The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France - Charles Duke Yonge (ereader that reads to you .TXT) 📗

she wrote he had killed forty head of game. (She did not mention that a French sportsman's bag was not confined to the larger game, but that thrushes, blackbirds, and even, red-breasts, were admitted to swell the list.) And the increased facilities for companionship with him that her riding afforded increased his tenderness for her, so that she was happier than ever. Except that as yet she saw no prospect of presenting the empress with a grandchild, she had hardly a wish ungratified.

Her taste for open-air exercise of this kind added also to the attachment felt for her by the lower classes, from the opportunities which arose out of it for showing her unvarying and considerate kindness. The contrast which her conduct afforded to that of previous princes, and indeed to that of all the present race except her husband, caused her actions of this sort to be estimated rather above their real importance. But how great was the impression which they did make on those who witnessed them may be seen in the unanimity with which the chroniclers of the time record her forbidding her postilions to drive over a field of corn which lay between her and the stag, because she would rather miss the sight of the chase than injure the farmer; and relate how, on one occasion, she gave up riding for a week or two, and sent her horses back from Compiegne to Versailles, because the wife of her head-groom was on the point of her confinement, and she wished her to have her husband near her at such a moment; and on another, when the horse of one of her attendants kicked her, and inflicted a severe bruise on her foot, she abstained from mentioning the hurt, lest it should bring the rider into disgrace by being attributed to his awkward management.

Not that the intrigues of the mistress and her adherents were at all diminished. They were even more active than ever since the marriage of the Count de Provence, who, in an underhanded way, instigated his wife to show countenance to Madame du Barri, and who allowed, if he did not encourage, the mistress and her friends to speak slightingly of the dauphiness in his presence. But, as Marie Antoinette felt firmer in her own position, she could afford to disregard the malice of these caballers more than she had felt that she could do at first, and even to defy them. On one occasion that the Count de Provence was imprudent enough to discuss some of his schemes with the door open while she was in the next room, she told him frankly that she had heard all that he said, and reproached him for his duplicity; and the dauphin coming in at the moment, she flew to him, throwing her arms round his neck, and telling him how she appreciated his honesty and candor, and how the more she compared him with the others, the more she saw his superiority. Indeed, she soon began to find that the Countess de Provence was as little to be trusted as her husband; and the only member of the family whom she really liked, or of whom she had at all a favorable opinion, was the Count d'Artois, who, though not yet out of the school-room, "showed," as she told her mother, "sentiments of honesty which he could never have learned of his governor.[8]"

Her indefatigable guardian, Mercy, reported to the empress that she improved every day. He had learned to conceive a very high idea of her abilities; and he dilated with especial satisfaction on the powers of conversation which she was developing; on her wit and readiness in repartee; on her originality, as well as facility of expression; and on her perfect possession of the royal art of speaking to a whole company with such notice of each member of it, that each thought himself the person to whom her remarks were principally addressed. She possessed another accomplishment, also, of great value to princes--a tenacious recollection of faces and names. And she had made herself acquainted with the history of all the chief nobles, so as to be able to make graceful allusions to facts in their family annals of which they were proud, and, what was perhaps even more important, to avoid unpleasant or dangerous topics. The king himself was not insensible to the increase of attraction which her charms, both of person and manner, conferred on the royal palace. He was perfectly satisfied with the civility of her behavior to Madame du Barri, who admitted that she had nothing to complain of. And the only point in which even Mercy, the most critical of judges, saw any room for alteration in her conduct was a certain remissness in bestowing her notice on men of real eminence, and on foreign visitors if they were not of the very highest rank; the remark as to the latter class being perhaps dictated by a somewhat excessive natural susceptibility, and by a laudable desire that any Germans who returned from France to their own country should sing her praises in her native land.

Perhaps one of the strongest proofs of the regard in which, at this time, she was held by all parties in the court is found in the circumstance that the Count de Provence himself very soon found it impossible to continue his countenance to the intrigues against her which he had previously favored. He preferred ingratiating himself and the countess with her. Marie Antoinette was always placable, and from the first had been eager, as the head of the family, to place her sister-in-law at her ease; so that when the count evinced his desire to stand on a friendly footing with her, she showed every disposition to meet his wishes, and the spring and summer of 1772 exhibited to the courtiers, who were little accustomed to such scenes, a happy example of an intimate family union. Marie Antoinette had always been fond of music, and, as we have seen before, ever since her arrival in France, had devoted fixed hours to her music-master. And now, on almost every evening which was not otherwise preoccupied, she gave little concerts in her apartments to the royal family, their principal attendants, and a few of the chief nobles of the court; being herself occasionally one of the performers, and maintaining her character as a hostess by a combined affability and dignity which made all her guests pleased with themselves as with her, and set all imitation and all detraction alike at defiance.


CHAPTER VI.

Marie Antoinette wishes to see Paris.--Intrigues of Madame Adelaide.-- Characters of the Dauphin and the Count de Provence.--Grand Review at Fontainebleau.--Marie Antoinette ill the Hunting Field.--Letter from her to the Empress.--Mischievous Influence of the Dauphin's Aunts on her Character.--Letter of Marie Antoinette to the Empress.--Her Affection for her Old House.--The Princes are recalled from Exile.--Lord Stormont.-- Great Fire at the Hotel-Dieu.--Liberality and Charity of Marie Antoinette.--She goes to the Bal d'Opera.---Her Feelings about the Partition of Poland.--The King discusses Politics with her, and thinks highly of her Ability.

It was a curious proof of the mischievousness as well as of the extent of the influence which Madame Adelaide and her sister were able to exert over the indolence and apathy of their father, that when Marie Antoinette had for more than two years been married and living within twelve miles of Paris, she had never yet seen it by daylight, although the universal and natural expectation of the citizens had been that the royal pair would pay the city a state visit immediately after their marriage. Her own wishes had not been consulted in the matter; for she was naturally anxious to see the beautiful city of which she had heard so much; and the delay which had taken place was equally at variance with Madame de Noailles' notions of propriety. But when the countess suggested a plan for visiting the capital _incognito_, proposing that the dauphiness should drive as far as the entrance to the suburbs, and then, having sent on her saddle-horses, should ride along the boulevards, Madame Adelaide, professing a desire to join the party, raised so many difficulties on the subject of the retinue which was to follow, and was so successful in creating jealousies between her own ladies and those in attendance on Marie Antoinette, that Madame de Noailles was forced to recommend the abandonment of the project. Mercy was far more annoyed than his young mistress; he saw that the secret object of Madame Adelaide was to throw as many hindrance as possible in the way of the dauphiness winning popularity by appearing in public, while he also correctly judged hat it would be consistent both with propriety and with her interest, as the future queen of the country, rather to seek and even make opportunities for enabling the people to become acquainted with her. But to Marie Antoinette any disappointment of that kind was a very trifling matter. She had vexations which, as she told the embassador, she could not explain even to him; and they kept alive in her a feeling of homesickness which, in all persons of amiable and affectionate disposition, must require some, time to subdue. Even when her brother, the Archduke Ferdinand, had quit Vienna in the preceding autumn to enter on the honorable post of Governor of Lombardy, she had not congratulated, but condoled with him, "feeling by her own experience how much it costs to be separated from one's family." And what she had found in her own home did not as yet make up to her for all she had left behind. Even her husband, though uniformly kind in language and behavior, was of a singularly cold and undemonstrative disposition; and it almost seemed as if the gayety which he exhibited at her balls were an effort so foreign to his nature that he indemnified himself by unpardonable boorishness on other occasions. The Count de Provence had but little more polish, and a far worse temper. Squabbles often took place between the two brothers. Though both married men, they were still in age only boys; and on more than one occasion they proceeded to acts of personal violence to each other in her presence. Luckily no one else was by, and she was able to pacify and reconcile them; but she could hardly avoid feeling ashamed of having been called on to exert herself in such a cause, or contrasting the undignified boisterousness (to give it no worse name) of such scenes with the decorous self-respect which, with all their simplicity of character, had always governed the conduct of her own relations.

Not but that, in the opinion of Mercy,[1] the dauphin was endowed by nature with a more than ordinary share of good qualities. His faults were only such as proceeded from an excessively bad education. He had many most essential virtues. He was a young man of perfect integrity and straightforwardness; he was desirous to hear the truth; and it was never necessary to beat about the bush, or to have recourse to roundabout ways of bringing it before him. On the contrary, to speak to him with perfect frankness was the surest way both to win his esteem and to convince his reason. On one or two occasions in which he had consulted the embassador, Mercy had expressed his opinions without the least reserve, and had perceived that the young prince had liked him better for his candor.

The king still kept up the habit of spending the greater part of the autumn at Compiegne and Fontainebleau, visits which Marie Antoinette welcomed as a holiday from the etiquette of Versailles. She wrote word to her mother that she was growing very fast, and taking asses' milk to keep up her strength; that that regimen, with constant exercise, was doing