Free To the scaffold by Carolly Erickson

King Louis acceded to, scarcely bothering to read documents before he signed them.
    It was as if he ruled in absentia, but no alternative to this sorry state of affairs seemed possible, given the King's frequent lapses into vacuity. "When he is thoughtful," an English traveler wrote describing King Louis, "and not disposed to speak, he is apt to open his mouth, fix his eyes upon some one object, and let his chin drop; to such who only see him at such times, his looks are rather unfavorable.""* He looked, in fact, as if he were drunk, and there were whispers at court that the King was growing much too fond of the bottle.^
    Inconsequential and vacuous. King Louis was also virtually devoid of accomplishments, unless stag-hunting and making coffee could be considered accomplishments. Spectators who came to Versailles to watch the King eat noted the skill with which he knocked the top off a soft-boiled egg with his fork, and applauded the feat. Certainly the King was not a success as a husband, or as a father. He had ignored his late wife Queen Marie for a procession of mistresses, leaving her to fill her life with quilt-making, drawing, and long tedious evenings with her ladies of honor.

    Toward his children the King was unpleasant at best. He had quarreled with his late son Louis, whose views on the monarchy diverged sharply from his own, and he looked on his four unmarried daughters with contempt, mocking and ridiculing them and treating them as nonentities. His grandson and heir he despised, not just because of his eccentricity but because there was nothing remotely virile about him, and Lx)uis himself was nothing if not virile. The dauphin Louis was certainly not yet ready for marriage, if indeed he ever would be, and at the thought of this his grandfather was apt to fall into one of his glassy-eyed reveries.
    Antoinette joined the King and the dauphin in the capacious royal carriage for the drive through the forest to the chateau of Compi^gne. There she met the rest of her new relatives, a crowd of dukes and duchesses, princes and princesses whose names and titles must have gone by her in a blur, especially as there were so many of them and so many other courtiers for her to meet as well. Besides, there were only two days until the wedding, and many last-minute details required attention. After supper—and one wonders what sort of meal it was, with the pretty and amiable young newcomer seated amid a dozen or more highly judgmental strangers, her bridegroom so shy he barely looked at her, her own manners noticeably less formal than those of the French—she was shown to her room, where she received the King's Master of Ceremonies. He presented her with twelve wedding rings, which she tried on one after another until she found one that fit her perfectly. It was put away until the ceremony.
    Two days later, at midmoming, Antoinette rode in her coach through the high ornate iron gates of the palace of Versailles. The sheer immensity of the sprawling stone edifice, with its enormous flanking wings and its three vast courtyards, must have made an impression on her, though she never mentioned her reactions to it or her opinions of it in letters to her mother. Far larger and grander than Schonbrunn, Versailles was also much older, and on the day Antoinette first glimpsed it, the palace looked shabby and unkempt. The fountains were broken, their basins dirty and full of debris. The canal too was dirty and mud-clogged. In the gardens, many statues had fallen over, and negligent servants and gardeners let them lie.
    Dark and overcast though the morning was, no lanterns had been hung along the streets leading to the palace, and as An-

    $6 CAROLLY ERICKSON
    toinette^s carriage passed through the iron gates, there was no band waiting to serenade her with fife and drum, no welcoming escort of Swiss Guards or other soldiery. People milled about in the forecourt as always, and stared at the carriage as it rolled into the courtyard and