^*01Now part of the offices of the Austrian President. The bedroom in which Marie Antoinette was born is today the President’s salon, with red- and gold-embroidered hangings; the room is dominated by an enormous portrait of Maria Teresa by Mytens. An adjacent room still contains a collection of pietra dura (pictures in semi-precious stones of birds and animals) which Maria Teresa loved, a taste she handed on to Marie Antoinette.
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^*02The so-called Austrian (southern) Netherlands, in which modern Luxembourg was then included and centred on Brussels, would form the largest constituent part of Belgium when it was founded after 1830; the two areas were, however, not identical and the modern term Belgium is used purely for convenience.
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^*03A huge set of Sèvres porcelain, white ornamented with a pattern of forest-green ribbons, which was given by Louis XV to Maria Teresa to celebrate the alliance, can still be seen in the Hofburg Museum.
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^*04Maria Teresa celebrated her fortieth birthday on 13 May 1757 when Marie Antoinette was eighteen months old.
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^*05These private apartments can still be seen today, with pictures by Marie Christine. The so-called Marie Antoinette Room, one of the state apartments, is named for a Gobelin tapestry woven after a painting by Madame Vigée Le Brun and donated by the Emperor Napoleon III in the nineteenth century.
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^*06Laxenburg is now the seat of IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis); there is a thriving conference centre there.
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^*07This delightful background to the childhood of Marie Antoinette can still be seen today. The park that she would have known was, however, remodelled in “the English fashion” in 1783.
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^*08Like her elder sister, Marianne, who was an invalid, Elizabeth would live and die unmarried.
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^*09Today the imperial crypt is still a site of respectful mourning (visitors are requested to take off their hats); here 143 Habsburgs and one commoner—Maria Teresa’s governess—are buried. Amid the dark shapes of the tombs and the sculpted figures of death, the skulls grinning under their diadems, can be seen bouquets of tribute, including fresh flowers, tied in ribbons of the imperial colours.
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^*10Louis Auguste, unlike Marie Antoinette (who descended from Charles I’s sister Elizabeth of Bohemia), was descended from Charles I himself; the latter’s daughter Henriette Anne, Duchesse d’Orléans (Madame), was Louis XV’s great-grandmother.
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^*11The essay on the Queens of France, said to be by Marie Antoinette, now in the Habsburg Archives, is in a completely different handwriting, far more advanced than hers at that period or, indeed, for long after it. It was probably written for her, rather than by her.³⁵
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^*12Mariazell, sometimes termed “the Lourdes of Austria” (although its origins are far older), is still a place of national pilgrimage; it is popular for First Communions, as well as a skiing resort.
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^*13Although 200,000 crowns was—pace Louis XV—a handsome dowry to most people, it was certainly not exceptional among great ones. In 1769, for example, the heiress Mademoiselle de Penthièvre brought a dowry of 6 million livres with her when she married the son of the Duc d’Orléans. In terms of British money of the period, Marie Antoinette’s trousseau cost over £17,000: a notional three-quarters of a million pounds at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
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^*14In real life the Générale (or Generalin in German), as her name came to be shortened, seems to have been a lady of the court, presumably married to a General Krottendorf. Maria Teresa mentions her death in late 1779. But the precise origin of the nickname for the monthly period remains obscure; it is, however, to be compared to similar nicknames of the same time. For example, the daughters of the 2nd Duke of Richmond referred to “the French lady’s visit.”¹⁶
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^*15Meaning literally “the Austrian woman”; but the coincidental combination of the two French words for ostrich (autruche) and bitch (chienne) meant that the name would present horribly rich opportunities for cartoonists.
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^*16The main feature of the church today is the vast Canova monument of 1805 to the Archduchess Marie Christine, Marie Antoinette’s disliked elder sister, with references to her as “the best wife.”
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^*17The Goncourt brothers, writing the life of Marie Antoinette in the nineteenth century, referred to the Comtesse de Noailles as “the bad fairy” in her entourage.⁶
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^*18Bombelles’ Journals are an important source of information. He was a diplomat with experience of many European countries, and his connections to the court included his mother-in-law, Madame de Mackau, deputy Governess to the Children of France, and his wife Angélique, who was a favourite of Louis Auguste’s sister, Madame Elisabeth.
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^*19Madame Campan’s claim that the Dauphine was totally undressed has sometimes been treated sceptically on the grounds that the writer was not personally present; but Madame Campan’s father-in-law, to whom she was very close, was part of the handover party. Other sources describe the Dauphine as changing her clothes or being dressed, which presupposed being undressed. That the ritual had not yet been abandoned is clear from the fact that it was applied to Josephine of Savoy, marrying the Comte de Provence three years later.¹²
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^*20It was later suggested by scandalmongers that Marie Antoinette had known Prince (later Cardinal) de Rohan as a girl in Vienna and had been debauched by him. Leaving aside the improbability of such a story, given the nature of her childhood, it was also impossible since Prince Louis arrived in Vienna in 1772, two years after she left.
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^*21Although Philippe, future Duc d’Orléans, was only a fourth cousin once removed of the future Louis XVI.
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^*22By the standards of European royalty, Marie Antoinette and Louis Auguste were not particularly closely related. On the Habsburg side (Maria Josepha’s mother was a Habsburg) they were second cousins once removed. They shared Bourbon descent from Louis XIII and additional Orléans blood, since Louis XV’s grandmother Anne Marie had been an Orléans princess; at its closest this amounted to second cousins twice removed. Interestingly, Marie Antoinette had more actual French blood in her than her husband—two grandparents out of four—to his one in the shape of the King.
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^*23These apartments today have their view masked by large plants in boxes, which gives a good idea of the lack of privacy that they would have without them. Somewhat surprisingly, a large and showy replica of the so-called Diamond Necklace can also be seen there in a case.
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^*24This first letter, and many others that are also authentic, can still be seen in the Habsburg Archives. During the nineteenth century, however, the letters of Marie Antoinette were frequently forged; inauthentic examples flooded Paris, Vienna and London. One editor printed a number of letters for which the “originals” had vanished; other forgeries of an allegedly early date were blatantly copied from the handwriting of her later years. The situation was unravelled and a definitive edition, with all forgeries eliminated, was printed in 1895 in Paris by Maxime de la Rocheterie and the Marquis de Beaucourt. Nevertheless, at this point the correspondence between mother and daughter was censored according to nineteenth-century standards; the most intimate aspects of Maria Teresa’s advice, although partly printed in 1933 by Georges Girard in Correspondance entre Marie-Thérèse et Marie-Antoinette, were not published in full until 1958, by Paul Christoph in Maria Theresia und Marie Antoinette: ihr geheimer Briefwechsel.²⁴
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^*25It is impossible to exaggerate the influence of La Nouvelle Héloïse, a story of (heterosexual) love and renunciation. First published in French in 1761, it went through seventy-two editions before 1800, as well as ten in England and others in America.²
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^*26It was an additional torment for Marie Antoinette that she had from the beginning an irregular menstrual cycle. In those reports on the arrival of the Générale (period) demanded by her mother of all her daughters, Marie Antoinette was obliged to mention a gap of four months before adding that there was no reason for it.⁹
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^*27Patrie was the word always used by Marie Antoinette to denote Austria in her correspondence with her family.
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^*28Tightness of the foreskin, due to insufficient elasticity, which does not, however, make erection, or even ejaculation, impossible, although it might inhibit both.
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^*29These particular acclamations, if they took place, would have been a tribute to the European reputation of the Empress since she had, of course, never visited France, let alone Paris.
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^*30It should, however, be noted that Marie Antoinette also had the works of Piccinni in her library, as well as French music.
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^*31In 1775, with more originality, Lady Clermont told Marie Antoinette that she was put in mind of the English beauty, eighteen months younger, Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire; the French Queen professed herself “much flattered.”⁷
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^*32This staircase would play a dramatic part in the subsequent story of Marie Antoinette.
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^*33Madame Campan became something of a hate figure to the ultra-royalists after the Bourbon Restoration, because she had taught the step-daughters of Napoleon, and her testimony, first published in 1823, was criticized for that reason alone. Although she does make mistakes (like many other memorialists) and is not averse to self-glorification in order to atone for her “Napoleonic” affiliations, Madame Campan is nevertheless a vital witness. A recent French writer, Jean Chalon, has compared her status to that of Figaro in the song: “Figaro here, Figaro there.” But of course Figaro, like all domestics, saw a great deal of the game.¹⁸
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^*34But a peculiarly symbolic one, given that the staple food of the French peasantry and the working class was bread, absorbing 50 per cent of their income, as opposed to 5 per cent spent on fuel; the whole topic of bread was therefore the result of obsessional national interest.³²
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^*35She did in fact give birth to a daughter on 5 August 1776, one year after the birth of the Duc d’Angoulême.
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^*36Lauzun’s own memoirs were written many years later, probably by others using his own manuscript; they were generally regarded as untruthful by contemporaries. He has Marie Antoinette (among many other eager women) throwing herself at him in a novelettish scene in which he breathes, “You are my Queen . . .” and “her eyes seemed to be asking me to give her yet another title; I was tempted to enjoy the good fortune which appeared to be offered to me.” However, even Lauzun admits that he then drew back.⁸
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^*37Subsequently Marquis of Huntly, this spirited Scottish nobleman was still able to dance the quadrille when he was seventy and he died in 1853 at the age of ninety-one. As a result of his prowess, he could boast of dancing with Marie Antoinette, Princess Charlotte, the daughter of George IV, and Queen Victoria.
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^*38“This country” was how Marie Antoinette always referred to France in her correspondence with her family.
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^*39Earrings were chosen to draw attention to the much-praised long neck, and bracelets for the beautiful hands; according to her portraits and accounts, the Queen did not care particularly for necklaces.
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^*40Many of the trees whose planting was inspired by the Queen were felled in the terrible gale of December 1999 when Versailles lost 2000 trees. They are being replaced in an ambitious restorative scheme.
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^*41A fact confirmed in a negative sense by the detailed record of the King’s unremitting hunting activities in his Journal. A painful operation of this sort (anaesthetics not being available) would have involved several weeks’ convalescence out of the saddle at the very least; but there is no such cessation.
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^*42This was the occasion when the services of Gluck, returning to Vienna, were used to break the annoying news.⁹
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^*43It would seem that the baby had been conceived on roughly the date when Benjamin Franklin was officially received at Versailles, as one of the accredited envoys of the United States. In contrast to the French custom, Franklin wore neither sword nor powdered wig. Perhaps the King found this first contact with the virile New World inspirational.
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^*44This meant that there would in the end be a grand total of six princesses in various countries named Maria Teresa.¹⁷
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^*45It has been suggested (yet again as in 1774) that there was a coup de foudre between the pair on this occasion, ignoring the fact that the Queen was going on six months pregnant.
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^*46It was not actually Louis XVI who performed this Herculean act, as is sometimes suggested, although he certainly possessed the physical strength. His own Journal does not relate the incident, making it clear, as Mercy confirmed to the Empress, that he had already left the chamber of the birth, accompanying his infant daughter.²⁹
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^*47But her periods were so troublesome at the end of her short (three-weekly) cycle that this may not actually have been the case.⁴¹
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^*48In the Wardrobe Book, in the Archives Nationales, Paris, the actual pin-pricks that the Queen made can still be seen; in recent years some of the long pins she used were recovered from the floor of her room at Versailles.
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^*49The theatre where Marie Antoinette blithely trod the boards can still be seen, an exquisite souvenir.
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^*50Nobody was particularly concerned over the sudden claims of the Comtesse de Provence that she too was pregnant; there was a general suspicion that these would fade away when the Queen gave birth, as indeed happened.
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^*51But there is no truth in the legend that Sèvres cups were modelled on Marie Antoinette’s breasts, which would have been a quite uncharacteristic activity for this “modest” and “prudish” woman, conscious of her dignity as Queen of France.
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^*52Madame Campan is discreetly silent on the subject in her memoirs, presumably anxious to recover favour with the Bourbons after her Napoleonic connection.
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^*53Nine of them are still standing.
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^*54Clumsy attempts by her detractors much later to pretend that her library was full of pornography, illustrating her general depravity, ignored the fact that such books, which were romances rather than pornography, were read by the most respectable women of her time.
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^*55His father Philippe Duc de Chartres (much later known as Philippe Égalité) succeeded his own father as Duc d’Orléans in November 1785. Louis Philippe then moved up to become Duc de Chartres.
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^*56This is a clear identification of the Josephine in question with Marie Antoinette, although as has been noted, it was not universally the case.
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^*57A large pass-key to Saint Cloud, which still exists, firmly marked “La Reine” in large letters, makes the point.
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^*58Apart from the French palaces, these can also be appreciated nowadays in many collections abroad, including the Wallace Collection, London; Waddesdon, Bucks; the Frick Collection and the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
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^*59Apart from her formal bridal journey through north-eastern France fourteen years ago, and the expedition to Rheims for the King’s coronation, Marie Antoinette knew nothing of France; she had never, for example, seen the sea—neither on the French coast nor for that matter during her childhood in land-locked Austria.
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^*60The visitor to Fontainebleau, passing from the ornate nineteenth-century taste of King Louis Philippe to that of Queen Marie Antoinette, is likely to feel refreshed. The mother-of-pearl furniture was thought to have vanished for ever in the time of the Revolution, but was miraculously rediscovered in 1961 and replaced in its original position.²⁵
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^*61Now in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.
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^*62Meaning literally “cabbage of love” although chou has moved to have a secondary meaning of “darling” or “sweetheart.” It is unconvincing to cite Marie Antoinette’s use of this endearment as a proof that Louis Charles was Fersen’s son as has been suggested; leaving aside the unlikelihood of Marie Antoinette making an allusion to her child’s bastardy in this manner, Maria Josepha’s reference makes it clear that this was simply a pet name given to a beloved child.
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^*63The respective points of view of Queen and Cardinal were put later by their acolytes, Madame Campan, and the Cardinal’s Vicar General, the Abbé Georgel; both writers, although not necessarily present at the crucial scenes in the affair, received the confidences of their employers at first hand immediately afterwards.²
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^*64The contemporary equivalent would be a signature by Queen Elizabeth II of “Elizabeth of Great Britain.” People remote from royal circles might not realize that her usual signature is “Elizabeth R” (for Regina); but someone in public life, let alone a courtier, would react at once.
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^*65It was well put by a modern historian, Sarah Maza, in “The Diamond Necklace Affair Revisited” (1991), that although the total innocence of Marie Antoinette was obvious, standard accounts of the affair viewed her as guilty “because large numbers of people wanted to believe in her guilt.”¹¹
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^*66The fullest and most impartial study remains The Queen’s Necklace by Frances Mossiker, first published in 1961, where the various contemporary accounts are compared side by side.
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^*67It cannot be known for certain what happened to the stones. Some of them may have been acquired by the Duke of Dorset and remained in his family, according to tradition, in the form of a tasselled diadem. It used to be claimed that twenty-two of the most fabulous brilliants were made into a simple chain, worn by the Duchess of Sutherland; this chain was exhibited in the Versailles Exhibition of 1955. But it was pointed out by Bernard Morel in a study of the French Crown Jewels that the diamonds of the so-called Sutherland Necklace were for the most part “irregular in shape,” which did not accord with a contemporary drawing of the “Cardinal’s Necklace,” including annotations about the weights. Boehmer and Bassenge eventually went bankrupt. The case that their legal heirs brought against Princesse Charlotte de Rohan-Rochefort, heir to the Cardinal de Rohan, dragged on until 1867. The Rohan family finally paid off this “debt of honour” towards the end of the nineteenth century.¹⁶
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^*68Saint-Priest, whose memoirs were written in old age (he died in 1821 aged eighty-six) and were not published until 1929, told a story of the Queen deliberately manipulating her husband. She offered to send Fersen away, confident that Louis XVI would refuse.¹⁷ There is no confirmation of this. If this scene had really taken place in private between husband and wife, Saint-Priest could only have heard about it third-hand from Fersen, passed on by the Queen; but Fersen, as all his contemporaries including Saint-Priest agreed, was legendarily discreet; such a tasteless confidence would be quite uncharacteristic.
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^*69For connoisseurs of the “What-might-have-been” (or Counterfactual) school of history, it is interesting to speculate on the possible results of Louis XVI’s death in March 1789. He would have left a young child as his heir, and at this stage Marie Antoinette’s strong claim to act as Regent, according to precedent, might have been allowed. It is at least possible that things would have gone better.
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^*70The words, which inspired innumerable popular engravings, may be apocryphal, but the sentiments were for real.
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^*71The memoirs of the Marquise (later Duchesse) de Tourzel, and her daughter Pauline (later Comtesse de Béarn), are crucial testimonies to the life of the royal family from this time forward, since in their different ways they were so intimately involved.
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^*72Nor is it plausible that Fersen marched among the women in order to find out what was going on and warn the Queen; he never mentioned this—surely vital—detail in his account to his father of the events of Versailles on 5–6 October; the evidence rests solely on the Souvenirs of the Comtesse d’Adhémar, published years later.³⁹
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^*73The Marquise de Tourzel’s narrative is thus a first-hand source; Madame Auguié related everything to Madame Campan the next day, which makes the latter’s relation of events another good source even if she was not personally present.⁴¹
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^*74The London Times had as its headline the next day, “The Attempt to Murder the Queen,” with which Marie Antoinette would have agreed; the more lurid but inaccurate story in the Morning Post had the Queen being paraded around with a noose about her neck, to symbolize her humiliation.⁴⁴
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^*75Writing her memoirs as an old lady for her descendants, Pauline Comtesse de Béarn recalled the King’s instruction gratefully: “It is thanks to him that I can beat you today, my dears.”¹³
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^*76The term, taken from the disused convent where the Jacobin Club met, was beginning to be used for the revolutionary wing of the National Assembly.
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^*77Easter Communion had been obligatory since the fourth century and is still today a precept that must be fulfilled “during paschal time” by members of the Catholic Church.⁶
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^*78A berline de voyage was the eighteenth-century version of a modern touring coach.
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^*79Both these royal dressing-cases survive, one in the Louvre and one in a private collection; originally the latter belonged to Madame Auguié, sister of Madame Campan, to whom it was given by the Queen. The sheer weight of such a dressing-case on the knee, let alone when carried, is the remarkable feature to a modern observer, apart from its luxuriousness—but the Queen of France, accustomed to the daily ritual of being dressed at the hands of others, was not expecting to handle it herself.
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^*80These posting-stations, where the exhausted horses were changed for relays of fresh ones, were of vital importance in any journey in eighteenth-century France. The postes existed, every fifteen miles or so, along the main routes; if travellers intended to deviate to the byways, arrangements had to be made in advance for fresh horses to be found.
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^*81The story that the Queen and Malden, having taken a wrong turning, wandered about the rue du Bac on the Left Bank of the Seine, having crossed the river from the Tuileries by the Pont Royal, is implausible; this would have needed not one but a whole series of wrong turnings, to the right, then out on to a quai and over a bridge, without their realizing what was happening.
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^*82Not out of a foreigner’s lack of knowledge of the city; Fersen had been living in Paris on and off for many years.
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^*83Today a plaque at the modern gendarmerie at Sainte-Menehould commemorates the site of the former poste from which Drouet and Guillaume “launched the pursuit of the King Louis XVI.”
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^*84Today at Varennes a plaque on the clock tower commemorates the arrest. The town also has a museum with a room dedicated to Louis XVI, which includes memorabilia such as a silver soup tureen left behind. The town’s position on the Argonne front during World War I means, however, that mine warfare is also remembered here and there is a memorial to the many American soldiers who fell in the campaign in 1918. There is still a Hôtel Le Grand-Monarque. At the time Varennes was presented with a tricolour flag in recognition of its services to the nation.²³
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^*85It seems to have been—not inexplicably—a recurring dream of the little boy about this time, since the Marquise de Tourzel recounts a somewhat similar dream en route at Dormans; in this case the wolves were threatening his mother, and he had to be shown the Queen in order to be reassured.³⁰
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^*86The name, like that of the Jacobins, derived from the former convent in which their meetings were held.
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^*87Since 1954 this portrait has been kept in the Queen’s room at Versailles, having been preserved by Tourzel descendants.
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^*88Although Queen Charlotte’s hair did turn white overnight at the first madness of King George III when she was forty-four.⁷
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^*89Paul et Virginie, first published in 1788 to universal admiration, concerned two young people brought up together in a state of innocence on an idyllic island (which was based on Mauritius). Rediscovering each other as adults in tragic circumstances, Paul and Virginie were finally united in “the celestial paradise” after death, of which the earlier paradise of their youth had only been a prefiguration. It is easy to see how the plot might appeal to Marie Antoinette’s sensibilities.
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^*90This correspondence ended up in Sweden, the most probable explanation being that the Queen gave it to Fersen for safety.¹²
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^*91Two other visitors to the fireworks were Emma Hamilton and her husband Sir William, ambassador to the Neapolitan court; they were received by the Queen who took the opportunity to send a letter to Maria Carolina.¹⁶
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^*92Not only were the Spanish Bourbons related to the French, but as the daughter of Madame Infante, Queen Maria Louisa was Louis XVI’s first cousin; also the King of Spain’s sister was married to the Emperor Leopold.
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^*93Other people also gave a political twist to their dogs’ names; the witty Prince de Ligne called two of his Turgot and Mirabeau because “I always think of hunting dogs when I hear the names of ’those Economists.’”³¹
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^*94This general term for a revolutionary activist—meaning literally without breeches—referred to the typical costume of baggy trousers, short jacket (carmagnole) and wooden sabots of the working class, whether small tradesman, labourer or vagrant.
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^*95This scene at Mass was subsequently the subject of a picture by the painter Marie Antoinette favoured, Hubert Robert.
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^*96There were many accounts of this time by survivors; one person, however, who never mentioned her experiences during the next few days was Madame Royale, an unusual omission—her account of Varennes is very full—presumably indicating that it remained too painful to contemplate.
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^*97Royalist pilgrims will not, however, find the Temple today. Napoleon did in 1808 what Marie Antoinette had wanted Artois to do: had it knocked down, specifically to avoid the creation of a hallowed site.
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^*98Its universal use had been decreed by the Assembly in March; not only was the guillotine considered a swift and thus humane instrument of justice, but it was also a symbol of the new equality—in this case equality in the face of death.¹⁰
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^*99This was certainly not impossible; many of the prostitutes were raped before being killed, as were even some of the very young girls, although Madame Bault’s testimony makes it mercifully unlikely that the Princesse was still breathing at the time.
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^*100Others were tracked down and restored to France over the following two centuries; as late as 1976 the great Sancy diamond, which Marie Antoinette (and Maria Lesczinska) had worn in parures, was returned, thanks to an act of public-spirited generosity; with the Regent diamond, it is now in the Louvre.
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^*101Now in the Musée Carnavalet, Paris.
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^*102This room has been recreated in a display at the Musée Carnavalet, Paris, which has some of the original artefacts including Madame Elisabeth’s bed and dressing-table.
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^*103There is also a story of Marie Antoinette seeking to console herself by sending for her erstwhile official draughtsman Redouté to paint the cactus known as the night-flowering cereus; if true, the cactus must have been acquired elsewhere than in her apartments; perhaps it was Redouté, able to maintain his position as an official draughtsman despite his royalist past, who brought or sent in the botanical drawing.²⁹
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^*104These were surely traditional Christian sentiments, rather than Louis XVI forgiving Marie Antoinette at the last minute for her affair with Fersen.
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^*105It was a point that Trotsky would later make against holding a trial of Tsar Nicholas II: putting the deposed monarch in the dock was to envisage the possibility at least of his innocence.³⁶
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^*106Hence the persistent tradition that country houses in the U.S., as for example in Maine, were prepared for the arrival of Marie Antoinette.
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^*107Turgy implied that there was a salutation then and there, not in his Recollections of 1818, but in an interrogation of an impostor in 1817. But of course he could just as easily have tested an impostor with a false incident as with a true one.⁶
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^*108There is a replica of a cell at the Conciergerie today. It shows the back of a black-clad figure, in a veil, reading a book, watched by a guard standing extremely close and peering over the screen. Tourists flock in and there is a susurration of the name in many languages and accents: “Maree Antoinette . . . Maria Antonietta . . . Maria Antonia . . . Marie.” Relics include a small beflowered water jug and a white linen napkin. The official notice, printed in French, English and German, refers to Marie Antoinette as “a brilliant but carefree and extravagant personality,” an image singularly at variance with the sight of the hunched widow.
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^*109The English royal family bought some of the belongings of the former King and Queen of France. As tends to happen when new regimes need money—Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the Soviet Government come to mind—other more stable royal families benefited.
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^*110But Madame Bault, interviewed in old age by an early biographer of Marie Antoinette, Lafont d’Aussone, struck him not only with her good memory but also with her grand manner: “You would have thought you were dealing with a grand old countess, not a concierge’s widow.”⁶
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^*111This move has been doubted, but there are two good reasons to suppose it did take place; first, the records remain in the National Archives of the work that was done, together with the police order to do it. Second, Rosalie stated that the Queen remained only “forty days” in the former Council Chamber, which fits this scenario.⁷
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^*112It was believed by some after the Restoration that the Abbé Cholet gave the Queen a final Communion on the night of 12 October (the Abbé Magnin being ill) and that this was something permitted by Bault.¹⁵ This seems a great deal more improbable than accounts of Masses and Communions under the Richards’ regime, since security in the new cell was so much greater, with Marie Antoinette on the verge of trial. However, with this pious story, as with the romantic one of Fersen’s last love-making in the Tuileries, one cannot help hoping that it was true.
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^*113Meaning, literally, no more than the former regime, although the words ancien régime have come to have a weightier meaning.
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^*114But the “last letter” never reached Madame Elisabeth. It was intercepted and given to Robespierre; it was unknown until 1816. It is now in the Archives Nationales showing the countersignature of Fouquier-Tinville, with three other signatures later. A note validates Marie Antoinette’s handwriting (“conforme à l’autographe”).³⁰
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^*115The French Bourbon pretenders to the throne today, headed by the Comte de Paris, are thus descended from Maria Carolina via Queen Amélie, not Marie Antoinette.
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^*116DNA testing in 1993 had already showed that the most celebrated claimant, Karl Wilhelm Naundorf, who died in 1845, was extremely unlikely to be descended from Marie Antoinette.
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^*117In 1993 the title The Ghosts of Versailles was used as an opera composed by John Corigliano and with a libretto by William M. Hoffman, in which Marie Antoinette is the ghost and Beaumarchais falls in love with her, planning to revise history by rescuing her. This is not the only opera to touch on the life of the Queen, for Marie Antoinette and Fersen, composed by Daniel Börtz with a libretto by its director Claes Fellborn, was first performed in Stockholm by the Swedish Folk Opera in 1997. There have also been films and historical novels in abundance.
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^*118Born a Princess of Hesse-Darmstadt and thus descended from Marie Antoinette’s friend Princess Louise, Alexandra was a fourth cousin, four generations removed, of the French Queen; both traced descent back to the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, George II, whose granddaughter married the Emperor Leopold I.
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