Queen of France

Fülszöveg

QUEEN OF FRANCE
by André Castelot
translated by Denise Folliot
"For all its careful scholarship and
judicious balance of judgment," says
The Listener, "it has the readability
and grip of a good novel. It deserves
the wide public that it is likely to
attract."
She was Marie Antoinette, a lovely
Austrian princess. She was fourteen
when she first met her fifteen-year-old
husband, the Dauphin of France. He was
a shy, heavy young man, overshadowed
by his grandfather, Louis XV.
The girl had many problems to cope
with at the French court, among them
her husband's lack of interest, the King's
spinster daughters (almost her only com-
panions at first) and Madame du Barry,
the King's favorite. Yet she soon won
everyone's heart and had all Paris at her
charming feet.
But as time went by, not only the court
but the country as a whole and Marie
Antoinette's mother (Maria Theresa of
Austria, four hundred leagues away, and
constantly advising her daughter by mail)... Tovább

Fülszöveg

QUEEN OF FRANCE
by André Castelot
translated by Denise Folliot
"For all its careful scholarship and
judicious balance of judgment," says
The Listener, "it has the readability
and grip of a good novel. It deserves
the wide public that it is likely to
attract."
She was Marie Antoinette, a lovely
Austrian princess. She was fourteen
when she first met her fifteen-year-old
husband, the Dauphin of France. He was
a shy, heavy young man, overshadowed
by his grandfather, Louis XV.
The girl had many problems to cope
with at the French court, among them
her husband's lack of interest, the King's
spinster daughters (almost her only com-
panions at first) and Madame du Barry,
the King's favorite. Yet she soon won
everyone's heart and had all Paris at her
charming feet.
But as time went by, not only the court
but the country as a whole and Marie
Antoinette's mother (Maria Theresa of
Austria, four hundred leagues away, and
constantly advising her daughter by mail)
were alarmed by the fantastic parties,
wild extravagances, and excessive pleas-
ures of the Dauphin s bride.
Then Louis XV died, and the courtiers
coming to salute the new nineteen-year-
old king found him and his queen on
their knees weeping bitterly. "Oh, God,"
they cried, embracing each other, 'pro-
tect us, we are too young to reign."
André Castelot, a distinguished French
scholar and historian, has in this book
written one of the most brilliant of recent
biographies, which makes Marie Antoin-
ette, from her arrival in France to the
day she rode to her death in a cart, amaz-
ingly alive for the reader. We are carried
from the intimate chambers of the young
queen, through the incredible splendor
and shocking discomfort of life at Court,
to the awesome sounds of the rising mob,
the last desperate flights, and the ulti-
mate imprisonment and execution.
The author has had a mass of docu-
ments at his disposal while writing this
book, many of them newly discovered
in Viennese and Parisian archives, and
never before presented to the public.
Robert Pick says, "I admire this
book immensely. Familiar with the
Marie Antoinette story and its grim
climax, I yet found myself in sus-
pense to the last." Vissza