La importancia de la hidratación
7. Seleccionar, a partir de los refranes analizados, el que sea más pertinente con la enseñanza
i UTERINE FURIES AND DYNASTIC OBSTRUCTIONS
There was a type of oversize necklace, briefly in vogue in the 1780s, that was known as a riviere. As the name implies, it looped about the neck and fell generously over the bodice towards the waist. At a time when fashion was becoming much simpler, the riviere was a loud item, much associated with actresses in the Palais-Royal, who might not blush to show off the generosity of their benefactors. One evening at the theater two young friends saw just such a river pouring over the decolletage of a conspicuous courtesan. "Look at that," one of them remarked, "a riviere that flows very low." "That's because it's returning to its source," replied his companion.
Jokes about sex and jewelry were nothing new. But in 1787, readers of the gossipy Moving Tableau of Paris, where the gibe was published, would have recognized more than a smutty double entendre. For two years, the reputation of the Queen had been mired in scandal, the centerpiece of which was a diamond necklace of 647 brilliants and 2,800 carats. It had been made with Mme Du Barry in mind by the court jewelers Bohmer and liassenge but Louis XV had died before they could deliver it. At 1.6 million livres it was a ruinous item of back inventory, and at first, Marie- Antoinette seemed a likely customer. She had already bought from the same firm a pair ol "chandelier" earrings, a spray and a bracelet. When funds ran low she repeatedly went to the King, who usually indulged her. As a young woman she indulged a weakness for diamonds that was reported by a disapproving Austrian ambassador and earned her a smart rap over the knuckles from her imperial mother. "A Queen can only degrade herself," wrote Maria Theresa, "by this sort of heedless extravagance in difficult times."
By the 1780s, Marie Antoinette seemed to have taken this lesson to
heart, since she had become more conscious of avoiding conspicuous lux
uries. At any rate she repeatedly declined to acquire the necklace. Driven to distraction (and perhaps knowing Marie-Antoinette's weakness for tear-sodden drames bourgeois) the jeweler Bohmer had made a scene at court, sobbing his eyes out, yelling, swooning and threatening to do away with himself unless the Queen took the necklace off his hands. This tremendous performance was of no avail. Even had she been inclined to ignore official pleas for economy, the monstrosity was not to the Queen's taste. It was altogether too much—the kind of blowsy vulgarity she associated with the Du Barry circle. Hoisting the wailing jeweler off his knees she counseled him to break up the necklace and get what he could for the separate stones.
This dinosaur of rococo jewelry would indeed be cut down to size, but not by its creator. In fact its public history had barely begun. For it became the prize in a confidence trick of breathtaking audacity. The Diamond Necklace Affair—as it became capitalized—is often treated as a scandalous sideshow to the "real" drama of empty coffers, famished peasants and
54. Portraits of the Cardinal de Rohan, Jeanne de La Motte, Nicole Le Guay and other principals in the Diamond Necklace Affair
55. "Ma Constitution": A later, graphic example of body politics, probably dating from 1790. Lafayette has his hand on the "Res Publica" of the Queen. growling artisans that heralded the end of the French monarchy. The cast of characters who were paraded before the French reading public as the bizarre plot unraveled in the summer of 1785 seemed perfect symbols of a regime worm-eaten with corruption: a dissolute, gullible, aristocratic cardinal; a scheming adventuress claiming descent from the Valois kings of France; a Neapolitan charlatan who said he had been born in Arabia
and could tap the healing arts of the occult; an ash-blond grisette picked up in the Palais-Royal to impersonate the Queen; hapless creditors wringing their hands and cracking their knuckles; sundry jewelers from the Paris quais, from Piccadilly and Bond Street, on whose counters had fallen black velvet bags packed with diamonds the size of thrushes' eggs. But at the very center of it all, unavoidably, was Marie-Antoinette. It was her transformation in public opinion from innocent victim to vindictive harpy, from Queen of France to the "Austrian whore" (putain
autrichienne), that damaged the legitimacy of the monarchy to an incalculable degree.
There was nothing inevitable about this. Until the affair came to light, the Queen had been an oblivious bystander to the intrigue. But the phobic hysterias gathering about her, even before the plot was hatched, meant that she would be suspected of collusion, of luring others to their doom in the service of her insatiable appetite for luxure: a term that usefully compressed together opulence and libido.
In all kinds of ways, however unwittingly, Marie-Antoinette designed her own downfall. It was precisely her reputation for unaffected girlish