The personal attacks on the French queen's…

The personal attacks on the French queen's character cause her to plunge further into the costly diversions of buying her dresses from Rose Bertin and gambling, simply to enjoy herself.

On one famed occasion, she plays for three days straight with players from Paris, straight up until her twenty-first birthday.

She has also begun to attract various male admirers whom she accepts into her inner circles, including the baron de Besenval, the duc de Coigny, and Count Valentin Esterházy.

Marie Antoinette has been given free rein to renovate the Petit Trianon, a small château on the grounds of Versailles, which Louis had given to her as a gift on August 15, 1774; she concentrates mainly on horticulture, redesigning the garden in the English fashion, which in the previous reign had been an arboretum of introduced species, and adding flowers.

Although the Petit Trianon had been built for Louis's mistress, Madame de Pompadour, it becomes associated with Marie Antoinette's perceived extravagance.

With the "English garden", Marie Antoinette and her court adopt the English dress of indienne, of percale or muslin, breaking the tradition of costume at the court at Versailles that had prevailed for more than a decade.

Rumors circulate that she has plastered the walls with gold and diamonds.

Her lady-in-waiting Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Campan replies to such rumors that the queen visits the workshops of the village in a simple dress of white percale with a gauze scarf and a straw hat.