Such, then, as she was, with both her manifest and her latent excellencies, as well as with those more mixed qualities which had some defects mingled with their sweetness, Marie Antoinette, at the age of fourteen years and a half, was thrown into a world wholly new to her, to guide herself so far by her own discretion that there was no one who had both judgment and authority to control her in her line of conduct or in any single action. She had, indeed, an adviser whom her mother had provided for her, though without allowing her to suspect the nature or full extent of the duties which she had imposed upon him. Maria Teresa had been in some respects a strict mother, one whom her children in general feared almost as much as they loved her; and the rigorous superintendence on some points of conduct which she had exercised over Marie Antoinette while at home, she was not inclined wholly to resign, even after she had made her apparently independent. At the moment of her departure from Vienna, she gave her a letter of advice which she entreated her to read over every month, and in which the most affectionate and judicious counsel is more than once couched in a tone of very authoritative command; the whole letter showing not only the most experienced wisdom and the most affectionate interest in her daughter's happiness, but likewise a thorough insight into her character, so precisely are some of the errors against which the letter most emphatically warns her those into which she most frequently fell. And she appointed a statesman in whom she deservedly placed great confidence, the Count de Mercy-Argenteau, her embassador to the court at Versailles, with the express design that he should always be at hand to afford the dauphiness his advice in all the difficulties which she could not avoid foreseeing for her; and who should also keep the Empress-queen herself fully informed of every particular of her conduct, and of every transaction by which she was in any way affected. This part of his commission was wholly unsuspected by the young princess; but the count discharged such portions of the delicate duty thus imposed upon him with rare discretion, contriving in its performance to combine the strictest fidelity to his imperial mistress with the most entire devotion to the interests of his pupil, and to preserve the unqualified regard and esteem of both mother and daughter to the end of their lives. Toward the latter, as dauphiness, and even as queen, he stood for some years in a position very similar to that which Baron Stockmar fills in the history of the late Prince Consort of England, being, however, more frequent in his admonitions, and occasionally more severe in his reproofs, as the youth and inexperience of Marie Antoinette not unnaturally led her into greater mistakes than the scrupulous conscientiousness and almost premature prudence of the prince consort ever suffered him to commit; and his