The Queen’s enemies made sure that the people knew of her follies; they were determined that her new-found popularity should not last. She lost this completely when, after a slight attack of measles, she decided to recuperate at the Petit Trianon.

‘This,’ she declared, ‘is what I must do, for the King has never had measles, so I must keep right away from him.’

‘Your Majesty must not be dull during convalescence,’ Gabrielle told her. ‘That would considerably retard your recovery. I for one shall be with you.’

‘If you have not had the measles, Gabrielle …’

‘Measles or not,’ said Gabrielle, ‘I shall be there.’

Four gentlemen of the Court came forward to say that they had also had measles. They said it so glibly that it was quite clear that they were not at all sure whether they had or not, but that they considered an attack little to pay for the intimate society of the Queen.

So with the Queen and a few – a very few – of her ladies went the Ducs de Coigny and de Guines, the Baron de Benseval and the Comte Esterhazy; and there at Petit Trianon they made her convalescence merry. Her bedroom was the centre of the gaiety, and it soon became known throughout Paris that the Queen entertained these men in her private bedchamber.

Now all the old scandals were revived. The people in the streets were inventing scandals and singing songs about her once more.

Mercy wrote frantically to Maria Theresa. Maria Theresa’s instructions came promptly in reply.

Mercy visited Petit Trianon and, as a result, the four gentlemen were commanded not to enter the Queen’s bedchamber after eleven o’clock in the day.

But the damage was done.


* * *

The finances of the country were in a tragic state.

Turgot had been replaced by Clugny de Nuis and, when the latter died, by Jacques Necker, the Genevese banker.

Necker was very popular and there was delight throughout the country on his appointment. A great deal had been heard about the Déficit, and it was firmly believed that Necker was the man who would put France on her feet again.

Necker, accustomed to dealing with finance, was horrified to discover that the national deficit was some 20,000,000 livres a year, and that owing to the American war – for France was supporting the settlers – the debt was increasing rapidly. He dared not inflict more taxes for he understood that the people would have risen in revolt if he had. Instead he resorted to loans.

With the borrowed money it seemed that Necker was succeeding. He was cutting down expenses throughout the country. He had believed in the beginning that if he could make France prosperous he would be able to repay the loans when the time came for repayment.

This he failed to do. The war was virtually over and he realised that his only means of repaying the loans was through further taxation. This he could shelve for a little while; so, determined not to throw the nation into a panic, he published a little booklet which he called Compte Rendu, and in this he set out details of the national income and the national expenditure. As he falsely included the loans as income he was able to show, instead of a deficit, a credit balance of 10,000,000 livres.

There was general rejoicing and the cry went up: ‘Long live Necker! He is the saviour of France!’


* * *

Antoinette was joyfully pregnant again.

James Armand stood behind her chair, listening to her talking about the new baby which was coming. ‘This time,’ said the Queen, ‘it must be a boy.’

It was a pleasure now to write to her mother. It was a pleasure to open her letters. Maria Theresa would forget to scold if there was a Dauphin on the way.

It was, however, but a few months after the child was conceived when she had her miscarriage. She was very sad about this, and wept often, but when she was assured again and again by her friends that she would almost certainly be pregnant again, her spirits lifted.

James Armand stood by the bed smiling his satisfaction. At least for the present there would be no other rival to be set beside the little girl in her cradle.

Antoinette laughed at him and told him he was a wicked little subject of the King. James Armand laughed with her. He cared not for the King, he told her; he was the Queen’s little boy.

‘Now,’ she said to Gabrielle, ‘there will be more letters from my mother. I shall be told that I must at all costs avoid le lit à part. Poor Mother, this will be a great shock to her. Ah, Monsieur James, is it not strange that what rejoices you will fill my dear mother with dismay?’

But the letters from Maria Theresa were coming less frequently.

In the last few years she had grown very fat. She had suffered badly from the smallpox, and Antoinette would not have recognised her if she had seen her at that time. The Empress knew that she had not long to live; and one day, soon after Antoinette’s miscarriage, when driving, she had caught a chill. A few days later she was dead.


* * *

When the news was brought to Antoinette she was prostrate with grief.

The King had sent the Abbé de Vermond to break it to her gently; he himself, guessing how broken-hearted she would be, declared he could not bear to do so. But as she lay on her bed, too dazed for speech, Louis came to her and took her into his arms.

‘I cannot believe it, Louis,’ she said. ‘Mother … dead. But she was so vital. I think she believed she would be immortal.’

‘We are none of us that,’ said Louis.

‘Yet she seemed so. And to think I have sometimes put her letters aside because I knew they would contain scoldings. As if she ever scolded when I did not merit a scolding. Louis, who will look after me now?’

‘I will,’ said Louis.

She smiled at him tenderly. Dear Louis. But Poor Louis. How different he seemed to her from that strong woman to whom she had felt she could always turn.

‘I cannot believe,’ she went on, ‘that she is not there. You see, Louis, she was always there … from the moment I first became aware of anything she was there …’

He soothed her. She felt closer to Louis than ever before; and in those days of mourning she wished to be shut away from everyone but her husband and her dear friends, Madame de Polignac and the Princesse de Lamballe.

The finances of France were tottering.

Necker had overlooked the fact that when he had made his drastic plans for reducing expenditure, the result would produce unemployment and the dissatisfaction of a great number of people; and that hundreds who had looked upon the service of the nobility as their livelihood would be without means of earning a living.

Necker was idealistic. The state of the hospitals appalled him, so he prevailed on the King to pay secret visits to those of Paris; and Louis, whose great desire was to serve his country, was willing to do so. What Louis saw in places such as the Hôtel-Dieu filled him with horror. Disguised he had wandered through the wards and seen the dying lying in heaps in corners, had seen as many as four people crowded into one narrow bed, all in various stages of misery.

He had come back to the Palace and told the Queen what he had seen; and he and Antoinette had wept together. Something must be done for the hospitals. In the provincial cities they were moderately satisfactory; it was in Paris that they provoked such horror and shame.

The Queen founded a maternity hospital at Versailles; the King bought new beds to be installed in the Hôtel-Dieu. This was admirable; but it cost money. Turgot, Malesherbes and Necker were all reformers, all idealists, but all lacked the means to bring their reforms into being.

Necker was now at the height of his popularity. Only Maurepas, now in his eighties, wise and shrewd, doubted the banker. Maurepas could not believe that the country’s financial state was as good as Necker had made it out to be; to Maurepas’ practical mind it was an impossibility. Trouble started between Necker and Maurepas when the banker rejected a proposal to strengthen the Navy, which had been put forward by de Sartines, who was then Minister for Naval Affairs and whom Maurepas was supporting.

There was an open rupture in high places. Necker, who was cheered every time he went into the streets, thought to score off the old statesman by demanding the post of Minister of State.

Maurepas then threatened to resign and take the Administration with him, pointing out that Necker was a Protestant and no Protestant had ever held the post of Minister of State since the days of Henri Quatre; but Necker imagined that, since the people believed in him, new rules should be made on his account.

The King and the Queen were reluctant to accept Necker’s resignation, but this was forced on them. Necker fell from power; and the men and women in the streets murmured because of it.

There was another disturbing factor. Many French had returned from America, now that war was being brought to a satisfactory conclusion. This sent the citizens of Paris wild with joy. From the beginning they had been on the side of those who called for liberty. They had cheered Benjamin Franklin, Arthur Lee and Silas Deane when they had appeared in Paris some years before to enlist French support. Many had sailed to America under the Marquis de la Fayette.

The King had wanted to remain aloof. It was because he was distrustful of war. He had an uneasy feeling too that, as a royalist, he would be fighting on the wrong side. All Europe was declaring against England in the struggle, not on principle but because they feared that mighty rising Power.