THE DAUPHINESS AND MARIA THERESA

History does not contain a more curious correspondence than that between the Empress Maria Theresa and her ambassador at Versailles, Count de Mercy-Argenteau. Never perhaps was the character of a sovereign and the talent of a diplomatist revealed in a more striking manner. Maria Theresa shows herself completely in her letters. What we have here is the political woman accustomed to power and domination; the woman of brains who sees, knows, and directs everything; the mother who inspires her children with fear and veneration; the sovereign who occupies herself with the same solicitude and the same authority in her family and her empire. Her counsels are like orders, her language is the language of command. Although her daughter may have become a Frenchwoman, she always regards her as a German princess, and would like to make of her a sort of Austrian ambassadress, accredited to Louis XV., but subordinate to Count de Mercy. Astonished that a young girl of fifteen should not have the penetration, the experience, the maturity of a matron, the Empress does not admit the right in Marie Antoinette to have the slightest imperfection. To her, the Dauphiness always remains the schoolgirl of Schönbrun and the Burg.

Like all those who govern, Maria Theresa has a passion to be well informed. The most minute details interest her. She wants to know the least particulars of the physical and moral life of her daughter. Nothing escapes her. She thinks of everything: toilettes, reading, conversations, dances, promenades, all pass under her rigorous, incessant control. Were she installed in the château of Versailles she could not know all its detours in a more thorough manner. She does inhabit it in spirit; she knows all the secrets, all the snares. Take care! she says to her daughter every minute. Knowing the French character as well as if she had lived in France all her life, she knows what to think of human levity, malice, ingratitude, and cowardice, and what a fund of envy and meanness exists in the character of many courtiers. The Capitol does not make her forget the Tarpeian rock for her daughter, and at certain moments she utters such dismal words, she casts such an unquiet look toward the future, that one might think that, divining the destiny of her Antoinette, she sees the scaffold in the misty distance.

On his side, the correspondent of the Empress is a model of diplomacy. Supple, active, reserved, knowing how to put himself on good terms with all who can be useful to his government, agreeable to Louis XV. and the royal family, to the Duke de Choiseul and the Duke d’Aiguillon, to the devotees and to Madame Du Barry, an observer of the first order and an indefatigable worker, exact to minutiæ, prudent to exaggeration, skilful in handling all the pieces of the most complicated diplomatic chessboard, Count de Mercy-Argenteau is in love with his profession. When he addresses his _very humble reports_ to his sovereign, he brings to them an excessive care and zeal; if he happens to receive the felicitations of the _Sacred Majesty_, as he always calls the Empress, he breaks into transports of joy. The letters he wrote to Maria Theresa independently of his official despatches, form a veritable journal of the existence of the Dauphiness. Everything is there with its date and hour. The ambassador knows what passes in the salons of the Princess, and knows also what does not pass in her alcove. A chambermaid, a physician, what am I saying? A confessor would not be better informed.

As to the Dauphiness, she is still a child. Sweet, simple, ingenuous, incredulous of evil, mocking a little at etiquette, sincerely pious, but with an always amiable piety, regretting Vienna but loving Versailles, German by her memories but French by her heart, full of respect and affection for her august mother but finding her at times a trifle too severe, the seductive Princess, on account of the inexplicable coldness of her husband, is still a young girl although a married woman.

If she has some little defects, if from time to time she can be accused of some trifling imprudences which one day she will expiate in a manner so cruel, they are the imprudences and defects which have the excuse of youth and also its charm. Marie Antoinette, and it is this which gives her physiognomy something so sympathetic and so graciously feminine, Marie Antoinette has the spirit of her age, its gaiety, sprightliness, unconcern. This amiable Dauphiness, who calls Louis XV. papa, and who throws her arms about his neck without asking his permission; who, still a child herself, takes her chief pleasure in the society of children, and who, when she sees her lady of honor appear, the severe and punctilious Countess de Noailles, says with a laugh: “Now let us behave properly; here comes Madame l’Etiquette;” this Princess, so natural and charming, contrasts with her surroundings as spring does with winter. She resembles the young trees full of sap which grow freely in the fields, and not those puny shrubs in the park of Versailles which cannot grow except under rule and square. Her simplicity is her most beautiful ornament. Her richest diadem is her long fair hair. Not one of her jewels can be compared to the sparkle of her eyes.

Well, if one can believe it, this Princess whose innocence and gentleness should soften all hearts, is already surrounded by enemies. Mercy-Argenteau wrote to Maria Theresa, April 16, 1771: “It is almost impossible that Your Majesty should form a very exact idea of the horrible confusion prevailing here in everything. The throne is debased by the extension of the favorite’s credit and the malevolence of her partisans. The nation vents itself in seditious proposals and indecent writings in which the person of the monarch is not spared. I have not hesitated to make these representations to Madame the Dauphiness, and have frequently called her attention to the fact that the only possible means of avoiding the inconveniences of a time so critical is to keep profound silence concerning things as well as persons, and Her Royal Highness begins to feel the necessity of this method.” The frank and expansive young girl must conduct herself like an old diplomatist. She must measure and calculate each gesture, each word, even her very silence. Everything is noted, commented on, and criticised. Underneath its majestic exterior this court is a veritable ant-hill of petty passions, petty intrigues. There is nothing but mines and countermines, ambushes, coalitions, cabals. There is Madame Du Barry’s camp, which is that of the ministers, that of Madame Adelaide and her sisters, the camp of the Duke de Choiseul’s friends, and even that of the Count de Provence, who, though so young, is already a wily politician. The Dauphiness is spied upon in the most odious manner. Her letters, her composition books, are read, and pages of them are torn out, evidently with a view to imitating her handwriting. It troubles her to find that there are double keys to her furniture. In order to preserve her mother’s letters, she is obliged to hide them under her pillows.

Maria Theresa is intensely preoccupied by this whole state of affairs. She is especially displeased with Mesdames. Although she recognizes their solid qualities and incontestable virtue, she is jealous of them, and is constantly criticising them; she will not admit that these princesses have the right to give their young niece the least advice. “I own to you,” she writes to Count de Mercy-Argenteau, February 11, 1771, “that in the stormy circumstances of the court of France, my daughter’s situation greatly disturbs me. Her nonchalance, her slight inclination for all serious application, her indiscretion (caused by her youth and vivacity), her relations with her aunts, and particularly with Madame Adelaide, who is perhaps the most intriguing and best known of the sisters, furnish me with more than one subject of fear.” Maria Theresa, who is German to the ends of her finger-nails, and who has no liking for the French nation, although she sought the alliance of the court of Versailles, experiences, moreover, a sort of jealousy of the affection manifested for her new country by the former Archduchess. “People have a right to be astonished,” she writes to her, “at the slight cordiality and interest that you have for Germans. Believe me, the Frenchman will esteem and rely upon you more if he finds in you the German solidity and frankness. Don’t be ashamed to be German even to awkwardness.” One comprehends that a young Dauphiness of France would need a good deal of filial respect not to become a trifle impatient under this by far too Germanic advice. The Empress is sounder when, still using severe, but this time very sensible, language, she writes to her daughter, July 9, 1771: “I expect in vain every month the list of your reading and your occupations.... At your age, levities and puerilities are easily excused, but in the long run they tire everybody and you too; they will make you very uncomfortable.... I cannot conceal from you that people are already beginning to talk about them, and by that you will lose the grand idea that has been formed of you, an essential point for us who are on the theatre of the great world. A life constantly dissipated, without the slightest serious occupation, will affect even your conscience.”

There are moments when the mother’s exhortations to her daughter are veritable lectures, when her pen is like a ferule. One may judge of them by this letter of September 30, in the same year, wherein, after complaining especially because the Dauphiness is not gracious enough toward Madame Du Barry, the imperious sovereign wrathfully exclaims: “You are so greatly lacking toward your benefactor on the very first occasion when you can oblige him!... Observe now for whom? By a shameful wish to please people who have enthralled you by treating you as a child, by procuring you rides on horseback and on donkeys, with children, with dogs; such are the great reasons which attach you by preference to them rather than to your master, and which in the long run will make you ridiculous, neither loved nor esteemed. You began so well. Your appearance, your judgment, when not controlled by others, is always correct and what it should be.... I require you to convince the King of your respect and tenderness by all your actions, considering on every occasion what will please him.... Even should you be obliged to embroil yourself with all the others, you have but one sole aim,—to please the King and do his will.”

Marie Antoinette, accustomed to respect her mother as much as God himself, always bends before this authority which admits of no reply. Sometimes she happens to forget certain recommendations, but she is assuredly excusable. As Count de Mercy writes the Empress in a letter of June 16, 1772, “the bad manners of her companions, the habit of receiving neither reprimand nor contradiction nor even advice from the King, nor from Monsieur the Dauphin either, and the three hundred leagues which separate her from you, are doubtless the reasons why severe letters have not always produced the desired effect.” Moreover, Maria Theresa relents at times. From the tone of reprimand she passes to that of tenderness. Occasionally her maternal admiration speaks in accents worthy of Madame de Sévigné. She writes to her daughter, October 31, 1771: “You have something so touching in your whole person that it is hard to deny you anything; this is a gift of God for which you should thank Him, and use it for His glory and the welfare of others.” It is because she would like to have her perfect, both physically and morally, that she says in a letter of December 31, 1772: “What! the Antoinette of twelve or thirteen years knew how to receive her company very prettily, and say something polite and gracious to every one; this truth has been evident to all Vienna, the whole Empire, Lorraine, and France,—and is the Dauphiness now to be embarrassed by a simple private person? Do not accustom yourself to these frivolous excuses; embarrassment, fear, timidity, chimeras! People employ such terms as those without reflection, to excuse a bad habit of not incommoding themselves. You know how you have gained hearts by affability; you see the opposite of that daily; can you allow yourself to neglect this important point. I am ending the old year with my sermons; you will wrong me if you do not accept them as the greatest mark of my tenderness and the interest I take in your future welfare, with which I am continually occupied.”

Marie Antoinette, who is all goodness and sensibility, bears her mother no ill will for her often severely given counsels, and her filial piety is never in fault. One should read, in a letter of Count de Mercy-Argenteau, February 29, 1772, the account of the grief inspired in this charming Dauphiness by the news that her mother was slightly ill: “The first word troubled Madame the Dauphiness so greatly that she could hear nothing further. She returned to her cabinet, dissolved in tears, and unable to say anything except that she was not in a condition to give audience. She asked for a rosary Your Majesty had given her, and began to pray. Monsieur the Dauphin, who did not leave her, seemed to share very sincerely the grief of his august spouse.”

Maria Theresa sometimes complains that her daughter’s letters are not long enough. This is because she has not a clear notion of the difficulties the young Princess encounters when she tries to write to her in peace. As M. de Mercy-Argenteau tells her, Marie Antoinette always writes quickly, lest she should be surprised either by her husband or her aunts, to whom she never shows the letters she addresses to her mother. Her correspondence is certainly not a masterpiece of style. But, honestly, could one expect a young German girl to write French like a member of the Academy? At least, the letters of Marie Antoinette, simple, natural, and without literary pretension, have the advantage of proving a good heart, a pure conscience, a character full of frankness.

When one goes to the bottom of history instead of studying nothing but the surface, what especially strikes one is the slight difference that exists between sovereigns and ordinary people. Does not the great Maria Theresa, the illustrious Empress, remind one, in spite of all her prestige, of those good middle-class women who are constantly telling their daughters to sit up straight? Palaces, thatched hovels, garrets, the same joys and sorrows, passions and vexations, are found under the roof of each.

To sum up, there is nothing grave in the reproaches which Maria Theresa addresses to her daughter, and at any other epoch the Dauphiness would have received nothing but praise. But at that time people were inclined to criticise everything, and the first breath of the Revolution was agitating French society.

As yet, however, the delightful, the incomparable, Dauphiness is the idol of the court and the nation. What charm! what brilliancy! what attractions! How she eclipses all other women! What a difference there is between her and her sisters-in-law, the Countess de Provence and the Countess d’Artois! Everywhere and always, Marie Antoinette is the first, in grace as well as beauty. One would say she is already on the throne. When, at the beginning of the second act of Gluck’s _Iphigenia_, the chorus exclaims: “Sing, let us celebrate our queen,” the public turns toward the Dauphiness and salute her enthusiastically, as if her reign had already begun. How she animates by her gaiety, how she illumines by her smile, this grand palace of Versailles which, without her, would be so dismal! What life there is in the private balls which she gives every Monday in her apartments! People dance there for the pleasure of dancing, without ceremony and without etiquette. The ladies come in white dominos, and the men in their ordinary attire. Here shines one of the most poetic and sympathetic of women, the Princess de Lamballe, that twenty-year-old widow who will be Marie Antoinette’s best and most faithful friend; the Princess de Lamballe, who surrounds with such affectionate cares her father-in-law, that venerable Duke de Penthièvre, to whom Florian said, in dedicating to him a Biblical poem:[49]

“Pieux comme Booz, austère avec douceur, Vous aimez les humains et craignez le Seigneur. Hélas! un seul soutien manque à votre famille; Vous n’épousez pas Ruth, mais vous l’avez pour fille.”[50]

At these Monday balls, to which only the élite of the nobility are admitted, and invitations to which make people so proud and happy, those young men make their appearance in society who are about to become all the rage, the great liberal lords, the chevaliers of new France, the Lafayette, Lauzun, La Marck, Ségur, Dillon, Noailles, Lameth. The Monday festivities are not enough. Other balls are given on Wednesday, in the apartment of the Countess de Noailles, Marie Antoinette’s lady of honor. The Dauphiness comes there for the first time on the arm of her husband, who says to the Countess on entering: “I hope, Madame, that you will kindly receive the husband and the wife; we do not come here to cause embarrassment, but to share your amusements.”[51]

The Dauphin and the Count de Provence dance rather clumsily; on the other hand, the Count d’Artois, that type of the elegant gentleman, is an accomplished dancer. As to Marie Antoinette, as graceful as beautiful, as lively as she is charming, she has the gait of a goddess.

_Et vera incessa patuit dea...._

Her only defect is that of being slightly satirical. Like Count de La Marck, she makes a jest of what is ugly or unpleasant. She loves young people, she wishes them to be gay, to amuse themselves and banish gloomy thoughts. How full of life she is those winters of 1771 and 1772, when, in company with the Princess de Lamballe, she enjoys her favorite amusement, those sleigh-rides which are like a vision of Northern poetry! And how majestic, on the 8th of June, 1773, the day of her ceremonious entry into Paris, when, in a gala carriage resplendent with gold and drawn by eight horses, followed by five other equipages not less magnificent, she goes, in great pomp, first to Notre Dame, afterwards to the church of Saint Geneviève, and finally to the palace of the Tuileries.

The air is rent with enthusiastic cries, all hats are flung up, all hearts are enraptured, all hands beat wild applause. The cry, Long live the Dauphiness! issues from every breast. At every step the Princess hears them saying: “How pretty she is! How beautiful! How good she looks!” A rain of flowers descends from every balcony, every window. This is not merely joy and admiration; it is intoxication, delirium. Moved to the very depths of her soul, and forgetting this time all her sorrows and presentiments, Marie Antoinette joyfully describes to her mother this unparalleled festivity, the remembrance of which will be so sweet.

“On returning from the promenade,” she writes, June 14, 1773, “we climbed an open terrace (at the Tuileries) and remained there half an hour. I cannot tell you, my dear mamma, what transports of affection were displayed for us at this moment. Before leaving it we waved our hands to the people, which gave them great pleasure. How fortunate we are in our position to gain the friendship of a whole people so cheaply! And yet there is nothing so precious; I felt that thoroughly, and shall never forget it. Another point which caused great pleasure on this beautiful day was the conduct of Monsieur the Dauphin. He made wonderful replies to all the addresses, noticed everything that had been done for him, and especially the joy and eagerness of the people, to whom he displayed great goodness.... To-morrow we are going to the Opera at Paris; this is greatly desired, and I even think we shall go two other days to the French and Italian Comedies. Every day I am more and more sensible of what my dear mamma has done for my establishment. I was the youngest of all, and she has treated me as if I were the eldest; hence my soul is filled with the most tender thankfulness.”