Marie Antoinette (20 page)

Not everyone could see her attraction. Count Mercy for one thought that neither the Comtesse’s wit nor her judgement made her suitable for the Queen’s favour. He could not understand that it was her apparent passivity, her languid sweetness which convinced bystanders of her lack of “avidity or egotism,” that attracted Marie Antoinette. Afterwards the satirists were happily convinced that the Queen’s emotional dependence on Yolande de Polignac was accompanied by a full-blown sexual relationship which lost nothing in the telling, as though affection between two women must invariably take this form. But what Marie Antoinette wanted at this point was an intimacy based on sentiment rather than sex; nothing in her life so far had made her look on sex as anything but duty and a rather disagreeable duty at that. The pattern of intense friendships in France had been set by the Princesse de Lamballe. This was another, deeper version.

It was the Comtesse who was now, for better or for worse, to form the emotional centre of the world of Marie Antoinette. She came to mean to her what Maria Carolina had meant for so long in the Queen’s early life, and the Princesse de Lamballe more briefly. Furthermore, because Yolande saw to it that all her relations were part of the new royal circle, her family life came to be in effect that of the Queen, who predictably adored the two small Polignac children Armand and Aglä ié. As for Yolande’s character, it was appealing that she was notably calm by nature; she had neither the ultra-sensitivity of the Princesse de Lamballe, nor the capricious moods that increasingly swept over Marie Antoinette.

None of this corresponded to an active lesbian relationship, if the test of that is physical consummation. But it is plausible to believe that Marie Antoinette was in some romantic sense in love with Yolande de Polignac (or, in girlish language, had a crush on her), at least in the early years of their relationship. The French saying that in love there is always one who bestows kisses and the other who extends the cheek was not irrelevant; Marie Antoinette, metaphorically speaking, bestowed the kisses on the apparently gently indifferent cheek of Yolande de Polignac.

What were the favourite’s own feelings? Gentle indifference in a love object, however fascinating to an affectionate nature, may mask selfcentredness on a large scale. Yolande had an accepted lover, the clever, artistic but dominating Comte de Vaudreuil. For one seemingly lacking in avidity, she would amass an amazing amount of positions and rewards for herself, her large family, her connections and, of course, Vaudreuil.

In terms of the court, 1775, which was destined to be the year of the coronation of Louis XVI, also heralded a series of humiliations for his consort. In December, Marie Antoinette had had to break to her mother the news that she had been personally dreading for two years, and she did not expect Maria Teresa herself to receive it with “much joy.” The Comtesse d’Artois was pregnant.

The patronage of Gluck continued.
Orphée
, attended by the Queen, had been a success in the previous August, and at the beginning of January there was a new production of
Iphigénie en Aulide
, which led to a spontaneous outburst of enthusiasm for the Queen. In a moving moment in the second act, Iphigénie’s bridegroom Achilles began to praise her, predicting eternal happiness for the kingdom as a result of their marriage. As the chorus duly responded, “Let us sing, let us celebrate our Queen . . .” loud applause brought them to a halt. The tribute was acknowledged with graceful embarrassment and tears by Marie Antoinette, while others present also wept at the touching spectacle. Once the chorus was allowed to complete the verses, there were shouts of
bis
and the whole thing was repeated. Then cries of “Long live the Queen” filled the air for fifteen minutes. The Baron Grimm was moved to reflect: “What prologues, what panegyrics can compare to these outbursts of tenderness and public admiration!” The popular ecstasy, the worship of the true goddess, was in sad contrast to Marie Antoinette’s private despair over the good fortune of her sister-in-law, which she hid behind a veil of solicitation.

In February, a visit that should have brought consolation to the Queen turned sour; once again, as in the case of Mademoiselle de Lorraine’s minuet, it was mishandled by Count Mercy. The Archduke Max, the Queen’s youngest brother, chose to pay an incognito visit to Versailles using the name of the Comte de Burgau. A picture painted by Joseph Hauzinger to mark the occasion shows a gloomy-looking Marie Antoinette, hair piled high, cheeks well rouged, and a melancholy Louis XVI, with a complacent Archduke, whose corpulence at the age of eighteen was already earning him the nickname “Fat Max.” The French royal couple had reason to look depressed. The Archduke showed himself tactless in his behaviour on every level.

To Marie Antoinette’s polite French, he insisted on answering in German. Then he wore uniform, something that was expressly forbidden to the French at court in order to promote the wearing of the French silk civilian dress, as Mercy should surely have warned him. Max was gauche to a degree that appalled the civilized French; when presented with one of Buffon’s works at the Jardin du Roi by the great naturalist himself, he waved it aside, saying casually that he would hate to deprive the author of his own book. All this was, naturally enough, fodder for the Austrophobes at court. But it was the Archduke’s tactless behaviour to the Princes of the Blood, which Mercy also allowed to pass, that created a really unfortunate impression, redounding inevitably to the discredit of the Queen.

When it came to rank, an Archduke, the son and brother of an Emperor, was obviously superior to a French Prince of the Blood, who was already one rank below that of the French royal family. If, therefore, Max had arrived in full archducal fig, the Princes would have been bound by the rules of etiquette to call on him first. The “Comte de Burgau” was another matter. Since he was a foreigner of no particularly distinguished rank, it could be argued that the Comte should call on the Princes first. The situation was aggravated by the fact that Mercy bear-led Max to call on various ministers without waiting for them to make the first move. So the Princes of the Blood sulked and did not call. The Queen, misled by the ambassador, was both indignant and upset on behalf of her family. As for Max, he left behind him the sobriquet “the Arch Fool.”

It was not altogether surprising that as the coronation, planned for mid-June, approached, Mercy’s efforts to get the Queen crowned at Rheims alongside her husband were rebuffed. The burgeoning pregnancy of the Comtesse d’Artois—her baby was due in August—emphasized the tenuous nature of Marie Antoinette’s claim. Maurepas advised the King to resist the pressure of the ambassador, using the expense of a double ceremony as an excuse, but Louis XVI himself certainly went along with the decision.

Marie Antoinette expressed herself indifferent to the whole matter. She would accompany her husband, and she would order a magnificent dress from the fashionable new couturier Rose Bertin. The weight of this robe, due to the richness of the jewelled embroidery, was so great that Bertin, a woman of fearless spirit where her creations were concerned, proposed that the Duchesse de Cossé, as Mistress of the Robes, should convey it to Rheims on an expensive stretcher. When the Duchesse declined to do so, suggesting a more humdrum trunk, the Queen was reduced to carrying it in her own luggage. The expense of the Queen’s dress was, however, a comparatively minor item in the extravagance of the whole occasion. The King’s own clothing was enormously costly. Since the crown of Louis XV was found to be too small, there was a special new gold crown made for the King by the royal goldsmith, Auguste, at a cost of 6000 livres, which included rubies, emeralds, sapphires and “the finest known diamond,” the Regent. A further 150 livres went on a morocco case for it, lined with velvet.

The costs of such an elaborate coronation had already been queried by Anne Robert Turgot, the King’s new Controller General of Finance, who had been appointed in August 1774. Through a series of edicts, he was attempting to remedy the finances of government, never properly stable since the Seven Years’ War. There was now a deficit of 22 million livres with a projected further 78 million still to come. Turgot intended to reform the tax system, with measures that involved reducing the fiscal privileges of the nobility. He also tried to establish a free market in grain. Unfortunately a disastrous harvest in 1774 compounded the hardship caused by a system that was ill received in the first place. Prices rocketed and there were rumours that they were deliberately held high for profit. Violent protest in the shape of grain riots followed, the “Flour War,” as it was known, reaching Versailles on 2 May.

Turgot had argued for a simplified coronation in Paris. This would have given the impression of a King crowned by popular acclamation, with the double effect of bringing extra commerce to the capital. Perhaps it was the May riots that persuaded the King and his advisors to go for the security of Rheims, so much further from the capital. At all events, this excursion of the King and Queen, exposing themselves to the public gaze a long way from Versailles and in the direction of the north-eastern border, at a time when the physical appearance of royalties was generally speaking an unknown factor, was to have unforeseen consequences in years to come.

The day of the coronation, 11 June, was intensely hot and the long ceremony was exhausting. Nevertheless Marie Antoinette was deeply moved by the occasion. First of all her husband’s dignified concentration caused her to weep as the
Te Deum
was being sung. The King too had tears in his eyes, but the Queen’s emotion was so overwhelming that she was forced to withdraw for a short while. On her return, the eyes of the royal couple met tenderly. All of this was noted and received much approbation: “The people loved her for her tears.” Second, as Marie Antoinette told her mother afterwards, she was affected by “the most touching acclamations” on the part of the people and the evident devotion shown to them both; this despite the shortage of bread, which continued. In the evening both the King and Queen promenaded outdoors informally through the city, stoically enduring the stifling heat, Marie Antoinette on the arm of her husband.

Now, if at all, during the period of the Flour War, was the occasion when Marie Antoinette might have uttered the notorious phrase: “Let them eat cake” (
Qu’ils mangent de la brioche
). Instead, she indulged to her mother in a piece of reflection on the duties of royalty. Its tenor was the exact opposite of that phrase, at once callous and ignorant, so often ascribed to her. “It is quite certain,” she wrote, “that in seeing the people who treat us so well despite their own misfortune, we are more obliged than ever to work hard for their happiness. The King seems to understand this truth; as for myself, I know that in my whole life (even if I live for a hundred years) I shall never forget the day of the coronation.” This was the tender-hearted Marie Antoinette who, alone among the French royal family, refused to ruin the peasants’ cornfields by riding over them, because she was well aware of the minutiae of the lives of the poor.

In fact that lethal phrase had been known for at least a century previously, when it was ascribed to the Spanish princess Marie Thérèse, bride of Louis XIV, in a slightly different form: if there was no bread, let the people eat the crust (
croûte
) of the pâté. It was known to Rousseau in 1737. It was credited to one of the royal aunts, Madame Sophie, in 1751, when reacting to the news that her brother the Dauphin Louis Ferdinand had been pestered with cries of “Bread, bread” on a visit to Paris. The Comtesse de Boigne, who as a child played at the Versailles of Marie Antoinette, attributed the saying to another aunt, Madame Victoire. But the most convincing proof of Marie Antoinette’s innocence came from the memoirs of the Comte de Provence, published in 1823. No gallant guardian of his sister-in-law’s reputation, he remarked that eating
pâté en croûte
always reminded him of the saying of his own ancestress, Queen Maria Thérèse. It was, in short, a royal chestnut.
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While Marie Antoinette was still at Rheims, she attempted to alleviate the condition of the Duc de Choiseul, exiled from court for the last four and a half years. It was not a notably successful manoeuvre. The best the Queen could do was persuade the King to let her receive her former patron personally. While Choiseul’s enemies shivered at the thought of his return to power, and the Queen herself tried to present the whole episode as a political triumph for herself in an unwise letter to an Austrian diplomat, Count Rosenberg, the truth was that, thanks to Maurepas and Vergennes, she simply did not have sufficient influence with the King to restore Choiseul.

In vain Marie Antoinette boasted to Rosenberg that “the poor man”—a reference to Louis XVI—had been induced to arrange the visit himself without having any idea how his wife had manipulated him. When Maria Teresa heard of the “style, the fashion of thinking” of this letter, she delivered a stunning reprimand to her daughter. The Empress was shocked! How could she refer to her royal husband in such a manner? The hypocrisy of the rebuke—delivered to one constantly adjured to govern her husband by stealth—was breathtaking.