Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette (P.S.) (18 page)

 

Mercy gave me your precious letter the day before yesterday, and yesterday a second letter so that I feel doubly connected to my dear mama.

Now I hope that my letter will serve, in its turn, as a conduit for joy flowing to you in Vienna. Last Tuesday, the people of Paris gave to me a fete that I shall never forget no matter how long I am to live. It was our official entry to the city, and every conceivable honor was heaped upon us. But it was not the honors bestowed by dignitaries that most moved me. What has touched me to the quick of my being is the love and eagerness bestowed on us by the poor people of France. Although they are burdened with taxes of a very heavy sort, they were in a transport of joy—merely to behold their future monarchs. Mercy tells me that everyone cried out about my beauty and charm and how they delight in our youth and innocence. In us, they see the rebirth of hope for the future of the country. I felt it most keenly and will work hard, as will the Dauphin, to alleviate the suffering of the people.

When we came out onto an open terrace, after dinner, and stayed there for a half hour, I cannot describe to even you, my dear mama, the intensity of delight and love which they manifested again and again. When I kissed my hand to them, or smiled, or waved my handkerchief to them, they went mad with joy. When we have so much and they so little, and yet they give us trust and love, I know that no experience can be more precious. I will never forget that they have given me this gift. I felt and do feel and will always feel profound gratitude. Were I to live a hundred years, I would not forget the outpouring of love given to us when we made our official entry to the city of Paris.

The King rejoices with us. Two days after our entry, the King freed 320 persons imprisoned for debt. The King made good on the debt which was owed to the wet nurses who had been paid to breast feed the children of the debtors. I am much moved that the King wants the helpless babes to be nourished in this way and for those who provide such nutrition to be honored.

I am glad to know that Mercy has told you he is pleased with the way I understand affairs of state. Really, it is my heart I count on for understanding, rather than my head, but Mercy has told me my first spontaneous response to persons and their words is something to trust, and not to be second-guessed. Even more than my intuitions, I trust the advice of Mercy, for I believe that it really is your advice that I follow when I follow his. I smiled to read your description that he thinks in a French way but as a good German. I believe that we have in his perspective the best of two worlds!

Now that we have made our official entry into Paris, the King says we may go as often as we like. Monsieur le Dauphin and I intend to see the shows at the Opera, the Comédie-Française, and the Comédie-Italienne every week, and we are to be greeted with just as much pomp and rejoicing as though it were the Monarch himself approaching, that is, with the welcoming roars of the cannon at the Invalides and the Bastille fortress. Now my life is much happier because the people of Paris have opened their hearts to me. If you had heard the mighty roar of the Bastille cannon, you would have exclaimed, “What punctuation!”

 

Snow has been falling
all night, and the Dauphin, who loves me so much, like a protective brother, has wondered aloud several times if we should travel to Paris tonight for the Opera Ball. I tell my husband that in the snow, Paris will appear like a Land of Fantasy.

“You have been happier these last six months,” he says to me.

“Since Paris…,” I begin. “Ecstasy. Perpetual ecstasy. I did not know life could be so amusing, so inexhaustibly entertaining.” I am in a grand mood.

The Comte de Provence, who loves me (or anyone but himself) not at all but who can sometimes be amusing, insists that we must not hesitate to pile on our furs and climb aboard the sleigh waiting just beyond the stairs of the Marble Courtyard. He and his wife have come no closer together in the bedroom than have the Dauphin and I.

Comte d’Artois, who is always amusing and the best dancing partner to be had, has already announced that he and his wife prefer to sport at home tonight. Though Artois is full of little jibes about his marital pleasures, knowing that both his older brothers suffer from a painful disorder of the too-tight foreskin, I always forgive him. Perhaps one of his jibes will someday spur the Dauphin on to greater achievement, despite pain, but I doubt it. Perhaps I forgive brother Artois because his jibes are not directed at me. Or perhaps it is because he is slim and lively and loves, as I do, the pretend world offered by theater.

My Partner in Pretend. Sometimes when the six of us play together, I pretend that he is my partner in life, instead of the stolid Dauphin. Had I been married to Artois, I would not find myself eighteen years old and still a virgin. But then I would not be Dauphine, a position I am learning to enjoy, since we can now visit Paris as often as we like. The fall season was jammed with theater, opera, dinners, balls, and receptions—a warm chocolate pudding embedded with darker chocolate morsels and iced with chocolate ganache!

After putting on my fur cloak, I cross to the window, so that I may look out at the snow in the courtyard before we ruin it. The sledges wait for us below, furnished with drivers and postilions, footmen, horses, but, without us, the scene seems empty and unreal. No, I witness an instance of simple
being
, caught in a still moment. It does not depend on us to have its reality. A footman leaning back against a sledge moves his shoulders forward, steps into new snow, and the scene is animated. It exists perfectly well—complete—without my presence.

Behind me sounds the ponderous voice of Comte Provence, and Artois is whistling the tune of a bawdy song. It is another way of bragging that he prefers his warm bed in Versailles to a cold trip to Paris in a sledge.
Artois, in Paris, you are interchangeable with other swains. If not you, some other young man will help me pass the time. I need the stimulation of the city. Paris itself will divert me from my imprisonment in a body that fails to allure its proper mate.

The three brothers debate again whether the weather is too mean to permit our attendance at the Opera Ball. What is the speed of thought? Of intense imagining? It must be faster than anything that moves on earth, faster than a slate falling from a roof, or lightning. I wish that Artois were going with us. He is such fun to play with.

“Of course we’re going,” I say. “Anyway.”

Full of merriment, I twirl from the window with so much vivacity that the heavy skins of my cloak fly out from my body.

“She looks so big, like a bear,” Provence says. His own mountainous shape is shingled with animal pelts.

“I’d rather resemble a warthog,” I reply and bare my side teeth as though they were tusks and run at him.

Taking careful stock, the Dauphin asks again if we have our dominoes, and all the garb suitable for a masked ball. He would be the shepherd to our frivolous flock. By taking responsibility for us, he fancies he prepares himself for assuming more serious royal duties. Why did my mother ever trade the lightness of pleasure for her somber desk and interminable work? But she would say that she always takes time for
proper
fun.

A
S WE DESCEND
the wide stairs, the cold of the night comes up to greet us. I feel it in my feet, and then my ankles, and then the calves of my legs, even though the fur cloak is long. At the foot of the stairs, my attendant ties on my separate hood with a silk cord under my chin. Now I look like two balls of fur stuck together, a big fur body, a smaller round furry head. I will need all this protection, for our sleigh is open to the night. From the footman’s leather-gloved hand swings a small metal stove. Through the perforations of the metal, I see a red glow, for the heater is filled with hot bricks and glowing charcoal, to warm our feet.

It is ten o'clock, the perfect moment to embark on a starry drive. When I cuddle close in the narrow space to my husband, the lap robes of shaggy fur, lined with woven wool, are drawn up almost to our noses.

Hold on tight, Marie.

“What did you say?” he asks.

I have to laugh. “I didn’t know I’d spoken aloud. I was giving myself advice, such as I was given when I was a child, about to descend a snow slope.”

“But did they call you ‘Marie’?”

“In Austria, I was called Antoine by those who loved me. Or as we say, Toinette. But, as a girl about to descend a snowy slope in the mountains, I seemed to hear advice:
Hold on tight, Marie.
It seemed to come from the mountains themselves, or from the future.”

Suddenly another haunting phrase echoes from memory, but I do not articulate it aloud.
Now do you love me?
asked by little Mozart of my mother.

The driver takes his place high above us, and the postilion mounts behind. I recognize the postilion but cannot remember exactly where I saw him. When the sleigh suddenly draws us forward, it is as though my brain is hitched to the horses and is surprised that some external force transports its stillness into motion.

Between the blackness of the sky, glimmering with stars, and the whiteness of the snow-covered world, we slide toward Paris. Already I imagine the large room, the masks, the music, the jostling of bodies and the human heat, the vibrating sense of Opportunity and Surprise.

“And did you obey?”

“Obey?”
Hold on tight, Marie.
“Ah, you mean the voices of authority. Yes, I have always tried to obey. For example, did I not speak to the notorious du Barry?”

“Does it gall you still?”

“You like her no better than I. Does it gall you?”

“Always, we must be cautious. Then and now. Did you ever read Mr. Hume’s
History of England
?”

“I began it—not only in obedience but because you wished it." I can feel my nose and cheeks growing pink with cold.

“And?”

“I found it quite interesting, but one has to remember that it was composed by a Protestant.” I see a star overhead that I would like someone to pluck for me. That desire, as well as the snow, makes me think of my dear papa, for once I asked him to give me a star. Smiling, he said he could not, shaking his head from side to side.
Princes will give you diamonds
, he said and called me his beautiful daughter. But I replied that I’d rather have stars than diamonds, and he kissed me on the cheek.

“Maurepas, a former advisor who no longer lives at court, has sent word to the King that he foresees the weakening of England,” my husband confides.

“Who is this Maurepas, who speaks of England?” I turn my head and glance at him to signal that he has my attention in a matter that has interested him.

“You don’t know him, for Maurepas has been in exile for more than a dozen years.”

Even in this bracing cold, as he looks ahead, the Dauphin’s eyes remain hooded and sleepy. Because he rises early to do the manual work that he says “makes a man of me,” I know he must really
be
sleepy, but voicing not one complaint, he enters into the spirit of fun.

“Still, this Maurepas advises the King?”

“He is a loyal subject; he would help his sovereign to see the future, if he could.”

“And why was Maurepas sent into exile?” The Dauphin has sometimes complained to me of Louis XV’s rather arbitrary use of power.

“Before Madame du Barry, the King’s Favorite was Madame de Pompadour. Maurepas unwisely criticized her. For that he has been in exile these decades.”

“I see,” I reply soberly. My mother the Empress and Count Mercy should have told me of the fate of Maurepas. Perhaps they did not wish to frighten me. But it is said that Louis XV does not love the du Barry with the same intensity he felt for the Pompadour. Now, I fancy, he reserves a measure of his affection for me.

“We are so much stronger, with the Alliance between Austria and France, are we not?” I ask. “It’s vain of me to feel pride, I know, but I do.” It comforts me to know that my marriage has helped to strengthen France and assure peace, at least between our two countries.

“You and I are true friends,” he says happily. “We can tell each other our true feelings. We do not betray our private confidences to others. You may not know how rare that is at the Court of Versailles.”

I feel a moment of shame, remembering how I so unwisely told the aunts of my husband’s plan to begin conjugal relations on a certain significant date, but I do not speak of this shame or remind him of my failure in the very area he praises. With gratitude, I think of how he is a kind and forgiving soul, a noble heart, and I wish to be more like him.

“And what event causes Maurepas to foresee the weakening of England?”

The Dauphin speaks but continues to look straight ahead. “Some say the American colonies are virtually in rebellion. Maurepas agrees.”

“Would we support the rebellion of a people against their monarch?”

“If George III lost his English colonies, their empire would suffer. He would hesitate to engage in combat with France and Austria.”

“Yes,” I say, “because of our Alliance.”

Still, I wonder if it is proper for us to hope for revolution, even if it occurs far from us, across the Atlantic.

T
HE DRIVERS
, whose high backs rise above us, and the up-curve of the front of the sleigh have shielded us from the wind. Heat still toasts our feet. I listen to the merry music of the sleigh bells, and the steady swish of the runners over the snow.

“This is all so beautiful,” I say. “Not just a means of transport to Paris, but a pleasure in itself.”

“That’s why I voted to come. I wished to be with you alone, in a beautiful place.”

I turn to him again and kiss him on the cheek.

I hear the postilion jump off the runner behind us and run a few steps. I realize he must be doing it to stir the blood, that his feet are cold.

“Do you know the postilion by name?” I ask.

“He seems familiar to you?”

“Who is he?”

The Dauphin reaches under the cover to take my hand.

“Once there was a beautiful princess,” he says, “who came to France to be married to something of a dolt—”

I stir and start to protest, but he says “Shhhh,” and then reminds me, “We have promised to speak our hearts when we are alone with each other.”

I am glad he cannot see me blush. He is in a rare mood, serene, here under the glittering eyes of heaven. Words flow from him as smoothly as our runners flow over the snow.

“Let’s imagine, not a complete dolt but something of a dolt. Still, he had some sense of the goodness that might lie behind a pretty face. He liked to hunt, and fortunately for him, so did his bride, even though to do so meant disobeying the strictures of her most dear and beloved mother. But the mother lived in a faraway land. Still, people tattled on the princess—people like her mother’s ambassador—”

“No,” I said, “I don’t believe Mercy tattles on me. Sometimes he brags about me, and I confess, in my own way I sometimes manipulate him to brag—”

“Well, someone who was in a position to tattle on her about her naughty riding to the hounds, someone—let's not say who—who had her complete confidence, and who had spies placed everywhere, but who meant well—certainly he means well…for the interests of Austria—did tattle repeatedly, but the princess bore up under her mother’s continued disapproval because she so much wanted to please her husband—who also wants to please her. In short, she continued to ride across the country, after the hounds.”

I know better: she rode to the hounds to please herself, for the exhilaration of it.

My husband continues his story in a low, confidential voice. “As sometimes happens during a royal hunt, crops are accidentally damaged. On this particular day, a stag who was being pursued ran into the vineyard of a peasant winegrower. The man tried to defend his vines, but the angry stag gored him. It happened that the Dauphine herself was nearby with her coach. Hearing the wailing of the man’s wife, she stopped to investigate what had happened. When she saw the poor man’s grievous injury, she took him into her own coach to convey him to a doctor, and, also, on the spot, she gave charity from her own purse to meet the immediate needs of the wife and quite a number of children—five or six—as well as to compensate for the loss of the crop. When it turned out that the peasant’s wounds were mortal, the Dauphine took further steps of generosity. For all that, her husband blessed her, certainly because of the gifts, but more so for her brave sym pathy and practical action in the face of the blood and pain of humble people.

“Although she acted entirely without self-interest, the people of France heard of the little Samaritan. Her deed was honored by pictorial engravings, by images woven into tapestries and paintings on fans. Often the images of the lovely, compassionate Dauphine bore the suitable title: ‘An Example of Compassion.’ And the people of France did not forget. When she made her official entry into Paris, they roared their approving welcome for the embodiment of goodness and beauty.”