"On the marriage night, Louis XV. said gaily to the Dauphin, who was
supping with his usual heartiness, 'Don't overcharge your stomach
to-night'
"'Why, I always sleep best after a hearty supper,' replied the Dauphin,
with the greatest coolness.
"The supper being ended, he accompanied his Dauphine to her chamber, and
at the door, with the greatest politeness, wished her a good night. Next
morning, upon his saying, when he met her at breakfast, that he hoped she
had slept well, Marie Antoinette replied, 'Excellently well, for I had no
one to disturb me!'
"The Princesse de Guemenee, who was then at the head of the household, on
hearing the Dauphine moving very early in her apartment, ventured to
enter it, and, not seeing the Dauphin, exclaimed, 'Bless me! he is risen
as usual!'--'Whom do you mean?' asked Marie Antoinette. The Princess
misconstruing the interrogation, was going to retire, when the Dauphine
said, 'I have heard a great deal of French politeness, but I think I am
married to the most polite of the nation!'--'What, then, he is
risen?'--'No, no, no!' exclaimed the Dauphine, 'there has been no rising;
he has never lain down here. He left me at the door of my apartment with
his hat in his hand, and hastened from me as if embarrassed with my
person!'
"After Marie Antoinette became a mother she would often laugh and tell
Louis XVI. of his bridal politeness, and ask him if in the interim
between that and the consummation he had studied his maiden aunts or his
tutor on the subject. On this he would laugh most excessively.
"Scarcely was Marie Antoinette seated in her new country before the
virulence of Court intrigue against her became active. She was beset on
all sides by enemies open and concealed, who never slackened their
persecutions. All the family of Louis XV., consisting of those maiden
aunts of the Dauphin just adverted to (among whom Madame Adelaide was
specially implacable), were incensed at the marriage, not only from their
hatred to Austria, but because it had accomplished the ambition of an
obnoxious favourite to give a wife to the Dauphin of their kingdom. On
the credulous and timid mind of the Prince, then in the leading strings
of this pious sisterhood, they impressed the misfortunes to his country
and to the interest of the Bourbon family, which must spring from the
Austrian influence through the medium of his bride. No means were left
unessayed to steel him against her sway. I remember once to have heard
Her Majesty remark to Louis XVI., in answer to some particular
observations he made, 'These, Sire, are the sentiments of our aunts, I am
sure.' And, indeed, great must have been their ascendency over him in
youth, for up to a late date he entertained a very high respect for their
capacity and judgment. Great indeed must it have been to have prevailed
against all the seducing allurements of a beautiful and fascinating young
bride, whose amiableness, vivacity, and wit became the universal
admiration, and whose graceful manner of address few ever equalled and
none ever surpassed; nay, even so to have prevailed as to form one of the
great sources of his aversion to consummate the marriage! Since the
death of the late Queen, their mother, these four Princesses (who, it was
said, if old maids, were not so from choice) had received and performed
the exclusive honours of the Court. It could not have diminished their
dislike for the young and lovely new-comer to see themselves under the
necessity of abandoning their dignities and giving up their station. So
eager were they to contrive themes of complaint against her, that when
she visited them in the simple attire in which she so much delighted,
'sans ceremonie', unaccompanied by a troop of horse and a squadron of
footguards, they complained to their father, who hinted to Marie
Antoinette that such a relaxation of the royal dignity would be attended
with considerable injury to French manufactures, to trade, and to the
respect due to her rank. 'My State and Court dresses,' replied she,
'shall not be less brilliant than those of any former Dauphine or Queen
of France, if such be the pleasure of the King,--but to my grandpapa I
appeal for some indulgence with respect to my undress private costume of
the morning.
"It was dangerous for one in whose conduct so many prying eyes were
seeking for sources of accusation to gratify herself even by the
overthrow of an absurdity, when that overthrow might incur the stigma of
innovation. The Court of Versailles was jealous of its Spanish
inquisitorial etiquette. It had been strictly wedded to its pageantries
since the time of the great Anne of Austria. The sagacious and prudent
provisions of this illustrious contriver were deemed the ne plus ultra of
royal female policy. A cargo of whalebone was yearly obtained by her to
construct such stays for the Maids of Honour as might adequately conceal
the Court accidents which generally--poor ladies!--befell them in
rotation every nine months.
"But Marie Antoinette could not sacrifice her predilection for a
simplicity quite English, to prudential considerations. Indeed, she was
too young to conceive it even desirable. So much did she delight in
being unshackled by finery that she would hurry from Court to fling off
her royal robes and ornaments, exclaiming, when freed from them, 'Thank
Heaven, I am out of harness!'
"But she had natural advantages, which gave her enemies a pretext for
ascribing this antipathy to the established fashion to mere vanity. It
is not impossible that she might have derived some pleasure from
displaying a figure so beautiful, with no adornment except its native
gracefulness; but how great must have been the chagrin of the Princesses,
of many of the Court ladies, indeed, of all in any way ungainly or
deformed, when called to exhibit themselves by the side of a bewitching
person like hers, unaided by the whalebone and horse-hair paddings with
which they had hitherto been made up, and which placed the best form on a
level with the worst? The prudes who practised illicitly, and felt the
convenience of a guise which so well concealed the effect of their
frailties, were neither the least formidable nor the least numerous of
the enemies created by this revolution of costume; and the Dauphine was
voted by common consent--for what greater crime could there be in
France?--the heretic Martin Luther of female fashions! The four
Princesses, her aunts, were as bitter against the disrespect with which
the Dauphine treated the armour, which they called dress, as if they
themselves had benefited by the immunities it could, confer.
"Indeed, most of the old Court ladies embattled themselves against Marie
Antoinette's encroachments upon their habits. The leader of them was a
real medallion, whose costume, character, and notions spoke a genealogy
perfectly antediluvian; who even to the latter days of Louis XV., amid a
Court so irregular, persisted in her precision. So systematic a
supporter of the antique could be no other than the declared foe of any
change, and, of course, deemed the desertion of large sack gowns,
monstrous Court hoops, and the old notions of appendages attached to
them, for tight waists and short petticoats, an awful demonstration of
the depravity of the time!--[The editor needs scarcely add, that the
allusion of the Princess is to Madame de Noailles.]
"This lady had been first lady to the sole Queen of Louis XV. She was
retained in the same station for Marie Antoinette. Her motions were
regulated like clock-work. So methodical was she in all her operations
of mind and body, that, from the beginning of the year to its end, she
never deviated a moment. Every hour had its peculiar occupation. Her
element was etiquette, but the etiquette of ages before the flood. She
had her rules even for the width of petticoats, that the Queens and
Princesses might have no temptation to straddle over a rivulet, or
crossing, of unroyal size.
"The Queen of Louis XV. having been totally subservient in her movements
night and day to the wishes of the Comtesse de Noailles, it will be
readily conceived how great a shock this lady must have sustained on
being informed one morning that the Dauphine had actually risen in the
night, and her ladyship not by to witness a ceremony from which most
ladies would have felt no little pleasure in being spared, but which, on
this occasion, admitted of no delay! Notwithstanding the Dauphine
excused herself by the assurance of the urgency allowing no time to call
the Countess, she nearly fainted at not having been present at that,
which others sometimes faint at, if too near! This unaccustomed
watchfulness so annoyed Marie Antoinette, that, determined to laugh her
out of it, she ordered an immense bottle of hartshorn to be placed upon
her toilet. Being asked what use was to be made of the hartshorn, she
said it was to prevent her first Lady of Honour from falling into
hysterics when the calls of nature were uncivil enough to exclude her
from being of the party. This, as may be presumed, had its desired
effect, and Marie Antoinette was ever afterwards allowed free access at
least to one of her apartments, and leave to perform that in private
which few individuals except Princesses do with parade and publicity.
"These things, however, planted the seeds of rancour against Marie
Antoinette, which Madame de Noailles carried with her to the grave. It
will be seen that she declared against her at a crisis of great
importance. The laughable title of Madame Etiquette, which the Dauphine
gave her, clung to her through life; though conferred only in merriment,
it never was forgiven.
"The Dauphine seemed to be under a sort of fatality with regard to all
those who had any power of doing her mischief either with her husband or
the Court. The Duc de Vauguyon, the Dauphin's tutor, who both from
principle and interest hated everything Austrian, and anything whatever
which threatened to lessen his despotic influence so long exercised over
the mind of his pupil, which he foresaw would be endangered were the
Prince once out of his leading-strings and swayed by a young wife, made
use of all the influence which old courtiers can command over the minds
they have formed (more generally for their own ends than those of
uprightness) to poison that of the young Prince against his bride.
"Never were there more intrigues among the female slaves in the Seraglio
of Constantinople for the Grand Signior's handkerchief than were
continually harassing one party against the other at the Court of
Versailles. The Dauphine was even attacked through her own tutor, the
Abbe Vermond. A cabal was got up between the Abbe and Madame Marsan,
instructress of the sisters of Louis XVI. (the Princesses Clotilde and
Elizabeth) upon the subject of education. Nothing grew out of this
affair excepting a new stimulus to the party spirit against the Austrian
influence, or, in other words, the Austrian Princess; and such was
probably its purpose. Of course every trifle becomes Court tattle. This
was made a mighty business of, for want of a worse. The royal aunts
naturally took the part of Madame Marsan. They maintained that their
royal nieces, the French Princesses, were much better educated than the
German Archduchesses had been by the Austrian Empress. They attempted to
found their assertion upon the embonpoint of the French Princesses. They
said that their nieces, by the exercise of religious principles, obtained
the advantage of solid flesh, while the Austrian Archduchesses, by
wasting themselves in idleness and profane pursuits, grew thin and
meagre, and were equally exhausted in their minds and bodies! At this
the Abbe Vermond, as the tutor of Marie Antoinette, felt himself highly
offended, and called on Comte de Mercy, then the Imperial Ambassador, to
apprise him of the insult the Empire had received over the shoulders of
the Dauphine's tutor. The Ambassador gravely replied that he should
certainly send off a courier immediately to Vienna to inform the Empress
that the only fault the French Court could find with Marie Antoinette was
her being not so unwieldy as their own Princesses, and bringing charms
with her to a bridegroom, on whom even charms so transcendent could make
no impression! Thus the matter was laughed off, but it left, ridiculous
as it was, new bitter enemies to the cause of the illustrious stranger.
"The new favourite, Madame du Barry, whose sway was now supreme, was of
course joined by the whole vitiated intriguing Court of Versailles. The
King's favourite is always that of his parasites, however degraded. The
politics of the De Pompadour party were still feared, though De Pompadour
herself was no more, for Choiseul had friends who were still active in
his behalf. The power which had been raised to crush the power that was
still struggling formed a rallying point for those who hated Austria,
which the deposed Ministry had supported; and even the King's daughters,
much as they abhorred the vulgarity of Du Barry, were led, by dislike for
the Dauphine, to pay their devotions to their father's mistress. The
influence of the rising sun, Marie Antoinette, whose beauteous rays of
blooming youth warmed every heart in her favour, was feared by the new
favourite as well as by the old maidens. Louis XV. had already expressed
a sufficient interest for the friendless royal stranger to awaken the
jealousy of Du Barry, and she was as little disposed to share the King's
affections with another, as his daughters were to welcome a future Queen
from Austria in their palace. Mortified at the attachment the King daily
evinced, she strained every nerve to raise a party to destroy his
predilections. She called to her aid the strength of ridicule, than
which no weapon is more false or deadly. She laughed at qualities she
could not comprehend, and underrated what she could not imitate. The Duc
de Richelieu, who had been instrumental to her good fortune, and for whom
(remembering the old adage: when one hand washes the other both are made
clean) she procured the command of the army--this Duke, the triumphant
general of Mahon and one of the most distinguished noblemen of France,
did not blush to become the secret agent of a depraved meretrix in the
conspiracy to blacken the character of her victim! The Princesses, of
course, joined the jealous Phryne against their niece, the daughter of
the Caesars, whose only faults were those of nature, for at that time she
could have no other excepting those personal perfections which were the
main source of all their malice. By one considered as an usurper, by the
others as an intruder, both were in consequence industrious in the quiet
work of ruin by whispers and detraction.
"To an impolitic act of the Dauphine herself may be in part ascribed the
unwonted virulence of the jealousy and resentment of Du Barry. The old
dotard, Louis XV., was so indelicate as to have her present at the first
supper of the Dauphine at Versailles. Madame la Marechale de Beaumont,
the Duchesse de Choiseul, and the Duchesse de Grammont were there also;
but upon the favourite taking her seat at table they expressed themselves
very freely to Louis XV. respecting the insult they conceived offered to
the young Dauphine, left the royal party, and never appeared again at
Court till after the King's death. In consequence of this scene, Marie
Antoinette, at the instigation of the Abbe Vermond, wrote to her mother,
the Empress, complaining of the slight put upon her rank, birth, and
dignity, and requesting the Empress would signify her displeasure to the
Court of France, as she had done to that of Spain on a similar occasion
in favour of her sister, the Queen of Naples.
"This letter, which was intercepted, got to the knowledge of the Court
and excited some clamour. To say the worst, it could only be looked upon
as an ebullition of the folly of youth. But insignificant as such
matters were in fact, malignity converted them into the locust, which
destroyed the fruit she was sent to cultivate.
"Maria Theresa, old fox that she was, too true to her system to retract
the policy, which formerly, laid her open to the criticism of all the
civilised Courts of Europe for opening the correspondence with De
Pompadour, to whose influence she owed her daughter's footing in
France--a correspondence whereby she degraded the dignity of her sex and
the honour of her crown--and at the same time suspecting that it was not
her daughter, but Vermond, from private motives, who complained, wrote
the following laconic reply to the remonstrance:
"'Where the sovereign himself presides, no guest can be exceptionable.'
"Such sentiments are very much in contradiction with the character of
Maria Theresa. She was always solicitous to impress the world with her
high notion of moral rectitude. Certainly, such advice, however politic,
ought not to have proceeded from a mother so religious as Maria Theresa
wished herself to be thought; especially to a young Princess who, though
enthusiastically fond of admiration, at least had discretion to see and
feel the impropriety of her being degraded to the level of a female like
Du Barry, and, withal, courage to avow it. This, of itself, was quite
enough to shake the virtue of Marie Antoinette; or, at least, Maria
Theresa's letter was of a cast to make her callous to the observance of
all its scruples. And in that vitiated, depraved Court, she too soon,
unfortunately, took the hint of her maternal counsellor in not only
tolerating, but imitating, the object she despised. Being one day told
that Du Barry was the person who most contributed to amuse Louis XV.,
'Then,' said she, innocently, 'I declare myself her rival; for I will try
who can best amuse my grandpapa for the future. I will exert all my
powers to please and divert him, and then we shall see who can best
succeed.'
"Du Barry was by when this was said, and she never forgave it. To this,
and to the letter, her rancour may principally be ascribed. To all those
of the Court party who owed their places and preferments to her exclusive
influence, and who held them subject to her caprice, she, of course,
communicated the venom.
"Meanwhile, the Dauphin saw Marie Antoinette mimicking the monkey tricks
with which this low Sultana amused her dotard, without being aware of the
cause. He was not pleased; and this circumstance, coupled with his
natural coolness and indifference for a union he had been taught to deem
impolitic and dangerous to the interests of France, created in his
virtuous mind that sort of disgust which remained so long an enigma to
the Court and all the kingdom, excepting his royal aunts, who did the
best they could to confirm it into so decided an aversion as might induce
him to impel his grandfather to annul the marriage and send the Dauphine
back to Vienna."
"After the Dauphin's marriage, the Comte d'Artois and his brother
Monsieur--[Afterwards Louis XVIII., and the former the present Charles
X.]--returned from their travels to Versailles. The former was delighted
with the young Dauphine, and, seeing her so decidedly neglected by her
husband, endeavoured to console her by a marked attention, but for which
she would have been totally isolated, for, excepting the old King, who
became more and more enraptured with the grace, beauty, and vivacity of
his young granddaughter, not another individual in the Royal Family was
really interested in her favour. The kindness of a personage so
important was of too much weight not to awaken calumny. It was, of
course, endeavoured to be turned against her. Possibilities, and even
probabilities, conspired to give a pretext for the scandal which already
began to be whispered about the Dauphine and D'Artois. It would have
been no wonder had a reciprocal attachment arisen between a virgin wife,
so long neglected by her husband, and one whose congeniality of character
pointed him out as a more desirable partner than the Dauphin. But there
is abundant evidence of the perfect innocence of their intercourse. Du
Barry was most earnest in endeavouring, from first to last, to establish
its impurity, because the Dauphine induced the gay young Prince to join
in all her girlish schemes to tease and circumvent the favourite. But
when this young Prince and his brother were married to the two Princesses
of Piedmont, the intimacy between their brides and the Dauphine proved
there could have been no doubt that Du Barry had invented a calumny, and
that no feeling existed but one altogether sisterly. The three stranger
Princesses were indeed inseparable; and these marriages, with that of the
French Princess, Clotilde, to the Prince of Piedmont, created
considerable changes in the coteries of Court.
"The machinations against Marie Antoinette could not be concealed from
the Empress-mother. An extraordinary Ambassador was consequently sent
from Vienna to complain of them to the Court of Versailles, with
directions that the remonstrance should be supported and backed by the
Comte de Mercy, then Austrian Ambassador at the Court of France. Louis
XV. was the only person to whom the communication was news. This old
dilettanti of the sex was so much engaged between his seraglio of the
Parc-aux-cerfs and Du Barry that he knew less of what was passing in his
palace than those at Constantinople. On being informed by the Austrian
Ambassador, he sent an Ambassador of his own to Vienna to assure the
Empress that he was perfectly satisfied of the innocent conduct of his
newly acquired granddaughter.
"Among the intrigues within intrigues of the time I mention, there was
one which shows that perhaps Du Barry's distrust of the constancy of her
paramour, and apprehension from the effect on him of the charms of the
Dauphine, in whom he became daily more interested, were not utterly
without foundation. In this instance even her friend, the Duc de
Richelieu, that notorious seducer, by lending himself to the secret
purposes of the King, became a traitor to the cause of the King's
favourite, to which he had sworn allegiance, and which he had supported
by defaming her whom he now became anxious to make his Queen.
"It has already been said, that the famous Duchesse de Grammont was one
of the confidential friends of Louis XV. before he took Du Barry under
his especial protection. Of course, there can be no difficulty in
conceiving how likely a person she would be, to aid any purpose of the
King which should displace the favourite, by whom she herself had been
obliged to retire, by ties of a higher order, to which she might prove
instrumental.
"Louis XV. actually flattered himself with the hope of obtaining
advantages from the Dauphin's coolness towards the Dauphine. He
encouraged it, and even threw many obstacles in the way of the
consummation of the marriage. The apartments of the young couple were
placed at opposite ends of the palace, so that the Dauphin could not
approach that of his Dauphine without a publicity which his bashfulness
could not brook.
"Louis XV. now began to act upon his secret passion to supplant his
grandson, and make the Dauphine his own Queen, by endeavouring to secure
her affections to himself. His attentions were backed by gifts of
diamonds, pearls, and other valuables, and it was at this period that
Boehmer, the jeweller, first received the order for that famous necklace,
which subsequently produced such dreadful consequences, and which was
originally meant as a kingly present to the intended Queen, though
afterwards destined for Du Barry, had not the King died before the
completion of the bargain for it.
"The Queen herself one day told me, 'Heaven knows if ever I should have
had the blessing of being a mother had I not one evening surprised the
Dauphin, when the subject was adverted to, in the expression of a sort of
regret at our being placed so far asunder from each other. Indeed, he
never honoured me with any proof of his affection so explicit as that you
have just witnessed'--for the King had that moment kissed her, as he left
the apartment--'from the time of our marriage till the consummation. The
most I ever received from him was a squeeze of the hand in secret. His
extreme modesty, and perhaps his utter ignorance of the intercourse with
woman, dreaded the exposure of crossing the palace to my bedchamber; and
no doubt the accomplishment would have occurred sooner, could it have
been effectuated in privacy. The hint he gave emboldened me with
courage, when he next left me, as usual, at the door of my apartment, to
mention it to the Duchesse de Grammont, then the confidential friend of
Louis XV., who laughed me almost out of countenance; saying, in her gay
manner of expressing herself, "If I were as young and as beautiful a wife
as you are I should certainly not trouble myself to remove the obstacle
by going to him while there were others of superior rank ready to supply
his place." Before she quitted me, however, she said: "Well, child, make
yourself easy: you shall no longer be separated from the object of your
wishes: I will mention it to the King, your grandpapa, and he will soon
order your husband's apartment to be changed for one nearer your own."
And the change shortly afterwards took place.
"'Here,' continued the Queen, 'I accuse myself of a want of that courage
which every virtuous wife ought to exercise in not having complained of
the visible neglect shown me long, long before I did; for this, perhaps,
would have spared both of us the many bitter pangs originating in the
seeming coldness, whence have arisen all the scandalous stories against
my character--which have often interrupted the full enjoyment I should
have felt had they not made me tremble for the security of that
attachment, of which I had so many proofs, and which formed my only
consolation amid all the malice that for yearn had been endeavouring to
deprive me of it! So far as regards my husband's estimation, thank fate,
I have defied their wickedness! Would to Heaven I could have been
equally secure in the estimation of my people--the object nearest to my
heart, after the King and my dear children!'"
[The Dauphine could not understand the first allusion of the Duchess; but
it is evident that the vile intriguer took this opportunity of sounding
her upon what she was commissioned to carry on in favour of Louis XV.,
and it is equally apparent that when she heard Marie Antoinette express
herself decidedly in favour of her young husband, and distinctly saw how
utterly groundless were the hopes of his secret rival, she was led
thereby to abandon her wicked project; and perhaps the change of
apartments was the best mask that could have been devised to hide the
villany.]
"The present period appears to have been one of the happiest in the life
of Marie Antoinette. Her intimate society consisted of the King's
brothers, and their Princesses, with the King's saint-like sister
Elizabeth; and they lived entirely together, excepting when the Dauphine
dined in public. These ties seemed to be drawn daily closer for some
time, till the subsequent intimacy with the Polignacs. Even when the
Comtesse d'Artois lay-in, the Dauphine, then become Queen, transferred
her parties to the apartments of that Princess, rather than lose the
gratification of her society.
"During all this time, however, Du Barry, the Duc d'Aiguillon, and the
aunts-Princesses, took special care to keep themselves between her and
any tenderness on the part of the husband Dauphin, and, from different
motives uniting in one end, tried every means to get the object of their
hatred sent back to Vienna."