They began to speak of her as "the Austrian," a name which, though Madame Adelaide had more than once chosen it to describe her during the first year of her marriage, had since that time been almost forgotten, but which was now revived, and was continually reproduced by a certain party to cast odium on many of her most simple tastes and most innocent actions.

Her enemies oven affirmed that in private she was wont to call the Trianon her "little Vienna,[6]" as if the garden, which she was laying out with a taste that long made it the admiration of all the visitors to Versailles, were dear to her, not as affording a healthful and becoming occupation, nor for the sale of the giver, but only because it recalled to her memory the gardens of Schoenbrunn, to which, as their malice suggested, she never ceased to look back with unpatriotic regret.
In one point of view they were unquestionably correct.

The queen did undoubtedly desire to establish in the French court the customs and the feelings which, during her childhood, had prevailed at Vienna; but they were wholly wrong in thinking them Austrian usages.

They were Lorrainese in their origin; they had been imported to Vienna for the first time by her own father, the Emperor Francis; when she referred to them, it was as "the patriarchal manners of the House of Lorraine[7]" that she spoke of them; and her preference for them was founded on the conviction that it was to them that her mother and her mother's family were indebted for the love and reverence of the people which all the trials and distresses of the struggle against Frederic had never been able to impair.
Nor was it only the old stiffness and formality, which had been compatible with the grossest license, that was now discountenanced.

A wholly new spirit was introduced to animate the conversation with which those royal entertainments were enlivened.