To the scaffold (12 page)

Louis and Antoinette were on the best of terms—^as friends. To please her he ordered that a ball be held in her apartments once a week, and escorted her to receptions given by various courtiers. Everyone remarked on the change in him; he was trying, in his awkward way, to be sociable, though he still preferred his solitary pursuits and was evidently making the effort solely to gratify his wife. Antoinette professed to be happy with him, and

insisted that "the wicked rumors people whisper about his impotence are just so much nonsense." He slept beside her most nights, and treated her "in the most friendly way." But they were not yet husband and wife, and Antoinette, watching the pregnancies of the other women at court, and then seeing them with their newborn babies in their arms, was at times in despair. Even when their pregnancies ended in tragedy, she envied them. In October of 1771 the Duchesse de Chartres was delivered of a stillborn child. "Even though it is terrible," Antoinette wrote in a letter to Vienna, "I still wish it had been me in her place, but there is still no hope of it."^^

"General Krottendorf" was the name Antoinette and Maria Theresa had agreed to use in their correspondence to refer to menstruation. In 1771 the "General" made his appearance with melancholy regularity, though during the previous year his visits had been quite erratic. ^^ Antoinette was still very young, not too young to bear a child but perhaps too young to be consistently fertile. She was still growing, her height increased considerably during her first several years at the French court. She was filling out as well, especially after she began drinking fresh milk every morning at her mother's request. The Empress had always be-lieved in the health-giving qualities of fresh milk, brought straight ft-om the dairy.

She was growing mentally too, learning to find pleasure in the reading of instructive books, having the Abbe Vermond (who was not dismissed after all) read to her for hours at a time from works on the history of France or from the memoirs of courtiers in earlier reigns. She sat patiently, her needlework in her lap, listening to the Abb^ or discussing with him the biblical commentary that her confessor had given her to read or Hume's History of Europe, which she had been reading on her own. ("It seems full of interest," she remarked to the Empress about Hume's History, "but one must remember that it was written by a Protestant, "^o)

By the second anniversary of her arrival in France Antoinette had become a different girl. She retained her charm, but added to it intelligence, acumen and perspicacity. Though she disliked and even feared politics, she understood it, up to a point, and grasped with alacrity the political explanations made to her. She was learning to make her way past the shoals of court politics, steering between the King and the Du Barry faction and those who would

use her as their stalking-horse. She eventually gratified the King by breaking her long silence toward his mistress, yet she did it in such a way that her own dignity remained intact.

On New Year's Day, 1772, in the midst of the elaborate ceremonies customary on the first day of the year, Antoinette decided to say the few words that made all the difference. Speaking briefly to each of the women who bowed before her in turn, she did not neglect Madame Du Barry. "There are a great many people at Versailles today," she said as the Countess knelt at her feet, keeping her tone so nonchalant that it belied the enormity of the communication.

The difference in the dauphine was apparent in how she spent her time. Once in a while she sought out her aunts, but more often she was to be found improving her mind, or giving audiences to ambassadors' wives, or practicing the harp music her mother sent her, slowly learning first one hand's part, then the other. The children of her bedchamber women were rarely in evidence in her apartments now, though the dogs were still there. Yet many afternoons found the dogs napping on the couches, or pawing at the doors, restless in their loneliness. Their mistress was at the hunt, riding one of the fine horses her grandfather had bought for her, looking her best in the hunt uniform of royal blue velvet with a white-plumed hat.

She rode nearly as boldly as Adelaide, her plumes flying, her cheeks pink with excitement, her blue eyes large and bright. The "sweet and gentle" donkeys she had ridden in her earliest months in France no longer satisfied her. They were too slow, they frustrated her, especially when she had to ride along with all the ladies of her suite following behind her in a huge procession sixty or eighty donkeys long. On her splendid Suffolk hunters she could gallop to her heart's content, free of her mother, free of Madame de Noailles, free, for the moment, of the cares of her situation and of fretful thoughts about her future.

^s^^

A HE King was aging rapidly. His health was declining, he walked with an old man's gait. His sight was dimming, though his lips still curved upward in a cadaverous grin when he saw Madame Du Barry. He repeated himself constantly, and his vacuity was swiftly turning into senility. "The King is not old in actual years," an observer wrote in 1773, "but very much so in fact, in consequence of the life he has led." He was dying of dissipation, and the courtiers, seeing that he was dying, were deserting him in droves.

Mercy, who had no love for King Louis, nonetheless had a sharp eye for his pitiful state. "He is isolated," the ambassador noted, "without comfort from his children, without resources, zeal, attachment or fidelity on the part of the bizarre assemblage that comprises his surroundings."^ Madame Du Barry was his constant companion, hanging over his shoulder when he was seated, walking beside him on his ever slower promenades, presuming to read his letters and generally claiming precedence over every other member of the court save the royal family.

She acted as though she expected him to live forever, continuing to spend lavishly, drawing funds from the bankrupt treasury to buy gold dinner services and golden mirrors crowned with cupids. She continued to receive costly gifts from kings and ambassadors. (King Gustavus of Sweden made her a present of a collar and chain for her dog Dorine, a Blenheim spaniel, composed entirely of diamonds and rubies.) Yet the reality could not be denied: before long her protector would vanish from the scene,

and then her enormous revenues—far in excess of 1,500,000 livres a year—would cease, her jewels and gowns and plate and furnishings would all have to be returned.

A year earlier, in 1772, King Lx)uis had made an attempt to arrange a divorce for Madame Du Barry so that he could marry her. Her fortunes had then been at their height, the King's bounty endless and the luxuries to be enjoyed in her white brocade boudoir without limit. But the divorce attempt had come to nothing, and the courtiers, who for a time had begun to consider the astounding possibility that Jeanne Becu might become Queen, and might even bear a new dauphin, had come to realize that before long she would not have any further influence whatever. They no longer flattered and served her as they once had, and even balked at attending her soirees.

In March 1773 the Countess gave a fete to inaugurate the pavilion the King had built for her in the gardens of Versailles. He had spared no expense, the building was sumptuous "to the point of indecency." To show it off Madame Du Barry planned a spectacular entertainment, with a hundred singers and dancers, scenic devices worthy of the best Paris theaters, and a dramatic finale in which a huge egg opened to reveal an armed cupid. All the important courtiers were invited, including the chief ladies. But when all was in readiness, and the hour for the fete arrived, the pavilion was all but empty. The King did not attend, and out of the hundreds of guests invited only thirty made their appearance. ^

It was a clear sign that Madame Du Barry's power was on the wane—and that the dauphin's faction was growing. Another clear sign was the increasing number of songs and epigrams written about the Countess, ridiculing her origins and satirizing her pretentions. "The streetwalker" had had her day, the songs implied, but her sun was setting and her attractions were losing their power to charm. An Englishman who saw Madame Du Barry at about this time exclaimed that her face was "rather upon the yellow leaf," the Indian summer of her beauty at its end.

As the King declined, and the day drew nearer when Louis and Antoinette would reign, power shifted their way. The cabals that schemed to make Provence King instead of Louis were silent, for Provence, despite his vaunted prowess on his wedding night, had not yet fathered a child and displayed an indifference toward

&f CAROLLY ERICKSON

his wife that verged on disgust. Provence had also been ill, with a skin disease on his hands and "humors in the blood," while the dauphin was growing taller and stouter and more healthy every day.^

Interest was now focused on the younger royal brother, Ar-tois. Adelaide had attached her hopes to him, had taken over the supervising of his education and was attempting—over the squabbling objections of Madame Du Barry—to play the dominant role in the selection of his household staff. His betrothal had been arranged. He was to marry Marie Theresa of Savoy, the sister of Provence's wife Josephine, and though Theresa was reputed to be even less attractive than her red-faced, mustachioed sister it was hoped that the couple would prove fertile.

Antoinette, who was not yet seventeen, had learned to take a somewhat stoic view of her childlessness, and even to make light of it. Writing to her mother about the very fertile Madame de Schwartzenberg, who had thirteen children, she remarked, "I wish she would lend me a little of her fecundity.'* And in another letter she was optimistic. "Perhaps they [her future children] will be all the healthier for coming late.""^

She was maturing mentally, learning to take the wider and longer view of things. Mercy's astute guidance, Abb6 Vermond's gentle promptings, the Empress's scoldings and caveats had taken root. Antoinette had begun to find her own way through the maelstrom of intrigues and tiresome etiquette, she was making an identity of her own. "When I first came to this country," she told Mercy, "I was too young and thoughtless. I believed everything I was told, but now—" She did not need to finish the thought. The difference was clear. She had begun to take her own education in hand.

To this end she drew up a new regimen for herself, filling her time as usefully as possible after allowing for the unavoidable demands of ritual. On arising in the morning she said her prayers, then had a music lesson and practiced her dancing, then devoted herself to an hour of what she termed "reasonable reading." Her public toilette came next, then a visit to the King with whom she went to Mass. After dinner she devoted herself to more "reasonable reading" for an hour and a half, then went out walking or joined the hunt. Conversations with her husband and other relatives closed out the day. "I 3o not know if I shall fulfill all that

quite exactly," Antoinette said as she showed Mercy her new schedule, "but I mean to try my best."^

She was showing signs of improving, of taking herself and her responsibilities seriously. And it was just as well, Mercy thought, for he was convinced that the dauphin would never have the fortitude to be King. Antoinette would have to rule for him, to direct his actions and decisions and so, in effect, rule France. He often spoke of her in the spring of 1773 as a states woman "who will one day govern this kingdom." "The dauphine," he told Maria Theresa, "has such great powers of mind and character that there cannot be the least doubt that we may rely upon their effects."^

Antoinette was making occasional efforts to prepare herself for her future role. Her husband, however, was not. He shuffled through his days, wearing old clothes unless his valets insisted on more elegant attire, squinting nearsightedly at the courtiers and doing his best to learn to dance. Alone in his apartments, the doors locked against intruders, he stumbled through the steps of the intricate court dances, "sweating great drops," while a lone fiddler scratched out the tune. Exhausted by his efforts, he joined his brothers in their private game of tormenting their grandfather's servants, "running with great glee" to tickle the King's valets de chambre as they entered and left the royal apartments laden with trays and baskets. When this palled, the dauphin escaped to the hunt, or to a construction site where he happily joined the laborers at their work.

"Despite her efforts," a visitor to Versailles reported, "the dauphine is unable to make her husband control his unusual taste for all that concerns construction, such as masonry, carpentry and other such things." Louis was forever discovering something that needed fixing, then calling in workmen to repair it and pitching in alongside them. "He works himself with the laborers in moving materials, girders, paving-blocks, and devotes whole hours to this toilsome exercise. Sometimes he comes home more tired than any laborer who is obliged to do such work for a living." It was embarrassing how avid the future King was for humble manual labor. Always self-conscious and stiff in the palace, he became relaxed and at peace in the mud and grime of the workplace, lost in the pleasures of exertion and the satisfactions of physical labor. Nothing delighted him more than to toil beside the carpenters and

masons for hours on end, then to return to his apartments sweaty and filthy, a look of utter satisfaction on his chubby face.

It was hard to imagine this royal misfit as King. "The dauphin shows certain savage virtues," wrote the Comtesse de la Marck, "but he is without wits, without knowledge, without education, without even taste." He was afraid of women, the Countess added, "and as even his own wife has not cured him we can believe that none will."^ The dauphin*s fear of women worked in Antoinette's favor. She gentled him, he wanted very much to please her and this made him adaptable. Oddly, with her kind and uncritical nature, her warmth and sympathy, she was more mother than wife to her husband. She sometimes scolded him until he cried (though his tears often led her to cry as well, from empathy), and let him feel the sting of her acid tongue. She often intervened to stop fights when he warred with his two brothers. Louis had never ceased to feel defensive around his siblings, vulnerable to Provence's quick wit and Artois's teasing. He lashed out at them physically, kicking them and hitting them and sometimes taking revenge by destroying their possessions.