Free To the scaffold by Carolly Erickson Page A

stopped at the entrance to the Queen's staircase.
    This being the dauphin and dauphine's wedding day, over five thousand people had been given invitations to the ceremony, and many thousands more, curious spectators who knew that this was to be a day of extraordinary pageantry, fought so persistently to get into the Hall of Mirrors that the guardsmen charged with keeping order were unable to prevent them from gaining entry. Tiers of seats had been erected in the long mirror-lined corridor especially for this day's events, but since early morning these had been filled by courtiers in their most resplendent dress, and the rest of the spectators were forced to find what space they could, flattening themselves against the temporary balustrades and pressing uncomfortably against the official guests. The press of people grew worse when thundershowers began; now everyone who had been outside in the courtyards came inside, their clothes dripping and their boots muddy.
    At one o'clock the wedding procession began to wind its way from the State Apartments toward the chapel. The Grand Master of the Ceremonies led the way, with Louis and Antoinette, hand in hand, immediately behind him. Antoinette was smiling and poised. Her small figure glittered with diamonds. An English wedding guest, the Duchess of Northumberland, was surprised at how small she was, and thought that she looked no older than twelve. The Duchess was also critical of her wedding dress. "The corps of her robe was too small," she wrote in her diary, "and left quite a broad stripe of lacing and shift quite visible, which had a bad effect between two broader stripes of diamonds. She really had quite a load of jewels."^ The dauphin, who was as usual terribly nervous, was dressed in a suit of dazzling cloth of gold covered with jewels and orders. According to the Duchess, Louis was timid and trembling, worn out with anxiety.
    Behind the bride and groom came pages carrying Antoinette's long brocade train, then the Comtesse de Noailles, her titular guardian, then the royal princes—the corpulent Due d'Orleans, the neurasthenic Due de Penthievre, the Princes of Conde and

    To the Scaffold S7
    Conti, the Dues de Chartres and Bourbon, and Comte de la Marche—and the dauphin's two younger brothers, the Comtes de Provence and Artois. After them walked the King, looking bemused, then came his ten-year-old granddaughter Princess Clothilde and his three unmarried daughters Adelaide, Victoire and Sophie, the dauphin's aunts. A crowd of be jeweled court ladies brought up the rear of the procession, which paraded the entire two hundred and fifty foot length of the Hall of Mirrors, beneath the massive chandeliers, until it reached the entrance to the palace chapel. Here, amid the baroque magnificence of white marble and gilding, another audience of spectators awaited,
    A drum and flute fanfare announced the entrance of the royals into the chapel, and all the assembled guests rose as Louis and Antoinette made their way to the altar and knelt on cushions to repeat their vows before the Archbishop of Rheims. The dauphin blushed beet-red when he placed the ring on Antoinette's finger, and fidgeted nervously throughout the nuptial Mass. Afterwards the couple signed the register, completing the formalities. Antoinette was now dauphine.
    She was dauphine—and as such she was feared, hated and resented.
    It was the paradox of Antoinette's position that, despite her extreme youth and inexperience, she was, in theory at least, the most powerftil woman at court, and at a court where the men of the royal family were weak and apathetic, this made her doubly poweriful. Her arrival upset the status quo—which had already been seriously upset the year before when the King had his buxom, exuberantly coarse mistress, Madame Du Barry, presented at court. Du Barry controlled the King, and was doing her best to gain control of the court through him. Antoinette, however, was capable of controlling the