female look. She also began to participate in amateur plays and musicals, starting in 1780, in a theatre built for her and other courtiers who wished to indulge in the delights of acting and singing. Three months after the empress' death, it was rumored that Marie Antoinette was pregnant again. The queen gave birth to Louis Joseph Xavier François, who was given the title of duc de Bretagne, on 22 October, 1781. The reaction to a male heir was best summed up by the words of Louis XVI himself, as he wrote them down in his hunting journal: "Madame, you have fulfilled our wishes and those of France. You are the mother of Dauphin."
During the Assembly of Notables, Marie Antoinette began to abandon her more carefree activities to become more involved in politics than ever before, and mostly against the interests of Austria. Her children
