I have been enchanted with my brother's answers.

It is impossible to put into letters more grace, more moderation, and at the same time more force.

I am going to say something which is very vain; but I do believe that there is not in the whole world any one but the emperor, the son of my dearest mother, who has the happiness of seeing her every day, who could write in such a manner." There is no trace in these letters of the levity and giddiness of which Mercy so often complains, and which she at times did not deny.

On the contrary, they display an earnestness as well as a good sense and an energy which are gracefully set off by the affection for her mother, and the pride in her brother's firmness and address which they also express.
With respect to the conduct of Louis at this crisis we may perhaps differ from her; and may think that he rarely showed so much self-reliance, the general want of which was in truth his greatest defect, as when he preferred the arguments of Vergennes to her entreaties.

But if her praises of the emperor are, as she herself terms them, vanity, it is the vanity of sisterly and patriotic affection, which can not but be regarded with approval; and we may see in it an additional proof of the correctness of an assertion, repeated over and over again in Mercy's correspondence, that, whenever Marie Antoinette gave the rein to her own natural impulses, she invariably both thought and acted rightly.
In one of the extracts which have just been quoted, the queen alludes to her own condition; and that, in any one less unselfish, might well have driven all other thoughts from her head.