Free Marie Antoinette by Antonia Fraser

German. Her attendants spoke French badly on the whole, while in Vienna “everyone speaks three languages”—Italian being the third—which did not help. A year after Vermond had arrived, Antoine was speaking French with ease and fairly well; even if she was not idiomatically perfect, the ugly phrases were being eliminated. By the time she left Austria, she was speaking fluently, according to an independent witness, although with a slight German accent.
    French history was more of a problem; it emerged that Madame Antoine did not even know the history of her own country. Vermond painted a pretty picture of his young pupil’s earnest attempts to improve her knowledge; how she was particularly interested in those Queens of France who had been members of the House of Austria. Maria Teresa listened in on some of these lessons. When the mother asked the daughter over which European country she would prefer to rule, the answer, amazing to relate, was France! “Because it was the country of Henri IV and Louis XIV, the one so good, the other so great.” In this instance, one cannot help suspecting that some prior coaching may have gone on à la Brandeis.
    Madame Antoine positively liked learning about French genealogy and the French regiments, their names and colours, reported Vermond. No doubt his lectures on the great court families she would find at Versailles, their positions and influence, were listened to with attention—as they should have been. Nevertheless the French would still find that Marie Antoinette’s education had been “much neglected,” which led to private accusations of stupidity, so perhaps Vermond struggled finally in vain with a mind without an intellectual or speculative cast. *11
    Nevertheless the Abbé’s reports on her character were generally favourable; he praised the sweetness and kindness of her nature—while deploring her tendency to let herself be distracted. Her appearance had only one fault: that she was rather small. “If as is to be expected, she grows a little more, the French will need no other token by which to recognize their sovereign.” A secret report to France was more succinct: Madame Antoine was delightful and would give no trouble.
    The Marquis de Durfort made the formal application on 6 June 1769 for the betrothal of the Dauphin aged nearly fifteen and the Archduchess aged thirteen and a half. Six days later a fête of more than usual magnificence was held at Laxenburg on the eve of the name-day of the future Dauphine. The gravity and dignity of Madame Antoine ravished every eye. Everyone knew that a glorious future beckoned for the youngest daughter of the Empress, for as in a fairy story, hers was to be the most splendid establishment of all. Or as Maria Teresa told Marie Antoinette: “If one is to consider only the greatness of your position, you are the happiest of your sisters and all princesses.” To Louis XV, however, the Empress wrote from Laxenburg along rather different lines: “Her age craves indulgence.” In this suggestive vein, Maria Teresa asked the French King to act “as a father” to the future Dauphine.

CHAPTER FOUR
    SENDING AN ANGEL
    “Farewell, my dearest child. A great distance will separate us . . . Do so much good to the French people that they can say that I have sent them an angel.”
    M ARIA T ERESA’S PARTING WORDS TO HER DAUGHTER, 1770
    As Count Khevenhüller set about the highly elaborate preparations for a daughter of Austria to marry a son of France, the Empress decided to spend the modern notion of quality time with Antoine. It took the form of a votive pilgrimage made together in August 1769 to Mariazell in northern Styria. Here, at the shrine in the Basilica, behind a silver grille donated by the Empress who made her First Communion here, a twelfth-century wooden image of the Blessed Virgin Mary— Magna Mater Austriae —was venerated. *12
    The journey was intended not only to bind Maria Teresa and Marie Antoinette together