For the event to which she had so long looked forward as that which was wanted to crown her happiness, and which had been so long deferred that at times she had ceased to hope for it at all, was at last about to take place--she was about to become a mother.

Her own joy at the prospect was shared to its full extent by both the king and the empress.

Louis, roused out of his usual reserve, wrote with his own hand to both the empress and the emperor, to give the intelligence; and Maria Teresa declared that she had nothing left to wish for, and that she could now close her eyes in peace.

And the news was received with almost equal pleasure by the citizens of Paris, who had long desired to see an heir born to the crown; and by those of Vienna, who had not yet forgotten the fair young princess, the flower of her mother's flock, as they had fondly called her, whom they had sent to fill a foreign throne.

Her own happiness exhibited itself, as usual, in acts of benevolence, in the distribution of liberal gifts to the poor of Paris and Versailles, and a foundation of a hospital for those in a similar condition with herself.[13] In the course of the spring, Paris was for a moment excited even more than by the declaration of war against England, or than by the expectation of the queen's confinement, by the return of Voltaire, who had long been in disgrace with the court, and had been for many years living in a sort of tacit exile on the borders of the Lake of Geneva.