Eder Strochling pne LOUIS XVII. ROI DE FRANCE ET DE NAVARRE, NÉ LE 27 MARS.1785. L. Schuenetti sculp It was their Majesties' will, that the Duchess de Polignac should maintain a state worthy the charge with which she was invested, and that her house should be open to all foreigners of distinction, and all the nobility at the Court. The Queen wished too, that there should be days appropriated to smaller companies selected by herself, in which she might pass more pleasing and tranquil hours. It was in these she said, like Henry IV: 1 am no longer Queen, I am myself. What an expression in the mouth of a Sovereign! Their Majesties were too just not to see that the slender income of the Duc de Polignac, and the salary attached to the Duchess's office, were not adequate to the extraordinary expences attending the state they maintained at Court. The King granted them a pension of eighty thousand livres to be continued to the survivor, and soon after appointed the Duke Director of the Posts and Haras of the kingdom, a place which he did not enjoy more than a year and a half. The suppression of this office was one of the first that signalized the entrance of the Archbishop of Toulouse into administration, and it gave MARIAANTOINETTA the opportunity of making the following admirable remark to those whom the changes reached: "No one has a right to com |