A year later, as a timid child of fourteen, she’s in the handover tent on
an island – this is the Austrian-French border, where she will forever leave
behind her childhood. She shivers with cold as she stands in a new chemise from
Paris; her waiting-women have removed every scrap of her former attire, because
she must retain nothing from her home country (despite the fact that the old
outfit was made in Paris). She may not even bring her darling pug Mops to her
new home, though he’s accompanied her the whole way. Ceremonially, but kindly,
the ladies lace her into her new corset, panniers, and petticoats, then attire
her in a golden gown, decked with ruffles and ribbons. Despite her lovely new
garb, she can’t a restrain a sniff as she watches her women; they are her last
ties to her past. Her ginger tresses are coiffed into an elegant, powdered
mode, and her face is smoothly coated with the fashionable white face paint and
rouged cheeks in vogue at Versailles. She steps into her shoes and stands among
them, a melancholy bride-to-be.
A week later,
she meets her some of her new family members in a forest clearing near Compiègne.
One of the court officials presents her to the King, at which point she drops
in a deep curtsy to the monarch. He raises her, and she looks into his raven
eyes, twinkling with good-naturedness. He motions for her fiancée to step
forward, and Antoine finally comes face to face with her groom, Louis Auguste,
the Dauphin of France. A few months away from his sixteenth birthday, he is
tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and rather good-looking; "I could like him," she thinks. Formally, he kisses her cheek. She’s then introduced to his three maiden
aunts, Adélaïde, Victoire, and Sophie, a trio of imposing females, who greet
her courteously. So far, her new relations seem rather likeable, and her new
life will hopefully be an agreeable one.
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