She had driven from her husband's councils the only man who combined with the penetration to perceive the absolute necessity of a large reform and the character of the changes required, the genius to devise them and the firmness to carry them out.
Thirteen years later, a variety of causes, some of which will be unfolded in the course of this narrative, had contributed to irritate the impatience of the nation, while the unskillfulness of the existing minister had disarmed the royal authority.

And the very same reforms which would now have been accepted with general thankfulness were then only used by demagogues as a pretext for further inflaming the minds of the multitude against every thing which bore the slightest appearance of authority, even against the very sovereign who had granted them.

France and all Europe to this day feel the sad effects of Marie Antoinette's interference.
She had given fatal proof of the truth of the words wrung from her by nervous excitement at the moment of the late king's death, when she declared that Louis and she were too young to reign; and the best excuse that can be found for her is that she was not yet one-and-twenty.

It was not, however, wholly from submission to the interested malevolence of others that she had shown herself the enemy of the great financier and statesman.

She had a spontaneous dislike to the retrenchments which necessarily formed a great portion of his economical measures; not as interfering with the indulgence of any extravagant tastes of her own, but as restraining her power of gratifying her friends.