News reached us that since there was to be rebuilding in Vienna, King Louis had decided that an opera house be erected at Versailles so that the wedding could be celebrated there.
My mother was determined that I should be provided with clothes as grand as anything the French could produce. I J could not help showing my delight with all this fuss surrounding me and sometimes I saw my mother watching me quizzically. I wonder now whether she was glad of my frivolity, J which prevented my being too concerned at the prospect of leaving home. After the suicidal attitude of Caroline must have been a relief.
When the Marquis de Durfort returned to Vienna really did seem like a wonderful game in which I ha been selected to play the biggest and most exciting role for this was the beginning of the official ceremonies. April had come and the weather was benign. On the seventeenth of that month the Ceremony of Renunciation took place, when I was called upon to renounce the hereditary Austrian Succession. It all seemed rather meaningless to me as I stood in the hall of the Burgplatz and signed the Act, which was in Latin, and took the Oath before the Bishop of Laylac I found the ceremony tedious but I enjoyed the banquet at ball which followed.
The huge ballroom was brilliantly lighted with threg thousand five hundred candles and I was told that eight hundred firemen had to work continuously with damp sponge because of the sparks which fell from the candles. When I danced I was oblivious of everything but the joy of dancing. I even forgot that this would be one of the last balls I should attend in my own country.
The very next day the Marquis de Durfort entertained the Austrian Court on behalf of the King of France, and of course this occasion must be as grand if not grander than that of the previous evening, so he hired the Lichteii. stein Palace in which to hold it. That was a wonderful evening too. I remember driving there it was in the suborj, of Rosseau and all along the road the trees had been illuminated, and between the trees dolphins had been set up each dolphin carrying a lantern. It was enchanting and e were exclaiming with wonder as we rode along.
In the ballroom the Marquis de Durfort had ordered th beautiful pictures be hung, symbolic of the occasion, and softline particularly remember one of myself on the road to France Spread out before me was a carpet of flowers which weight being thrown by a nymph representing love.
There were fireworks and music; and the splendour on that evening did in fact exceed ours, in spite of those three thousand five hundred candles. On the nineteenth I was married by proxy. This was all part of a game to me, for Ferdinand played the part of bride groom, and because my brother was standing proxy for the Dauphin of France it seemed exactly like one of those plays I used to watch my brothers and sisters perform, only now I was old enough to join in. Ferdinand and I knelt together at the altar and I kept saying to myself “Volo et ita promitto’ so that I should get it right when the moment came to say it aloud.
After the ceremony guns were fired at the Spitalplatz, and then . the banquet.
I was to leave my home two days later, and suddenly I began to realise what this was going to mean. It struck me that I might never see my mother again. She called me to her room and again gave me many instructions. I listened fearfully; I was beginning to feel apprehensive.
She told me to be seated at a desk and take up my pen. I was to write a letter to my grandfather, for the King of France would now be that.
I must remember it. I must seek to please him. I must obey him and never offend him. And now I must write to him. I was glad I was not expected to compose the letter. That would, indeed, have been beyond my powers; it was bad enough to have to write to my mother’s dictation. She watched me. I can imagine her fears. There I sat, my head on one side, frowning in concentration, biting my tongue, the tip of which protruded slightly, making the utmost effort, but only managing to produce a childish scrawl with crooked lines. I remember asking the King of France to be indulgent to me and begging him to ask the indulgence of the Dauphin on my behalf.
I paused to think of the Dauphin, the other important player in this . farce, comedy or tragedy? How could I know which it was to be?
Later I came to think of it as all three. What of the Dauphin? No one spoke much of him. Sometimes my attendants referred to him as though he were a handsome hero . as all princes should be. Of course he would be handsome. We should dance together and we should have babies.
How I longed for babies! Little goldenhaired children who would adore me. When I became a mother I should cease to be a child. Then I thought of Caroline—those poor pathetic letters of hers.
“He is very ugly … but one grows accustomed to that….” My mother had talked to me of everything that I might encounter at the Court of France . except my bridegroom.
My mother then put her arm about me and held me to her while she wrote to the King of France. I looked at her quick pen, admiring the skill with which it travelled over the paper. She was begging the King of France to care for her ‘very dear child. “
“I pray you be indulgent towards any thoughtless act of my dear child’s. She has a good heart, but she is impulsive and a little wild….” I felt the tears coming to my eyes because I was sorry for her. That seemed strange, but she was so worried because she knew me so well and she could guess at the sort of world into which I was being thrust.
The Marquis de Durfort had brought with him to Austria two carriages which the King of France had had made for the sole purpose of taking me to France. We had heard of these carriages in advance. They had been made by Francien, the leading camagemaker in Paris, and the King of France had ordered that no expense should be spared in the making.
Prancien had lived up to his reputation arid they were quite magnificent, lined with satin and decorated with paintings in delicate colours, with gold crowns on the outside to proclaim them royal carriages. I was to discover that they were not only the most beautiful I had ever travelled in but the most comfortable.
The Marquis came with a hundred and seventeen bodyguards, all in coloured uniforms; and it was boasted that the cost of this merry little cavalcade was about three hundred and fifty thousand ducats.
On the twenty-first of April my journey to France began. During the last few years I have often thought of my mother when she said goodbye to me. She knew it was the last time she would hold me in her arms, the last time she would kiss me. No doubt words came into her mind.
Remember this. Don’t do that. Surely she had said it all to me in her icy bedroom; but knowing me, she would realise that I had forgotten half of it by now. In any case I should have heard little of what she said to me. Now I knew she was praying silently to God and the Saints, asking them to guard me. She saw me as a helpless child wandering in the jungle.
“My dearest child,” she whispered; and suddenly I did not want to leave her. This was my home. I wanted to stay in it-even if it did mean lessons and painful hairstyles and lectures in a cold bedroom. I should not be fifteen until November and suddenly I felt very young and inexperienced. I wanted to plead to be allowed to stay at home for a little longer, but Monsieur de Durfort’s magnificent carriages were waiting; Kaunitz was looking impatient and relieved that all the bargaining was over. Only my mother was sad and I wondered if I could be alone with her and beg to be allowed to stay. But of course I could not. Much as she loved me she would never allow my whims to interfere with state affairs. It was a state affair. The thought made me want to laugh—and it pleased me too. I really was a very important person.
“Goodbye, my dearest child. I shall write to you regularly. It will be as though I am with you.”
“Yes, Mamma.”
“We shall be apart but I shall never cease to think of you until I die. Love me always. It is the only thing that can console me.”
And then I was getting into the carriage with Joseph, who was to accompany me for the first day. I had had little to do with Joseph, who was so much older and had become so important now that he was Emperor and co- ruler with my mother. He was kind, but because of my mood I found his pomposity irritating, and all the time he gave me advice to which I did not want to listen. I wanted to think about my little dogs, which the servants had assured me they would care for.
When we passed the Schonbrunn Palace I looked at the yellow walls and the green shutters and remembered how Caroline, Ferdinand, Max and I used to watch the older ones perform their plays, operas and ballets.
I remembered how the servants used to bring refreshments to us in the gardens—lemonade, which my mother thought was good for us, and little Viennese cakes covered with cream.
Before I left, my mother had given me a packet of papers which she said I was to read regularly. I had glanced at them and saw that they contained rules and regulations which she had already given me during our talks. I would read them later, I promised myself. I wanted now to think about the old times—the pleasantness of the days before Caroline and Maria Amalia had been so unhappy. I glanced at Joseph, who had had his own
