Dauphine to agree to speak to Madame du Barry. The first time Marie Antoinette attempted to do so, however, she was interrupted by Madame Adélaïde, requiring a second attempt before the Dauphine managed to speak to Madame du Barry, avoiding a rift in the Franco-Austrian alliance and thus thwarting the plot of Madame Adélaïde. This discontinued the friendship between Marie Antoinette and Madame Adélaïde, who would bear subsequent malice toward Marie Antoinette and was reportedly the first person to call her "the Austrian." Reign of Louis XVI From April 1774, Madame Adélaïde and her sisters attended to their father Louis XV on his deathbed until his death from smallpox on 10 May. Despite the fact that the sisters never had the disease and the male members of the royal family, as well as the Dauphine, were kept away because of the high risk of catching the illness, the Mesdames were allowed to attend to him until his death, being female and therefore of no political importance because of the Salic Law even if they died. After the death of Louis XV, he was succeeded by his grandson Louis Auguste as Louis XVI, who referred to his aunts as Mesdames Tantes. Madame Adélaïde came to play a political role after the succession of her nephew. The sisters had in fact been infected by their father and fell ill with smallpox (from which they recovered), and were kept in quarantine on a little house near the Palace of Choisy, to which the court evacuated after the death of the king until their recovery. Despite this, however, Madame Adelaide had the time to intervene in the establishment of the new government: Louis XVI had been advised by his father to ask the advice of Adelaide should he become King, and after his succession, he sent her a letter and asked her advice on whom he should entrust his kingdom., and she replied with a list of names of minister candidates to him suggested by his father. After her brother the dauphin's death in 1765, followed in 1767 by that of his spouse, Marie-Josèphe, Madame Adélaïde took custody of the late dauphine's papers, with instructions concerning suitable ministers for their son, Louis Auguste, should he become king, and these papers were duly sent to Louis XVI, and opened on 12 May 1774. Three names were suggested for the position of Prime Minister; that of