While Louis was busy making locks and spinning wheels, Marie was indulging her taste for luxury. Marie Antoinette liked flowers and chocolates, Queen-style He did, and the betrayal led to the discovery of the iron chest by the ministers seeking to overthrow the king. Marie warned Louis that Gamain might be untrustworthy, but Louis could not believe that his friend of 20 years would betray him. By this time, Gamain had secretly joined the revolutionary cause. Nervous about the revolutionary fervor bubbling up in France, Louis asked Gamain to craft an iron chest with a special lock to protect important papers. Later on, Louis had much worse luck with his old friend from the locksmith shop. The story goes that Marie thanked him courteously and then gave it away to one of her attendants. He crafted her a spinning wheel, a considerate present for a clotheshorse like Marie Antoinette, who averaged over 200 new dresses per year. Once, Louis attempted to use his talents to reach out to his wife. On the other hand, being king allowed Louis to explore his interests on an extravagant level, given that the palace at Versailles was his playground. If his path in life hadn’t been preordained, it seems likely that Louis would have been a simple craftsman rather than a king. It wasn’t long before Louis became interested in carpentry and began to make furniture. The royal locksmith, a man named François Gamain, befriended him and taught him how to make locks from scratch. Unencumbered with learning how to be kingly at a young age, Louis found himself drawn to the solitary pursuits of lock making and carpentry. Since Louis didn’t seem very interested in a vivacious young bride, what exactly was he interested in? Although it wasn’t the kind of working with his hands that the French may have preferred, what Louis liked to do was work with metal and wood. Louis spent more time on padlocks than wedlock Some ill-advised policies advanced by Louis did nothing to contradict this point of view. The long delay had done damage to Louis’ reputation as king, however, with some critics contending that a man who could not perform on a personal level was likely to be just as ineffective as a leader. Some wags wondered if the children were Louis’s, given Marie’s almost understandable interest in other men at court, but no one was able to prove otherwise. Joseph’s straight talk during his visit seemed to produce results the couple sent him a thank-you letter and produced four children in relatively quick succession. Joseph referred to the royals as “two complete blunderers” and didn’t discover any good reason why the sheets remained so cold in the royal bedchamber other than a lack of inclination or, perhaps, a lack of education. Her mother eventually sent Marie’s brother Joseph to town to find out what the problem was. Marie, who was interested in sex, became increasingly frustrated with this state of affairs. Louis, self-conscious and insecure, may not have been very interested in sex, unlike his licentious grandfather, who lambasted him for his reluctance. Several reasons have been proposed for the fact that the marriage went unconsummated for seven years. Not yet 12 years old, she was promised to the future king of France. Most likely, Antonia would not have been selected to fulfill this duty, but her older, eligible sisters had died from an outbreak of smallpox. Her mother Maria Theresa, acting as queen after the death of the emperor, planned to unite Austria with its former enemy France through marriage. She liked playing music and dancing and was reportedly very talented at both. Unlike Louis-Auguste, who had a rather austere upbringing, she was a very social child with a close family and many friends. Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna was born in Vienna, the beautiful daughter of Emperor Francis I. This brother died young, however, and Louis-Auguste the loner was thrust into a public role as the heir apparent to the throne. His grandfather, the king, considered him “ungainly” and “dimwitted” kinder appraisers regarded him as shy and withdrawn, living in the shadow of an attractive older brother being groomed for the crown. Louis-Auguste was not a promising specimen.
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