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a minor post but one involving "daily and assiduous duties," could only be held by a nobleman, one whose lineage was distinguished enough to match that of the first gentleman usher. (The train-bearer and first gentleman usher had to share a carriage when the royal household moved; the latter dignitary could not be expected to ride with a social inferior.) Yet the train-bearer could only exercise his office within a very limited sphere, for as soon as the Queen left her own apartments and passed through the Galerie des Glaces, he had to yield the train to another servant, either a page of the King's bedchamber or a chapel servant. To console him for the frustrations of his severely curtailed responsibilities, the train-bearer was allowed to hold the Queen's pelisse or mantle—but never to hand them to her directly, only to hand them to the first gentleman usher or first equerry.*

The memoirs of the Comte d'H^z^cques provide an intriguing view of what it was to be a page at the court of Louis and Antoinette. ^ He came to Versailles as a boy of twelve, owing his appointment as page of the King's chamber to the influence of a relative who was one of the chamber gentlemen. When he arrived there were fifty-eight pages in all, not counting those who served the Princes of the blood. Eight of these were assigned to the King's chamber, where their duties consisted of attending the grand levefy escorting the King to Mass, lighting his way with torches when he returned after dark from the hunt, and handing him his slippers at his nightly coucher. The duties were not strenuous, but the initiation was, as Hez^cques found to his dismay. As a novice page he was at the mercy of the anciens —pages who had held their posts for two years and more and who were despotic in the extreme. The anciens punished every fault of the novices mercilessly, and the novices were expected, not only to perform their duties flawlessly, but to guess the wishes of their superiors or else face a beating with a cane.

To be a royal page was a coveted honor of>en only to boys who could prove noble ancestry stretching back two hundred years or more. Elach page was required to have a pension from his family of six hundred livres per year. But this was for incidental expenses only, for everything else was provided: abundant food, liveries and other clothing, medical care, and education. Hez^cques felt that he was looked after with "a truly royal magnificence." The eight chamber pages had two governors and a preceptor, or

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teacher, to supervise them in their lodgings in the rue de rOrangerie. They spent their mornings (before the King's /ever, which was usually not until eleven or eleven-thirty) learning horsemanship; later in the day, when not attending the King, they were tutored in mathematics, German, drawing, dancing, fencing and firearms, tumbling, and athletic exercises.

Boys such as the future Comte Hez^cques were proud little lordlings, conceited and disdainful. Such conceit naturally bred quarrels, and the pages often fought duels among themselves which their governors were not vigilant enough to prevent. Duels between the King's pages and those of the Prince de Conde or the Prince de Conti were also common, though rarely fatal. The wounded were taken to surgeons in the town of Versailles or to one of the Queen's "common surgeons" who normally attended the inferior servants of her household but who could be pressed into service for emergencies. Dueling was officially disapproved, yet it was a recognized part of the life of an army officer, and all the royal pages were being groomed for careers in the army. At the end of their terms, when they were seventeen or eighteen, they expected to be given commissions in the guards, as H^z^c-ques was.

After four years as a page of the King's chamber, the sixteen-year-old Hez^cques, now an ancien ruling the lives of other novice pages, was transferred to the great stable, where the regimen was much more lax and the pages were free to roam about the town for five or six hours every day. The fifty boys assigned here were quartered in one wing of the vast stable, in small rooms, each painted yellow, each with identical furnishings, that were scarcely larger than horse stalls. Four huge stoves kept them warm, and they shared a large study room and dining room. Though the formal education of the stable pages was neglected, their training in horsemanship was superb, under the tutelage of the "strict, but never ferocious" Prince de Lambesc, scion of the heretofore royal house of Lorraine (and thus a distant kinsman of the Queen). The Prince rose before dawn every morning, even in winter, and began his tutelage of the pages by five o'clock, teaching them not only how to handle the superb horses kept for the King (there were some three thousand horses in the royal stables) but how to groom them and care for them.

The duties of the stable pages were relatively light. An elite

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group chosen from among them accompanied the King on his hunts, wearing special hunting livery with gold braid trim (the trim was worn in a variety of ways depending on which animal was being hunted). They carried his loaded guns, handing them to him and taking them back from him when he had fired, then taking the empty guns to the arquebusier who loaded them again. At the end of the hunt, after the game was distributed, the pages feasted on what was left—and were often given a dozen botdes of champagne to wash it down with.

The Queen^s household was smaller than the King's, but it was still very large—perhaps a total of five hundred officers and servants—and very complex. Antoinette revived the office of superintendent of the Queen's household and gave it to the Princesse de Lamballe, her friend and confidante, soon after she became Queen. (The elevation of the Princess put Madame de Noailles in the shade, and she soon resigned, as no doubt Antoinette meant her to.) As superintendent the Princess had vast authority, and given her mild and benign nature she did not abuse it. Beneath her was the chief lady-in-waiting, the Duchesse de Cosse, succeeded by the Princesse de Chimay and then by Madame de Mailly, who held the post until 1781. Madame Campan, Antoinette's loyal servant and biographer, was one of the two chief bedchamber women, in charge of all the bedchamber servants, responsible for the Queen's private funds and entrusted with her jewels. The Abb^ Vermond held the position of reader to the Queen. ^

The running of Antoinette's household involved a wide variety of activities, from the checking and paying of bills to the answering of letters from foreign sovereigns announcing births, deaths, and other events in their families. Two secretaries were kept busy with this correspondence alone. The repair and maintenance of the Queen's vehicles, including the gilded sledges she went riding in when especially harsh winters provided enough snow, was another time-consuming task. Each time the court moved to Marly, Choisy or Fontainebleau, invitations had to be sent out for balls, suppers, and hunting parties—thousands of invitations in all. Then too there was the payment of pensions to former servants and others, including the former servants of the late Queen Marie Leczinska, which Antoinette insisted on continuing.

The health of the inferior servants was an ongoing concern

that necessitated the employment of an apothecary and two surgeons. These were in addition to the "body apothecary" and surgeon for the household, who tended the Queen herself and her officers. The purveyance of foodstuffs, the care of glassware and silver, the storing and cleaning of robes and court dresses—not to mention shoes, bags, fans, gloves, undergarments and hats—employed many dozens of people. The regulations put in place by Abbe Terray called for linen clothes, napkins, chemises and lace to be replaced every three years (later changed to five, then seven years as successive controllers attempted to enforce more stringent economy); clerks of the linen cupboard had to make certain these regulations were honored, and that the discarded items were disbursed appropriately.

Oversight of these long-range matters went on while the daily, hourly services were performed without which the household could not run smoothly. The making of the Queen's bed, for example, had to be completed while she and her entourage were at Mass. Once the Mass-bound procession had left the apartments, the waiting women hurried in with clean sheets and pillows, and, opening the huge double curtains that surrounded the bed, stripped off the old linen and put it into huge baskets lined with green taffeta to be taken to the laundry. Then four liveried footmen were called in to turn the mattresses, which were too heavy for the waiting women to lift. Once the footmen had withdrawn, new white sheets were put on the bed and the covers arranged. So skilled were the waiting women at this task that they accomplished it in five minutes, and dusted the furniture and tidied the mess left after the dressing and coiffing of the Queen as well, with one of the ladies-in-waiting sitting in a large armchair looking on to make certain everything was done properly."*

Fortunately, one of Antoinette's ladies-in-waiting, the Com-tesse de la Tour du Pin, left a long and detailed account of her life at Versailles. She was bom Henriette-Lucy Dillon, the daughter of an Irish soldier who commanded a regiment in the French army and his French wife, a great beauty named Lucie de Rothe, also one of Antoinette's ladies. (Antoinette, the Countess recalled, "was always ready to be captivated by glitter" and Lucie was lovely and glittering, though tragically she died young.) A number of Henriette's other relatives held court positions, and because of these connections, her marriage to the Comte de la Tour

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du Pin de Gouvemet was celebrated in the chapel at Versailles. She obtained her appointment as lady-in-waiting, but first had to be formally presented, a ceremony that made great demands on the grace and poise of a young woman.

Her aunt the Princesse d'Henin took Henriette to Paris to a dancing master, one M. Huart, who was accustomed to preparing women for their formal presentations. "It is impossible to conceive of anything more ridiculous than those rehearsals of the presentation," the Countess wrote in her memoirs. "M. Huart, a large man, his hair very well dressed and white with powder, wore a billowing underskirt and stood at the far end of the room to represent the Queen." M. Huart showed Henriette when to remove her glove and bow to kiss the hem of the Queen's gown, how to walk with dignity down the length of the room, how to curtsey gracefully despite the encumbrance of her robe and gown. "Nothing was forgotten or overlooked in these rehearsals, which went on for three or four hours. I wore a train and the wide paniers of court dress, but above and below was my ordinary morning dress, and my hair was only very simply pinned up. It was all very fiinny."

The day of the presentation came, and Henriette was dressed in her special white gown embroidered with pearls and silver, and wore around her neck "seven or eight rows of large diamonds" which Antoinette had lent her for the occasion. More diamonds sparkled in her hair. "Thanks to M. Huart's good coaching," she recalled, "I made my three curtseys very well. I removed my glove and put it on again not too awkwardly. Then I went to receive the accolade from the King and his brothers, the Princes," and other dignitaries. Years afterward, the Countess still remembered how embarrassing and exhausting the ceremony was for her. Even though many of her relatives were present, and even though the Queen's affection for her late mother predisposed her to welcome Henriette, she still felt as if she were running a gauntlet, "being stared at by the whole court and being torn to shreds by every critical tongue." "One became the topic of every conversation and on returning to the *jeu' in the evening . . . every eye was upon you."^

It was not long, however, before Henriette learned to feel at home among the Queen's ladies. She stood with the others each Sunday in the salon next to Antoinette's bedroom, waiting for the signal to enter for the ceremony of the grand toilette. The salon

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was always fiill, she recalled, there were usually at least forty women waiting there, often more. "Sometimes we were very closely packed," she wrote, "for our paniers took up a great deal of room." When the Princesse de Lamballe entered the bedchamber, and then the first lady-in-waiting and the mistress of the robes, the women knew that the ceremony would soon begin. In a few moments a footman came to the bedchamber door and called in a loud voice for "Le Service,^'' At this the ladies entered.

"As soon as the Queen had greeted each of us in her charming, kindly way, the door was opened and everyone admitted. We stood to the right and left of the room in such a manner as to leave a clear space at the door and in the center of the room." Often the women had to stand in rows two or three feet deep, their paniers crushed and their gowns wrinkled, until the entire group moved off toward the chapel. One day Henriette encountered the British ambassador and, knowing the English custom, shook hands with him. Antoinette happened to see her, and, as "she had never seen this English form of greeting before, found it very amusing. As jokes do not die easily at court, she never failed to ask the [ambassador] on the many occasions when we were both present, *Have you shaken hands with Mme de Gouvemet?'"

The Sunday morning audiences went on until 12:40, when the footman again advanced to the door and announced "The King!" At this Antoinette "would go to meet him with a charming air of pleasure and deference. The King would incline his head to the right and the left, and speak to a few ladies whom he knew, though never to the young ones." His extreme short-sightedness meant that he would only recognize those who stood very near him, Henriette recalled, and it was evident that he felt encumbered by his heavily embroidered coat, sword and hat.

The procession to the chapel was at its most elaborate on Sundays, and foreign visitors liked to come to Versailles to witness it if possible. The first gentleman of the bedchamber led the way, the Captain of the Guard following him, then came the King and Queen, who walked slowly enough to enable them to speak a few words to each of the courtiers as they passed them. "Often, the Queen would speak to the foreign ladies who had been presented to her in private, to artists and to writers. An inclination of the head or a gracious smile was noted and carefully stored against future need." Behind the King and Queen came the highest rank-