Cradle to Guillotine

MARIE ANTOINETTE--Katharine Anthony--Knopf ($3).

Biographer Anthony takes no stock in the story that Marie Antoinette, when a hungry mob was clamoring for bread, asked with cruel naivete: "Why don't they eat cake?" Her brief (298-page) biography is a partisan but appealing argument in favor of Marie Antoinette's humanity.

Marie Antoinette had several popular nicknames, all indicative of her unpopularity. The first, ''The Austrian," was founded strictly on fact. Fifteenth and next-to-last child of Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria. Marie Antoinette was condemned by her scheming mother, by the diplomatic system of Europe, to be a political pawn. Married off young to the French Dauphin, lethargic Louis XVI ("whose greatest achievement was to go to bed at eleven o'clock every night") she soon found her married life was to have no pretense of love, not even (until Louis finally consented to an operation) a chance of children. Though scandal surrounded her, Biographer Anthony thinks it was baseless rumor. Marie did have expensive tastes, however, and loved cards. The evening before her 21st birthday she played faro continuously for 36 hours. One lover (Biographer Anthony thinks) Marie Antoinette did have: discreet, able Count Axel Fersen, a Swede who served two and one-half years in the U.S. Revolution.

As unrest in France grew before the Revolution, Marie Antoinette's extravagance got her another nickname--Mme Deficit. Partly because she was a foreigner she was more hated than her bumbling husband, who might have saved all their lives if he had agreed to run away in time. Too late Marie and Count Fersen persuaded him to escape. After they were captured at Varennes and brought back to Paris, Marie and her lover said goodbye for the last time. (He was killed by a mob in Sweden, in 1810.) To the bitter end Marie Antoinette played out the rest of her part becomingly. When she mounted the overcrowded platform of the guillotine, she stepped on somebody's foot, begged his pardon with her last words.

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