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'Opéra.--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 Thérèse 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 rank 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 naître,
Une Princesse vient pour en être témoin,
Sitôt qu'on voit une grâce paraître,
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 Comédie
Française, 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. She 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 Bouillé, 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.