Marie Antoinette (46 page)

Marie Antoinette’s own domestic life was singularly unchanged. The royal family continued to go to Mass in public as they had done at Versailles. She worked at her tapestry with her ladies, as she had always liked to do, including large-scale projects for covering furniture. She played billiards with the King, who delighted in teaching “our dear Pauline” the game.
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Above all, the Queen spent time with her children who were, as she told Princesse Louise, growing up: “They are always with me and give me my sole happiness.” Madame Royale now had all her lessons in her mother’s presence, Marie Antoinette being at last able to play that assiduous maternal role that she had originally planned for herself.

As for the Dauphin, he made everyone happy with his innocent gaiety. He was able to profit from the gardens of the Tuileries, for that fresh air and exercise which the Queen had told the Marquise de Tourzel were essential to his health; there (in sharp contrast to his mother) he was generally admired by doting spectators. Many people, whatever their political views, found it possible to see in the lively, handsome little boy a more agreeable symbol of the future of France than that represented by his corpulent, graceless father or his malevolent Austrian mother. Playing in the palace gardens, he became one of the sights of Paris, on one occasion presenting flowers to a large body of visiting Bretons until they ran out and then tearing lilac leaves in two to complete the process. Soon, with the resilience of youth, the Dauphin had quite forgotten his original disgust with the Tuileries. When asked whether he preferred Versailles or Paris, Louis Charles replied: “Paris, because I see so much more of Papa and Maman.” It was true.

Perhaps it was the balm of her children’s constant presence that caused the Queen’s health—long a cause for concern—to improve once she was settled in the Tuileries. Although her confidential communications to Count Mercy referred without cease to her “agitation,” the fact was that, according to Madame Campan, her frequent “hysterical disorders” vanished. Or perhaps it was simply, in Madame Campan’s words, that “all the faculties of her soul were called forth to support her physical strength.” In other words, Marie Antoinette, the daughter of Maria Teresa, knew how to put on a good show.

Marie Antoinette—for all the abuse heaped upon her, the people who deliberately splashed her with their carriages when she was out walking, the others who talked loudly and insultingly about her a short, safe distance away—was still expected to exercise that traditional benevolence that was an integral part of the duties of the Queen of France. Demands were quickly made that she should fund the many poor women encumbered with debt who had pawned their vital goods. The King merely authorised the redemption of pledges for goods worth one louis or less, but still the principle of the Queen’s innate compassion was maintained. In early January 1790 she presided over a committee meeting of a
charité maternelle
in aid of poverty-stricken mothers, at which a report was submitted to about forty women present. Marie Antoinette impressed the rich ladies in attendance by inviting everyone to sit in her presence. When she was asked to state her preferences, since funds did not permit helping more than two mothers at a time, she tactfully announced that she had consulted the National Assembly on the subject. Miraculously their two candidates were also her own. The Queen then gave a further financial gift, which in the words of one of those present, Madame Necker, would enable them to help further unfortunates in “the asylum of misery.”

In February various visits were paid to a foundling hospital. The Queen showed the Dauphin, shortly to have his fifth birthday on 27 March 1790, a baby recently discovered on the steps of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois, the parish church of the Tuileries, and gave him a little lecture: “Don’t forget what you have seen and let your protection extend one day to these unfortunate children.” Easter Week saw the royal family, accompanied by La Fayette, paying a visit to the working-class Faubourg Saint-Antoine where most of the trouble in July had started. There were demonstrations of joy, according to the
Journal de Paris
, and acclamations when alms were presented. Mayor Bailly remarked to the Queen that Her Majesty could see for herself “the joy of these good people.” The Marquis de Bombelles (who was not present) heard that Marie Antoinette replied: “Yes, the people are good when their masters visit them, but they are savage when they visit their masters.” At which the Mayor blushed. Whether the Queen gave such a pointed answer or not—it has an apocryphal ring at a time when Marie Antoinette was bending every effort to show “patience, prudence”—she certainly impressed a member of the National Guard on the same date. Standing very close to her, he admired the display of composure and even enjoyment that she put on at the public dinner.

The next day, Maundy Thursday, both King and Queen washed the feet of the poor in an ancient ceremony to commemorate Easter Week. Another member of the National Guard, who watched, was impressed by the efficiency of the ritual: twelve poor people, dressed in new clothes at the expense of the King, sat on a bench, their right foot bare and resting on the edge of basin of hot water. The King “washed” the foot by flinging water over it from a little scoop in his hand. Next the Queen took a napkin from the stack on the silver platter held out to her and passed it over the newly pristine foot before moving on to the next foot—and the next napkin. Alms were then presented as the beneficiaries hastily resumed their right shoes and helped themselves to provisions set out in wooden boxes.

Only the First Communion of Marie Thérèse, planned for 8 April at Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois, showed signs that the old routines were in some way diminished. The King did not attend, although the Queen did so, incognito. It was traditional for a Daughter of France to receive a handsome set of diamonds from the monarch on such a sanctified occasion but Louis XVI judged that such a present would be intolerably extravagant in view of the general financial need. He told Marie Thérèse that she was too sensible to worry about such artificial pleasure, and would undoubtedly prefer to go without her jewels rather than that the public should go without bread. In a tender blessing, as his daughter knelt before him, the King told Madame Royale that her destiny remained unknown, whether she would stay in France or live in another kingdom . . . And he prayed openly for the necessary grace to satisfy those other “children” of his, the subjects over whom God had given him dominion.

On 12 May the Mayor of Paris presented the King with a commemorative gold medal with the inscription, “Henceforth I shall make this my official residence.” Bailly in his speech said that those words were engraved in the hearts of all citizens. The Queen and the Dauphin received similar medals, in silver and bronze. Marie Antoinette was assured by Bailly that the people wanted her to be always at the side of the King, while the Dauphin (“Monseigneur”) was to be instructed by the Queen’s example as well as the King’s. It was all very flowery. Ten days later the King and Queen walked on foot, as was customary, in the procession of the Blessed Sacrament, which marked the feast of Corpus Christi, and proceeded to Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois. The National Assembly, invited to participate, did so happily, with its president walking on the right of the King.

This seemingly unchanged royal round masked the fact that vast political changes were not only taking place but were being accepted by the King. Catherine the Great, in a letter handwritten from despotic Russia and which Marie Antoinette showed to Madame Campan, advocated showing magnificent indifference to recent events: “Kings ought to go their own way without worrying about the cries of the people, as the moon goes on its course without being stopped by the cries of dogs.” This was not an option available to the King of France as a new Constitution was slowly—very slowly—hammered out by the National Assembly. There was a growing and deleterious gap, from the point of view of the King, between the apparent executive and the actual legislative arm of the government, since the National Assembly decreed that the King’s ministers could not be chosen from among its deputies. Political compromise seemed of the essence to preserve the King’s remaining authority. On 4 February, on the advice of Necker, the King went so far as to describe himself as “at the head of the Revolution” in a speech to the Assembly, having spent a rather pleasanter portion of the day stag-hunting. This placatory scene infuriated royalists abroad, who from exile found it easy to denounce the diminution of the King’s power.

Louis XVI’s perceived weakness also had its critics within the bosom of his Parisian family. Madame Elisabeth, for so long the devoted pious gentle sister, was developing into a figure of proud conservatism, under the remote control of her brother Artois. She interpreted the events at Versailles from a paternalistic angle as being examples of the people’s dreadful ingratitude, adding, “If I were the King, I’d do something about making them regret it.” Revealingly, she told a correspondent that the memories of that night—an outrage of the divinely prescribed order—had almost turned her against praying. By May 1790, Madame Elisabeth admitted to Artois, in sentiments that divided her sharply from the brother and sister-in-law with whom she resided, that she regarded civil war as “necessary” with bloodletting being somehow therapeutic.

Like Louis XVI and unlike Elisabeth, Marie Antoinette believed in compromise. On 4 February 1790, when the King spoke to the National Assembly, she received some deputies on the terrace of the Tuileries where she was playing with Louis Charles. She made a gracious speech beginning, “Messieurs . . . behold my son,” and was told by one deputy to watch over “this precious kid.” The Queen had, in fact, had a speech prepared for her by the Keeper of the Seals, but in the event she spoke without a text. Her words summed up her public philosophy. In referring to France as “the nation I had the glory to adopt when I united myself with the King,” she went on to say that “my title of mother assures my links [with it] for ever.”

Yet even as these aspirations were entertained towards a state where the King still had some limited powers—a kind of constitutional monarchy, a parallel world was being developed. In this world the notion of escape was ever present. Immediately after the events of 6 October 1789, Marie Antoinette summoned the Secretary of the Queen’s Commandment, Augeard, to the Tuileries and gave him one of the little keys that enabled her confidential servants to slip in and out without observation. Augeard suggested that a loyal person should proceed to Vienna and ask for help. When the Queen asked him, “And who should that be?” the Secretary replied, “Your Majesty.” “What!” exclaimed the Queen. “I would leave the King alone.” But Augeard was full of practical plans: the Dauphin could be dressed as a girl, in clothes matching those of Madame Royale, while the Queen herself would be totally unadorned. And she would leave a letter for her husband (which could be made public) along these lines: “It is impossible for me to disguise the fact that I have had the terrible misfortune to displease your subjects.” She would rather condemn herself to “a secluded retreat outside your dominions” than be seen to interfere with the making of the new Constitution.

According to Augeard, the Queen listened to him seriously before rejecting the plan. On 19 October 1789, she told him: “All reflection is over; I shall not depart; my duty is to die at the feet of the King.” Nevertheless it is evident that not only Marie Antoinette but well-wishers around her were looking anew at her situation. On 12 November, for example, Mercy inspected the marriage contract hammered out nearly twenty years earlier. He noted that in the case of her widowhood, the Queen was free to stay in France or go to Austria. In late 1789, it is clear that her freedom of action rather than her widowhood was the issue.

What is also clear is that one element already present in discussions of escape at Versailles on 15 July 1789—the reluctance of the Queen to leave the King’s side—remained firmly in place. As plans to legalize divorce in France were debated in 1790, being finally enacted in November, this reluctance gained rather than lost its strength, as Augeard would testify to Marie Antoinette’s sister Maria Carolina. Another element present from the beginning was the pathological indecision of the King. This, however sympathetic in a good man who feared to make things worse for his subjects, yet could not see how to make them better, combined fatally with the ultimate respect for his royal authority of those around him. At this stage Marie Antoinette hesitated to make up the King’s mind for him as she had once tried to do, so conscious was she of herself as a liability to the monarchy.

All of this was seen to disastrous effect in various abortive schemes during the spring of 1790. The details of the Favras Affair, including the participation of the Comte de Provence, remain mysterious since the conspiracy never came to fruition. The Marquis de Favras, accused of a plot to kidnap the King and take him to Péronne, was tried and executed on 19 February 1790, leaving Louis XVI and Provence to grant his widow a pension. The Queen, who wanted to comfort the widow and her child but did not dare do so publicly, also sent fifty louis. When a similar scheme was mooted by the Comte d’Inisdal, it was resolved to seek the King’s agreement. The King first of all took refuge in silence, and then when his wife insisted that he must say something, muttered: “Tell the Comte d’Inisdal that I cannot consent to being abducted.” Was that tacit approval—so long as Louis himself could not be blamed? If not, what was it? The fact was that the attitude of the King was crucial and he was, as he had always been, “irresolute.”