The new year had come. The winter festivities of early ’78 were at their height awaiting their end at the approaching carnival. It was the 21st of January—a date thrice of great moment to the French people—and the Queen was holding a ball (characteristically hers) in the palace. There was a fuller life that evening, in the glare of a thousand candles, than had yet been known, a more continuous and a more vivacious noise of laughter and of music. Paris had come more largely than usual; there were many strangers, and the air seemed full of an exultant conciliation. Upon this joy and movement there fell a sudden silence; it was a silence the Queen well comprehended and had expected too, for Provence, coming straight from the Council, had entered the room and had given her the message she awaited. The message was repeated, whispers first, then louder and more eager questions and replies were everywhere heard; voices rose louder: young Artois openly cheered.
The English ambassador had turned at the unusual scene and knew its meaning; he despatched to his Government that night the news that the Independence of the United States had been recognised and orders to the French navy signed.
What followed may be briefly told. In somewhat over a fortnight the treaty of recognition and of alliance with the new Republic was concluded. The approaching affair with England began to equal, very soon it wholly surpassed, in interest and peril the petty Bavarian quarrel, and though war was not formally declared, French ships were in February already attacked by English. In mid-March the treaty was notified by the French ambassador in London to the Prime Minister of England; forty-eight hours later Lord Stormont at Versailles had demanded and received his papers. A month of preparation passed.
At last, upon Easter Sunday (the 19th of April in that year) two couriers riding crossed each other at the royal gate of Versailles—the one reaching, the other leaving, the palace. He that drew rein and was ending his journey bore great news: D’Estaing had sailed from Toulon with twenty ships of the fine, and the campaign was opened. He that set spurs and was but just beginning his post bore great news also, for he had upon him that letter (it is still preserved) in which Marie Antoinette told her mother that now she was certainly with child.
CHAPTER VII
THE CHILDREN
Easter Sunday, April 19, 1778, to Monday, October 22, 1781
THE expectation of an heir, the Queen’s ascendency over her husband, the promise of adventurous war, proceeded with the year. Meanwhile the little business of Bavaria somewhat marred the hopes of the now renewed and invigorated Monarchy. It is a business history should make little of; hardly a combat—rather a diplomatic rupture soon arranged. It covered the year exactly—it was settled with the close of it; but it had its significance in the Queen’s life, for her political action in it confirmed and extended the popular idea that Marie Antoinette was treasonable to French interests in the department of foreign affairs.
The most apparent thing of that moment was the new certitude and strength of the Queen now that she was to be a mother. Her love of change became less frivolous, more mixed with character; her old passionate friendships, her appetite for colour of every kind—in jewels, in fantasies, in voices—took on some depth and permanence. Even her interference with public affairs was no longer the mere whim that had been the bane of Turgot: it had objects; those objects were pursued, though they were personal and unwise. Unfortunately her mother and Mercy persuaded her, just as her strength appeared, not to the aggrandisement of her husband’s throne, but to the mere fending off of Prussia from Maria Theresa’s land in the Bavarian quarrel. There arose concerning her action a swarm of whispers, voices not yet of moment, though numerous in the taverns and clear at Court.