The Queen expects to be confined again.--Increasing Unpopularity of the
King's Brothers.--Birth of the Dauphin.--Festivities.--Deputations from
the Different Trades.--Songs of the Dames de la Halle.--Ball given by the
Body-guard.--Unwavering Fidelity of the Regiment.--The Queen offers up her
Thanksgiving at Notre Dame.--Banquet at the Hôtel de Ville.--Rejoicing in
Paris.
How irreparable his loss was, was shown by the rapid succession of finance
ministers who, in the course of the next seven years, successively held
the office of comptroller-general. All were equally incompetent, and under
their administration, sometimes merely incapable, sometimes combining
recklessness and corruption with incapacity, the treasury again became
exhausted, the resources of the nation dwindled away, and the distress of
all but the wealthiest classes became more and more insupportable. But for
a time the attention of Marie Antoinette was drawn off from political
embarrassments by the event which alone seemed wanting to complete her
personal happiness, and to place her position and popularity on an
impregnable foundation.
In the spring she discovered that she was again about to become a mother.
The whole nation expected the result with an intense anxiety. The king's
brothers were daily becoming more and more deservedly unpopular. The Count
d'Artois, who as the father of a son, occupied more of the general
attention than his elder brother, seemed to take pains to parade his
contempt for the commercial class, and still more for the lower orders,
and his disapproval of every proposal which had for its object to
conciliate the traders or to relieve the sufferings of the poor; while the
Count de Provence openly established a mistress, the Countess de Balbi, at
the Luxembourg Palace, his residence in the capital, where she presided
over the receptions which he took upon himself to hold, to the exclusion
of his lawful princess. The Countess de Provence was not well calculated
to excite admiration or sympathy, since she was plain and ungracious. But
Madame de Balbi, whose character had been disgracefully notorious even
before her connection with the count, was not more attractive in
appearance or manner than the Savoy princess; and the citizens of Paris,
who in this instance faithfully represented the feelings of the entire
nation, did not disguise their anxiety that the child about to be born
should be a prince, who might extinguish the hopes and projects of both
his uncles.
Their wishes were gratified. On the morning of the 22d of October the king
was starting from the palace on a hunting expedition with his brothers,
when it was announced to him that the queen was taken ill.[1] He at once
returned to her room, and, mindful of the danger which she had incurred on
the occasion of the birth of Madame Royale from the greatness and disorder
of the crowd, he broke through the ancient custom, and ordered that the
doors should be closed, and that no one should be admitted beyond a very
small number of the great officers, male and female, of the household. His
cares were rewarded by a comparatively easy birth; and his anxiety to
protect his wife from agitation was further shown by a second arrangement,
which was perhaps hardly so easy to carry out, but which was also
perfectly successful. As was most natural, the queen and himself fully
shared the ardent wishes of the nation that the expected child should
prove an heir to the throne; and he consequently feared that, should it
not be so, the disappointment might produce an injurious effect on the
mother's health; or, should their hopes be realized, that the excessive
joy might be equally dangerous. With a desire, therefore, to avoid
exposing her to either shock in the first moments of weakness, he forbade
any announcement of the sex of the child being made to any one but
himself. The instant that the child was born, he hastened to the bedside
to judge for himself whether she could bear the news. Presently she came
to herself; and it seemed to her that the general silence indicated that
she had become the mother of a second daughter. But she desired to be
assured of the fact. "See," said she to Louis, "how reasonable I am. I ask
no questions.[2]" And Louis, who from joy was scarcely able to contain
himself, seeing her freedom from agitation, thought he might safely reveal
to her the whole extent of their happiness. He called out, so as to be
heard by the Princess de Guimenée, who still held the post of governess to
the royal children, and who had already exhibited the child to the
witnesses in the antechamber, and was now awaiting his summons at the open
door, "My lord the dauphin begs to be admitted." The Princess de Guimenée
brought "my lord the dauphin" to his mother's arms, and for a few minutes
the small company in the room gazed in respectful silence while the father
and mother mingled tears of joy with broken words of thanksgiving.
Yet even in this moment of exultation Marie Antoinette could not forget
her first-born, nor the feelings which had made her rejoice at the birth
of a daughter, who still had, as it were, no rival in her eyes, because no
rival claim to her own could be set up with respect to a princess. She
kissed the long-wished-for infant over and over again; pressed him fondly
to her heart; and then, after she had perused each feature with anxious
scrutiny, and pointed out some resemblances, such as mothers see, to his
father, "Take him," said she, to Madame de Guimenée; "he belongs to the
State; but my daughter is still mine.[3]"
Presently the chamber was cleared; and in a few minutes the glad tidings
were carried to every corner of the palace and town of Versailles, and, as
speedily as expresses could gallop, to the anxious city of Paris. By a
somewhat whimsical coincidence, the Count de Stedingk, who, from having
been one of the intended hunting-party, had been admitted into the
antechamber, rushing down-stairs in his haste to spread the intelligence,
met the Countess de Provence on the staircase. "It is a dauphin, madame,"
he cried; "what a happy event!" The countess made him no reply. Nor did
she or her husband pretend to disguise their mortification. The Count
d'Artois was a little less open in the display of his discontent, which
was, however, sufficiently notorious. But, with these exceptions, all
France, or at least all France sufficiently near the court to feel any
personal interest in its concerns, was unanimous in its exultation.
As soon as the new-born child was dressed, his father took him in his
arms, and, carrying him to the window, showed him to the crowd[4] which,
on the first news of the queen's illness, had thronged the court-yard, and
was waiting in breathless expectation the result. A rumor had already
begun to penetrate the throng that the child was a son, and the moment
that the happy tidings were confirmed, and the infant--their future king,
as they undoubtingly hailed him--was presented to their view, their joy
broke forth in such vociferous acclamations that it became necessary to
silence them by an appeal to them to show consideration for the mother's
weakness.
For the next three months all was joy and festivity. When the little Duc
d'Angoulême, now a sprightly boy of six years old, was taken into the
nursery to see, or, in the court language, to pay his homage to, the heir
to the throne, he said to his father, as he left the room, "Papa, how
little my cousin is!" "The day will come, my boy," replied the count,
"when you will find him quite great enough." And it seemed as if the whole
nation, and especially the city of Paris, thought no celebration of the
birth of its future king could be too sumptuous for his greatness. It was
a real heart-felt joy that was awakened in the people. On the day
following the birth, chroniclers of the time remarked that no other
subject was spoken of; that even strangers stopped one another in the
streets to exchange congratulations.[5]
The different trades and guilds led the way in the expression of these
loyal felicitations. When his royal highness was a week old, he held a
grand reception. Deputations from different bodies of artisans, each with
a band of music at its head, and each carrying some emblem of its
occupation, marched in a long procession to Versailles. The chimney-sweeps
bore aloft a chimney entwined with garlands, on the top of which was
perched one of the smallest of their boys; the chairmen carried a chair
superbly gilt, on which sat in state a representative of the royal nurse,
with a child in her arms in royal robes; the butchers drove a fat ox; the
pastry-cooks bore on a splendid tray a variety of pastry and sweetmeats
such as might tempt children of a larger growth than the little prince
they had come to honor; the blacksmiths beat an anvil in time to their
cheers; the shoe-makers brought a pair of miniature boots; the tailors had
devoted elaborate and minute pains to the embroidering of a uniform of the
dauphin's regiment, such as might even now fit its young colonel, if his
parents would permit him to be attired in it. The crowd was too great to
be received in even the largest saloon of the palace; but it filled the
court-yard beneath; and, as the weather was luckily favorable, the dauphin
was brought to the balcony and displayed to the people, while they greeted
him with cheers, which were renewed from time to time, even after he had
been withdrawn, till the shouting seemed as if it would have no end.
One deputation, consisting of members of the fairer sex, received even
higher honors. Fifty ladies of the fish-market vindicated the
long-acknowledged claims of their body by forming a separate procession.
Each dame was dressed in a gown of rich black silk, their established
court-dress, and nearly every one had diamond ornaments. To them, the
celebrated antechamber, from the oval window at the end known as the
Bull's Eye, was opened;[6] and three of their body were admitted even into
the queen's room, and to the side of the bed. The popular poet La Harpe,
whom the partiality of Voltaire had designated as the heir of his genius,
had composed an address, which the spokeswoman of the party had written
out on the back of her fan, and now read with a sweet voice, which had
procured her the honor of being so selected,[7] and with very appropriate
delivery. The queen made a brief but most gracious answer, and then, on
their retirement, the whole company, with a train of fish-women of the
lower class, was entertained at a grand banquet, which they enlivened with
songs composed for the occasion. One of them so hit the fancy of the king
and queen that they quoted it more than once in their letters to their
correspondents, and Marie Antoinette even sung it occasionally to her
harp:
"Ne craignez pas,
Cher papa,
D' voir augmenter vot' famille,
Le Bon Dieu z'y pourvoira:
Fait's en tant qu' Versailles en fourmille
Y eut-il cent Bourbons chez nous,
Y a du pain, du laurier pour tous."
The body-guard celebrated the auspicious event by giving a grand ball in
the concert-room of the palace to the queen on her recovery; it was
attended by the whole court, and Marie Antoinette opened it herself,
dancing a minuet with one of the troop, whom his comrades had selected for
the honor, and whom the king promoted, as a memorial of the occasion and
as a testimony of his approval of the loyalty of that gallant regiment.
Amidst all the troubles of later years, the fidelity of those noble troops
never wavered. They had even in one hour of terrible danger the honor, in
the same palace, of saving the life of their queen. But it is a melancholy
proof of the fleeting character and instability of popular favor which is
supplied by the recollection that these very artisans who were now so
vociferous, and undoubtedly at this moment so sincere in their profession
of loyalty, were afterward her foul and ferocious enemies. And yet between
1781 and 1789 there had been no change in the character or conduct of the
king and queen, or rather, it may be said, the intervening years had been
a period during which a countless series of acts of beneficence had
displayed their unceasing affection for their subjects.
The festivities were crowned in the most appropriate manner by a public
thanksgiving, offered by the queen herself to Heaven for the gift of a
son, and for her own recovery. But that celebration was necessarily
postponed till her strength was entirely re-established; and it was not
till the 21st of January that the physicians would allow her to encounter
the excitement of so interesting but fatiguing a day. The court had quit
Versailles for La Muette the day before, to be nearer the city; and on the
appointed morning, which the watchers for omens delightedly remarked as
one of midsummer brilliancy,[8] the most superb procession that even Paris
had ever witnessed issued from the gates of the old hunting-lodge, whose
earlier occupants had been animated by a very different spirit.[9]
That the honors of the day might be wholly the queen's, Louis himself did
not accompany her, but followed her three hours later, to meet her at the
Hôtel de Ville. Nineteen coaches, glittering with burnished gold, and
every panel of which was embellished with crowns, wreaths, or allegorical
pictures, marching on at a stately walk toward the city gate, conveyed the
queen, radiant with beauty and happiness, the sisters and aunts of the
king, the long train of her and their ladies, and all the great officers
of her household. Squadrons of the body-guard furnished the escort, riding
in front of the queen's carriage and behind it, but not on either side,
she herself having forbidden any arrangement which might intercept the
full sight of herself from a single citizen. Companies of other regiments
awaited the procession at different points, and closed up behind it as it
passed, swelling the vast train which thus grew at every step. An
additional escort, almost an army in itself, in double rank, lined the
whole road from the barrier of the Champs Élysées of the great cathedral;
and, as the royal coach passed through the city gate, a herald proclaimed
that "The king wishing to consecrate by fresh acts of kindness the happy
moment when God showered his mercies on him by the birth of a dauphin, and
at the same time to give to the inhabitants of his good city of Paris some
special mark of his beneficence, granted an exemption from the poll-tax to
all the burgesses, traders, and artisans who were not in such
circumstances as made the payment easy."
The proclamation was received with all the thankfulness of surprise; the
cheers, which had never censed from the moment that the procession first
came in sight, were redoubled, and it was amidst shouts of congratulation
both to themselves and to her that the queen proceeded onward to Notre
Dame. Having paid her vows and made her offerings in the cathedral of the
nation, she passed on to the Church of Ste. Geneviève, the especial
patroness of the city, and repeated her thanksgiving before the tomb of
Clovis, the founder of the monarchy. At the Hôtel de Ville she was met by
the king, with the princess, his brothers, the great officers of his
household, and the ministers; and there (after having first come forward
on the balcony to afford the multitude, who completely filled the vast
square in front of the building, a sight of their sovereigns), the royal
pair, sitting side by side, presided at a banquet of unsurpassed
magnificence and luxury. In compliance with the strictest laws of the old
etiquette, none but ladies were admitted to the king's table, but other
tables were provided for the male guests. The most renowned musicians
performed the sweetest airs, but the melodies of Gluck and Grétry were
drowned in the cheers of the multitude outside, who thus relieved their
impatience for the re-appearance of their queen.
The banquet was succeeded by a grand reception, with its singular but
invariable accompaniment of a gaming-table,[10] and the whole was
concluded by a grand illumination and display of fireworks, in which the
pyrotechnists had exhausted their allegorical ingenuity. A Temple of Hymen
occupied the centre, and the God of Marriage--never, so far as present
appearances indicated, more auspiciously employed--presented to France the
precious infant who was the most recent fruit of his favor; while the
flame upon his altar, which never had burned with a brighter light, was
fed by the thank-offerings of the whole French people. As each new feature
of the display burst upon their eyes, the acclamations of the populace
redoubled, and their enthusiasm was kindled to the utmost pitch when Louis
and Marie Antoinette descended the stairs, and, arm-in-arm, walked out
among the crowd, ostensibly to see the illuminations from the different
points which presented the most imposing spectacle; but really, as the
citizens perceived, to show their sympathy with the joy of the people by
mingling with the multitude, and thus allowing all to approach and even to
accost them; while they, and especially the queen, replied to every loyal
cheer or homely word of congratulation by a cordial smile or expression of
approval or thanks, which long dwelt in the memory of those to whom they
were addressed.