At first all went on prosperously. The Marquis de Fontenay did not belong to the haute noblesse, but his position amongst the noblesse de robe was good, and his fortune was at any rate sufficient to enable Térèzia to entertain lavishly, and to give fêtes which caused a sensation even at Paris, while her beauty became every day more renowned.
Whatever religious teaching she may have received she had thrown off its influence and principles, and ardently adopted the doctrines of the Revolution. Freedom, not only from tyranny, but from religion, law, morality, restraint of any kind, was the new theory adopted by her and by the party to which she belonged.
She was surrounded by those who talked of virtue, but practised vice; her husband was amongst the most corrupt of that vicious society; they soon ceased to care for each other; and she was young, beautiful, worshipped, with the hot Spanish blood in her veins and all the passion of the south in her nature, what but one result could be expected?
The King, the royal family, but especially the Queen, were becoming every day more unpopular, the reforms introduced seemed to do no good, only to incite the populace to more and more extortionate demands. The King, having neither courage nor decision, inspired neither confidence nor respect.
The Comte de Provence, his brother, remarks in his souvenirs: “The court did not like Louis XVI., he was too uncongenial to its ways, and he did not know how to separate himself from it, and to draw nearer to the people, for there are times when a sovereign ought to know how to choose between one and the other. What calamities my unfortunate brother would have spared himself and his family, if he had known how to hold with a firm hand the sceptre Providence had entrusted to him.” [84]
Nothing but reforms were talked of when Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette came to the throne; but of course everything proposed excited the opposition and ridicule of one party or the other.
The following song, one of the many circulating at the time, is a specimen of the least objectionable of its kind:
“Or, écoutez, petits et grands,
L’histoire d’un roi de vingt ans,