The Life of Marie Antoinette

CHAPTER XIV. Birth of Madame Royale.-Festivities of Thanksgiving.-The Dames de la Halle at the Theatre.-Thanksgiving at Notre Dame.-The King goes to a Bal d'Opera.-The Queen's Carriage breaks down.-Marie Antoinette has the Measles.-Her Anxiety about the War.-Retrenchments of Expense.

Mercy, while deploring the occasional levity of the queen's conduct, and her immoderate thirst for amusement, had constantly looked forward to the birth of a child as the event which, by the fresh and engrossing occupation it would afford to her mind, would be the surest remedy for her juvenile heedlessness. And, as we have seen, the absence of any prospect of becoming a mother had, till recently, been a constant source of anxiety and vexation to the queen herself-the one drop of bitterness in her cup, which, but for that, would have been filled with delights. But this disappointment was now to pass away. From the moment that it was publicly announced that the queen was in the way to become a mother, one general desire seemed to prevail to show how deep an interest the whole nation felt in the event. In cathedrals, monasteries, abbeys, universities, and parish churches, masses were celebrated and prayers offered for her safe delivery. In many instances, private individuals even gave extraordinary alms to bring down the blessing of Heaven on the nation, so interested in the expected event. And on the 19th of December, 1778, the prayers were answered, and the hopes of the country in great measure realized by the birth of a princess, who was instantly christened Maria Therese Charlotte, in compliment to the empress, her godmother.

The labor was long, and had nearly proved fatal to the mother, from the strange and senseless custom which made the queen's bed-chamber on such an occasion a reception-room for every one, of whatever rant or station, who could force his way in.[1] In most countries, perhaps in all, the genuineness of a royal infant is assured by the presence of a few great officers of state; but on this occasion not only all the ministers, with all the members of the king's or of the queen's household, were present in the chamber, but a promiscuous rabble filled the adjacent saloon and gallery, and, the moment that it was announced that the birth was about to take place, rushed in disorderly tumult into the apartment, some climbing on the chairs and sofas, and even on the tables and wardrobes, to obtain a better sight of the patient. The uproar was great. The heat became intense; the queen fainted. The king himself dashed at the windows, which were firmly closed, and by an unusual effort of strength tore down the fastenings and admitted air into the room. The crowd was driven out, but Marie Antoinette continued insensible; and the moment was so critical that the physician had recourse to his lancet, and opened a vein in her foot. As the blood came she revived. The king himself came to her side, and announced to her that she was the mother of a daughter.

It can hardly be said that the hopes of the nation, or of the king himself, had been fully realized, since an heir to the throne, a dauphin, that had been universally hoped for. But in the general joy that was felt at the queen's safety the disappointment of this hope was disregarded, and the little princess, Madame Royale, as she was called from her birth, was received by the still loyal people in the same spirit as that in which Anne Boleyn's lady in waiting had announced to Henry VIII. the birth of her "fair young maid:"

"King Henry. Now by thy looks

I guess thy message. Is the queen delivered?

Say ay; and of a boy.

"Lady. Ay, ay, my liege,

And of a lovely boy. The God of Heaven

Both now and ever bless her. 'Tis a girl,

Promises boys hereafter."

And a month before the empress had expressed a similar sentiment: "I trust," she wrote to her daughter in November, "that God will grant me the comfort of knowing that you are safely delivered. Every thing else is a matter of indifference. Boys will come after girls.[2]" And the same feeling was shared by the Parisians in general, and embodied by M. Imbert, a courtly poet, whose odes were greatly in vogue in the fashionable circles, in an epigram which was set to music and sung in the theatres.

"Pour toi, France, un dauphin doit naitre,

Une Princesse vient pour en etre temoin,

Sitot qu'on voit une grace paraitre,

Croyez que l'amour n'est pas loin.[3]"

Marie Antoinette herself was scarcely disappointed at all. When the attendants brought her her babe, she pressed it to her bosom. "Poor little thing," said she, "you are not what was desired, but you shall not be the less dear to me. A son would have belonged to the State; you will be my own: you shall have all my care, you shall share my happiness and sweeten my vexations.[4]"

The Count de Provence made no secret of his joy. He was still heir presumptive to the throne. And, though no one shared his feelings on the subject, for the next few weeks the whole kingdom, and especially the capital, was absorbed in public rejoicings. Her own thankfullness was displayed by Marie Antoinette in her usual way, by acts of benevolence. She sent large sums of money to the prisons to release poor debtors; she gave dowries to a hundred poor maidens; she applied to the chief officers of both army and navy to recommend her veterans worthy of especial reward; and to the curates of the metropolitan parishes to point out to her any deserving objects of charity; and she also settled pensions on a number of poor children who were born on the same day as the princess; one of whom, who owed her education to this grateful and royal liberality, became afterward known to every visitor of Paris as Madame Mars, the most accomplished of comic actresses.[5]

One portion of the rejoicings was marked by a curious incident, in which the same body whose right to a special place of honor at ceremonies connected with the personal happiness of the royal family we have already seen admitted-the ladies of the fish-market-again asserted their pretensions with triumphant success. On Christmas-eve the theatres were opened gratuitously, but these ladies, who, with their friends, the coal-heavers, selected the most aristocratic theatre, La Comedie Francaise, for the honor of their visit, arrived with aristocratic unpunctuality, so late that the guards stopped them at the doors, declaring that the house was full, and that there was not a seat vacant. They declared that in any event room must be made for them. "Who were in the boxes of the king and queen? for on such occasions those places were theirs of right." Even they, however, were full, and the guards demurred to the ladies' claim to be considered, though for this night only, as the representatives of royalty, and to have the existing occupants of the seats demanded turned out to make room for them. The box-keeper and the manager were sent for. The registers of the house confirmed the validity of the claim by former precedents, and a compromise was at last effected. Rows of benches were placed on each side of the stage itself. Those on the right were allotted to the coal-heavers as representatives of Louis; the ladies of the fish-market sat on the left as the deputies of Marie Antoinette. Before the play was allowed to begin, his majesty the king of the coal-heavers read the bulletin of the day announcing the rapid progress of the queen toward recovery; and then, giving his hand to the queen of the fish-wives, the august pair, followed by their respective suites, executed a dance expressive of their delight at the good news, and then resumed their seats, and listened to Voltaire's "Zaire" with the most edifying gravity.[6] It was evident that in some things there was already enough, and rather more than enough, of that equality the unreasonable and unpractical passion for which proved, a few years later, the most pregnant cause of immeasurable misery to the whole nation.

But the demonstration most in accordance with the queen's own taste was that which took place a few weeks later, when she went in a state procession to the great national cathedral of Notre Dame to return thanks; one most interesting part of the ceremony being the weddings of the hundred young couples to whom she had given dowries, who also received a silver medal to commemorate the day. The gayety of the spectacle, since they, with the formal witnesses of their marriage, filled a great part of the antechapel; and the blessings invoked on the queen's head as she left the cathedral by the prisoners whom she had released, and by the poor whose destitution she had relieved, made so great an impression on the spectators, that even the highest dignitaries of the court added their cheers and applause to those of the populace who escorted her coach to the gates on its return to Versailles.

She was now, for the first time since her arrival in France, really and entirely happy, without one vexation or one foreboding of evil. The king's attachment to her was rendered, if not deeper than before, at least far more lively and demonstrative by the birth of his daughter; his delight carrying him at times to most unaccustomed ebullitions of gayety. On the last Sunday of the carnival, he even went alone with the queen to the masked opera ball, and was highly amused at finding that not one of the company recognized either him or her. He even proposed to repeat his visit on Shrove-Tuesday; but when the evening came he changed his mind, and insisted on the queen's going by herself with one of her ladies, and the change of plan led to an incident which at the time afforded great amusement to Marie Antoinette, though it afterward proved a great annoyance, as furnishing a pretext for malicious stories and scandal. To preserve her incognito, a private carriage was hired for her, which broke down in the street close by a silk-mercer's shop. As the queen was already masked, the shop-men did not know her, and, at the request of the lady who attended her, stopped for her the first hackney-coach which passed, and in that unroyal vehicle, such as certainly no sovereign of France had ever set foot in before, she at last reached the theatre. As before, no one recognized her, and she might have enjoyed the scene and returned to Versailles in the most absolute secrecy, had not her sense of the fun of a queen using such a conveyance overpowered her wish for concealment, so that when, in the course of the evening, she met one or two persons of distinction whom she knew, she could not forbear telling them who she was, and that she had come in a hackney-coach.

Her health seemed less delicate than it had been before her confinement. But in the spring she was attacked by the measles, and her illness, slight as it was, gave occasion to a curious passage in court history. The fear of infection was always great at Versailles, and, as the king himself and some of the ladies had never had the complaint, they were excluded from her room. But that she might not be left without attendants, four nobles of the court, the Duke de Coigny, the Duke de Guines, the Count Esterhazy, and the Baron de Besenval, in something of the old spirit of chivalry, devoted themselves to her service, and solicited permission to watch by her bedside till she recovered. As has been already seen, the bed-chamber and dressing-room of a queen of France had never been guarded from intrusion with the jealousy which protects the apartments of ladies in other countries, so that the proposal was less startling than it would have been considered elsewhere, while the number of nurses removed all pretext for scandal. Louis willingly gave the required permission, being apparently flattered by the solicitude exhibited for his queen's health. And each morning at seven the sick-watchers[7] took their seats in the queen's chamber, sharing with the Countess of Provence, the Princesse de Lamballe, and the Count d'Artois the task of keeping order and quiet in the sick-room till eleven at night. Though there was no scandal, there was plenty of jesting at so novel an arrangement. Wags proposed that in the case of the king being taken ill, a list should be prepared of the ladies who should tend his sick-bed. However, the champions were not long on duty: at the end of little more than a week their patient was convalescent. She herself took off the sentence of banishment which she had pronounced against the king in a brief and affectionate note, which said "that she had suffered a great deal, but what she had felt most was to be for so many days deprived of the pleasure of embracing him." And the temporary separation seemed to have but increased their mutual affection for each other.

The Trianon was now more than ever delightful to her. The new plantations, which contained no fewer than eight hundred different kinds of trees, rich with every variety of foliage, were beginning, by their effectiveness, to give evidence of the taste with which they had been laid out; while with a charity which could not bear to keep her blessings wholly to herself, she had set apart one corner of the grounds for a row of picturesque cottages, in which she had established a number of pensioners whom age or infirmity had rendered destitute, and whom she constantly visited with presents from her dairy or her fruit-trees. Roaming about the lawns and walks, which she had made herself, in a muslin gown and a plain straw hat, she could forget that she was a queen. Shi. did not suspect that the intriguers, who from time to time maligned her most innocent actions, were misrepresenting even these simple and natural pleasures, and whispering in their secret cabals that her very dress was a proof that she still clung as resolutely as ever to her Austrian preferences; that she discarded her silk gowns because they were the work of French manufacturers, while they were her brother's Flemish subjects who supplied her with muslins.

But, far beyond her plantations and her flowers, her child was to her a source of unceasing delight. She could be carried by her side about the garden a great part of the day. For, as in her anticipations and preparations she had told her mother long before, French parents kept their children as much as possible in the open air,[8] a fashion which fully accorded with her own notions of what was best calculated to give an infant health and strength. And before the babe was five months old,[9] she flattered herself that it already distinguished her from its nurses. That nothing might be wanting to her comfort, peace was re-established between Austria and Prussia; and if at this time the war with England did make her in some degree uneasy, she yet felt a sanguine anticipation of triumph for the French arms, in the event of a battle between the hostile fleets; a result of which, when the antagonists did come within sight of each other, it appeared that the French and Spanish admirals felt far less confident. Her anxieties and hopes are vividly set forth in a letter which, in the course of the summer, she wrote to her mother, which is also singularly interesting from its self-examination, and from the substantial proof it supplies of the correctness of those anticipations which were based on the salutary effect which her novel position as a mother might be expected to have upon her character.

"Versailles, August 16th.

"My Dearest Mother,-I can not find language to express to my dear mamma my thanks for her two letters, and for the kindness with which she expresses her willingness to exert herself to the utmost to procure us peace.[10] It is true that that would be a great happiness, and my heart desires it more than any thing in the world; but, unhappily, I do not see any appearance of it at present. Every thing depends on the moment. Our fleets, the French and Spanish, being now united, we have a considerable superiority.[11]

"They are now in the Channel; and I can not without great agitation reflect that at any instant the whole fate of the war may be decided. I am also terrified at the approach of September, when the sea is no longer practicable. In short, it is only on the bosom of my dearest mamma that I lay aside all my disquiet God grant that it may be groundless, but her kindness encourages me to speak to her as I think. The king is touched, quite as he should be, with all the service you so kindly propose to render him; and I do not doubt that he will be always eager to profit by it, rather than to deliver himself up to the intrigues of those who have so frequently deceived France, and whom we must regard as our natural enemies.

"My health is completely re-established. I am going to resume my ordinary way of life, and consequently I hope soon to be able to announce to my dearest mother fresh news such as that of last year. She may feel quite re-assured now as to my behavior. I feel too strongly the necessity of having more children to be careless in that. If I have formerly done amiss, it was my youth and my levity; but now my head is thoroughly steadied, and you may reckon confidently on my properly feeling all my duties. Besides that, I owe such conduct to the king as a reward for his tenderness, and, I will venture to say it, his confidence in me, for which I can only praise him more find more.

"... I venture to send my dear mamma the picture of my daughter: it is very like her. The dear little thing begins to walk very well in her leading-strings. She has been able to say "papa" for some days. Her teeth have not yet come through, but we can feel them all. I am very glad that her first word has been her father's name. It is one more tie for him. He behaves to me most admirably, and nothing could be wanting to make me love him more. My dear mamma will forgive my twaddling about the little one; but she is so kind that sometimes I abuse her kindness."

It was well for Marie Antoinette's happiness that her husband was one in whom, as we have seen that she told her mother, she could feel entire confidence, for during her seclusion in the measles the intriguers of the court had ventured to try and work upon him. Mercy had reason to suspect that some were even wicked enough to desire to influence him against his wife by the same means by which the Duke de Richelieu had formerly alienated his grandfather from Marie Leczinska; and the queen herself received proof positive that Maurepas, in spite of her civilities to him and his countess, had become jealous of her political influence, and had endeavored to prevent his consulting her on public affairs. But all manoeuvres intended to disturb the conjugal felicity of the royal pair were harmless against the honest fidelity of the king, the graceful affection of the queen, and the firm confidence of each in the other. The people generally felt that the influence which it was now notorious that the queen did exert on public affairs was a salutary one; and great satisfaction was expressed when it became known in the autumn that the usual visit to Fontainebleau was given up, partly as being costly, and therefore undesirable while the nation had need to concentrate all its resources on the effective prosecution of the war, and partly that the king might be always within reach of his ministers in the event of any intelligence of importance arriving which required prompt decision.

Her letters to her mother at this time show how entirely her whole attention was engrossed by the war; and, at the same time, with what wise earnestness she desired the re-establishment of peace. Even some gleams of success which had attended the French arms in the West Indies, where the Marquis de Bouille, the most skillful soldier of whom France at that time could boast, took one or two of the British islands, and the Count d'Estaing, whose fleet of thirty-six sail was for a short time far superior to the English force in that quarter, captured one or two more, did not diminish her eagerness for a cessation of the war. Though it is curious to see that she had become so deeply imbued with the principles of statesmanship with which M. Necker, the present financial minister, was seeking to inspire the nation, that her objections to the continuance of the war turned chiefly on the degree in which it affected the revenue and expenditure of the kingdom. She evidently sympathizes in the disappointment which, as she reports to the empress, is generally felt by the public at the mismanagement of the admiral, M. d'Orvilliers, who, with forces so superior to those of the English, has neither been able to fall in with them so as to give them battle, nor to hinder any of their merchantmen from reaching their harbors in safety. As it is, he will have spent a great deal of money in doing nothing.[12] And a month later she repeats the complaints.[13] The king and she have renounced the journey to Fontainebleau because of the expenses of the war; and also that they may be in the way to receive earlier intelligence from the army. But the fleet has not been able to fall in with the English, and has done nothing at all. It is a campaign lost, and which has cost a great deal of money. What is still more afflicting is, that disease has broken out on board the ships, and has caused great havoc; and the dysentery, which is raging as an epidemic in Brittany and Normandy, has attacked the land force also, which was intended to embark for England ... "I greatly fear," she proceeds, "that these misfortunes of ours will render the English difficult to treat with, and may prevent proposals of peace, of which I see no immediate prospect. I am constantly persuaded that if the king should require a mediation, the intrigues of the King of Prussia will fail, and will not prevent the king from availing himself of the offers of my dear mamma. I shall take care never to lose sight of this object, which is of such interest to the whole happiness of my life." So full is her mind of the war, that four or five words in each letter to report that "her daughter is in perfect health," or that "she has cut four teeth," are all that she can spare for that subject, generally of such engrossing interest to herself and the empress; while, before the end of the year, we find her taking even the domestic troubles of England into her calculations,[14] and speculating on the degree in which the aspect of affairs in Ireland may affect the great preparations which the English ministers are making for the next campaign.

The mere habit of devoting so much consideration to affairs of this kind was beneficial as tending to mature and develop her capacity. She was rapidly learning to take large views of political questions, even if they were not always correct. And the acuteness and earnestness of her comments on them daily increased her influence over both the king and the ministers, so that in the course of the autumn Mercy could assure the empress[15] that "the king's complaisance toward her increased every day," that "he made it his study to anticipate all her wishes, and that this attention showed itself in every kind of detail," while Maurepas also was unable to conceal from himself that her voice always prevailed "in every case in which she chose to exert a decisive will," and accordingly "bent himself very prudently" before a power which he had no means of resisting. So solicitous indeed did the whole council show itself to please her, that when the king, who was aware that her allowance, in spite of its recent increase was insufficient to defray the charges to which she was liable, proposed to double it, Necker himself, with all his zeal for economy and retrenchment, eagerly embraced the suggestion; and its adoption gave the queen a fresh opportunity of strengthening the esteem and affection of the nation, by declaring that while the war lasted she would only accept half the sum thus placed at her disposal.

The continuance of the war was not without its effect on the gayety of the court, from the number of officers whom their military duties detained with their regiments; but the quiet was beneficial to Marie Antoinette, whose health was again becoming delicate, so much so, that after a grand drawing-room which she held on New-year's-eve, and which was attended by nearly two hundred of the chief ladies of the city, she was completely knocked up, and forced to put herself under the care of her physician.

Meanwhile the war became more formidable. The English admiral, Rodney, the greatest sailor who, as yet, had ever commanded a British fleet, in the middle of January utterly destroyed a strong Spanish squadron off Cape St. Vincent; and as from the coast of Spain he proceeded to the West Indies, the French ministry had ample reason to be alarmed for the safety of the force which they had in those regions. It was evident that it would require every effort that could be made to enable their sailors to maintain the contest against an antagonist so brave and so skillful And, as one of the first steps toward such a result, Necker obtained the king's consent to a great reform in the expenditure of the court and in the civil service; and to the abolition of a great number of costly sinecures. We may be able to form some idea of the prodigality which had hitherto wasted the revenues of the country, from the circumstance that a single edict suppressed above four hundred offices; and Marie Antoinette was so sincere in her desire to promote such measures, that she speaks warmly in their praise to her mother, even though they greatly curtailed her power of gratifying her own favorites.

"The king," she says, "has just issued an edict which is as yet only the forerunner of a reform which he designs, to make both in his own household and in mine. If it be carried out, it will be a great benefit, not only for the economy which it will introduce, but still more for its agreement with public opinion, and for the satisfaction it will give the nation." It is impossible for any language to show more completely how, above all things, she made the good of the country her first object. And she was the more inclined to approve of all that was being done in this way from her conviction that Necker was both honest and able; an opinion which she shared with, if she had not learned it from, her mother and her brother, and which was to some extent justified by the comparative order which he had re-established in the finance of the country, and by the degree in which he had revived public credit. She was not aware that the real dangers of the situation had a source deeper than any financial difficulty, a fact which Necker himself was unable to comprehend. And she could not foresee, when it became necessary to grapple with those dangers, how unequal to the struggle the great banker would be found.

It may, perhaps, be inferred that she did suspect Necker of some deficiency in the higher qualities of statesmanship when, in the spring of 1780, she told her mother that "she would give every thing in the world to have a Prince Kaunitz in the ministry;[16] but that such men were rare, and were only to be found by those who, like the empress herself, had the sagacity to discover and the judgment to appreciate such merit." She was, however, shutting her eyes to the fact that her husband had had a minister far superior to Kaunitz; and that she herself had lent her aid to drive him from his service.