From April 27, 1784, to August 15, 1785
AS the summer of 1784 broadened through May and June it led on the Queen to every grace of life, and at last, as it might have been imagined, to security. The season itself was fruitful and serene: the establishment of prestige abroad—so often a forerunner of evil to European nations—was now triumphantly achieved. There was now about the Court an air of solidity and permanence which the visit of foreign princes continued to confirm, and this air (thanks to Calonne’s largesse) seemed less poisoned by that financial ill-ease which had turned even the last victories of the American War into doubtful and anxious things.
Marie Antoinette had entered into that content and calm which often introduces middle age after a youth tormented by an inward insecurity. Her inheritance was sure. Her children had not yet betrayed the doom of their blood. The legend of her follies meant daily a little less, because daily it became more and more of a legend worn by time, dangerous only if its set formula should be filled with life and reality by some new scandal. The violence of her youth now seemed exorcised; her fulness of feature, which had shocked the taste of Louis XV.’s Court, accorded with these her later functions of authority. She was indeed in that full flower of womanhood which later so perturbed the memories of Burke and lent one famous passage of sincerity to his false political rhetoric.
As Marie Antoinette so entered at last into maturity, and, it would seem, into peace, the comedy which was to bring upon her every humiliation entered upon the Stage of this World. In the waters below her, Jeanne de La Motte de Valois, fishing for goldfish, struck and landed her Cardinal.
MARIE ANTOINETTE
AFTER THE PAINTING BY MADAME VIGEE LE BRUN
Gustavus of Sweden, Northerner and Flibbertigibert, the same that had slung diamond necklaces round the Du Barry’s little dog and the same that had despised the Dauphine, was at Court in the early days of that June, and saw the Queen now a woman; his affections were immediately moved. There was a touch of flirtation between them; on her side also a real friendship which for years continued in correspondence—for the softness of the North never failed to soothe and to relieve this Austrian woman caught in the hardness of French rules and the pressure of French vitality. He had come as the “Comte de Haga,” and she feasted him well. That new toy, a balloon, was sent up to amuse him—she had it called by her name—and he was shown all that Trianon could show by day or by night. She was the more gracious from the awkwardness of Louis, who came ill-dressed to meet Gustavus and who was slow with him. She gave him deference. She consented, at one great supper of hers, to stand with her women and supervise all, while he was seated. Only she would not dance with him; she said she danced no more....
Meanwhile accompanying the King of Sweden and ever at his side, Fersen was come again to Versailles.
Fersen was now a man. War had made him. Marie Antoinette could silently watch in him a very different carriage and a new alertness of the visage, but his eyes still bore the tender respect that she had known and remembered.
He was now for some years to come and go between Versailles and the world. He was a colonel of French Horse, and his place was made....