To the scaffold (22 page)

asked his advice, and he gave it to her. He also urged her to tell her mother the unfortunate truth about Louis's weakness (which she knew already from Mercy's candid secret reports), and to try again to get the better of Maurepas not by overt confrontation but by flattery and dissembling. Antoinette, who could dissemble well enough with Lx)uis when she wanted to, drew the line at pretending friendship toward Maurepas. She could not "pretend gra-ciousness to a man she despised," she told Mercy, no matter what was at stake.

The crisis eased. Though the state of war continued to exist, by fall the threat of imminent battle retreated. Once again Antoinette put all her energies into preparing for the birth of her child. She declared herself ready to give up her old life and start fresh. "I want to live as a mother, nurse my own child, and devote myself to his education," she declared. She would install the baby on the ground floor of the palace, where he would be near the terrace where she herself liked to walk. In time he would take his first steps on the terrace, he would join his cousins, Theresa's children, in games and festivities at the Petit Trianon. Best of all, his birth would help to solidify once again the fragile bonds between Vienna and Versailles.

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ouis could not wait for his son to be bom. He watched

over Antoinette tenderly, visiting her apartments many

J times a day, loaded down with gifts and eager to re-

__-^ assure himself that all was well with her. He did his

best to ignore the ever increasing stream of scurrilous songs and ribald poems that circulated in the court and capital, denying his paternity and slandering his wife. It was impossible to keep this sort of ephemera away from the Queen, damaging though it was to her peace of mind. In mid-December, with the delivery expected any day, an entire volume of songs ridiculing Antoinette and several court ladies was thrown into the palace through the oeil-de-boeuf. (The author was caught but not punished.) Throughout the kingdom, however, songs of thanksgiving were sung in the cathedrals and prayer vigils were kept for the safe delivery of the Queen. Versailles, rarely crowded in recent years, was full for once. Nobles who lived in Paris installed themselves at the palace to await the great event, to profit from it if they could, to witness it if they were lucky.

When the labor pains began, early in the morning of December 19, the royal family, the Princes of the blood and great state officers all moved into the Queen's apartments and waited in the rooms adjacent to her bedchamber. They had to be present at the moment of birth, and custom required that anyone else who so desired should be admitted as well. The outer rooms of the apartments began to fill up with courtiers and officials, relatives and hangers-on.

In the bedchamber the accoucheur Vermond and his assistants busied themselves around the special "labor bed" where the Queen lay. Huge tapestry screens surrounded the bed, secured with ropes by the King's orders. No breath of air stirred in the overheated room. The huge high windows were sealed shut with caulking, and paper had been pasted over them to prevent any draught. As the labor progressed the order was given for the royal family and officials to be admitted. They came in, and ranged themselves around the bed. The Princesse de Lamballe was there, as the Queen's friend and superintendent of her household, as was Antoinette's closest confidante Yolande, Comtesse de Polignac. Mercy too was asked to attend, though he was extremely ill at ease; childbirth made him squeamish.

For some eight hours the witnesses kept their places, while Antoinette endured ever stronger contractions. She did her best to be brave. Had not her indomitable mother undergone more than a dozen births without flinching? Did not German women pride themselves on their ability to undergo pain without complaint? She had witnessed Theresa's labor, now Theresa was forced to witness hers, and to feel mortified in her turn. Provence too, and Artois were watching for the child who would displace them in the succession. Undignified and wretched as she was, writhing in the high bed under the eyes of her relatives, Antoinette must have felt pride and a sense of triumph as the pains increased in intensity and frequency. "The Queen showed great courage," Mercy afterwards wrote laconically in his report to Maria Theresa.

Her courage all but deserted her, however, when the accoucheur announced "the Queen is giving birth" and at once, according to Madame Campan, "torrents of inquisitive persons" poured into the bedchamber from the adjoining rooms in a noisy and tumultuous rush. They pressed against the tapestry screens and jostled the indignant officials, they shoved up against the furniture, they made movement impossible. The spectators were "so motley a crowd," Madame Campan recalled, "that anyone might have fancied himself in some place of public amusement."* Everything seemed to happen at once. Antoinette's pain reached an agonizing crescendo, the room felt hotter than ever and so close that it was hard for her to breathe. She was aware that the baby was being born at last—and, gasping and panting, she looked over at

the Princesse de Lamballe who had agreed to give her one sign if it was a boy, another if it was a girl. The sign was given: a girl!

The room began to go black. The noise became a roaring in the Queen's ears. Two eager Savoyards who had climbed up onto the furniture in order to get a better view saw that the baby was female, that the accoucheur was distracted and in a panic, and that the Queen, lying still on her lace-trimmed pillows, had fainted. Her mouth twisted oddly. The Princesse de Lamballe, never very stalwart in a crisis, fainted also and had to be carried out through the crowd.

"Give her air!" shouted the panic-stricken Vermond, realizing that he was on the point of losing his patient. "Warm water! She must be bled in the foot!" The baby must at this moment have taken her first breaths and gasped out her first little cry, but no one, afterward, could remember hearing it. All the concern was for the Queen, who had just disappointed her subjects by failing to give them a dauphin. The King rushed to the nearest window and, using all his great strength, flung it open, tearing open the seal and causing ice-cold air to rush into the room.

There was no basin of hot water ready to bleed the Queen into, but the accoucheur ordered the chief surgeon to lance the royal foot without it. The surgeon opened a vein, "the blood streamed out freely, and the Queen opened her eyes. The joy which now succeeded to the most dreadful apprehensions could hardly be contained." Hastily the valets de chambre cleared the room of the noisy rabble, dragging out those spectators reluctant to leave by the scruff of their necks. Courtiers embraced one another and shed tears of joy, and Vermond, enormously relieved, ordered that the baby be wrapped in blankets and taken to her governess, the Princesse de Guemenee.

Though contemjx)raries did not note it Antoinette must have been gravely disappointed that her child was not a boy. Her daughter could not inherit the throne, she would have to have a son. No doubt she wanted more children. Still, having gone through the ordeal once, it cannot have been pleasant to realize that she would have to undergo it again, and soori, in order to accomplish the minimum expected of her. Louis's proclamation announcing the birth of his daughter, who was christened Marie-Ther^se Charlotte and was known as Madame Royale, stated that "this visible mark of Providence makes me hope for the complete

accomplishment of my desires and those of my people, the birth of a dauphin."^ Antoinette felt compassion for the child. "Poor little thing," she said when she took her into her arms for the first time, "you were not wanted; but you will be my very own the more for that; a son would have belonged to the state."^ Possibly Antoinette, who had confessed to Mercy many years earlier that in her childhood she had never really felt loved, was drawn especially close to the tiny child on that account.

Twenty-one cannon shots thundered in Paris to salute Madame Royale, and a huge bonfire was lit in the square in front of the H6tel de Ville with fireworks at night. Processions, services of thanksgiving, music and special theatrical performances all marked the birth. In the poor quarters of the capital open-air feasts were held and people glutted themselves on the King's meat and bread and on the wine that flowed from the public fountains. It was an orgy of satiety in a season of shortages and famine; glad of the King's bounty, the poor forgot for a few days their resentment against the Queen and listened with satisfaction to the bulletins from Versailles about her recovery. Her health was "satisfactory," her belly "supple and not at all painful." She was nursing her daughter normally and eating cereal and biscuit, even a little chicken. Her good spirits were reportedly back within a week after the birth, and six weeks later she and the King made another formal entry into Paris to receive the city's congratulations.

The streets were cleared, the house fronts decorated to receive their majesties. Officials wore their finest coats and guardsmen their smartest livery. The speeches were laudatory, the fanfares thrilling. Outwardly, Paris was rejoicing. But a shadow overhung the royal entry. The unpopular war with England was bleeding the shopkeepers and tradesmen, the laborers were not earning enough to get by. Bread was dear. Antoinette might be the heroine of the hour, but the stories of her escapades at the Opera balls, the rumors of her numerous lovers of both sexes made her contemptible to many Parisians, and as her ornate carriage passed along the streets the crowds were thin and in some places silent. In the public mind the Queen was associated, not with monarchy and motherhood, but with dissipation and expense.

Only a few months after Madame Royale's birth Antoinette was pregnant again, and of course she and Lx)uis hoped for a son.

But overexertion caused her to miscarry, and her hopes were crushed. She was also fearful, according to Madame Campan, realizing that if they knew of her miscarriage her subjects would be very likely to blame it on her dissolute life. The miscarriage was kept secret from the courtiers and the public—and also from Mercy and Maria Theresa. The Empress was hounding her daughter incessantly about the need for a dauphin. Every letter from Vienna brought a scolding, a warning, an urgent demand.

Then at the end of 1780 the demands ceased. Momentous news arrived from the Hofburg: the great Empress Maria Theresa was dead. Typically, she had worked until almost her last hour, knowing that her worn out, clumsy body could not last much longer. In the intervals between writing to her children and running her share of the government, she had taken time to sew her own shroud and to make herself a dress to be buried in.

Antoinette had not seen her mother for ten years, but she grieved for her as if they had been living in the closest intimacy. Dressed in her mourning black, she shut herself in her most private rooms and had everyone except Yolande de Polignac and the Princesse de Lamballe sent away. She found comfort in talking about the Empress, not as a beloved parent but as a beleaguered yet triumphant sovereign; the sad truth was, Antoinette had never known her mother very well.'*

At two years old, Marie-Ther^se Charlotte was an attractive, fresh-faced little girl with large eyes and her mother's clear skin. She showed signs of having a difficult temperament, she was not an amiable child. Antoinette, determined not to let her become an imperious brat, overly conscious of her status and ungovernably haughty, reduced the number of servants around her child to a minimum and ordered them to raise Madame Royale in an atmosphere of simplicity (as far as was possible in a palace). It was the servants, not the Queen, who provided the hour-by-hour care of little Therese, but Antoinette visited Madame de Gu6men6e's establishment frequently every day and kept herself informed about every tooth the baby cut and every word she spoke. When her teething brought on a fever, Antoinette sat by her bedside for hours at a time, frowning with concern over "the sweetness and patience of the poor little thing in her suffering."

Early in 1781 Antoinette finally became pregnant again, much to her relief and that of her husband and the entire country. When

her brother Joseph, now sole ruler of the Hapsburg domains, made a brief visit to Versailles in August he was very pleased to find his sister in good health and her pregnancy well advanced. Two months later, on October 22, she gave birth to a boy. This time precautions were taken to protect both mother and child from the smothering crowd of onlookers. Only a dozen or so relatives and officers were allowed to be present in the bedchamber, besides the accoucheur and his staff.

"So deep a silence prevailed in the room at the moment the child first saw the light," Madame Campan recalled, "that the Queen thought she had only produced a daughter; but after the Keeper of the Seals had declared the sex of the infant, the King went up to the Queen's bed, and said to her, 'Madame, you have fulfilled my wishes and those of France; you are the mother of a dauphin/"^

As Louis spoke, the tears rolled down his face. Forgetting his habitual awkwardness, he went around the room and took everyone by the hand, chattering joyously on about "his son." There was pandemonium in the antechambers when the news was announced. Strangers embraced each other, laughing and weeping at the same time. "Even those who cared least for the Queen," Louis wrote in his brief account of the birth, "were carried away by the general rejoicing."^ The newborn infant was almost an object of worship. Madame de Gu^menee took charge of him, sitting in an armchair with wheels that was perambulated gently toward her apartments. People followed the armchair, gazing reverently at the tiny bundle in her arms and reaching out to touch the chair as if it were a holy relic.