Виктория Холт - Flaunting, Extravagant Queen

Antoinette then sought out the King. ‘If you do not allow this play to be played either in Paris or Versailles they will say that you are a tyrant. Many have heard of its success at Gennevilliers and are asking for it to be played here.’

Louis, who always saw himself as the indulgent Papa, wavered; the play was read again, and four out of six judges declared it fit to be played, for Beaumarchais had pretended to make cuts of the speeches objected to, and believing this to have been done, the judges agreed that it might safely go on.

And so on an April day Le Mariage de Figaro was played at the Théâtre-Français, and the crowds had waited in the streets all during the previous night to make sure of getting seats.

The Parisians applauded the sentiments of the impudent barber, particularly where they saw references to certain members of the Court.

They stamped their feet, laughed and applauded; but after the show they stood about outside the theatre and considered the daring remarks of the comic barber.

Antoinette had enjoyed the play and had shared Artois’ feelings about it. It would be amusing, she had said to him, to put it on in the lovely gilded theatre she had had built at Trianon.

Artois was enthusiastic. He pranced about the apartment, quoting the merry barber.

But in the weeks following the showing of Le Mariage de Figaro, there had been more pamphlets than ever before; when she sat at table Antoinette would find them beneath her plate, and the King would discover them among his papers.

It was unfortunate that the purchase of Saint-Cloud should have been made so public. She had been worried about the Dauphin’s health and, when repairs to the château of Versailles were necessary, had not wanted to take him into Paris. She had often visited Saint-Cloud, which had belonged to the Orléans family since the days of Louis Quatorze, and she had thought that they, complaining as they did of their poverty, would have been glad to sell at a reasonable price, or perhaps take one of the royal houses in exchange.

Chartres, with whom it was necessary to deal, the old Duke being so ill now that he could not live much longer, had prevaricated and Calonne, who was handling the transaction on behalf of the King and Queen, was prevailed upon to pay a very large sum for it.

The news was out. In the streets they were talking about the further waste of money, the great extravagance of the Queen. Rumours immediately began to circulate. It was declared that the Queen planned to spend money at Saint-Cloud as she had at Trianon.

‘What is all this talk of a deficit?’ demanded the people. ‘What is this deficit? What does it mean?’

The answer to that was: ‘There is one who can answer that question, for she is Madame Déficit.’

Now in the pamphlets she had a new name: Madame Déficit.

Everything I do, she told herself, is turned to my disadvantage. The Emperor Joseph had asked the Dutch to open the Scheldt and so bring prosperity back to the Netherlands which were under Austrian dominion. The Dutch had refused to do this, and flooded their country, as they had done before in order to save it from the invader. Louis and his ministers, realising that a European war was about to break out, offered mediation between the two countries, with the result that the Scheldt was to remain closed but the Austrians were to be paid a sum of money by the Dutch as compensation. As the Dutch were unable to find this money, the French came to their rescue. This was no altruism on the part of the French; a conflict so close to them could have involved them in war, and one thing France’s tottering financial structure could not endure at that time was participation in a war; therefore 5,000,000 florins seemed, to the ministers of France, a small price to pay for peace.

But it was not possible to expect the people to understand this.

‘Déficit! Déficit! Déficit!’ they cried. ‘We are nearly bankrupt. So what do we do? We send money to the Queen’s family. For what purpose? Oh, that they may build Petit Trianons in Austria, that they may have their little farms and houses and theatres … just as l’Autrichienne does in France. What matters it? The French pay. Ask Madame Déficit.’

‘It matters not what I do,’ she told herself. ‘Nothing I do could be good in their eyes.’

She went down to her gilded coach which was to take her into the Capital.

Josèphe was already waiting for her. The years had not improved Josèphe. She was even more sour than she had been when she had first come to France; though it would have been difficult at the time to believe that was possible. She was barren of children and of hope, for now that the King of France had two sons she believed her husband would never be King.

As they made the journey from Versailles into the Capital, Antoinette knew that Josèphe was delighted at the cold reception given the Queen.

The crowds were there to watch, but they did not cheer. They merely stared at her as she passed.

She knew they were calling her haughty. If she had unbent they would have called her frivolous.

Ah, she thought, when they have determined to hate a sovereign as they have determined to hate me, there is no hope of gaining their affection.

The ceremony over, she emerged from Notre Dame.

Now she must make her way to Sainte-Geneviève. She must enter the church and endure further ceremony, for Sainte-Geneviève was the patron saint of Paris.

‘Why should I?’ she asked herself. ‘I am weary of their ceremonies. Why should I do my part when they will not do theirs? Why should I prolong the ceremony simply because it is their patron saint they wish me to honour? The people of Paris do not honour me.’

The coach had slowed down and the Abbé of Sainte-Geneviève had come out to greet her.

She answered his greeting with warmth and charm, and told him that she would be late for the banquet which was being given at the Tuileries and that she would therefore be unable to enter the church.

The Abbé bowed his head. The people gasped.

‘It is an insult to our Patroness!’ they murmured. ‘It is an insult to Paris.’

Josèphe was smiling, well pleased. It always pleased her to see the foolish frivolous creature make her mistakes.

‘You are well pleased, Josèphe,’ said Antoinette as they drove to the Tuileries.

‘Like you,’ said Josèphe demurely, ‘I am glad the tiresome ceremony is over.’

‘We but exchange one tiresome ceremony for another,’ said the Queen wearily.

She thought how pleasant it would be to sit on the lawn before her dear little house watching the children play, dressed in one of her muslin dresses, a shady hat on her head.

But the ceremonies must go on. There must be the banquet at that cheerless palace. Even the performance at the Opéra, which followed, raised her spirits very little, although the audience did not treat her with the same contempt as that which she had received in the streets, and there were a few lukewarm cheers.

After the Opéra she and the King went to supper at The Temple, Artois’ Paris home.

She shivered as she entered the place. ‘It’s so ancient,’ she complained to Artois. ‘Why do you not rid yourself of the place and build yourself something modern?’

Artois bent his mischievous face close to hers and whispered: ‘How would it be if I asked Calonne to arrange to buy Saint-Cloud from you?’

They laughed. She could be gay in the company of Artois. He refused to take anything seriously. The people of Paris were grumbling about the purchase of Saint-Cloud. Let them grumble! was Artois’ way of thinking. Who cares for the people of Paris!

When she was with him she could share that insouciance, and it was as though they were young again, arousing the wrath of the people with the Austrian habit of sledging, and riding back to Versailles in the early hours of the morning.

‘All the same,’ she said. ‘I find the Temple a gloomy residence. I command you, brother, change it for another.’

Artois bowed over her hand. ‘The Queen commands,’ he said and lightly kissed her fingers.

Artois was in the Queen’s apartment. He was pacing the floor, his eyes ablaze, his impish smile illuminating his rather handsome face. Antoinette smiled at him. She had always been a great deal fonder of him than of his brother Provence.

He was saying: ‘But why not, ’Toinette? Why not indeed? It would be a wonderful show. A perfect play for the Trianon Theatre. I tell you it is better than Le Mariage de Figaro. The barber is more amusing, more witty, more impudent than ever in this play. We must do it. Come, ’Toinette, say you will allow us to play Le Barbier de Seville in your theatre.’

‘As you are so earnest …’ she began.

He was beside her, kissing her hands, putting his arm about her and dancing with her about the apartment.

‘It is well that there are only those whom we trust watching us,’ she said.

‘ ’Toinette, we should never trust any, and there will always be those to watch us whom we do not trust.’ He struck an attitude and declaimed: ‘ “Since men have no choice other than stupidity or madness, if I can’t get any profit I want pleasure at least. So hurrah for happiness. Who knows if the world is going to last three weeks?” That,’ he continued, ‘is Figaro. What a character! My dearest Queen, you must play Rosine. “Imagine the prettiest little woman in the world, gentle, tender, lively, fresh, appetising, nimble of foot, slenderwaisted, with rounded arms, dewy mouth; and such hands; such feet; such eyes!” There! That is Rosine. And you, my Queen, must play Rosine. I swear if you do not I’ll not play the barber, and what will the play be like without me as the barber?’