To the scaffold (13 page)

Provence had a beautiful piece of porcelain that stood on his mantel. Louis liked to torment his brother by lifting the fragile thing and toying with it. One day he broke it, and Provence, infuriated, threw himself on his taller and older brother, slapping and scratching him with all the intensity pent up in a jealous younger sibling. The dauphin struck back with a vengeance; the two looked murderous and Antoinette, accustomed since birth to the inevitable scrapping in a large family, stepped in and separated them. She came away with a scratched hand, but was otherwise unhurt.^

Another time Antoinette was having a game of piquet with Provence, who had developed an uneasy rapport with her (they laughed together over the songs and jokes about Madame Du Barry). Louis stood nearby with a small whip in his hand, watching the game. Out of jealousy or irritation he struck his brother's arm with the whip again and again, ignoring Provence's complaints. Tensions rose, and eventually the whip struck once too often. Provence grabbed for the whip and tried to yank it out of the dauphin's hand; a struggle ensued, they were about to come to blows. Again Antoinette stepped in, snatched the whip, broke it in two and so prevented violence. No doubt Louis received a lecture later on, when they were alone.^

Antoinette was old enough to perceive how her husband's deficiencies were bound to hamper him as King. She knew, thanks in part to Mercy's tutelage, that much would be expected of her as Queen—that in fact, after she became Queen she would be even more under siege from intriguers and the ambitious, even more the target of faction and gossip and importunate schemers. Her sense of duty prompted her to bow to the inevitable—yet another instinct was becoming stronger. Mercy noted it with alarm.

"She never allows herself to suppose that she may one day possess both authority and power," he wrote to Vienna, "from which it results that her character acquires daily a dependent and passive trend: hence ensue habits of timidity and fear on the least occasion." She sensed the onset of an overwhelming burden, and she backed away from it, possibly because she knew that she would never become strong enough to face it squarely, possibly because she had grown up under the shadow of a mother impossibly overburdened with the grinding labor of government, whose entire life had been a paean to duty, and partly, too, because of the shallow, frivolous streak in her nature, which led her to shut her eyes to duty and simply enjoy herself.

Mercy was exasperated with her. "It is important that the Archduchess should learn better to know and appreciate her own strength," he said, for she had all the intelligence, character and good judgment to be her husband's badly needed partner in affairs. But her willfulness, her fondness for "dissipation and amusement" were a handicap, and one she did not want to overcome. She was troubled by thoughts "upon which she could not express herself." Moreover, she was, in 1773, old enough to be beyond the reach of his instruction. Her basic character was formed, it would not change very much. *^

The King was aging rapidly, and before he died his heir needed to present himself, with his wife, to the people of Paris in the Joyeuse Entree.

On the morning of June 8, 1773 the throngs of people pouring into the narrow streets of the capital made the work of the street cleaners nearly impossible. The black, sulfiirous mud that collected on the cobblestones and in the gutters, reeking of ordure and rotting garbage, had to be shoveled into carts and hauled away to the countryside, where it could not offend the noses of the next King and Queen. But the crowds of spectators interfered with the labor, shouldering aside the workmen with their carts

and shovels, bringing new mud in on their boots, littering the thoroughfares and alleyways as they tramped enthusiastically toward the Porte de la Conference where the dauphin and dauphine were to make their entry. Many went on beyond the gate toward Versailles, hoping to meet the royal entourage on its passage from the palace to the city.

The usual morning activities had been suspended. There were no markets, no flocks of sheep or herds of cattle were permitted in the streets, no grain changed hands, even the peddlers were shooed away from the route the procession was to take. Women carrying cafe au lait—the Parisians' usual breakfast—in tin vessels mingled with the gathering throng, doing a brisk business at two sous the cup. The nuns of the Foundling Hospital took inside the dozen or so abandoned babies left at their gate during the previous night and received others from the police; it would not do to let the wailing of infants dampen the day's celebrations, even the weak wailing of newborns. Similarly, the most unsightly of Paris's thousands of beggars were driven off or locked away, lest the royals be displeased by the sight of their crippled and palsied limbs. The hordes of prostitutes that normally earned their day's livelihood from the farmers in the grain market or the pleasure-seeking rou^s in the Palais Royale were forced to look for new clients, and they roved through the crush of spectators eyeing likely men and calling out boldly to them.

It was a noisy crowd, Parisians were notoriously loud and talkative. They were a heterogeneous lot, affluent bourgeois in their best velvet waistcoats and lace-trinuned cuffs, tradesmen in coats and breeches of plain tailored cloth, here and there a gentleman in buckled shoes, silk stockings and beribboned periwig, his sword in its low-slung scabbard swinging perilously along behind him. There were vintners and grocers, tanners and dentists, bankers and lawyers—but many more casual laborers, apprentices freed from their workshops for the day, water carriers and street porters, bargemen and peasants from the villages nearest to the capital who had walked through the night in order to be able to witness the spectacle of the Joyous Entry. They rushed to find places along the route the royal carriages would take, and in the gardens of the Tuileries, embroidresses and grimy chimney sweeps vying for space with students, fishermen up from the river and renegade monks.

Paris hid a multitude of sins, and of crimes; along the southern perimeter of the city there was constant apprehension because it was to nearby Bicetre that convicts from many northern French cities were sent to prepare for deportation. From Bicetre they were transported to Brest and Rochefort and Toulon, but many escaped en route, and lost themselves in the dim, crooked alleyways of the capital from which they emerged to terrorize honest citizens.

A bare two weeks had passed since the last gathering at Bicetre, and the city was full of tales and rumors, stories of escape and recapture, of multiple murders and grisly discoveries. Police spies were everywhere, keeping watch on the Seine bridges for escapees, haunting taverns and tollgates, waiting to overhear the indiscreet conversation that could lead them to their quarry. They were especially vigilant this day, for pickpockets and cutpurses loved crowds and burglaries invariably increased on holidays.

By midmoming the city officials were in their places and the orchestra was tuning up. Ten carriages were drawn up by the Porte de la Conference, occupied by soldiers, councillors and their retinues; the chief carriage contained the governor of Paris, the aged Marechal de Brissac, the provost Michodi^re, and Sartines, lieutenant of police in charge of keeping order. Squadrons of town guards and horsemen of the watch formed up at the gate, ready to escort the dauphin and dauphine and to prevent the hordes of onlookers from engulfing the objects of their curiosity.

At eleven-thirty the first of the royal carriages was sighted, and the signal was passed to the trumpeters who blew a fanfare. At almost the same moment the cannon of the Invalides boomed out a salute, followed by the guns of the H6tel de Ville and the Bastille. Thick black smoke rose into the clear summer skies and then settled over the city as the thunderous cannonade proceeded. The crowd cheered, people surged forward until beaten back by the police. At last the four royal coaches rattled through the gateway and came to a halt, and Marechal de Brissac came forward to kneel before the future sovereigns and extend greetings, handing the dauphin the symbolic key to the city. The provost made a speech, but the noise of the crowd drowned it out. They cheered, they whistled, they sang songs written specially for the Joyous Entry and sold on printed sheets. They kept on singing

go CAROLLY ERICKSON

and shouting as the speechifying continued, their roaring covering the decorous playing of the orchestra.

To Antoinette the deafening noise of the crowd was both exciting and gratifying. She had had little opportunity to come face to face with the French people, having been entombed at Versailles for three long years. But now here they were in their thousands, rich and poor together, clamoring for a closer view of her and of her husband, coming as near as they dared to the carriage in which she rode, wide grins on their pockmarked faces. She watched them in smiling fascination as the procession of coaches made its way along the quays to Notre Dame, stopping at the Conti quay where the prefect of the Mint made a speech. The Archbishop of Paris celebrated Mass at Notre Dame, after which the dignitaries returned to their carriages and made the brief journey to the Collie of Louis le Grand where the rector of the university made an address.

The official ceremonies were tedious, but to Antoinette's eager, curious eyes the city and its inhabitants were endlessly engrossing. The tumult, the incessant cries of ''Vive le dauphin!'' and ^'Vive la dauphine!^'' the flowers strewn in their path, the quaint medieval buildings in the oldest part of the city, even the pungent odors that lingered near the river were a panorama of delight. After three years she was finally meeting those who would soon be her people, and seeing her famed capital. It was almost too much for her.

"I shall never forget it as long as I live," she wrote to her mother some days later. "As for honors, we received every honor one could imagine—but all that, though very well in its way, was not what moved me most: it was the fondness and eagerness of the poor people who, despite the taxes which burden them, were carried away by joy at the sight of us."^^

The dauphin and dauphine drew the largest crowds Paris had known since the arrival of a celebrated faith healer, whose fame attracted thirty thousand people to the city. Then the people had filled the rue des Ciseaux and spilled out into the surrounJing streets, the crush made worse by the crutches of the many invalids seeking the man's healing touch and the dogs that accompanied the many blind men. The crowd had kept its hopeful vigil outside the healer's lodgings until word spread that the police had driven him out of town; even then the people kept their composure, and murmured blessings on him wherever he had gone.^^

Now there was an even more compelling sight to attract the Parisians, and they clamored for Louis and Antoinette from rooftops and attic windows, and from the packed gardens of the Tuil-eries, where the dauphin and dauphine went to dine. After the public dinner the two young royals went out into the gardens, where the acclamation was deafening and the crowd pressed in on them so tighdy from all sides that they couldn't move. "We remained for three-quarters of an hour without being able to go forward or back," Antoinette wrote. The guards, accustomed to lashing at crowds with whips or with the flat of their swords, heeded the dauphin's orders to do nothing, to let the people swarm close to him. This unheard-of lenity "created a very good impression," and fortunately did not result in any injuries. (Such mob scenes were rarely so innocuous. Three years earlier, when all Paris rushed into the rue Royale to watch the fireworks celebrating the dauphin's marriage, there was a stampede and in the resultant panic more than a hundred people were suffocated or trampled to death.) Later Louis and Antoinette went up onto a terrace overlooking the garden, and stayed there for half an hour acknowledging the continuing acclamations of the crowd.

"I cannot tell you, dear mama, what rapture, what enormous fondness were shown to us during that time." From her vantage point on the balcony Antoinette could now gauge the true size of the enormous mass of humanity that had come to pay her homage.

"My God!" she cried out, "what a crowd!"

"Madame," said Marechal de Brissac, at her elbow, "without prejudice to Monsieur le Dauphin, here you have two hundred thousand lovers."

As ardent as lovers in their passionate cheers and shouts, the Parisians cried themselves hoarse, tears mingling with smiles. They were delighted with the dauphin, who looked to them strapping and stalwart, a man's man, and who on that day surpassed himself in responding with dignity to the speeches and the acclaim. They were even more delighted with his Austrian wife, whose doll-like delicacy, enchanting coloring and vibrant grace captivated them. She was then seventeen; at about this time Edmund Burke saw Antoinette at Versailles, and wrote an ecstatic reminiscence of her. "Surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch," Burke wrote, "a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the ele-

vated sphere she had just begun to move in—glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendor, and joy."

Ten months later, in April of 1774, the young couple shut themselves in Antoinette's apartments at Versailles and prayed that the old King's life would be spared. He was very ill, he had been bled twice by the iSve surgeons who attended him and purged at the order of his three apothecaries. Adelaide, Victoire and Sophie kept watch by his bedside during the day, Madame Du Barry watched over him at night. Privately, one of the doctors who diagnosed "catarrhal fever" confided to a courtier that he did not think the King would live. In Paris, the lieutenant of police began to make plans for controlling the outbreak of violence that was sure to come when the news of the King's death spread through the capital.

The dauphin, supported by his frightened but loyal wife, waited in anguish for the medical bulletins that came from the sickroom, aware of a subtle change in the way he was being treated by the servants and courtiers. If the King was bled a third time, the Archbishop of Paris would be summoned to give him extreme unction. The third bleeding was a sentence of death. Pale and restless, his nerves in shreds, the dauphin knelt and begged to be spared awhile longer the awful responsibility of ruling the kingdom of France.