The marriages accordingly took place when Louise was sixteen and Adrienne fifteen years old.
Their aunt, the Maréchale de Mouchy, called then the Comtesse de Noailles, was about this time appointed first lady of honour to the Archduchess Marie Antoinette of Austria, whose approaching marriage with the Dauphin was the great event of the day; and was sent with the other distinguished persons selected to meet her at the frontier. This alliance was very unpopular with the royal family and court, who disliked Austria and declared that country to be the enemy of France, to whom her interests were always opposed. Madame Adélaïde especially, made no secret of her displeasure, and when M. Campan came to take her orders before setting off for the frontier with the household of the Dauphin, she said that she disapproved of the marriage of her nephew with the Archduchess, and if she had any order to give it would not be to fetch an Austrian.
The Comtesse de Noailles was a most unfortunate choice to have made for the post in question; for although a woman of the highest character, religious, charitable, and honourable, she was so stiff, precise, and absolutely the slave of every detail of court etiquette that she only tormented and estranged the young girl, who was ready to be conciliated, and whom she might have influenced and helped. The Dauphine, however, an impetuous, thoughtless girl of fifteen, accustomed to the freedom of her own family life at the court of Vienna, hated and ridiculed the absurd restrictions of the French Court, called the Countess “Madame l’Etiquette,” and took her own way.
The ill-luck which seemed to follow the Dauphin had not forsaken him; a terrible catastrophe marked the fêtes given in honour of his wedding. Some scaffolding in the place Louis XV. caught fire. The flames spread with fearful rapidity, a scene of panic and horror ensued, hundreds were burned or trampled to death by the frantic horses or maddened crowd; and with this terrible calamity began the married life of the boy and girl, the gloom and darkness of whose destiny it seemed to foreshadow. [71]
The Comtes de Provence and d’Artois were married to the two daughters of the King of Sardinia, to whose eldest son the Princess Clotilde was betrothed.
The King associated all his grandchildren with Mme. Du Barry just as he had his daughters with the Duchesse de Châteauroux and her sisters de Nesle, and affairs went on at court much in the usual way until, in 1774, he caught the small-pox in one of his intrigues and died, leaving a troubled and dangerous inheritance to the weak, helpless, vacillating lad, who had neither brains to direct, energy to act, or strength to rule.
In 1779 Mlle. d’Epernon, third daughter of the Duc d’Ayen, married the Vicomte du Roure. She was a gentle, affectionate girl of less decided character than the others, and less is known of her, for her life was a short one passed in domestic retirement. This marriage was unhappy, as the Vicomte cared very little for his wife. However, he died in two years, and in 1784 she married the Vicomte de Thésan, an ardent Royalist who was devoted to her. [72]
Married or single, the five sisters were all strongly attached to one another. The married ones were a great deal with their family, either at Paris or Versailles, while Pauline and Rosalie, between whom there was only a year’s difference, were inseparable.
The real names of Mlle. de Maintenon were Anne Paule Dominique, which, sonorous as they sound, were those of a poor old man and woman of the labouring class whom the Duchess had chosen to be her daughter’s godfather and godmother.
Pauline was very pretty, a brunette with dark eyes and masses of dark hair, of an impetuous, affectionate, hasty disposition, which she was always trying to correct according to the severe, almost ascetic, counsels of her mother and younger sister, whom one cannot but fancy, though equally admirable, was perhaps less charming.