The Days of the French Revolution Read Free

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    Other observers besides de Mercy had attributed Marie Antoinette’s pert and saucy behaviour to her husband’s failings as a lover. Insecure and dissatisfied, she seemed to go out of her way to shock and surprise. She did not attempt to conceal her impatience with the ridiculousness of Court protocol which required, for instance, that when she was being dressed in the morning her chemise had to be handed to her by her dame d’honneur or, if a royal Princess were in the room, the chemise must first be passed to the Princess beforebeing passed to the Queen. Once, when the dressing ceremony was about to begin, there was a scratch at the door and the Duchesse d’Orléans was admitted. The chemise was, therefore, passed to her for presentation to the Queen; but before the Queen could take it another scratch announced the entry of the Comtesse d’Artois who had precedence over the Duchesse. The Duchesse could not, however, hand it directly to the Comtesse but had to pass it first through the hands of the dame d’honneur . While these movements were being performed, with appropriately stylized emphases, the Queen stood shivering in the cold and draughty room, murmuring to herself in the German accent which she never entirely lost, ‘ C’est odieux !’
    It was further held against the Queen that she made no attempt to disguise the feelings which were always reflected in the expressions that fleeted across her pretty face. If she felt like laughing she laughed. If she felt like teasing the King she did tease the ‘poor man’ as she called him. If the mood took her to throw her hat into a lake she did so. She thought it absurd that it was considered impolite to clap musicians and dancers at royal performances, so she applauded them. She considered it preposterous that she should always be expected to be driven about by a coachman, so she bought a cabriolet and drove it herself, extremely fast. She called one of the senior and most staid of the Court ladies, the Comtesse de Noailles, to whom a pin misplaced on a gown was a tragedy, ‘Madame l’Étiquette’. And on one celebrated occasion when she fell off a donkey she laughingly refused to be helped to her feet. ‘Leave me on the ground,’ she said. ‘We must wait for “Madame l’Étiquette”! She will show us the right way to get up having fallen off a donkey.’
    She was often bored and even more often frightened of being bored. ‘To escape the terrible obsession,’ she said, ‘I must have bustle; I must have endless change.’ She could not bear to be still. She played with children and dogs; she dressed up in a plain muslin dress, net fichu and straw hat and pretended to be a dairymaid in the miniature village she had built at enormous cost in the grounds of the Trianon; she took part in amateur theatricals; she arranged and rearranged the flowers in her room; she went to horse-races and toballs; she did embroidery and frustratedly put the silks and canvas down to play the clavichord, then left that to gamble. Looking for a part to play in life, she became a patron of the opera and of the ballet; she became a leader of fashion, rejecting the elaborate dresses of her day and choosing to wear those simple and natural clothes which so well suited her, buying three or four new dresses every week, and spending far more than her allowance permitted, turning to the King to supplement it and never turning in vain.
    Indulgent as the King was towards her, however, and influenced as he was by her opinions, the King did not allow the Queen to interfere as meddlesomely in affairs of state as public opinion was led to suppose and her own naturally proud and authoritative nature seemed to suggest. Once, when she came into his room while he was working on some official papers, he said to her quietly but firmly, ‘Madame, I have business to attend to.’
    At the beginning of his reign he had called upon the services of the clever, witty Comte Jean-Frédéric de