To the scaffold (10 page)

"The four Mesdames," Walpole wrote, "who are clumsy, plump old wenches with a bad likeness to their father, stand in a row with black cloaks and knitting bags, looking good humored, not knowing what to say and wriggling as if they wanted to make water." Walpole had a tendency to turn people into grotesques; another observer thought the King's daughters were "kindly old women." But in his malice King Louis referred to his daughters Adelaide, Victoire and Sophie as "Rag," "Piggy" and "Snip," and mocked them without mercy. Antoinette, isolated and homesick, gravitated toward her aunts and they in turn, seeing in her an avenue of influence that could be used against their father and his upstart mistress, drew her into their circle.

Of the three, stout Victoire was the most agreeable, though she suffered terribly from fits of nerves, brought on by childhood terrors; as a little girl she had been shut up in the dark vault of the Abbey of Fontevrault, where the nuns were buried, and forced to do penance. A madman was shut up nearby, and his shriekings and ravings, added to the imagined horrors of the tomb, must have left the poor child marked for life."^ Victoire was nonetheless "good, sweet-tempered and affable," according to Madame Cam-

pan, the lively chronicler of the French court whose first position was as reader to the King's daughters. Benevolent and smiling, Victoire loved good food and the comfort of a soft couch by the fireside. She was particularly welcoming to Antoinette.

Sophie was more hard-bitten, a repellently ugly woman whose air of hauteur masked a deep diffidence. She read a good deal, but always alone; according to Madame Campan, "the presence of a reader would have disconcerted her very much." People invariably disconcerted Sophie, and she always walked quickly through the crowded corridors of the palace in order to avoid contact with them. When there was a storm, however, her fear got the better of her shyness, and she ran to embrace anyone within reach, so great was her dread of thunder and lightning.

The third sister, Adelaide, was made of sterner stuff. She was, in fact, the most forceful personality of the three and the most aggressive. Even as a child she had dominated her masters, stamping her foot and insisting on her way with a stubbornness that became more pronounced as she got older. She had been outspokenly opposed to the Austrian marriage, and her opposition did not end when she met the charming Antoinette. According to Madame Campan, Adelaide was "wearied with the somewhat obtrusive gaiety of the dauphine." But, wearied or not, Adelaide was a politician, and as a politician she saw that Antoinette would be useful to her. She swallowed her distaste and cultivated the dauphine— though in small ways she maintained a tacit rivalry with her. After Queen Marie Leczinska's death, the evening card parties were moved to Adelaide's apartments, and when Antoinette took over as hostess of these gatherings, Adelaide refused to attend them, continuing to entertain a few stalwarts in her own rooms, in private.

With Adelaide taking the lead, the dauphin's aunts saw to it that Antoinette came under their influence. Mercy saw the danger of this, and warned the Empress. "Mesdames love to mix themselves up in little intrigues," he wrote, "and it will be dangerous if they drag in the dauphine." They hated Madame Du Barry, and were constantly criticizing her and watching for opportunities to slight her and diminish her influence. In this they worked through Antoinette, playing on her inbred aversion to the very idea of a royal mistress (and her distasteful memories of her father's mistress Princess Auersperg), knowing that, given her free and crit-

ical tongue, everything they told her about Madame Du Barry would be repeated.

Antoinette, for her part, needed no prompting. She disliked her grandfather's mistress personally. Though capable of boundless kindness and generosity to menial servants and other commoners—kindness she showed repeatedly during her early months at the French court—she did not look kindly on people of low birth and no breeding who attempted to lord it over their betters. She, Archduchess Antoinette, was the daughter of an Empress, Jeanne Becu was the daughter of a prostitute from Vaucouleurs. One day she would be Queen of France, and when that day came, if not before, the Comtesse Du Barry would suddenly find herself bereft of friends, influence and income.

Antoinette spent a good portion of her time each day in the company of her aunts. She got up at nine-thirty or ten every morning, and having dressed and said her prayers, and had her breakfast, went to her aunts' apartments where the King also was often to be found. She stayed there until eleven, when she had a daily appointment with her hairdresser. With her hair suitably arranged she carried out the public ceremony of washing her hands and applying her rouge, while interested spectators looked on, and after that her women dressed her. At noon it was time for Mass, which she attended in company with the King, the dauphin and her aunts. After Mass Antoinette and Louis dined together— once again in public, but very quickly, and then they went to his apartments; if he was occupied (and he nearly always was occupied, usually with the hunt) then she went to her own rooms where, truth to tell, she had all too little to do, though she made fitful efforts to read or to work at her embroidery.

"I am making a vest for the King," she told her mother. "It is going badly, but I hope that by the grace of God it will be finished in a few years' time." Nothing more was ever heard of the vest.

At three o'clock she went to her aunts' apartments again, where the King usually joined them, then at four she returned to her own rooms where her confessor. Abbe Vermond, came to her. At five she had a lesson with the music master or the singing teacher. At six-thirty it was back to Adelaide, Victoire and Sophie, with the dauphin in tow. From seven to nine she presided over the card tables, unless the weather was fine, in which case she went for a walk. Supper was at nine, and when the King was not present (he

often took his supper with Madame Du Barry and a small informal company) the aunts ate with Antoinette and the dauphin. When he was present Antoinette and Louis ate in the aunts' apartments, where the King joined them a little before eleven. Antoinette got sleepy waiting for him, and took a nap on a large sofa.^

It was a long day, made longer by the tedious public rituals and the lack of variety or stimulation. For company Antoinette had her self-conscious husband, who was particularly uncomfortable in his grandfather's presence, the King, who indulged her but teased and tormented the aunts and the dauphin when he was not staring vacantly into the distance, and Adelaide, Victoire, and Sophie, who gossiped about Madame Du Barry and goaded Antoinette to insult her. They also probed for information of a very personal kind. Had the dauphin come to her bedroom the previous night? Adelaide had had a talk with him, exhorting him to be courageous and play the part of a man. Had this talk made any difference? Upset and anxious, Antoinette had to admit that he had not come to her bed, despite repeated promises to do so. Not even King Louis's intervention had had an impact.

"I find my wife charming," the dauphin had informed his grandfather with newfound dignity. "I love her, but I still need a little time to overcome my timidity."

The months passed, the year was ending. Was it possible the marriage would never be consummated? There were whispers about a divorce—or rather, an annulment, easy enough to arrange under church law when the married pair were still virgins. The courtiers were giving up on the impossible dauphin and looking to his brother Provence to fulfill the hopes of the dynasty.

Provence was betrothed, his wedding would take place in May of 1771. The bride-to-be, Marie-Josephine of Savoy, might produce an heir to the throne if Antoinette could not. And Provence would in any case make a much more presentable king than the dauphin ever would.

Then just before Christmas Antoinette lost her most powerful |X)litical ally. Choiseul was sent away from court, deprived of his ministerial responsibilities and exiled to his estate. Madame Du Barry and her party had triumphed, her ally the Due d'Aiguillon replaced Choiseul as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Equally significant was the fact that the Comtesse Du Barry now moved into new quarters at the palace—a sumptuously decorated suite of

JO CAROLLY ERICKSON

rooms linked by a staircase to the King's. These rooms became the informal center of government, the place where the King met with his ministers and ambassadors and where much of the behind-the-scenes work of the court was done. Here Madame Du Barry presided, dressed like a queen and surrounded by regal splendor. And the King, it seemed, was rarely out of her sight, wanting her beside him, sitting on the arm of his chair, while he read letters or discussed business. He even permitted her to sit in on meetings of the royal council, where, Madame Campan wrote, she behaved like a bored child and distracted him with her silliness.^

It was a dangerous situation, one designed to test Antoinette's astuteness. Distasteful though it was, she would have to come to terms with Madame Du Barry's ambiguous but powerful position. The King wished it; she was the King's subject as well as his daughter-in-law.

King Louis summoned Mercy to his mistress's drawing room to make his will known.

"Until now you have been the Empress's ambassador," Louis said with unctuous politeness. "I beg you to be mine, at least for a short time. I love Madame la dauphine dearly. I think she is charming, but as she is lively and has a husband who is not in a position to guide her she cannot possibly avoid the traps set for her by intrigue."

He did not mention Adelaide, but the implication was clear. Antoinette, he insisted, must treat every person presented at court with courtesy. Madame Du Barry was among those who had been presented. Therefore Antoinette owed her some degree of acknowledgment, however slight. If she would speak to her once, that would be sufficient. But speak to her she must.

Far more was iat stake than Antoinette's pride or Madame Du Barry's ego. The fall of Choiseul, coupled with Austria's designs on Poland—France's sometime ally—were bound to affect French foreign policy. Antoinette too was headed for a fall, unless she moved adroitly. Vermond cautioned her to affect grief for Choiseul while not showing anger or mortification at Madame Du Barry's triumph. But Vermond's position too was imperiled by the shifting of power at court; Maria Theresa was certain he would be dismissed, and without him Mercy would have no direct conduit to Antoinette. She would be more isolated than ever, vulnerable to the clever intriguers who surrounded her.

And it was clear, at least to Mercy, that she could not trust her aunts. Once a vehement supporter of Choiseul, Adelaide became one of the first to turn against him the moment he was out of favor. And Mercy noticed that as the new year began, all three of the King's daughters were trimming their sails to the prevailing winds, doing small favors for Madame Du Barry, holding back their caustic comments about her, all the while urging Antoinette to snub her and judge her harshly. They were using Antoinette, Mercy thought, "as an instrument of a hatred they dared not avow."^

Caught in a web of intrigue, yoked to a boorish, pathetically incapable husband, still a child yet burdened with intractable adult problems, Antoinette struggled to maintain her equilibrium. The "somewhat obtrusive gaiety" that wearied Adelaide was partly a pose, a smokescreen designed to obscure anxiety. But the anxiety was at times all too evident. Antoinette fretted when her mother's letters were delayed, and when they finally arrived she dropped whatever she was doing and jumped out of her chair, exclaiming "Go// sei dank!'' —"Thank God!"—as if her survival depended on the packet from Vienna.

"I swear to you," she wrote to the Empress in July of 1770, "that I have not received one of your dear letters without having the tears come to my eyes. ... I ardently wish I could see my dear and very dear family for an instant at least."^ The warm family life of Vienna was gone forever, to be replaced by the chili of constant suspicion and scheming. There were no safe havens at Versailles, no places where she could go to be free from prying eyes and whispers. The King, Madame Du Barry, Mercy had spies in every dark corner, watching and listening; every keyhole seemed to invite surveillance.

Antoinette became particularly anxious about locks and keys during her early months at Versailles. She didn't feel safe in her own apartments, and worried that her enemies had skeleton keys that they used to enter and leave at will, and also to open her desk and read her letters. She confessed to Vermond that she imagined her own keys were taken from her pockets at night—and without them, especially the one Adelaide had given her so that she could come and go at will to Adelaide's own rooms, she would be a prisoner of her entourage. Indeed even with her keys she had no true freedom, bound as she was by etiquette, routine and the confines of the great labyrinthine palace, whose corridors, never truly bright with welcome, now began to seem forbiddingly dim.

N Antoinette's large, chilly rooms at Versailles, disorder :| reigned. The huge guardroom at the top of the wide mar-j ble staircase was cluttered with weaponry and the accoutrements of the guards, who whiled away their idleness gambling and telling stories while all around them tradesmen waited for a chance to show the dauphine their wares and messengers and visitors to court milled expectantly. In the antechamber, where her attendants waited for their turn to serve her and where the "Great Table" was laid for the midday dinner, there were holes in the tapestries where Antoinette's two curly-tailed pug dogs had scratched at them, and the parquet floor was muddy with paw prints. "Madame la dauphine loves dogs very much," Mercy told Maria Theresa, adding that she had requested that another dog be sent from Vienna, a tawny pug with a black nose. Mercy was willing to endorse the request, though he noted that the two dogs she already had were "extremely unclean."^