Page "Marie Antoinette" Paragraph 79

" Come, Léonard, dress my hair, I must go like an actress, exhibit myself to a public that may hiss me ", the queen quipped to her hairdresser, who was one of her " ministers of fashion ", as she prepared for the Mass celebrating the return of the Estates General on 4 May 1789.

She knew that her rival, the duc d ' Orléans, who had given money and bread to the people during the winter, would be popularly acclaimed by the crowd much to her detriment.

The Estates General convened the next day.

During the month of May, the Estates General began to fracture between the democratic Third Estate ( consisting of the bourgeoisie and radical nobility ), and the royalist nobility of the Second Estate, while the king's brothers began to become more hardline.