DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

(ie) stead of practising economy in face of the financial embarrassments of the country, she used the un- bounded influence she acquired over the king to gratify her own extravagance and to procure costly cifts and pensions for her friends. With all the ardour of youth the queen indulged her fondness for dancing, not only at the palace, but at the masked balls at the Opera. It is true that the royal princesses had been in the habit of appear- ing at these entertainments, but a queen should have been careful to guard against the possibility of compromising contingencies. One evening it happened that her carriage broke down, and she was obliged to take refuge in a shop until a cab was brought, in which she arrived at the Opera house. All Paris rang with the incident, and the vilest insinuations were thrown out as to the real object of her going into a private house. It was natural that a young queen should set the fashion of the day, but she need not have spent hours in consultation with fashionable milliners designing extravagant costumes, and head-dresses so elaborate that it took hours to construct them. Three years after her accession to the throne, her brother, the Emperor Joseph IJ., came to France. One day he found the queen engaged in arranging a lofty device of feathers and flowers on her head. ‘Is not my hair beautifully done?’ she inquired.