But the more people spoke ill of her, the more the queen protected her; and if she received the resignation of Madame de Guimenée with pleasure, much of her joy seemed to be owing to the opportunity which it afforded her of promoting the new duchess to the vacant place, while Madame de Polignac had even the address to persuade her that she accepted the post unwillingly, and, in undertaking it, was making a sacrifice to loyalty and friendship. But if the queen was duped on that point, she was not deceived on others. She knew that the duchess had no qualifications for the office; that she was neither clever nor accomplished. But her absence of any special qualifications was, in fact, her best recommendation in the eyes of her patroness; for Marie Antoinette had high ideas of the duty which a mother owes to her children. She thought herself bound to take upon herself the real superintendence of their education, and, having this view, she preferred a governess who would be content that her children's minds should receive their color from herself. Her own idea of education, as we shall see it hereafter described by herself,[3] was that example was more powerful than precept, and that love was a better teacher than fear; and, acting on this principle, from the moment that her little daughter was old enough to comprehend her intentions and wishes, she began to make her her companion; abandoning, or at least relaxing, her pursuit of other pleasures for that which was now her chief delight, as well as in her eyes her chief duty--the task of watching over the early promise, the opening talents and virtues of those who were destined, as she hoped, to have a predominant influence on the future welfare of the nation. Especially she made a rule of taking the little princess with her on the different errands of humanity and benevolence, which, wherever she might be, and more particularly while she was at Versailles, formed an almost habitual part of her occupations. She saw that much of the distress which now seemed to be the normal condition of the humbler classes, and much of the discontent, which was felt by all classes but the highest, were caused by the pride of the princes and nobles, who, in France, drew a far more rigorous and unbending line of demarkation between themselves and their inferiors than prevailed in other countries; and she desired from their earliest infancy to imbue her children with a different principle, and to teach them by her own example that none could be so lowly as to be beneath the notice even of a sovereign; and that, on the contrary, the greater the depression of the poor, the greater claim did it give them on the solicitude and protection of their princes and rulers.