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.”
MARIA TERESA’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 but also to symbolize that special devotion of the House of Habsburg to the Virgin which had given them both the same prefix in her honour. And now Antoine too could take Communion at her mother’s side. The Empress subsequently offered a family-tree picture by Antoine-Assieu Moll to commemorate the occasion: “Because of the refuge the Virgin Mary has been in all her calamities . . . for the sake of her saved kingdoms and for all her descendants.”1
At this point the future Dauphine was conventionally pious—there was not much chance of being anything else where Maria Teresa as mother was concerned—but unlike Louis Auguste, there is no evidence of anything more ardent. Royal ladies were allotted father confessors; in France Marie Antoinette complained to Vermond about one of them, Bishop Guirtler: “He wanted to make me a dévote [ultra religious]!” Vermond permitted himself to wonder aloud how the Bishop had proposed to carry this out, since he had had so little success himself in correcting her behaviour. Marie Antoinette laughed.2
There was a story of Maria Teresa worrying over the future state of Antoine’s soul once she was at the morally perilous French court. The Empress was supposed to have consulted a nun who pronounced as follows: the Archduchess would have great reverses, and then she would become pious again. Henry Swinburne heard the story; he was an English Catholic who travelled widely and was especially popular in Vienna where Joseph II acted as godfather to his son. Another tale was repeated to Madame Campan by the governess to the children of Prince Kaunitz. This time the Empress was supposed to have asked the celebrated healer and pretender to miraculous powers, John Joseph Gassner: “Will my daughter be happy?” His reply was suitably gnomic: “There are crosses for all shoulders.”3
These stories were repeated years later; but insofar as they were true, their importance is surely more as an indication of the Empress’s growing anxiety about Antoine’s future than anything more sybilline. It was in line with this apprehension that Maria Teresa had already written the first of her worried-mother letters to Louis XV, craving indulgence for Antoine’s youth. Further letters would follow. Nevertheless Khevenhüller—and his opposite number in France—ploughed relentlessly on throughout the autumn, preparing the ground for Madame Antoine’s sumptuous bridal journey next spring. At the same time Prince Starhemberg, a former ambassador to France and chief assistant to Prince Kaunitz, was appointed as Ambassador Extraordinary. He was in overall charge of her progress including the crucial moment of the handover, known in Austria as the conségna and in France as the remise.
It was the Court Chamberlain’s intention to mobilize a procession whose magnificence would attest to the imperial state of Austria, despite being centred around a teenage girl. Horses were a particular concern, horses to draw the endless carriages that were consonant with the rank of the future Dauphine, horses that had to be changed with sufficient frequency to avoid delays. It was to be a procession of 132 dignitaries, swollen to twice that number by doctors, hairdressers and servants including cooks, bakers, blacksmiths and even a dressmaker for running repairs. For this there was need for 57 coaches and 376 horses; that entailed a total of 20,000 horses altogether posted along the route. The Prince of Paar, grand postmaster, was to be in control of actual movements; this meant that his wife, the Princess, could travel with Madame Antoine.4
Arranging food and drink for this travelling court—for such it was—a problem in itself. Furthermore dignity had to be maintained at all points, even in the most intimate moments of everyday existence. The French accounts show due concern for the furnishing of the rooms in which the future Dauphine was to lodge en route. Curtains were to be of crimson taffeta. Otherwise red velvet and gold embroidery was to be lavished everywhere, not only on furnishings such as the great armchairs for the travelling salon, but also in the royal commode and the royal bidet. In the meantime Khevenhüller had to grapple with the rather different point of view of the Emperor Joseph who was anxious that expense should where possible be spared. The Court Chamberlain had to explain to his imperial master that his pared-down proposal for the Austrian military escort would definitely not create a good impression on the French . . .5
Madame Antoine herself became, inevitably, the focus of courtly sightseeings. At a masked ball in December 1769 nearly 4000 people attended in order to gape at the future Dauphine and were charmed at what they saw, even if the Empress, increasingly lame and leaning heavily on her daughter’s arm, gave cause for concern. For those unable to inspect the original, there were beginning to be commercial reproductions of Marie Antoinette’s picture, in both Austria and France. Official medals were also struck, with allegorical designs and flowery inscriptions, most of which alluded to her descent, since there was frankly little of interest to be said about the bride (or the bridegroom). One sounded a note of optimism:
From the most august blood she has seen the light of day
Yet her high birth is the least of her merits.
The Austro-French alliance was another popular theme. One medal minted in France as early as March 1769 showed the young pair holding hands over an altar where a sacred fire was burning; behind them, the symbolical figures of France and Austria were seen to embrace.6
There was, however, an extraordinary amount of detail to be settled between the two courts before this allegorical embrace could be turned into reality. Fortunately the dowry of an Archduchess of Austria who married a Prince of France was laid down by custom: 200,000 florins, and jewels worth an equal amount. In the opinion of Louis XV, as he told his grandson Don Ferdinand, the dowries of the House of Austria were rather small. Laid down with equal precision was the income she would receive as a widow: 20,000 gold écus and jewels valued at 100,000 écus.7
The big expense from the point of view of Austria was the Archduchess’s trousseau; her native country paid for it but—naturally—it had to come from Paris if she was to cut any kind of sartorial dash at Versailles. In total, 400,000 livres were allowed for this.*13 The money was to be provided by Madame de Nettine, director of the most important bank in Brussels in the Austrian Netherlands and the trousseau itself chosen by Count Mercy d’Argenteau, the Austrian ambassador to Versailles.
It was hardly likely that such prolonged negotiations could pass by without difficulties of etiquette. The question of the marriage contract was especially tricky. Who was to sign first? The King as father of the bridegroom? Or the Empress and the Emperor? The problem looked momentarily insoluble until it was decided to compromise with two separate contracts. The King of France signed first on one, the Austrians on the other.8 Poor Durfort, who had upheld the French interests gallantly in Vienna, was told that he would not after all be accompanying the bridal cortège into France; this was a snub to his position, although he was allowed to act as Ambassador Extraordinary (that is, the French King’s personal representative) during the actual marriage celebrations.
Durfort also received strict instructions from the Duc de Choiseul in France that he was not to receive Madame Antoine under his own roof once the proxy marriage had taken place; as a French subject he could entertain an archduchess but he could not entertain a Dauphine. Durfort had his own complications with the Austrian court; as the French King’s representative, he refused to be outranked by Marie Christine’s husband, Albert of Saxe-Teschen (as he was now known)—a mere prince, no matter whom he had married. In the end the two had to be kept apart, going to alternate functions. Albert, who was greedy, settled for the official dinner whilst Durfort got the church service. To maintain his dignity once more, Durfort managed to stop the Archduchess’s oath of renunciation being administered to her by the Cardinal-Archbishop of Vienna, in favour of a lesser functionary who did not outrank Durfort himself.
During her own bridal journey to Naples a year earlier, Maria Carolina had written back to the governess Countess Lerchenfeld: “Write to me everything you know about my sister Antoine, down to the tiniest detail, what she says and does and even what she thinks . . . Beg her to love me, because I am so passionately concerned for her.”9 This natural concern—by remote control—of the elder sister for the younger never ceased although both of them were aware that they might never meet again. Fortunately other friendships were at hand. There were Madame Antoine’s ladies-in-waiting to whom she was extremely attached; this was a foretaste of the excellent relations she would have with those who served her (Marie Antoinette was always a heroine to her valets). Then there were two princesses of lesser rank, who were more likely to be able to travel to France than a Queen of Naples.
Charlotte Wilhelmine of Hesse-Darmstadt was the virtual twin of Marie Antoinette (she was born three days later) and like her younger sister Louise, born in 1761, had been brought up at the Viennese court. The two young women were the nieces of the reigning Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt. If Antoine’s reciprocated affection for Maria Carolina had set the pattern for close and, above all, cosy female relationships early in her life, then her connection to Charlotte and Louise continued the trend. These were to be lasting friendships. Time and duty separated the three of them geographically, but Marie Antoinette, that agonizingly slow correspondent, found it a joy to write to them, the friends of her youth; over forty of these letters survive.10 She retained the portraits of her “dear Princesses” among her most intimate possessions for the rest of her life.
Then there was Antoine’s feeling for little children; she was one of those girls who had a natural love of them and their unchallenging company long before there was any question of her bearing children herself. When Count Mercy d’Argenteau grumbled about this predilection of the Dauphine on her arrival in France, that she preferred playing with the young ones to reading books, Maria Teresa admitted that her daughter was “always very fond of amusing herself with children.”11
There was a child at the Viennese court: the little Archduchess Teresa, daughter of the Emperor and the late Isabella of Parma, Louis XV’s granddaughter. At seven, Teresa was in fact closer in age to the fourteen-year-old Antoine than the latter’s nearest remaining sister Elizabeth, who was in her late twenties. Durfort reported a charming scene on New Year’s Day 1770. Just as he was arriving at Madame Antoine’s apartments in order to present his greetings, she emerged with her brother the Emperor. Together, they went to see Teresa, who had prepared a little puppet theatre for her father and aunt in which the principal events of the reign of Maria Teresa were enacted.12
Three weeks later—on 23 January—Teresa was dead of pleurisy, leaving the Emperor Joseph distraught: “I have ceased to be a father. Oh my God, restore to me my daughter . . .” He asked her governess, who by custom received the dead child’s belongings, to allow him his daughter’s writings and “her white dimity dressing-gown embroidered with flowers.”13
At Versailles the news of the death of a Great-Granddaughter of France was treated with appropriate ceremony and lamentation. The city of Paris went into mourning and money was distributed to the poor in her memory. There was, however, no truth in a subsequent story that Louis XV had really wanted the Dauphin to marry Teresa, only turning to Antoine after his great-granddaughter’s death. As has been seen, preparations for the marriage of Antoine were well advanced by the end of January; on the 21st a ring had arrived for her from the Dauphin.14
Another death, on 6 February 1770, was a good deal less tragic from Madame Antoine’s point of view; the unpopular Countess Lerchenfeld died and was replaced as head of her household by Countess Trautmannsdorf. Antoine was in need of a sympathetic ally. The really tumultuous event of February for her occurred on the 7th when, as the Empress was quick to inform the French ambassador, the future Dauphine “became a woman.”15 She had had her first period that very morning but no particular problem had been presented, since the Archduchess had been able to dance in the evening; Maria Teresa was confident that Louis XV would be very happy at the news. Madame Antoine was now on course to become a mother, as and when her marriage was consummated. Furthermore she would be the mother of a child with imperial Austrian blood in its veins. And it was this dynastic aspect of the matter that inspired in Maria Teresa an obsessional curiosity about her daughters’ monthly cycles.
It was a preoccupation with which considerations of distance, let alone privacy, were never allowed to interfere. Once her daughters were married, the Empress greeted with indignation the news of the arrival each month of the “Générale Krottendorf,” for such was the nickname given by her to her daughter’s periods.*14 These daughters, the wives of important princes in other countries, were expected to give full and frequent reports on the subject. Envoys such as Count Mercy d’Argenteau were pressed into service, and the French royal doctor, Lassonne, was supposed to report “every month” directly to her mother with news of Marie Antoinette’s cycle so that Maria Teresa was not left to the doubtful “meticulousness” of the young woman herself. Less appropriately, perhaps, Gluck was at one point asked to bear the vital message. Louis XV himself gave the Empress a news-flash on the subject a few months after she had arrived in France; the règles (the French term) of the Dauphine had arrived for the first time “since we have had the pleasure of possessing her.”17
That was the point. The fate of a princess who married into a foreign country was to be a hostage—possessed. But she was also expected to be an ambassador. Marie Antoinette was certainly an egregious example of such a complicated twofold destiny but throughout history there were many, many other princesses who shared it. Isabella of Parma had outlined the unhappy possibilities: “What should the daughter of a great prince expect? . . . Born the slave of other people’s prejudices, she finds herself subjected to the weight of honours, these innumerable etiquettes attached to greatness . . . a sacrifice to the supposed public good.” Napoleon, marrying Marie Antoinette’s great-niece forty years later, expressed the bargain rather more crudely: “I am marrying a womb.”18
Under the circumstances it was scarcely surprising that royal women retained strong feelings for the land of their birth, from which duty had wrenched them and which, in the course of events, it was more than likely they would not see again. The Dauphine Maria Josepha, who was immensely proud of her position in the French royal family, told her brother Prince Xavier after fifteen years of marriage that her heart could detach itself neither from France nor Saxony. But this was pre-eminently true when the bride had reason to suppose her own country superior to all others. (Some French princesses, as Marie Antoinette would discover to her cost, enamoured of both their status and their country, would solve the problem by staying there unmarried.) Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese-born wife of Charles II, tried to cheer up her niece Princess Mary, who was on her way to Holland to marry her cousin William of Orange, with memories of her own apprehensions, which had happily been unnecessary. “But Madam, you came into England! I am going out of it,” replied the Princess with the cruelty of youth.19
Nine years before the wedding of Marie Antoinette, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz made a long journey across Europe to marry George III, sight unseen as it were. Arriving in London at three o’clock in the afternoon, she was dressed in English clothes and was married to him a few hours later, with a long reception and the wedding night to follow immediately. The whispered encouragement of the Duke of York—“Courage, Princesse, courage”—as he took his future sister-in-law up the aisle was appropriate to Charlotte’s situation, as it was to that of many other princesses. It was not as though the bride could necessarily expect sympathetic endorsement in her new family circle. Marie Antoinette was sneeringly baptized l’Autrichienne*15 by Madame Adélaïde, eldest surviving daughter of Louis XV, years before it became a popular term of derision. Similarly the French Queen Maria Lesczinska, wife of Louis XV and daughter of the dispossessed King Stanislaus, was known as la Polonaise. The shy Infanta Maria Teresa, wife of Louis XIV, had been mocked for her Spanish accent.20
The advice of Maria Teresa to her daughters, stepping lightly in their pretty satin shoes across these morasses, was extremely detailed. And yet it did little to reconcile the two covert roles of hostage and ambassador. The two previous Archduchesses had received long instructions, many of which were religious in nature: adjurations to pray long, pray often, read holy books and so forth and so on. To Maria Carolina, Maria Teresa hammered home the precept that marriage was the greatest happiness. Above all, she must try to understand her ill-educated but well-meaning husband, King Ferdinand, who had received the following encouraging rating as a bridegroom: “Although an ugly prince, he is not absolutely repulsive . . . at least he does not stink.” Where her homeland was concerned: “Do not always be talking about our country, or drawing comparisons between our customs and theirs.”21
Amalia was similarly admonished in advance: “You are a stranger and a subject; you must learn to conform; even more because you are older than your husband, you must not seem to dominate . . . you know we are subjects of our husbands and owe them obedience.” Yet for whatever reason, by the time of Antoine’s wedding, both the Queen of Naples and the Duchess of Parma were being perceived in Europe as interfering consorts. Maria Teresa bewailed her daughters’ reputation for domination: “This will reflect badly on my Dauphine.”22 It does not seem to have occurred to her that she herself had not actually led such a visibly meek life.
In contrast to the theme of obedience, there was the crucial question of remaining a good German. Maria Teresa had told Maria Carolina that “in her heart and in the uprightness of her mind,” she should be a German; only in things that were unimportant (although nothing that was wrong) must she appear to be Neapolitan. The Empress’s instructions to “the little one,” as she sometimes called Antoine to Maria Carolina, also contained this important admonition. On the one hand Antoine was never to introduce any new custom, or behave in any way other than was strictly ordained in advance at the court of France; she must never ever cite the usages of the court of Vienna. On the other hand she must also see it as her duty to “be a good German.”23 How was this apparently contradictory admonition supposed to be effected? As Dauphine, Marie Antoinette would need to find out.
The rest of Maria Teresa’s instructions, conveyed in the form of a long letter which Antoine was told to read once a month, were simple enough, if hardly envisaging much independence of action on the part of one who would shortly be the subject of another monarch. It was carefully laid down, for example, to whom the Dauphine would be able to write; her Lorrainer uncle Prince Charles and her Lorrainer aunt Charlotte were on the list, as was Prince Albert of Saxe-Teschen. It must have come as a relief to Antoine that the Queen of Naples was on the list on the grounds that the one sister who had faced a difficult situation in her marriage—“much more difficult than your own”—would inspire the other.24 Antoine was not to read any book without permission of her confessor, since French books, under the veil of erudition, often showed a shocking lack of respect for religion. Antoine must never forget the anniversary of her father’s death on 18 August. In time she would of course commemorate annually the death of her mother—not exactly a consoling thought for one shortly to leave her side—but in the meantime Antoine should say special prayers for her mother on her birthday.
It was only in a few sentences that Maria Teresa revealed apprehensions for her daughter based on the terrible (and unacknowledged) inadequacy of Antoine’s preparation. The future Dauphine was not to display undue curiosity—a particular fault of hers. She must not cultivate familiarity with “underlings.”25 Above all, she must remember that “all eyes” would be fixed on her; she must give no scandal.
The month of April 1770—her wedding month—began with a three-day spiritual retreat for Madame Antoine. This programme of prayer and reflection was directed by the Abbé de Vermond. Since he tactfully promised not to make his various little instructive talks too long, it was probably less onerous than the Archduchess’s new sleeping arrangements, which were to be in her mother’s black velvet-draped apartments. The Empress was making up for lost time in this close last association with her daughter, however gloomy the surroundings must have seemed, however awesome the privilege.
Outside the imperial bedchamber, the onward march of ritual festivities left little space for tranquillity. These included the presentation of a Latin address by the university, to which the Archduchess was said to have responded in kind; since she had not been taught Latin, presumably Vermond took a hand. Then there was the kissing of her hand by mixed German and Hungarian guards. On 15 April—Easter Sunday—the Marquis de Durfort returned in splendour as Ambassador Extraordinary of the French King, having quitted Vienna as a mere ambassador shortly before. In theory Durfort had returned to France to perform this transformation act; but all he had actually done was acquire an enormous cortège of forty-eight carriages, drawn by six horses each, in order to emphasize the new magnificence of his status to a court that had come to know him well over the last three years.26
Since Durfort had to find the money out of his own pocket, he would shortly resell all but two of the equipages. But it is to be hoped that in the meantime Madame Antoine, who watched this formal entry from the house of Countess Trautmannsdorf, was suitably impressed. The two remaining carriages were in fact provided by the French; these were to have the honour of conveying the Dauphine personally on her journey, and were the most gorgeous of all. One was upholstered in crimson velvet and embroidered with motifs of the four seasons in gold; the other was upholstered in blue, with motifs of the four elements, and bouquets of flowers made from thin gold wire trembling on the roof.27
The next day Durfort was received in audience by the Empress and the Emperor. It was all very courteous. Durfort doffed his hat and was politely told to put his hat back on. Having done so, he took it off again as a sign of respect. When all this was finished, the Ambassador Extraordinary was able to present a letter and two portraits of the Dauphin to Madame Antoine. Primed by Countess Trautmannsdorf, Madame Antoine took one of them, set in diamonds, and pinned it to her corsage. The letter was one of exquisite courtesy and formality, in the contents of which it is unlikely that the Dauphin had much say.
As for the portrait, there had already been trouble behind the scenes on that score when the French despatched a picture of Louis Auguste out ploughing. This was a classical image but not the image of an archduchess’s fiancé that was expected in Vienna. The new portraits were more conventional likenesses. However, if Marie Antoinette had any reaction to them, either public or private, it was not recorded; as these ceremonies gradually progressed throughout April, it was as though her small figure was gradually disappearing under “the weight of honours, these innumerable etiquettes attached to greatness” described by Isabella of Parma as the inevitable fate of a princess bride.
The next day, 17 April, Madame Antoine swore on a Bible to renounce her right through her mother to the Austrian hereditary lands and through her father to Lorraine.28 This formal renunciation was frequently asked of departing princesses in order to prevent a foreign dynasty from trying to acquire the family throne if the male succession failed.
That evening the Emperor Joseph gave a supper party for 1500 people at the Belvedere Palace in Vienna. There had been some doubt whether he would participate in the ceremonies, given that he was still in mourning for his recently dead child; but to the general relief the Emperor rallied to the imperial cause, in spite of his sorrow, although Khevenhüller’s copious records suggest that most of the decisions were taken by Maria Teresa. In addition to the huge numbers invited for supper in the palace, which had been designed in the early eighteenth century for Prince Eugene of Savoy, a further 600 would dance at a ball in a pavilion specially erected in the palace gardens for the purpose; masks and white dominoes or hooded cloaks were to be worn. (But there was a special order that no “disagreeable” masks would be tolerated.)29
The usual rules for any vast entertainment were in place. Court officials were to make sure that there was no admission without invitation; no doubt this was a necessary proviso, given that the general public were to be admitted to the lower gardens of the Belvedere and provided with their own, albeit rather smaller, illuminations. The presence of 800 firemen standing by was another piece of wise planning, given the multitudinous candles—nearly 4000—needed for such an occasion. Rather less usual was the hiring of dentists, in case of any sudden pangs on the part of guests; the official gazette attributed this to the “motherly care” of the Empress. Supper at the ball was to be served in stages, 1000 people at a time, starting at eleven o’clock, but drink—coffee, tea, chocolate and lemonade as well as liqueurs—was to be supplied without intermission throughout the night. Perhaps this generosity was responsible for the fact that the ball actually lasted until seven in the morning, although the imperial party withdrew at about three.30
The following night it was Durfort’s turn to show what a French ambassador could do. His last effort, since he was forbidden to receive Madame Antoine once she was married, it was held at the Liechtenstein Palace a little outside Vienna. Eight hundred servants were provided to wait on 850 guests. There were fireworks accompanied by the currently fashionable Turkish music. Gold dolphins, an emblematic reference to the Dauphin, lit by flaming torches were in abundance. Every tree and shrub was heavy with allegory and verse on the general theme of Hymen, the God of Marriage, ordering Louis Auguste to wed Marie Antoinette, the Goddess of Beauty.
As with the medals, the specific alliance of France and Austria was not forgotten. One ornate verse in French ran:
The Rose of the Danube and the Lily of the Seine
Mingling their colours, embellish both parts:
From a garland of these flowers, love forms a chain
Uniting happily two nations’ hearts.
A Latin salutation referred to “Maria Antonia” as “Daughter, sister, wife, daughter-in-law” (Filia, soror, uxor, nurus) and coyly suggested that she would soon add to all these the “sweet name” of mother. In spite of all this, however, Count Khevenhüller loyally noted in his diary that the French entertainment had not been nearly as good as that of Austria the night before.31
The wedding, which took place at six o’clock in the evening on 19 April, was of course a proxy wedding. This was a familiar concept where the marriage of princesses to foreigners was concerned since, given ecclesiastical approval of its validity, it meant that the young lady could travel with her new rank. Antoine’s proxy bridegroom was to be her elder brother, the Archduke Ferdinand; he was as yet unmarried (he would marry Beatrice d’Este, heiress to the Duchy of Modena, the following year) and had already acted as proxy for the Duke of Parma at the marriage of Amalia. In this case Ferdinand simply had to take the Latin vow, “I am willing and thus make my promise,” kneel beside his sister and enjoy the nuptial supper at her side. In bygone times, proxy marriages had been considerably more realistic with the “bridal pair” being bedded together, in front of witnesses, the proxy inserting a symbolic leg.
Like her mother before her, thirty-four years ago, Antoine got married in the Church of the Augustine Friars, the beautiful austere fourteenth-century edifice in which she had been baptized.*16 The Emperor Joseph and the Empress, who had first led her daughter up the aisle, sat high on a special dais to the right of the altar; Antoine and Ferdinand were on a lower level, and to the right of Ferdinand, but lower still, was the Marquis de Durfort. Antoine wore glistening cloth-of-silver, her train carried by Countess Trautmannsdorf. The Papal Nuncio, Monsignor Visconti, officiated. The vows were taken. Rings were duly blessed. An act of celebration was drawn up which Prince Kaunitz certified and Durfort legalized. Once the ceremony was concluded, salvoes were fired outside, and the sound of kettledrums and trumpets was heard.32
At nine o’clock there was the official marriage supper lasting several hours; this was a testing occasion physically for Count Khevenhüller who had to stand throughout, behind the chair of the Emperor. Nor were the galas over yet. Yet another took place on the following night, at which ambassadors and others were permitted to kiss the hand of she who could now be officially addressed as “Madame la Dauphine.” It was time for Durfort to take his leave; he had been displaced by the Baron de Breteuil—a character whom we shall meet again in the story of Marie Antoinette. Since Durfort already possessed a pair of imperial portraits for his good offices in the marriage of Amalia to Don Ferdinand of Parma, he was allowed to receive a diamond ring and a diamond-decorated snuffbox instead.
But the main activity of the day for the Empress and her newly married daughter was letter-writing. First of all the Dauphine had to address Louis XV personally, according to the royal convention, as “Monsieur mon frère et tres chèr grand-père,” for royals were all technically brothers and sisters to each other; thus Maria Teresa addressed Louis XV quite simply as “Monsieur mon frère.” The Dauphine told the French King how long it was since she had first wished to communicate to him the affection she felt for him; she was now taking the first opportunity to do so. The Dauphine was delighted that, thanks to the ceremony yesterday, she now “belongs to Your Majesty” (once again the language of possession). The French King may be sure that she will spend her whole life trying to please him and deserve his confidence. “All the same,” writes the Dauphine, in language, like the letter itself, traceable to Maria Teresa, “I feel my age and inexperience may often need his indulgence.” She craves it in advance, and that of “Monsieur le Dauphin” too, as of the whole family into which she now has the happiness to pass. The signature of the new Dauphine is still the familiar one of her childhood: “Antoine.”33
It is no surprise to find that the Empress’s postscript, addressed to “my brother,” sounds exactly the same note. She writes of her own unhappiness in losing such a beloved child, and how her entire consolation lies in the fact that she was confiding her to “the best and tenderest of fathers.” She hopes that the French King will want to direct her daughter’s future course of behaviour. “Her intentions are excellent, but given her age, I pray you to exercise indulgence for any careless mistake . . . I recommend her once again as the most tender pledge which exists so happily between our States and our Houses.”34
The departure of the Dauphine was scheduled for nine o’clock the following morning, 21 April. The early hour was deliberate. Whatever the bride’s glittering future, these partings were not, and could hardly expect to be, happy occasions. Count Khevenhüller reported in his diary that it was hoped to avoid the distress that had attended the farewells of the Archduchesses Maria Carolina and Amalia. In April 1768, Maria Carolina had sprung out of the coach at the last moment to give her adored Antoine a series of passionate, tearful embraces. On this cold spring morning it was the Empress who clasped her daughter to her again and again. “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.” Then she broke down and wept. Joseph Weber, with his mother the wet-nurse, was allowed to watch the cortège depart. He always remembered how Madame Antoine, unable to control her own sobs, craned her neck out of the windows again and again, to catch a last sight of her home.35
As the procession of fifty-seven carriages passed by Schönbrunn at the beginning of the long road to France, the postilions blew their horns. They were saluting the past of the Archduchess and the future of the Dauphine.