administration, sometimes merely incapable, sometimes combining recklessness and corruption with incapacity, the treasury again became exhausted, the resources of the nation dwindled away, and the distress of all but the wealthiest classes became more and more insupportable. But for a time the attention of Marie Antoinette was drawn off from political embarrassments by the event which alone seemed wanting to complete her personal happiness, and to place her position and popularity on an impregnable foundation.
In the spring she discovered that she was again about to become a mother. The whole nation expected the result with an intense anxiety. The king's brothers were daily becoming more and more deservedly unpopular. The Count d'Artois, who as the father of a son, occupied more of the general attention than his elder brother, seemed to take pains to parade his contempt for the commercial class, and still more for the lower orders, and his disapproval of every proposal which had for its object to conciliate the traders or to relieve the sufferings of the poor; while the Count de Provence openly established a mistress, the Countess de Balbi, at the Luxembourg Palace, his residence in the capital, where she presided over the receptions which he took upon himself to hold, to the exclusion of his lawful princess. The Countess de Provence was not well calculated to excite admiration or sympathy, since she was plain and ungracious. But Madame de Balbi, whose character had been disgracefully notorious even before her connection with the count, was not more attractive in appearance or manner than the Savoy princess; and the citizens of Paris, who in this instance faithfully represented the feelings of the entire nation, did not disguise their anxiety that the child about to be born should be a prince, who might extinguish the hopes and projects of both his uncles.
Their wishes were gratified. On the morning of the 22d of October the king was starting from the palace on a hunting expedition with his brothers, when it was announced to him that the queen was taken ill.[1] He at once returned to her room, and, mindful of the danger which she had incurred on the occasion of the birth of Madame Royale from the greatness and disorder of the crowd, he broke through the ancient custom, and ordered that the doors should be closed, and that no one should be admitted beyond a very small number of the great officers, male and female, of the household. His cares were rewarded by a comparatively easy birth; and his anxiety to protect his wife from agitation was further shown by a second arrangement, which was perhaps hardly so easy to carry out, but which was also perfectly successful. As was most natural, the queen and himself fully shared the ardent wishes of the nation that the expected child should prove an heir to the throne; and he consequently feared that, should it not be so, the disappointment might produce an injurious effect on the mother's health; or, should their hopes be realized, that the excessive joy might be equally dangerous. With a desire, therefore, to avoid exposing her to either shock in the first moments of weakness, he forbade any announcement of the sex of the child being made to any one but himself. The instant that the child was born, he hastened to the bedside to judge for himself whether she could bear the news. Presently she came to herself; and it seemed to her that the general silence indicated that she had become the mother of a second daughter. But she desired to be assured of the fact. 'See,' said she to Louis, 'how reasonable I am. I ask no questions.[2]' And Louis, who from joy was scarcely able to contain himself, seeing her freedom from agitation, thought he might safely reveal to her the whole extent of their happiness. He called out, so as to be heard by the Princess de Guimenee, who still held the post of governess to the royal children, and who had already exhibited the child to the witnesses in the antechamber, and was now awaiting his summons at the open door, 'My lord the dauphin begs to be admitted.' The Princess de Guimenee brought 'my lord the dauphin' to his mother's arms, and for a few minutes the small company in the room gazed in respectful silence while the father and mother mingled tears of joy with broken words of thanksgiving.
Yet even in this moment of exultation Marie Antoinette could not forget her first-born, nor the feelings which had made her rejoice at the birth of a daughter, who still had, as it were, no rival in her eyes, because no rival claim to her own could be set up with respect to a princess. She kissed the long-wished-for infant over and over again; pressed him fondly to her heart; and then, after she had perused each feature with anxious scrutiny, and pointed out some resemblances, such as mothers see, to his father, 'Take him,' said she, to Madame de Guimenee; 'he belongs to the State; but my daughter is still mine.[3]'
Presently the chamber was cleared; and in a few minutes the glad tidings were carried to every corner of the palace and town of Versailles, and, as speedily as expresses could gallop, to the anxious city of Paris. By a somewhat whimsical coincidence, the Count de Stedingk, who, from having been one of the intended hunting-party, had been admitted into the antechamber, rushing down-stairs in his haste to spread the intelligence, met the Countess de Provence on the staircase. 'It is a dauphin, madame,' he cried; 'what a happy event!' The countess made him no reply. Nor did she or her husband pretend to disguise their mortification. The Count d'Artois was a little less open in the display of his discontent, which was, however, sufficiently notorious. But, with these exceptions, all France, or at least all France sufficiently near the court to feel any personal interest in its concerns, was unanimous in its exultation.
As soon as the new-born child was dressed, his father took him in his arms, and, carrying him to the window, showed him to the crowd[4] which, on the first news of the queen's illness, had thronged the court-yard, and was waiting in breathless expectation the result. A rumor had already begun to penetrate the throng that the child was a son, and the moment that the happy tidings were confirmed, and the infant-their future king, as they undoubtingly hailed him-was presented to their view, their joy broke forth in such vociferous acclamations that it became necessary to silence them by an appeal to them to show consideration for the mother's weakness.
For the next three months all was joy and festivity. When the little Duc d'Angouleme, now a sprightly boy of six years old, was taken into the nursery to see, or, in the court language, to pay his homage to, the heir to the throne, he said to his father, as he left the room, 'Papa, how little my cousin is!' 'The day will come, my boy,' replied the count, 'when you will find him quite great enough.' And it seemed as if the whole nation, and especially the city of Paris, thought no celebration of the birth of its future king could be too sumptuous for his greatness. It was a real heart-felt joy that was awakened in the people. On the day following the birth, chroniclers of the time remarked that no other subject was spoken of; that even strangers stopped one another in the streets to exchange congratulations.[5]
The different trades and guilds led the way in the expression of these loyal felicitations. When his royal highness was a week old, he held a grand reception. Deputations from different bodies of artisans, each with a band of music at its head, and each carrying some emblem of its occupation, marched in a long procession to Versailles. The chimney-sweeps bore aloft a chimney entwined with garlands, on the top of which was perched one of the smallest of their boys; the chairmen carried a chair superbly gilt, on which sat in state a representative of the royal nurse, with a child in her arms in royal robes; the butchers drove a fat ox; the pastry-cooks bore on a splendid tray a variety of pastry and sweetmeats such as might tempt children of a larger growth than the little prince they had come to honor; the blacksmiths beat an anvil in time to their cheers; the shoe-makers brought a pair of miniature boots; the tailors had devoted elaborate and minute pains to the embroidering of a uniform of the dauphin's regiment, such as might even now fit its young colonel, if his parents would permit him to be attired in it. The crowd was too great to be received in even the largest saloon of the palace; but it filled the court-yard beneath; and, as the weather was luckily favorable, the dauphin was brought to the balcony and displayed to the people, while they greeted him with cheers, which were renewed from time to time, even after he had been withdrawn, till the shouting seemed as if it would have no end.
One deputation, consisting of members of the fairer sex, received even higher honors. Fifty ladies of the fish- market vindicated the long-acknowledged claims of their body by forming a separate procession. Each dame was dressed in a gown of rich black silk, their established court-dress, and nearly every one had diamond ornaments. To them, the celebrated antechamber, from the oval window at the end known as the Bull's Eye, was opened;[6] and three of their body were admitted even into the queen's room, and to the side of the bed. The popular poet La Harpe, whom the partiality of Voltaire had designated as the heir of his genius, had composed an address, which the spokeswoman of the party had written out on the back of her fan, and now read with a sweet voice, which had procured her the honor of being so selected,[7] and with very appropriate delivery. The queen made a brief but most gracious answer, and then, on their retirement, the whole company, with a train of fish-women of the lower class, was entertained at a grand banquet, which they enlivened with songs composed for the occasion. One of them so hit the fancy of the king and queen that they quoted it more than once in their letters to their correspondents, and Marie Antoinette even sung it occasionally to her harp:
'Ne craignez pas,
Cher papa,
D' voir augmenter vot' famille,
Le Bon Dieu z'y pourvoira:
