic of Marie Antoinette that, in her description of the day to her mother, she had dwelt with special emphasis on the gracious deportment of her husband.

It was equally natural for Mercy to assure the empress[2] that it had been the grace and elegance of the dauphiness herself which had attracted general admiration, and that it was to her example and instruction that every one attributed the courteous demeanor which, as he did not deny, the young prince had unquestionably exhibited.
It was she whom the king, as he affirmed, had complimented on the result of the day; a success which she had gracefully attributed to himself, saying that he must be greatly beloved by the Parisians to induce them to give his children so splendid a reception[3].