Louis & Antoinette

New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc.l- A Balliett & Fitzgerald Book, 1974. Book Club Edition . Hard Back. Fine/Good. 6" X 8 1/2. 427 Pages. Tight bright book with no marks or stamps. Interior text pages are flawless. Dust Jacket is slightly worn at edges and at opening. Tear at top left corner less than an inch. Antoinette too has been tagged with a bad line: If they have no bread, let them eat cake. She never spoke it. Indeed such words are almost inconceivable on anyone's lips in the humanitarian late 18th century. They were spoken a century earlier by another Queen, Marie Therese, Spanish- born wife of Louis XIV, and were familiar to young Jean Jacques Rousseau in 1737, 18 years before Antoinette's birth. Tracing the birth and upbringing of both Louis and Antoinette, he at Versailles and she in Vienna under the brilliant but domineering Maria Theresa, makes an interesting contrast. Louis spent his childhood lonely in the scandalous community of two of France's most shocking courtesans, Mesdames Pompadour and Du Barry, and undoubtedly they contributed to his hangups. Antoinette's upbringing was strict, but intelligent, and it is to the credit of both that after an impossible marriage had been arranged for them, they managed to make it work and even became notably fond of one another.