Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette (P.S.) (12 page)

Because there is
no proper bath at Compiègne, my ladies bring tubs and porcelain bowls to bathe away the sweat and dust. I look with disgust at the limp rag of lace that I wore at my throat. Tossed on a dressing table, it resembles wilted lettuce, and I resolve to have a more enduring froth at my throat for future hunts, something more regal—a cascade of gold lace.

In one bathing bowl float several disks of orange to scent the water. I recall a crate of oranges boxed up from l’Orangerie at Versailles being lifted onto a wagon, no doubt for this purpose. Impulsively, I pluck a floating orange slice from the clean water, break its rind with my thumbnail, straighten it so that the fruit presents itself toward me in triangular tongues, and gnaw the juicelets to the quick. For my refreshment, immediately I am presented with a mound of grapes on a plate, but I ignore them and lean my nose over the white bowl with the floating wheels of orange.

“Please send for the perfumer for the hunt tomorrow,” I say. “This aroma lacks complexity.” But I cannot say what I want to smell. Something of lilac, perhaps, with the power of lily. Always I crave attar of rose, and yet none quite fulfills the need.

When I lift my face from the water, something in me feels older and more cynical than when I first mounted my horse today. Without reserve, I have given myself to excitement. I look at the ring on my little finger again. After I looked at it while sitting in my saddle, when I glanced up, I saw that the King’s eye had followed my gaze, and he too stared at my hands. Later, after hard riding, I recall the image of my ungloved hand rubbing the sweat-wet hair on my horse’s thick chestnut neck. I wanted the horse to feel my bare hand. Now my ladies follow all my movements and my mood, even this moment of reverie. I take off my ring to bathe my hands among the disks of sliced orange. My hands are tired, and I spread and stretch my fingers in the water.

W
HEN WE HAVE
gathered together for the hunt supper, my fatigue makes me feel nervous. Drinking their glasses of wine, the others relax and shed their fatigue with the imbibing. Though I am tempted to join them, I remember my promise to my mother, and I know that in this she is right. I will never drink wine.
Draw your gaiety from your own heart,
she told me.
Be chaste in this matter and you will never regret the pure clarity of your mind.
Purple-skinned grapes sit in a tall silver compote before me, along with sugared peaches and candied oranges. I take a large grape and crunch through its simple skin with my back teeth. The pulp is good on my tongue, and I position the little seeds at the tip of my tongue and remove them with the perfect grace of a single forefinger, tucking the seeds into the palm of my hand till I choose the moment to discard them.

“Do you agree,” the Dauphin asks me, triumphant in the chase, “the next-to-the-last stag was the most beautiful? He ran the most swiftly, threaded his way most gracefully.”

“Lying on the ground,” I say, “he did not deign to look at us.”

“I noticed that as well. His gaze was on the sky.”

“Or, perhaps, at the scalloped edge, where the treetops meet the sky.”

The odor of a savory soup, one with parsley, greets my nostrils, but I do not want to bring anything hot into my mouth. I hated it when my ladies reapplied the circles of rouge to my still hot cheeks. The King asks me if I desire some token of our hunt, and I reply a necktie fashioned with lace of gold, one that will not wilt in heat.

“Our huntress deserves the gold,” he answers enthusiastically. “You ride like Catherine de Medici.”

“I think Your Majesty guides his horse with the hands of Apollo.”

“But he had a chariot,” the plump Comte de Provence puts in. “I wish I did.”

The King asks me if I have been to the foot of the garden at Versailles and seen the fountain there of Apollo. When I say I have not, he offers to escort me on our return.

Quickly, the Dauphin reminds me that we are to have days of hunting before we quit Compiègne, and I smile encouragingly at him, for I do not want to leave either, till all of me is as tired as my hands. And I smile because I remember his promise as to what will happen between us, now that we are at Compiègne. The Dauphin quietly asks if there is any other part of my costume I would change.

“Not the pants,” the King exclaims. “I adore her in pants, and how she rises from the saddle for the leaps.”

Artois mischievously tells his older brother the Dauphin that I ride faster than he, though it is not true. “You will have to pant to catch her,” Artois adds, and I recall that he has uttered this sentence before. But the Dauphin does not spare himself in the hunt—no one could urge his horse or himself with greater passion. When he draws to a stop, both he and the horse are gasping, and their eyes are wild in the same way. Now the Dauphin’s eyes look down, heavy, sleepy, and hooded again. I wish he would not guzzle the hot soup, but he nods for another bowl of the creamy stuff on which float small islets of butter. I lay my spoon beside my soup plate, as though to give a signal.

Slender Artois also lays aside his spoon. He asks me if I prefer the lighter rigor of dancing to the wild rides on horseback.

“Today, I prefer the wildness of the hunt,” I reply, “but when next we dance, you must ask the question again.”

“Comtesse de Noailles plans a small dance in her rooms,” the King says. “She attends to every detail and even consulted me on the guests—so much would she wish to please you.”

Suddenly I am aware that part of my feeling of freedom is occasioned by the absence of Madame Etiquette. Beneath her insistence on forms is nothing but envy of my youth and energy.

“The King is so kind,” I say, “as to wish all his family and subjects the greatest possible happiness at every possible moment.”

“In that,” the Dauphin adds, “he is like God, according to Leibniz—”

“One of his philosophers,” Artois interrupts.

“But you read him as well,” the Dauphin says to his bright little brother.

“However, I do not discuss him after the hunt.”

“Please,” I mediate, “Leibniz is an interesting name—German, I would guess.”

“The princess would not leave all things German behind?” the King questions, but his eyes are kind and full of understanding.

“My mother wishes me to read books on devotion, as does the Abbé Vermond.”

“Leibniz has his own thoughts,” the Dauphin continues, but with some reluctance because of his brother’s criticism of the topic. “Leibniz addresses the question ‘How can a benevolent and all-powerful God allow evil to exist in the world?’”

Immediately, I think of the sudden death of my beloved papa, and the injustice of his taking, but I have never uttered that thought aloud, and I do not do so now. When the news of his death reached us, my mother looked at me, however, as though she could read my thoughts, and she ordered me to fall to my knees, handing me a cushion, and to pray for the soul of my father, which I did at once, with all the urgency of my being.

“What is the answer?” I ask timidly.

“Monsieur, you frighten your wife,” the King cautions. Still his glance at his grandson is merely advisory, not unkind, not even a nuance of reprimand in his tone. Truly, I do love the King despite his moral weakness in concupiscence.

“Leibniz’s answer is full of consolation,” the Dauphin replies.

I recall the tenth stag, his neck presenting its curve for the knife, his eye rolled up to heaven.

“Your Majesty is so kind as to make my sensibility his care,” I say, “but I am not afraid—of anything.” Nervously, I laugh a little at myself.

The King chuckles. “Then your heart is still that of a child who has received perfect care.”

“And are we not all God’s children?” Provence asks. “It is a belief that none of us question. And yet we fear. We lack control in so many matters—”

“Such as the order of our birth,” audacious Artois quips.

“I am my mother’s tenth daughter,” I say. “Yet here I sit, among you.”

Oh, that was not wisely said before these boys whose turn at kingship is behind that of my husband and any progeny we may have! Around the edges of my ears, I seem to hear the crinkle of encroaching fire.

Papa-Roi rescues me. With the smile that shows him completely at ease in his own power and ordering of the world and in this moment most happy, he says, “Without doubt, God’s wisdom rules the earth and all that comes to pass. Nothing could bless this moment more than the presence of our darling princess, the tenth daughter of our fortunate friend, the Empress.”

“And that is Leibniz’s very point,” the Dauphin concludes. “This is the best of all possible worlds.”

“Who can doubt it?” Provence speaks with his mouth full of venison, lifts his glass of wine by its slender crystal stem, and tilts outward to indicate the splendor and abundance that surround us.

“Voltaire thinks the idea absurd,” Artois amends, with something of his own sneer.

“And where is Voltaire?” the King asks.

We all know that he is exiled to Switzerland for his attacks on piety and religion in general, so no one speaks.

“Voltaire…the
philosophes,
” the Dauphin muses. “Our tutors were chosen, my brothers, mainly to exclude those who sympathized with that crew.”

I think of his hatred of his tutor Vauguyon which my husband has privately expressed to me. I eat another grape from the compote. I am eating very little tonight. I am almost too tired to eat. A sigh slips out.

“Are you thinking of your home?” the King asks. “Tell us, what image comes to mind?”

“I am thinking of the menagerie,” I say. “My father kept many amusing animals for us.”

“Monkeys?” the King asks, glancing around the crowded room, as though to be sure that all of his guests enjoy their conviviality.

I recall that Madame du Barry keeps a pet monkey. “I do not like monkeys,” I say. “They are too mocking.”

Artois laughs. “I heard that what’s-her-name’s monkey went on a rampage. He got in her cosmetics and powdered himself in a flurry and rouged his cheeks, just like his mistress.” When Artois imitates the monkey, hunching his back and chattering his teeth, we all burst into laughter.

“What animals did you like, in the menagerie at Schönbrunn?” the King inquires of me.

“Clara, the rhinoceros, with her armor covered in red dust.” I do not want to tell him of beloved Hilda, the hippopotamus, floating among the hyacinths, so peaceful and
vulnerable
. “And a leopard, with golden eyes lounging in the shade of a lilac bush.”

“You must have a leopard skin,” the King says, “to place under your saddle.”

A
HEAVY SILVER
platter is brought forth, loaded with cakes in fanciful shapes, some like eggs, some like stars, or hearts. A whole group resembles the houses and shops of a small village, and all are covered in glittering sugar as though a great snowstorm had struck this darling hamlet. A golden platter is covered with pastries, their golden-brown crusts are shaped to make nests for jellies and cooked fruit, apricots and pears freckled with cinnamon, and some have a puddle of molten chocolate in their center. A large porcelain bowl decorated with Chinese bridges and blue willow trees holds an enormous pudding, and the aroma of cooked raisins and plums and cherries rushes through my nostrils to my stomach and makes it writhe with greed.

Nonetheless, I choose one of the snow-draped structures from the hamlet to nibble. The Dauphin has his plate covered with some of each of the wondrous sweets, and Provence has his plate covered, and then another layer, a second story, so to speak, of dessert built up on his plate. I have no doubt he will eat it all, but slender Artois, and I, and the handsome King have some sense in this matter of eating. I am sorry when the Dauphin asks for more.

Provence says, “I intend to live in the most
delicious
of all possible worlds.”

When it is time to retire, the Dauphin accompanies me to our chamber door. He looks at the beautiful white bed, which is as bedecked with lace and satin-sided pillows as the little cake-houses of the village were with white icing and sparkling sugar, but he tells me he has indigestion, and, indeed, it is best that he sleep elsewhere, lest he disturb me in the night. He knows that he will be sick and need attending.

All my eagerness melts, but I speak with the utmost good cheer and genuine concern for his discomfort.

In bed alone, my legs are restless, as I anticipate the motion of the hunt tomorrow. My eagerness returns, and I think of squeezing the horse between my knees to make him jump at just the moment of my choosing.

Tomorrow our object will be the foxes, and we hunt another quarter of the forest.

Tomorrow night my husband will surely want to come to me—if the hunt is successful. Yes, it will be a sign. If the hunt goes well, surely he will want to bed his wife.

The day
has been a delirium of dust, speed, leaping, riding. I am triumphant not in the animals we kill but in the joy of the hunt, the excitement, the color of costumes, the sound of the horn, the hard thudding of horses’ hooves, the independence of my own body, rising and settling, rising to fly, the good ache in all my limbs.

When we left the woods, I heard the quiet reclaiming the countryside. The trees seemed to be part of something almost holy, a vast
cathédrale
. But it was the quiet that called me back.

A
T DINNER
, we are loud and boisterous. The King always keeps his dignity, but the grandsons seem childish in their jubilance, especially the younger brothers. My Dauphin has moments of sullenness, which I have not seen in him for some time. Finally, he says to me, “I would hunt now, in the dark, if I could.”

I understand: he is bored; it is only the chase he craves. The bounty of the table, the steaming meat pies, the piles of peeled fruits, and green stacks of haricots are poor substitutes for plunging into the forest astride a willing mount. Because he must wait for what he wants, he withdraws and sulks.

“The morning comes quickly,” I say. “Refreshed, we will ride all the better.”

“You love it too?”

“I do love the hunt, and all that pleases you gives me double pleasure, for I experience both your joy and my own.”

His eyes look fondly into mine, with gratitude for my understanding, but they do not go so far as to promise any connubial joy for me. He needs, and he appreciates what he receives, but he is not strong enough to give.

The trays of candies arrive, nuts cooked in patties of brown sugar, a cake in the shape of a fox covered in raspberry fondant with a green grape eye. The Dauphin licks his lips. A lovely meringue shell holds a rich swirling whirlpool of chocolate pudding; a deep bowl with a scalloped golden edge cradles large mounds of beaten cream studded with strawberries and sprinkled with crystals of white sugar, and more and more; he eats it all.

At the door of our chamber, the Dauphin folds his arms over his stomach and bends forward in pain.

“I’m sorry,” he gasps and runs doubled over away from me, as fast as he can, for a commode.

A
M
I
TO GROW
miserable at Compiègne? Soon will he not even accompany me to the door? I do not need to be a Bohemian Gypsy to predict the future. I know the answer is
yes.

And what is my recourse?

I will remain patient. And I will visit the gardens of Versailles, and explore the bosquets, and revel in the basins of cavorting waters. I am his friend. Though the whole court laugh at him, from me, he will receive nothing but sympathy, mounds and mounds of sweet concern, as though each rejection were without history and engendered no impatience.