Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette (P.S.) (14 page)

Too late, we realize that she is moving. She simply steps around us and walks toward the Mars room. Her heavy boots make soft, quick thuds as she hurries away, first into the Diana salon.

Because the doors of all the state rooms are in alignment, I expect to see her pass through the Diana room and into the Mars room, and perhaps she does, but my eyes slowly slide closed, then open, and she is gone. Perhaps she has used one of the hidden doors cut into the wallpaper, the secret doors that lead to the Land of Intrigue.

“We’ve lost her, haven’t we?” the Dauphin asks. “Shall I look for her?”

“Perhaps we have other destinations this evening.”

My voice is as quiet and neutral as her gray-green dress.

“Did you hear the story of the demented Comtesse de Guéméné this evening?” My husband’s question guides our minds around some corner, and we seem back in the familiar world. “Lately, they say, she believes she converses with the dead.”

“I would talk with my dear papa, if I could.”

“And I with my older brother, the Dauphin who died as a child.” My husband turns his head to look at me. Curiosity about my mood subsequent to this strange encounter is evident in his facial expression, though not in his words. “The comtesse communicates with the other world”—he cracks a thin smile—“through her dogs and their incessant yapping.”

I laugh out loud.

“Come with me,” my husband says and leads me to his bed.

W
ITH A STACK OF SOFT PILLOWS
at our backs, we begin our nocturnal conversation. Every confidence we share is like a tongue of ribbon reaching out and connecting us. He tells me of the boy who died, the firstborn of his parents, who would have more rightly been the next king than he himself. He tells me the boy was brilliant and much beloved. For his brother’s sake, Louis Auguste’s own education was accelerated, as he was taken away from his governess in order to keep his brilliant brother company at his lessons. To whet their interest in history, the great philosopher-historian David Hume of Scotland was invited to visit. The older brother was frail, and their pious father, wanting his firstborn son never to be lonely, employed the second-born to serve that purpose.

The Dauphin speaks for a long time about his childhood, his brother’s death, his parents’ heartbreak at that loss and their disappointment in him.

“After the Dauphin’s death, I was kept isolated with tutors, as princes usually are, and I developed no skills in conversing freely with other young scholars nor in quickly taking the measure of another person.”

“What measure,” I ask, “did you take of the young woman we saw tonight?” I rejoice in the informal coziness of our conversation. “We have spoken nothing of her.”

His legs stir under the covers.

“Was she real?” he asks in a speculative tone. “If so, perhaps she was from the Gypsies. My brother Provence says they are encamped in tents outside the gates.”

“Can two people share the same delusion?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says. “A hundred can share the same delusion. A thousand, or tens of thousands.”

He abandons the topic of our apparition. We talk until we fall asleep, though I only ask him questions to help him in his discourse. His face fills with brightness as he confides more and more of his childhood experiences with me. Perhaps another night, he will inquire further into my private history. Because sleep comes more slowly to me, I review the party hosted by the Comtesse de Noailles. By including the Princesse de Lamballe, Madame Etiquette has given me the gift of a special sister. With the Princesse de Lamballe, first one and then the other of us would tell one tidbit or another. The fabric of our conversation interlaced as naturally as warp and woof.

However, I did express my regret to my husband before he slept that the young Prince de Rohan has now become a cardinal, to the delight of both the Comtesse de Guéméné and the Comtesse de Noailles, who are his relatives. “He behaved most impudently to me in Strasbourg," I confided.

When morning comes, I wake before my husband. He sleeps with only a sheet pulled across his naked body. At the place between his legs stands a little tent of sheeting, held high by a single sturdy prod.

Weeks pass
before I am able to spend more time in the company of my new friend. Her father-in-law has as many estates almost as does the King, and his household, like ours, travels frequently, at great expense, from one to another. She went southwest to Rambouillet, while the court traveled east to Meudon, which is said to possess the best air of all the estates. But finally, on a fine spring day, her family and mine meet again at Versailles.

Accompanied by our attendants, the Dauphin’s charming little sister Elisabeth, the Princesse de Lamballe, and I are walking beside the dragon fountain, which for some reason has been turned off, though its large pool is filled with water. Exceedingly fond of her tall dogs, Elisabeth walks surrounded by her greyhounds, and she insists on wearing her winter cap of gray rabbit fur, though now it is well into spring.

“If it were not for the Dauphin’s aversion to cats,” I confide to the princess, “I would surround myself with them.”

“I like it when they sit in my lap and purr,” she replies. “But sometimes their toenails snag a thread and ruin the silk.”

I wonder to myself if the Dauphin’s dislike of cats is not rebellion, in a very small way, against the tastes of the King, who adores cats—particularly a pure white Persian, who is so spoiled and smug that my secret nickname for her is du Barry.

Glancing at my dear new friend, I wonder what the Princesse de Lamballe thinks of the du Barry and the King’s immorality, but because my friend’s husband was also a profligate, I do not raise the subject, which might be a painful one for her. How did she avoid the contagion he carried in his body? It took his life. With her pretty face and beautiful clothes, she seems the picture of health and content. Like myself, she enjoys the company of pets, but I do not think she likes to romp with the children of other people as much as I do.

One of the greyhounds trots so that his head travels just below my hand in case I should want to stroke his smooth, sleek head. He glances up at me—sympathetically, I believe. If I were with my sister Charlotte, I would be silly: I would cradle the dog’s gray head in my hands, kiss him on his long nose, and say, “Now, turn into the perfect prince.”

These animals are a relief—quiet and elegant in comparison to the spaniels of my aunts. Perfectly gentle, they are so strong that they seem to spring on their legs while they circle round and round their little mistress, Elisabeth.

The dragon is surrounded by large, gilded putti mounted on swans swimming in the waters of the basin. The fearless children aim their little bows and arrows at the monster. Reared erect, with spread claws, the dragon is fierce and scaly, his nipples pointed like weapons, his head thrown back and raised upward toward the sky. The children and the swans are far larger than life-size—perhaps they
could
slay the dragon, for all their innocence. Mythically large, they dwarf the adults standing at the edge of the basin.

Suddenly from out of the thrown-back head and open mouth of the gilded dragon, with a tremendous noise and gush, a mighty plume of water arises. The silent greyhounds erupt in barking. They crouch and growl while the water plume grows up and up to a truly towering height. All the greyhounds are barking, and some of them leap into the pool to join the swan-mounted putti in their attack. All the while we admire the dogs’ fierce courage, we laugh at them for their foolishness. As they thrash in the water and crouch and spring and bark, Elisabeth shouts at them, “It’s not real, it’s not real!” but they believe the evidence of their own senses. The water spouting heavenward from the dragon statue means he is alive.

I laugh so hard that I begin to feel deep sobs starting in my chest, till with an awful gurgle in my throat, tears spurt from my eyes.

Quickly, the princess directs Elisabeth and her dogs and attendants to return to the château. Kind little heart, Elisabeth first kisses me on the cheek and whispers to me, her auntie, not to be afraid of the dragon. “He can’t move.” I try to seal shut my wailing mouth, and I give her a quick, reassuring nod, but as soon as she begins to climb back up the incline to the château, with the wet greyhounds frolicking around her, I sob again. Not one gray guardian dog has remained behind, but here is my friend, the princess, leading me to a stone bench.

She asks the source of my unhappiness, and when I cannot answer, she weeps with me a little. Still I cannot answer.

“Look how high the water spout has climbed,” she says. “It seems to tickle the clouds.”

But my eyes are shut in a hard firm line while I sob. The Princesse de Lamballe embraces me and tries to soothe me. Her cool fingertips and palm stroke the back of my neck, under my hair. Finally, I gasp out in a broken cadence, “I want to become a mother!”

Pulling back, the princess looks at me with startled horror, and then I realize she is glad to be spared the rites of married life and the pleasure of motherhood. As daughter-in-law to the wealthiest and most virtuous man of the kingdom, she is entirely content; she is like a large child.

“My whole being is afraid the Dauphin will never make love to me,” I wail. “My whole body hopes to mother a child.”

The princess sits before me in a lovely hat, bedecked with flowers; her wide-set eyes regard me as though she wishes to comfort me, but she is speechless. In her helpless distress, I believe she will begin to cry again.

I reach my hand toward her. “Every night,” I tell her, “I thank God that he has sent me such a friend as you.”

She smiles, and I make myself smile back at her. I straighten her pink bow that spreads its wide loops across her bosom. It is my duty to learn to command my feelings, or to hide them.

T
HIS NIGHT
I
SLEEP
alone because the Dauphin has gone to Fontainebleau to hunt, and it being during the visit of the Générale, I did not want to share his bed. Nor do I ride with my husband, lest I risk the possibility on a galloping horse of a hemorrhage occasioned by too much exercise. Absentmindedly, I have arranged no entertainment for the evening.

As I lie in bed, the silence is terrible. Perhaps I should send for the princess to keep me company. Almost I decide to rise up and write letters to my mother or to my sister, but I do not reach out to anyone. In themselves, silence and boredom become terrifyingly interesting because they are
novel.
I want to
explore
the moment. I lie very still, staring for a while at the portrait of my mother, then at the one of my brother, Emperor Joseph. Their images are my guardians.

When I was at home, we were never bored—or afraid. We had amusements: we played cards, or games, or danced, or made music together. There were so many of us—I shudder to think that the Empress gave birth fourteen times—and the boys and girls played together like equals. Because our entertainments most often involved our talents—at the keyboard or with the bow, dancing or singing or acting—our ability determined who was dominant and most admired.

I
N THE MORNING
, after having coffee with my aunts in their apartment, as I walk with the King to Mass, I tell him that I must have more music in my life. I ask if my old teacher Christoph Gluck might be brought to court to give me lessons and to perform his operas.

“There is bitter controversy now about aesthetic questions in composing operas,” Louis XV says, amused. “Should the music support the poetry, or the poetry provide a mere framework for vocal acrobatics? That is the question.”

No. The question is whether I shall strangle on bitterness or shame. People say I am pretty and have great charm, but to my husband I am more hideous than a dragon. I want to throw back my head and spout up my misery. I want to be torn apart by dogs.

I have made my husband cry.

A double repentance is required: one with Abbé Vermond in the confessional box, another for political reasons.

Gossips soon will have told Count Mercy, who, I fear, will report the matter in an unadvantageous way to my mother, so I must tell him myself, and in the process learn more about the rumor that the sister of the wife of the Comte de Provence is destined to marry the Comte d’Artois; then we shall have much of Savoy come to Versailles.

As he enters my sitting room, Count Mercy asks why I have requested his presence in this private chamber and, of course, how delighted he is at any moment to serve my needs.

I look at his handsome countenance and pleasant bearing and know that he always makes an effort not to frighten me. I have been told that he keeps a mistress at great expense, but I forgive him because he serves my mother with undivided loyalty and is devoted also to me. In France such arrangements between men of power and common women are unexceptional and accepted, but that does not make me admit the Comtesse du Barry into my conversation, even if she sits in the same room with me. While Count Mercy sins, he is not corrupted by his sins, and besides, he suffers terribly from hemorrhoids and is thus punished.

Perhaps they hurt him at this moment, but because he is not only curious but also concerned about me, there is no trace of distraction in his face. His chin is an excellent feature, firm but well molded, with a certain delicacy. My own chin is something that has a bit too much of Hapsburg prominence, making me appear haughty to some, while friends speak of my dignity. Count Mercy always carries his head with utmost naturalness. It is when one meets his eyes that one encounters an intellect of remarkable cunning and dignity. And I believe I see there too a shrewd kindness reserved primarily for me—and perhaps his actress mistress.

I dismiss all attendants, motion to a chair, which the count draws closer as he sits.

“How can I serve?” he asks with avuncular goodwill.

“It would comfort me if you would listen to the story of the Dauphin’s tears today.” I seem so serene in my demeanor that I convince myself my royal bearing is unperturbed. “And I beg of you advice, if I have left undone any gesture needed to restore perfect tranquillity in the household. Have you heard already that I made the Dauphin weep?”

Truthfully, he says that he has heard of the incident—a mere sentence or two that did not criticize me in any way.

“You know the sad state of incompleteness, of course, in which the Dauphin and I live. I have given him every encouragement. My mother says always that I must express more caresses, and I do, but sometimes I feel it is conversation that draws us closer.”

“It is true, and a disadvantage, that when Your Highness and His Highness were married, you scarcely knew each other. No one denies that, my dear princess.”

“And to my mind, conversation, if it is to be effective, must sometimes convey truth—important truths.”

With a slight smile, he nods and encourages me to continue.

“‘There is only so much time in any day’—that is the way I began the conversation."

“An indisputable observation, my princess.”

“And if we occupy the day and spend our energy in one way, then it cannot be spent in another.”

“And you wished to convey that perhaps the Dauphin—”

“Would spend less time hunting.”

In a confidential tone, the count remarks, with sad candor, “He has an intemperate passion for the sport, as does the present King, and the King before him.”

“Yes, but I never thought a passion running through the generations would be instrumental in preventing the continuation of the family.” I decide to describe my husband’s habits in more detail. “The Dauphin hunts incessantly, and it leaves him no energy. After the hunt and eating, he collapses, night after night. Today, I asked him forthrightly, in front of Monsieur le Comte de Provence and Madame la Comtesse de Provence, if he was aware that his addiction to the hunt was destroying his health, and that furthermore it was destroying his appearance, making him look common and unkempt.”

The count presents a mien of perfect neutrality, which means he is shocked by what I have had the unlucky impulse to communicate to the Dauphin.

Nonetheless, I continue my narrative. “I am sorry to say that my comment on his appearance hurt the Dauphin’s feelings very much, and I know that I should not have begun as I did. But the comte is so overweight and Josephine of such a sallow complexion that it was clear to me that the Dauphin far outshines both of them, at any moment, and that he knew this fact and that he would not take offense because, in comparison to them, ‘unkempt’ was a minor flaw.”

The count smooths the fabric on the thighs of his pants. He glances down and then up at me, as though asking permission to interject his own idea, and I signal with courteous silence that he may speak.

“Of course his Highness is hurt not by the specific content of your complaint against him but by the fact that he has been trained and counseled many times that even in his family, he is ascendant, and no one must seem to presume otherwise.”

“I did presume,” I admit.

When I remember the look of despair on the Dauphin’s face that I who have always supported him in every situation should have suddenly failed, I feel as though I will weep.

I can offer only feeble defense of my indiscretion. “Sometimes the Dauphin has appreciated my concern for his welfare. You will remember, perhaps a month ago, at one of the parties of the Comtesse de Noailles when too many pastries were brought to him, I ordered the servants to remove them all, and I explained to his Highness that his digestion was delicate and that I could not bear to see him suffer from overeating. Then he was pleased and considered my behavior to be evidence of my tenderness for him.”

“Is it really the same circumstance?” the count asks patiently, as he has so many times in trying to help me thread my way through a labyrinth of choices. Sometimes he speaks very earnestly and intently, sometimes with special pleasantness, as he does now, which makes me realize that he has probably been told the whole story already.

It is not the same circumstance, and I say so, noting that there is certainly a difference between a spontaneous act, prettily couched, and scolding.

“What happened next?” the count prompts.

“Before I could request that he change his hunting habits, he fled to his own apartment. But I followed him and continued discussing the disadvantages of a behavior, an indulgence, that not only drove me to despair but that was irresponsible in his duty to the King and to the citizens of France.

“The idea that he was robbing the people of a future king so humiliated the Dauphin that he burst into tears. He told me that I was right and begged my patience with him.

“Then I caressed him, and I wept with him and told him that I loved the French people second only to himself.”

“And what was his response?”

“He asked with great feeling if it were true, then, that I did indeed love him, and I replied that I did, and even more I respected him, and that it broke my heart to think that I had been so wicked as to say things in front of his brother that should have been said in other ways and when we were alone. I called myself a goose, and then he kissed me tenderly.”

Though I speak to the count only of what was said and done, I experience again how surprised I was by my husband’s question—did I love him? He was as vulnerable as a child. I had never imagined he worried about the question of my
feeling
about him, but that he simply accepted that it was our duty to be together. The frankness of this question from Louis Auguste struck through a hard shell that had grown (almost without my noticing it) around my own heart.

“So the reconciliation brought the two of you into greater intimacy.”

“I believe it did, and certainly I feel most loving toward him,” I confide in a burst of my own frankness, “for he has an excellent temper and rather than become angry with me, he shows me his sensitive nature and reproaches himself. I told him that a demon had taken control of my tongue.”

The count smiles at me fondly and then asks if the Dauphin smiled at me.

“There is no one who has greater charm than you,” the count says, “and I shall tell the Empress that I am pleased with the way you handled this small tempest. Perhaps flowers of greater affection will germinate between the two of you from this watering by tears.”

I have not told the count that I excused myself with my husband by telling him that the so-called demon was sometimes a herald to the imminent arrival of the Générale Krottendorf.

“Ah, yes,” the Dauphin said, “we will respect the visit of the Générale, and perhaps after that we will complete our reconciliation in a way that fulfills not only your expectations but those of France.” He hugged me to him again and kissed my brow. Then he added gallantly, “And my own fond hopes as well.”