Free To the scaffold by Carolly Erickson Page B

dauphin, who might become King at any time. Hers was the rising power, and the experienced courtiers, hardened by years of intrigue, presumed that she would lose no time in building and consolidating her faction. They were suspicious of her, and guarded in her presence; behind her back, many of them did all they could to work against her.
    Under other circumstances the backstairs rivalries within the royal household would have had limited significance. But France in 1770 was a nation in disorder, with a vacuum at the center of power. According to the Austrian envoy in Paris, Count Mercy,

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    who was extremely well informed, a "horrible confusion" reigned at Versailles, and the palace was "the abode of treachery, hatred and revenge." "Everything is worked by intrigues and inspired by personal ambitions," he wrote, "and it seems as if the world had renounced even the semblance of uprightness."^ With no strong authority to provide moral ballast and give direction to affairs, the government became nothing but a sordid scramble for influence, with the rewards going to the greediest and most ruthless of the scramblers. And with the prospective ruler showing even less capability than the feeble Louis XV, seasoned observers such as Mercy shuddered to contemplate the future.
    "This monarchy," Mercy had written a year before Antoinette came to France, "is so decadent that it would not be regenerated except by a successor of the present monarch who, by his qualities and talents, would repair the extreme disorder of the kingdom." But the dauphin lacked the requisite qualities and talents. "This prince, by his face and his talk," Mercy thought, "shows only an extremely limited intelligence, much clumsiness."^
    It would be up to Antoinette, many thought, to shore up what rudimentary abilities her husband had, to civilize him, if possible, and in time to make a king of him. To do all this would have strained the capabilities of a mature, sophisticated woman. To expect it of a fourteen-year-old naif was futility itself.
    On the afternoon of her wedding day, Antoinette was installed in the apartments allotted to her, a smallish but exquisitely appointed suite of rooms with painted walls decorated with carved reliefs. Apart from her bedroom and bathroom, there were two sitting-rooms, a large library, two antechambers, and a private oratory. Here she received the officers of her household, each of whom in turn took an oath of fidelity to serve her. Her lady of honor, gentleman of honor, almoner, intendants, maitre d'hotel, first equerry and controllers-general all knelt to repeat their oaths, having themselves received the oaths of their dozens of underlings. There were nearly two hundred of these concerned with the preparation and serving of her food alone, from cooks to butlers to wine-bearers to the children of the scullery. A ftirther hundred or so servants and officers looked after her every personal need, from the wig-maker who did double service as bath attendant to the two apothecaries to the nineteen valets de chambre. Antoinette had twelve aristocratic ladies to attend her and keep her company

    and fourteen waiting women to serve her, two preachers, five chaplains and an almoner (all of whom made Abbe Vermond superfluous), six equerries, nine ushers, two doctors and four surgeons, a clock-maker, a tapestry-maker, eighteen lackeys, a fencing master and two muleteers.
    The afternoon was well advanced before the procession of servants and officials ended and the last of them bowed his way out of the dauphine's apartments. But the events of this exhausting day were far from over. The King, his grandson and granddaughter again presented themselves to public view, this time playing cavagnole at a table in the royal apartments while six thousand invited guests took advantage of the privilege of watching them. At the appropriate hour a wedding supper was held in the newly completed opera house, an exquisitely ornate theater