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imitated there. Nothing can exasperate more. You must learn to admire everything French.”
    I knew I should never remember all the things I was to do and not to do. I should trust to my luck, to my ability to smile my way out of my mistakes.
    During those two months I was sleeping in my mother’s bedroom she was in a state of tension because she feared there might be no marriage at all. She and Kaunitz were constantly closeted together and the Marquis de Durfort was always coming to see them.
    This was a respite for me because I was spared those lectures which had become a part of my life in the draughty state bedroom. It was all a matter of who should take precedence over whom—whether my mother’s and brother’s names or that of the King of France should be first on the
    documents. 3i Kaunitz was calm but anxious.
    “The whole question of a marriage could be dropped,” he told my mother.
    “It’s ridiculous that so much should hang on such insignificant details.” They were arguing about the formal ceremony of handing me over. Should it take place on French or Austrian soil? One or the other had to be chosen. The French said it must be on French;
    The Austrians said it must be Austrian. My mother sometimes told me snatches of these matters.
    “Because it is good for you to know.”
    So much prestige was involved. It was a matter of the greatest importance how many servants I took with me and how many of these should accompany me into France. There came a time when I was certain there would be no marriage and I was not sure whether I was pleased or sorry. I should be disappointed if all the attention stopped, but on the other hand I thought it would be comforting to stay at home until I was twenty-three as Maria Amalia had. ? I have often, during the last months, thought of those i wrangles and wondered how different my life would have been if the statesmen had failed to come to an agreement.
    But fate decided differently and at last agreement was reached.
    The Marquis de Durfort returned to France to receive instructions from his master; there were hasty reconstructions to enlarge the French Embassy because there must be fifteen hundred guests and it would be a breach of etiquette to leave one out. Etiquette! That was a word I heard repeatedly.
    News reached us that since there was to be rebuilding in Vienna, King Louis had decided that an opera house be erected at Versailles so that the wedding could be celebrated there.
    My mother was determined that I should be provided with 1 clothes as grand as anything the French could produce. I J could not help showing my delight with all this fuss surrounding me and sometimes I saw my mother watching me quiz-fl zically. I wonder now whether she was glad of my frivolity, J which prevented my being too concerned at the
    prospect 32 of leaving home. After the suicidal attitude of Caroline must have been a relief.
    When the Marquis de Durfort returned to Vienna really did seem like a wonderful game in which I ha been selected to play the biggest and most exciting rol for this was the beginning of the official ceremonies. April had come and the weather was benign. On the seventeenth of that month the Ceremony of Renunciation took place, when I was called upon to renounce the hereditary Austrian Sue.
    cession. It all seemed rather meaningless to me as I stood in the hall of the Burgplatz and signed the Act, which wA in Latin, and took the Oath before the Bishop of Laylac I found the ceremony tedious but I enjoyed the banquet ai ball which followed.
    The huge ballroom was brilliantly lighted with threg thousand five hundred candles and I was told that eig hundred firemen had to work continuously with damp sponge because of the sparks which fell from the candles. When I danced I was oblivious of everything but the joy of dancing. I even forgot that this would be one of the last balls I should attend in my own country.
    The very next day the Marquis de Durfort entertained the