To the scaffold (7 page)

Celebrating on this scale had not gone on for years, and the city was on holiday for the next several days with the streets illuminated every night and music, fireworks and spectacle available at every turn. On the eighteenth Durfort gave another banquet at the Lichtenstein palace, which served as the French embassy. A large Temple of Hymen had been built in the palace gardens, from which skyrockets rose and burst in a display even more dazzling than that of the night before.

On the following day, at six in the evening, the courtiers gathered in the Augustinian church for the wedding ceremony. In the dauphin's absence, his part was taken by Antoinette's brother Ferdinand, who knelt beside his smiling sister and placed the wedding ring on her finger. The papal nuncio, Visconti, celebrated the nuptial Mass, and when it was over the guns of the Hofburg were fired again and again, their thunder shaking the walls of the old church.

Antoinette was radiant, unperturbed by the long days and nights of ceremony and merrymaking, content to be the center of attention, her charm and poise at their best as she walked beside

her mother in her luxurious wedding gown of cloth of silver. To judge from outward appearances, she did not dread her future, nor did she shrink from the obligations it would entail. Whether her composure came from true serenity, or whether she was largely oblivious to the real meaning of the events surrounding her, or whether, more likely, she was simply a young, naive and unaffected girl caught up happily in an exciting swirl of events, Antoinette took it all in stride. Her mother had instructed her in what she needed to know, and had promised to continue to give her advice once she left home. She trusted her mother, sad though she would be to leave her; that trust, and her own natural buoyancy, were all she needed. As always in the past, she would be amiable and do what was expected of her.

Already Maria Theresa was making her daughter's way easier by providing guidance in the form of rules to be read once a month. They enjoined Antoinette to attend to her spiritual observances faithfully, including private morning devotions, to do her best to conform to French customs, to avoid familiarity with underlings and avoid becoming involved in the requests or grievances of individual petitioners. "Do not be ashamed to ask everyone for advice and do nothing on your own," the Empress cautioned. Antoinette should show no initiative, grant no requests, and display no curiosity. "Read no book, even the most indifferent, until you have received your confessor's permission," Maria Theresa went on. "This is a particularly important point in France because books are published there which, although they are full of agreeable erudition, can nonetheless be pernicious to religion and morals."^

France was a dangerous place. The Empress did not say so, but she meant it. It would be very hard, she knew, for a naive and trusting young girl to keep her head and follow common sense at Versailles, even with the best guidance. There would be too much that was unfamiliar, and tempting, too many seductive voices calling her to follow hazardous paths, too few examples of innocence and decency. Her husband was not likely to protect her against any of these temptations, indeed he hardly seemed capable of protecting himself. Still, Antoinette was her mother's daughter, and she had a sweet nature. Perhaps her mettle would show in time.

Two days after the proxy wedding, on April 21, Antoinette got into one of the two huge berlins that had been fitted out for

her comfort. She was allowed to take very few familiar things with her into her new life: some treasured personal belongings, enough clothes to last until she reached the border of France, and her little dog. Abb6 Vermond went with her, but not Countess Lerchenfeld, who had died the previous year, or any of the servants she had known since childhood. One treasured possession she did take: her late father's "Instructions to my children both for their spiritual and temporal lives." This little tract exhorted Antoinette and her siblings to be sincere Catholics, to cultivate reserve and discretion, to be charitable toward the poor and not overly fond of luxury. "The world where you must pass your life is but transitory," Francis admonished her from beyond the grave. "There is nought save eternity that is without end." "We should enjoy the pleasures of this life innocently, for so soon as they lead us into evil, of whatever sort it may be, they cease to be pleasures."^

Some of Emperor Francis's advice he had been unable to follow himself, as when he told his children to "have no particular affection for any one thing," and "above all, to have no passion." His own particular passion for Princess Auersperg had been so intense that, after his death, his widow and his mistress had grieved equally. He had been a famous gambler, yet he instructed his children to have "a horror of high play."

"I recommend you to take two days in every year to prepare for death," he concluded, "as though you were sure that those two were the last days of your life; and thus you will accustom yourself to know what you ought to do under those circumstances, and when your last moment arrives, you will not be surprised, but will know what you have to do." Devotion, religion, virtue: these summed up Francis's ideals. "I herewith commend you to read these instructions twice yearly; they come from a father who loves you above everything, and who has thought it necessary to leave you this testimony of his tender affection, which you cannot better reciprocate than by loving one another with the same tenderness he bequeaths to all of you."^

The tender father was gone, the stem yet loving mother would soon be very far away. The berlin inched forward, then eased into its slow traveling speed. Many people lined the road to watch the dauphine pass by in her gorgeous coach, waving their hands and calling out to her. The more sharp-eyed of them noted that her

§0 CAROLLY ERICKSON

cheeks were wet with tears. She lay back against the velvet cushions, "covering her eyes, sometimes with her handkerchief and sometimes with her hands, now and then putting her head out of the carriage to take another look at the palace of her ancestors which she was never more to enter." The long train of coaches escorting her berlin stretched out along the muddy road for several miles, the outriders covering their handsome blue and yellow liveries with drab cloaks as a cold spring rain began to fall. The crowds thinned out, Vienna receded into the far distance. Antoinette was on her way into a new life.

ITH tortoise-like slowness the dauphine's entourage crawled westward, traveling from eight to ten hours in a typical day, stopping for the night at convenient castles or monasteries or in towns whose inns could barely accommodate the hundreds of retainers and their horses. At the end of a week the traveling had become tedious; after two and a half weeks, when the party arrived at the Abbey of Schuttem, the last resting place before the Austro-French border, everyone, from the ladies-in-waiting to the secretaries to the lackeys and cooks, was exhausted. The dauphine herself bore up well under the strains of travel, her cheeks as usual pink with health and her spirits cheerful.

At Schuttem she was visited by the stiff, self-important Comte de Noailles, Louis XV's ambassador, who paid far less attention to her than he did to what he considered an insult in the wording of the documents under whose terms Antoinette was to be officially handed over to him. The document named Maria Theresa and her son Joseph, now reigning monarch of Austria, before naming the august King Louis. Such a slight could not be tolerated. The Count's Austrian counterpart, Starhemberg, pointed out politely but firmly that to put the French King's name first would be to insult their Austrian majesties. The two diplomats faced off, at an impasse, and not for the first time. Finally, to avoid conflict, the document was prepared in two versions, one for each court: in the Austrian version the Austrian monarchs were named first, and in the French version Louis XV received precedence.

$2 CAROLLY ERICKSON

The contretemps did not bode well for the next day's ceremony of remise^ when Antoinette was to lay aside her Austrian identity and become French. On neutral ground—an island in the middle of the Rhine—she entered a building newly constructed for the ceremony. Putting on a gown designated for this day (but keeping her Austrian jewels and ornaments), she entered the salk de remise and took her place in front of a table that symbolized the boundary line between the two realms. On one side of the table stood her Austrian escort, on the other the punctilious Noailles, with two of his assistants. Noailles made a speech, then the act was read under whose terms Antoinette became French.

As the room filled with official verbiage, Antoinette's attention must have strayed to the large and brilliant tapestries that covered the walls. They were of the finest workmanship, having come from the palace of the Archbishop of Strasbourg who loaned them specifically for this occasion, but their subject matter was, to say the least, disturbing. They represented the horrific scene in which Medea, goaded to fury by her husband Jason's desertion, murders their children and then kills herself. A more suggestible girl than Antoinette might have shuddered at the sight of them and taken them as an ill omen. But most likely Antoinette, ever curious, was more intrigued by them than alarmed—and it may have occurred to her that whoever chose the tapestries was passing a sour judgment on the alliance between Bourbon and Hapsburg.^

The solemnities concluded, Antoinette's Austrian ladies filed in to kiss her hand and take leave of her. She was delivered into the keeping of Noailles, and of his flinty, officious sister-in-law whose immediate response to Antoinette's childlike kiss of welcome was to draw back in indignation at the latter's impropriety. The Comtesse de Noailles invariably stood on ceremony, and she expected her new mistress to keep her effusions of sentiment to herself. Her previous mistress, Louis XV's late wife Queen Marie Leczinska, had been dull and retiring, and therefore easy to serve. The Countess presented Antoinette with her ladies of honor, a staid and matronly group, and then escorted her across the threshold symbolizing her arrival in France.

A week later, on the evening of May 14, Antoinette finally met the dauphin Louis, at the Pont de Berne on the outskirts of the forest of Compiegne. It was a setting calculated to make Louis as comfortable as possible, on the verge of the great forest near the

tall oaks and chestnuts that provided his favorite refuge. Nonetheless he was extremely ill at ease, uncomfortable in the ornate waistcoat and breeches, fine linen and lace that were so far from the rough clothes he customarily wore, nervous in the presence of his disdainful grandfather, uncomfortable at being the center of attention.

The sight that greeted him when Antoinette stepped down from her berlin must have made him blink his weak eyes in surprise: she was petite, blond, and every bit as pretty as his grandfather's ministers had said she would be. She was also gentle and amiable, with a wide-eyed, innocent friendliness that made him relax ever so slightly, though he maintained his outward reticence.

For her part, Antoinette gazed at the heavy and gawky youth whom she expected to marry and took pity on him. She saw at once how timid he was, and was not put off by his extreme detachment or by his brusque speech. He aroused her sympathy, the fear in his large eyes touched her. He was not really bad-looking, and would seem a good deal more presentable if he stood up straight and didn't shamble when he walked. He was untamed, but perhaps not untamable.

Any rapport she might have tried to establish with Louis was interrupted by the multitude of introductions and ceremonies the occasion called for. Antoinette abased herself before the King, who pulled his bow lips back in a smile and helped her up, muttering that she was charming. At fifty-nine Louis XV was still a very handsome man, with piercing black eyes, a Roman nose and a regal bearing. To Antoinette he must have seemed ancient, but others, visitors to the French court from England, found in him "the remains of a manly beautifulness" despite his advanced age and round shoulders. He was certainly a connoisseur of beautiful women, and though his taste did not run to ingenues, no doubt he saw at a glance that the young girl his chief minister Choiseul had chosen to be dauphine would grow into a very handsome woman indeed.