The Lost King of France: A True Story of Revolution, Revenge, and DNA Read Online Free PDF Page A

have bothered you about such bagatelles.”
    Inevitably, all this played into the hands of the rumormongers. Malicious gossip soon spread about how much money she was spending. Apart from jewels and clothes—around 170 creations a year, not to mention her famous hairdresser, Leonard Hautier, who came out from Paris each day to create a powdered, coiffured fantasy up to three feet high—she also lavished money on the Petit Trianon. This was an elegant neoclassical pavilion about a mile from Versailles given to her by the king, which she refurbished to her own taste, including the creation of an English-style garden. This little private heaven was a place where Marie-Antoinette could escape the suffocating etiquette of court and enjoy being informal with her friends; but of course, the money poured into the Petit Trianon, together with enormous sums spent on generously favoring her friends, created jealousy and hostility among those who were not so favored. Courtiers frustrated not to be part of her inner circle maliciously called the Petit Trianon “Little Vienna.”
    Her Austrian blood still rankled with many in France. All too many nobles had had relatives killed by Austrians in recent wars or at least had fought against Austrian troops. The queen’s apparent contempt for French customs soon made her enemies among the nobility. “Apart from a few favorites … everyone was excluded from the royal presence,” complained one nobleman, the Due de Lévis-Mirepoix. “Rank, service, reputation, and birth were no longer enough to gain admittance.” Some nobles, he said, stayed away from Versailles, rather than endure snubs from such a young, apparently light-headed and frivolous foreigner.
    Yet she was not without admirers; she particularly cultivated the good-looking and fashionable men, such as the king’s youngest brother, Artois. With his cosmopolitan air and ease with women, he was only too happy to oblige the king and escort the queen to countless social events. On one occasion, in January 1774, at a masquerade at the Opera in Paris, through her grey velvet mask, Marie-Antoinette found herself talking to a tall, attractive man with a somewhat serious expression. He was finishing a European grand tour and, as he talked, she realised he had a delightful Swedish accent. Always drawn to foreigners, she became interested in this aristocratic stranger who was so at ease in Parisian high society. The glamorous Count Axel Fersen made an instant impression.
    Not surprisingly, her relationship with her husband was under strain. Anxious about his new role as king, he seemed intimidated by this sophisticated and beautiful wife whom he could not satisfy. “The king fears her, rather than loves her,” observed one courtier, who noticed the king seemed much happier and more relaxed when she was absent. Marie-Antoinette, in turn, chose the company of young men full of energy and wit who would flatter and amuse her; she found it difficult to be patient with such a dull and unexciting husband. Yet they both wanted the marriage to succeed and, in particular, they both wanted an heir.
    However, as the years passed, no heir was produced, which incited much malicious gossip. In the autumn of 1775, five years into the marriage, Parisian women were heard shouting revolting obscenities at Marie-Antoinette at a race meeting, mocking her for not giving birth to a dauphin. In the same year she wrote to her mother to tell her about the birth of Artois’s first son, the Due d’Angoulême, now third in line to the throne. “There’s no need to tell you, dear Mama, how much it hurts me to see an heir to the throne who isn’t mine.” Despite this pressure, Louis remained, to say the least, rather uninterested in sex. The best doctors were consulted and various diagnoses were made, although no serious impediment to the match was found. Marie-Antoinette told her mother that she tried to entice her husband to spend more time with her, and