The Life of Marie Antoinette

CHAPTER V. Mercy's Correspondence with Empress.-Distress and Discontent pervade France.-Goldsmith predicts a Revolution.-Apathy of the King.-The Aunts mislead Marie Antoinette.-Maria Teresa hears that the Dauphiness neglects her German Visitors.-Marriage of the Count de Provence.-Growing Preference of Louis XV. for the Dauphiness.-The Dauphiness applies herself to Study.-Marie Antoinette becomes a Horsewoman.-Her Kindness to all beneath her.-Cabals of the Adherents of the Mistress.-The Royal Family become united.-Concerts in the Apartments of the Dauphiness.

Marie Antoinette was not a very zealous or copious letter-writer. Her only correspondent In her earlier years was her mother, and even to her her letters are less effusive and less full of details than might have been expected, one reason for their brevity arising out of the intrigues of the court, since she had cause to believe herself so watched and spied upon that her very desk was not safe; and, consequently, she never ventured to begin a letter to the empress before the morning on which it was to be sent, lest it should be read by those for whose eyes it was not intended. For our knowledge, therefore, of her acts and feelings at this period of her life, we still have to rely principally on Mercy's correspondence, which is, however, a sufficiently trustworthy guide, so accurate was his information, and so entire the frankness with which she opened herself to him on all occasions and on all subjects.

The spring of 1771 opened very unfavorably for the new administration; omens of impending dangers were to be seen on all sides. Ten or twelve years before, Goldsmith, whose occasional silliness of manner prevented him from always obtaining the attention to which his sagacity entitled him, had named the growing audacity of the French parliaments as not only an indication of the approach of great changes in that country, but as likely also to be their moving cause.[1] And they had recently shown such determined resistance to the royal authority, that, though in the most conspicuous instance of it, their assertion of their right to pronounce an independent judgment on the charges brought against the Duc d'Aiguillon, they were unquestionably in the right; and though their pretensions were supported by almost the whole body of the princes of the blood, some of whom were immediately banished for their contumacy, Louis had been persuaded to abolish them altogether. And Marie Antoinette, though she carefully avoided mixing herself up with politics, was, as she reported to her mother,[2] astonished beyond measure at their conduct, which she looked upon as arising out of the grossest disloyalty, and which certainly indicated the existence of a feeling very dangerous to the maintenance of the royal authority on the part of those very men who were most bound to uphold it. There was also great and general distress. For a moment in the autumn it had been relieved by a fall in the price of bread, which the unreasoning gratitude of the populace had attributed to the benevolence of the dauphiness; but the severity of the winter had brought it back with aggravated intensity till it reached even to the palace, and compelled a curtailment of some of the festivities with which it had been intended to celebrate the marriage of the Count de Provence, which was fixed for the approaching May.

Distress is the sure parent of discontent, unless the people have a very complete confidence in their government. And this was so far from being the case in France at this time, that the distrust of and contempt for those in the highest places increased daily more and more. The influence which Madame du Barri exerted over the king became more rooted as he became more used to submit to it, and more notorious as he grew more shameless in his avowal of it. She felt her power, and her intrigues became in the same proportion more busy and more diversified in their objects. In the vigorous description of Mercy, Versailles was wholly occupied by treachery, hatred, and vengeance; not one feeling of honesty or decency remained; while the people, ever quick-witted to perceive the vices of their rulers, especially when they are indulged at their expense, revenged themselves by bitter and seditious language, and by satires and pasquinades in which neither respect nor mercy was shown even to the sacred person of the sovereign himself. He was callous to all marks of contempt displayed for himself; but was, or was induced to profess himself, deeply annoyed at the conduct of the dauphin, who showed a fixed aversion for the mistress, which, however, his grandfather did not regard as dictated by his own feelings. Louis rather believed that it was fostered by Marie Antoinette, and that she, in encouraging her husband, was but following the advice of her aunts; and he threatened to remonstrate with the dauphiness on the subject, though, as Mercy correctly divined, he could not nerve himself to the necessary resolution.

It was true that Marie Antoinette did often allow herself to be far too much influenced by those princesses. She confessed to Mercy that she was afraid to displease or thwart them; a feeling which he regarded as the more unfortunate because, when she was not actuated by that consideration, her own judgment and her own impulses would always guide her aright; and because, too, the elder princesses were the most unsafe of all advisers. They were notoriously jealous of one another, and each at times tried to inspire her niece with her feelings toward the other two; and they often, without meaning it, played into the hands of the mistress's cabal, intriguing for selfish objects of their own with as much malice and meanness as could be practiced by Madame du Barri herself.

Still, in spite of these drawbacks, it was almost inevitable that they should have great influence over their niece. Their experience might well be presumed by her to have given them a correct insight into the ways of the court, and the best mode of behaving to their own father; and she, a foreigner and almost a child, was not only in need of counsel and guidance, but had no one else of her own sex to whom she could so naturally look for information or advice. They were, as she explained to Mercy, her only society; and, though she was too clear-sighted not to see their faults, and not at times to be aware that she was suffering from their perverseness, she, like other people, was often compelled to tolerate what she could not mend, and to shut her eyes to disagreeable qualities when forced to live on terms of intimacy with the possessors.

On this point Maria Teresa was, perhaps, hardly inclined to make sufficient allowance for her difficulties, and insisted over and over again on the mischief which would arise to her from the habit of surrendering her judgment to these princesses. She told her that, though far from being devoid of virtues and real merit, "they had never succeeded in making themselves loved or esteemed by either their father or the public;[3]" and she added other admonitions which, as they were avowedly suggested by reports that had reached her, may be taken as indicating some errors into which her daughter's lightness of heart had occasionally betrayed her. She entreated her not to show an exclusive preference for the more youthful portion of her society, to the neglect of those who were older, and commonly of higher consideration; never to laugh at people or turn them into ridicule-no habit could be more injurious to herself, and indulgence in it would give reason to doubt her good-nature; it might gain her the applause of a few young people, but it would alienate a much greater number, and those the people of the most real weight and respectability. "This is not," said the experienced and wise empress, "a trivial matter in a princess. We live on the stage of the great world, and it is above all things essential that people should entertain a high idea of us. If you will only not allow others to lead you astray, you are sure of success; a kind Providence has endowed you so liberally with beauty, and with so many charms, that all hearts are yours if you are but prudent.[4]"

The empress would have had her exhibit this prudence in her conduct also to Madame du Barri. She pressed upon her that she was justified in appearing ignorant of that lady's real position and character; that she need only be aware that she was received at court, and that respect for the king should prevent her from suspecting him of countenancing undeserving people.

One other detail in the accounts of Marie Antoinette's conduct, which from time to time reached Vienna, had also vexed the empress, and it should be kept in mind by any one who would fairly estimate the truth of the charge brought against her, and urged with such rancor after she had become queen-of postponing the interests of France to those of her native land, of being Austrian at heart. Maria Teresa had heard, on the contrary, that she had given those Austrians who had presented themselves at Versailles but a cold reception, and she did not attempt to conceal her discontent. With a natural and becoming pride in and jealousy for her own loyal and devoted subjects, she entreated her daughter never to feel ashamed of them, or ashamed of being German herself, even if, comparatively speaking, the name should imply some deficiency in polish. "The French themselves would esteem her more if they saw in her something of German solidity and frankness.[5]"

The daughter answered the mother with some adroitness. She took no notice of the advice about her behavior to Madame du Barri. It was the one topic on which her own feelings of propriety, as well as those of the dauphin, coincided with the suggestions of the aunts, and she did not desire to vex or provoke the empress by a prolonged discussion of the question; but the charge of coldness to her own countrymen she denied earnestly. "She should always glory in being a German. Some of those nobles whom the empress had expressly named she had treated with careful distinction, and had even danced with them, though they were not men of the very highest character. She well knew that the Germans had many good qualities which she could wish that the French shared with them;" and she promised that, whenever any of her mother's subjects of such standing and merit as to be worthy of her attention came to the court, they should have no cause to complain of her reception of them. Her language on the subject is so measured and careful as to lead us almost inevitably to the ingerence that the reports which had excited such dissatisfaction at Vienna were not without foundation, but that the French gayety, even if often descending to frivolity, was more to her taste than the German solidity which her mother so highly esteemed, and that she had been at no great pains to hide a preference which must naturally he acceptable to those among whom her future life was to be spent.

In the middle of May, the Count de Provence was married to the Princess Josephine Louise of Savoy, and the court went to Fontainebleau to receive the bride. The necessity for leaving Madame du Barri behind threw the king more into the company of the dauphiness than he had been on any previous occasion, and her unaffected graces seemed for the moment to have made a complete conquest of him. He came in his dressing-gown to her apartments for breakfast, and spent a great portion of the day there. The courtiers again began to speculate on her breaking down the ascendency of the favorite, remarking that, though Louis was careful to pay his new relative the honors which, were her due as a stranger and a bride, he returned as speedily as he could with decency to the dauphiness as if for relief; and that, though she herself took care to put her new sister-in-law forward on all occasions, and treated her with the most marked cordiality and affection, every one else made the dauphiness the principal object of homage even in the festivities which were celebrated in honor of the countess. Indeed, it was evident from the very first that any attempt of the mistress's cabal to establish a rivalry between the two princesses must be out of the question. The Countess de Provence had no beauty, nor accomplishments, nor graciousness. Horace Walpole, who was meditating a visit to Paris, where he had some diligent correspondents, was told that he would lose his senses when he saw the dauphiness, but would be disenchanted by her sister; and the saying, though that of a blind old lady, expressed the opinion of all Frenchmen who could see.[6]

Indeed, so obvious was the king's partiality for her that even Madame du Barri more than once sought to propitiate her by speaking in praise of her to Mercy, and professing an eager desire to aid in procuring the gratification of any of her wishes. But he was too shrewd and too well-informed to place the least confidence in her sincerity, though he did not fear half as much harm to his pupil from her enmity as from the pretended affection of the aunts, who, from a mixture of folly and treachery, were unwearied in their attempts to keep her at a distance from the king, by inspiring her with a fear of him, for which his disposition, which had as much good-nature in it as was compatible with weakness, gave no ground whatever. Indeed, the mischief they did was not confined to their influence over her, if Mercy was correct in his belief that it was their disagreeable tempers and manners which at this time, and for the remainder of the reign, prevented Louis from associating more with his family, which, had all been like the dauphiness, he would have preferred to do.

It would probably have been in vain that Mercy remonstrated against her submitting as she did to the aunts, had he not been at all times able to secure the co-operation of the empress, who placed the most implicit confidence in his judgment in all matters relating to the French court, and remonstrated with her daughter energetically on the want of proper self-respect which was implied in her surrendering her own judgment to that of the aunts', as if she were a slave or a child. And Marie Antoinette replied to her mother in a tone of such mingled submissiveness and affection as showed how sincere was her desire to remove every shade of annoyance from the empress's mind; and which may, perhaps, lead to a suspicion that even her subservience to the aunts proceeded in a great degree from her anxiety to win the good-will of every one, and from the kindness which could not endure to thwart those with whom she was much associated; though at the same time she complained to the ambassador that her mother wrote without sufficient knowledge of the difficulties with which she was surrounded. But she had too deep an affection and reverence for her mother to allow her words to fall to the ground; and gradually Mercy began to see a difference in her conduct, and a greater inclination to assert her own independence, which was the feeling that above all others he thought most desirable to foster in her.

Another topic which we find constantly urged in the empress's letters would seem strangely inconsistent with Marie Antoinette's position, if we did not remember how very young she still was. For her mother writes to her in many respects as if she were still at school, and continually inculcates on her the necessity of profiting by De Vermond's instructions, and applying herself to a course of solid reading in theology and history. And here, though her natural appetite for amusement interfered with her studies somewhat more than the empress, prompted by Mercy, was willing to make allowance for, she profited much more willingly by her mother's advice, having indeed a natural inclination for the works of history and biography, and a decided distaste for novels and romances. She could not have had a better guide in such matters than De Vermond, who was a man of extensive information and of a very correct taste; and under his guidance and with his assistance she studied Sully's memoirs, Madame de Sevigne's letters, and any other books which he recommended to her, and which gave her an idea of the past history of the country as well as the masterpieces of the great French dramatists.[7]

The latter part of the year 1771 was marked by no very striking occurrences. Marie Antoinette had carried her point, and had begun to ride on horseback without either her figure or her complexion suffering from the exercise. On the contrary, she was admitted to have improved in beauty. She sent her measure to Vienna, to show Maria Teresa how much she had grown, adding that her husband had grown as much, and had become stronger and more healthy-looking, and that she had made use of her saddle-horses to accompany him in his hunting and shooting excursions. Like a true wife, she boasted to her mother of his skill as a shot: the very day that she wrote he had killed forty head of game. (She did not mention that a French sportsman's bag was not confined to the larger game, but that thrushes, blackbirds, and even, red-breasts, were admitted to swell the list.) And the increased facilities for companionship with him that her riding afforded increased his tenderness for her, so that she was happier than ever. Except that as yet she saw no prospect of presenting the empress with a grandchild, she had hardly a wish ungratified.

Her taste for open-air exercise of this kind added also to the attachment felt for her by the lower classes, from the opportunities which arose out of it for showing her unvarying and considerate kindness. The contrast which her conduct afforded to that of previous princes, and indeed to that of all the present race except her husband, caused her actions of this sort to be estimated rather above their real importance. But tow great was the impression which they did make on those who witnessed them may be seen in the unanimity with which the chroniclers of the time record her forbidding her postilions to drive over a field of corn which lay between her and the stag, because she would rather miss the sight of the chase than, injure the farmer; and relate how, on one occasion, she gave up riding for a week or two, and sent her horses back from Compiegne to Versailles, because the wife of her head-groom was on the point of her confinement, and she wished her to have her husband near her at such a moment; and on another, when the horse of one of her attendants kicked her, and inflicted a severe bruise on her foot, she abstained from mentioning the hurt, lest it should bring the rider into disgrace by being attributed to his awkward management.

Not that the intrigues of the mistress and her adherents were at all diminished. They were even more active than ever since the marriage of the Count de Provence, who, in an underhanded way, instigated his wife to show countenance to Madame du Barri, and who allowed, if he did not encourage, the mistress and her friends to speak slightingly of the dauphiness in his presence. But, as Marie Antoinette felt firmer in her own position, she could afford to disregard the malice of these caballers more than she had felt that she could do at first, and even to defy them. On one occasion that the Count de Provence was imprudent enough to discuss some of his schemes with the door open while she was in the next room, she told him frankly that she had heard all that he said, and reproached him for his duplicity; and the dauphin coming in at the moment, she flew to him, throwing her arms round his neck, and telling him how she appreciated his honesty and candor, and how the more she compared him with the others, the more she saw his superiority. Indeed, she soon began to find that the Countess de Provence was as little to be trusted as her husband; and the only member of the family whom she really liked, or of whom she had at all a favorable opinion, was the Count d'Artois, who, though not yet out of the school-room, "showed," as she told her mother, "sentiments of honesty which he could never have learned of his governor.[8]"

Her indefatigable guardian, Mercy, reported to the empress that she improved every day. He had learned to conceive a very high idea of her abilities; and he dilated with especial satisfaction on the powers of conversation which she was developing; on her wit and readiness in repartee; on her originality, as well as facility of expression; and on her perfect possession of the royal art of speaking to a whole company with such notice of each member of it, that each thought himself the person to whom her remarks were principally addressed. She possessed another accomplishment, also, of great value to princes-a tenacious recollection of faces and names. And she had made herself acquainted with the history of all the chief nobles, so as to be able to make graceful allusions to facts in their family annals of which they were proud, and, what was perhaps even more important, to avoid unpleasant or dangerous topics. The king himself was not insensible to the increase of attraction which her charms, both of person and manner, conferred on the royal palace. He was perfectly satisfied with the civility of her behavior to Madame du Barri, who admitted that she hail nothing to complain of. And the only point in which even Mercy, the most critical of judges, saw any room for alteration in her conduct was a certain remissness in bestowing her notice on men of real eminence, and on foreign visitors if they were not of the very highest rank; the remark as to the latter class being perhaps dictated by a somewhat excessive natural susceptibility, and by a laudable desire that any Germans who returned from France to their own country should sing her praises in her native land.

Perhaps one of the strongest proofs of the regard in which, at this time, she was held by all parties in the court is found in the circumstance that the Count de Provence himself very soon found it impossible to continue his countenance to the intrigues against her which he had previously favored. He preferred ingratiating himself and the countess with her. Marie Antoinette was always placable, and from the first had been eager, as the head of the family, to place her sister-in-law at her ease; so that when the count evinced his desire to stand on a friendly footing with her, she showed every disposition to meet his wishes, and the spring and summer of 1772 exhibited to the courtiers, who were little accustomed to such scenes, a happy example of an intimate family union. Marie Antoinette had always been fond of music, and, as we have seen before, ever since her arrival in France, had devoted fixed hours to her music-master. And now, on almost every evening which was not otherwise preoccupied, she gave little concerts in her apartments to the royal family, their principal attendants, and a few of the chief nobles of the court; being herself occasionally one of the performers, and maintaining her character as a hostess by a combined affability and dignity which made all her guests pleased with themselves as with her, and set all imitation and all detraction alike at defiance.