It was hardly strange, then, that those who were not members of this society should feel offended at finding the court, as it were, closed against them, and should cease to frequent the palace when they had no certainty of meeting any thing but empty rooms. They even absented themselves from the queen's balls, which in consequence were so thinly attended that sometimes there were scarcely a dozen dancers of each sex, so that it was universally remarked that never within the memory of the oldest courtiers had Versailles been so deserted as it was this winter; the difference between the scene which the palace presented now from what had been witnessed in previous seasons striking the queen herself, and inclining her to listen more readily to the remonstrances which, at Mercy's instigation, the empress addressed to her. Her mother pointed out to her, with all the weight of her own long experience, the incompatibility of a private mode of life, such as is suitable for subjects, with the state befitting a great sovereign; and urged her to recollect that all the king's subjects, so long as their rank and characters were such as to entitle them to admission at court, had an equal right to her attention; and that the system of exclusiveness which she had adopted was a dereliction of her duty, not only to those who were thus deprived of the honors of the reception to which they were entitled, but also to the king, her husband, who was injured by any line of conduct which tended to discourage the nobles of the land from paying their respects to him. In the midst of all her giddiness, Marie Antoinette always listened with good humor, it may even be said with docility, to honest advice. No one ever in her rank was so unspoiled by authority; and more than one conversation which she held with the ambassador on the subject showed that these remonstrances, re-enforced as they were by the undeniable fact of the thinness of the company at the palace, had made an impression on her mind; though such impressions were as yet too apt to be fleeting, and too liable to be overborne by fresh temptations; for in volatile impulsiveness she resembled the French themselves, and the good resolutions she made one day were always liable to be forgotten the next. Nothing as yet was steady and unalterable in her character but her kindness of heart and graciousness of manner; they never changed; and it was on her genuine goodness of disposition and righteousness of intention that her German friends relied for producing an amendment as she grew older, far more than on any regrets for the past, or intentions of improvement for the future, which might be wrung from her by any momentary reflection or vexation.