Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette (P.S.) (39 page)

After several weeks
in bed recovering from the miscarriage, I feel well enough to dine with my friends. Yolande has promised an amusing time. She does not usually employ the word
amusing
, so I am full of curiosity.

It is a pleasant dinner, but I cannot say that I have been amused. Nonetheless my appetite has been good, and I have eaten beef, because the doctors say it strengthens the blood.

“For dessert,” she says, her face exceedingly merry, “we shall have fruit tarts and fruit itself.”

A very large dish is brought in, capped with a silver hood. At a nod from Yolande, the cover is removed by a servant, and there I see the tarts and fruit—but, behold! The fruit begins to rise! To my amazement—yes, vast amusement!—apples, oranges, a pineapple, limes, pears, a bunch of grapes, are steadily floating upward in the air!

“Balloons,” she shrieks, “filled with methane gas.”

“They are lighter than ordinary air,” the King explains, his eyes twinkling, “so they rise.”

I
T HAS NOT
been long since the fruit-shaped balloons rose up from the table, past the decanters of sherry and port, up to the level of the putti near the ceiling, that the King comes to my private chambers within the château to read me an article describing the first human ascent by balloon: a young physician of the last name of Rozier, age twenty-six, along with an army officer have been the first human beings to be carried aloft by a globe of hot air. While the King reads, I work at my needlepoint. The King explains that methane is too susceptible to explosion to be trusted in such a venture at the present time. Large balloons bearing people are best filled with hot air.

The King goes on to read aloud Pilâtre de Rozier’s life. To provide interaction with the public for scientists excluded by the Royal Academy, he created an open Musée des Sciences containing books and scientific equipment, in Paris. Not only men but women might be given admission to the museum—but only if they were recommended by three male members. Rozier has written a book titled
Electricity and Loving.

“What is this electricity?” I ask.

“It was discovered by the American statesman Benjamin Franklin. It is the force in lightning that lights the sky and has the power to kill people and to knock the bark from trees.”

“How is it related to
loving
?”

The King lays down his lorgnette. “I can’t imagine,” he replies.

Both of us look at one another, dumbfounded. Then we laugh.

It is the first time we have laughed together since the miscarriage.

O
N THE FIRST
of December, very formally at dinner, the King announces, “What months these are!”

We all wait to hear what he will say next. He lifts a glass of Bordeaux to propose a toast. All of us rise—we happen to be dining with his two brothers, the Comte de Provence and the Comte d'Artois, and their wives, planning festivities for the Christmas season—though we do not yet know what solemn occasion has just occurred.

“Congratulations to Messieurs Charles and Robert. From the Tuileries gardens in Paris, they have soared aloft for a full ninety minutes, come back safely to earth, and been greeted as they stepped from their basket by the Duc d'Orléans."

We all shout hooray, as though we were the triumphant aeronauts, but I can see that the King wishes with all his being that it had been he who had had the honor of greeting the heroes.

I notice my husband’s eye falls with interest on another item in his paper, below the fold.

“Is there more to the story?” I ask.

“No, no,” he replies. “Only here it says that in one’s own kitchen one can make a miniature balloon from the bladder membrane of an ox.”

All the rest of us burst into laughter.

The King looks a bit sheepish. “It says to use fish glue,” he adds.

In a rapture
of excitement, though I try not to show it, I watch my friend paint my children. We are all outside at Trianon, and they sit on a large stone step. As I watch her transport their actual beauty to the world of the canvas, I am radiant with pleasure. Such an art she has, Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun!

Not long ago, the Dauphin lay so ill with a consuming fever that he could not pass water, and his body bloated. The physicians explained that such an ordeal strengthens a child against future maladies and surely he would recover. Yes, I said, it is unthinkable that he will not recover. And he did, but when I look at him now, dressed in pale blue satin beside his sister, I want to say to her, “Hold him to you more closely.”

Her arm is around his little shoulders; his sweet hand touches her forearm. In the painting they appear to tend some little gray birds, though actually the birds are products of taxidermy. When my friend paints them, she imagines them back into life; she paints the one in the Dauphin’s hand with an open beak.

His fingers enclose the feathery bird, a meadowlark, so gently, as though he would not for all the world squeeze the life out of it. In the hand resting on her lap, Marie Thérèse holds the nest, with a number of other occupants.

The Dauphin’s eyes look right out at us, but they are wistful, and I can easily see the traces of illness in his expression. My friend paints it just so—his large, tired eyes—for she knows my anguish and how I treasure him for his delicacy.

She is no less accurate in capturing my daughter’s expression: her smile that curves slightly down, the tight little pressure that is often between her lips. Her taffeta dress is the technical masterpiece of the painting: peach and blue stripes, smooth here but slightly crumpled there, reflecting the light in a hundred different ways. A wisp of scarf softens the neckline, while a pink flower—is it an apple blossom?—is pinned to one side. My daughter’s gaze is partly on her brother, partly on the twiggy nest; her gaze seems partly unfocused, or focused on inward thoughts. Sometimes I feel just like that—softly absent. The pointed toe of a white satin slipper peeps out from under the hem of her skirt.

I love the softness of Madame Vigée-Lebrun’s touch, the vibrancy of her colors, even when they are pastel. I wish there had been such a painter in Vienna to capture the enchantment of my own childhood.

My children hold a nest, but they themselves are little birds with open beaks, needing the careful care of those who would hold them tenderly.

The court calls the time I lavish on my children
frivolity.
They criticize me for wishing to take care of my own children, for they feel I neglect my duties as Queen, which is to say, spending time at court with them. But what do they want of me? Only favors and gossip. They are behind the times in not appreciating the appeal of children, and when they are old, they will regret that they preferred to hold stiff playing cards in their hands instead of the trusting fingers of their children and that they studied the faces of jacks and spades instead of the sweet eyes and lips of innocence.

When my friend painted me in my muslin dress, the courtiers demanded that the picture be removed from the Salon. They said it was unseemly to portray the Queen in her chemise, her undergarment, yet less of my bosom is exposed than if I wore a court dress. Moreover, this same Salon accepted Adélaide Labille-Guiard’s portrait of Madame Mitoire breast feeding her babe, a subject never depicted in modern painting. When they scorned the simple appeal of my straw hat, I knew all their criticism of my portrait was actually an attack on me. They call me Madame Déficite. I think they wanted to criticize the very rose that I held in my hand, but it is my favorite painting of myself, and the one that is truest to my spirit. And such simple clothes are less expensive.

Now my friend proposes to paint me again in the same attitude, only this time dressed in blue satin.

I am glad the Dauphin is wearing blue satin for his portrait, for I could not bear it if they criticized my son. I would want to run away to another country, and then they would have no king and no future! I would want to lock us behind gates that they could never enter, and there we would have an uninterrupted idyll, my dear family, my true friends, and I.

Count von Fersen
writes to me that my letters are all about the building of the hamlet of late, and that I mention the theater less and less frequently. This observation surprises me—certainly it is not a criticism. It is an observation about a change that is perhaps made so slowly that I hardly detect it.

I fear such changes. Sometimes I wonder if the Dauphin is not slowly losing ground, and because the change is gradual, I fail to take proper note of it. The doctors are so determined not to upset me that I sometimes wonder about the veracity of their explanations. When I mention my fear to the King, he only looks at me sadly, his eyelids at half-mast. He grunts in a troubled, sympathetic way. He offers no opinion. When I press him, he says we must rely on the doctors.

It is true that thoughts and plans for the
Hameau
delight me. We have a model of how it will all be built. When I look down on the model, I feel rather like a goddess viewing the earth from Olympus, only this is a very French earth, with tiny model French cows and French sheep beautifully placed in the pasture of the miniature working farm, to be located at the edge of the village and to supply the wholesome things we shall eat there, our cheese and butter.

But certainly I have loved the theater well. Last spring I was playing the roles of Babet and Pierrette, both of them simple, loving country girls. In contrast, this spring I talk endlessly with Hubert Robert and Richard Mique about our designs for the
Hameau
. I shall have over one thousand white porcelain flowerpots, decorated in blue with my own monogram, modeled on that lovely superimposition of the letters
M
and
A
on the clasp of the bracelet I received at the time of my marriage. These rustic pots will be placed on the wooden staircase that spirals up to the balcony and on the balcony itself, lined up like so many little soldiers. And the darling pots will also adorn the winding stair up the Marlborough lighthouse tower, overlooking the pond. I think the pots will be filled with red geraniums, but the air of the
Hameau
will be redolent from spring through summer with the aroma of lilac, roses, jasmine, and myrtle. And I will have nightingales to sing during the evening hours! Wild ones, but so well fed with the nicest seeds that they will never want to fly away.

My white lawn dresses, tied with a simple sash, topped with a straw hat, can be worn whether I am in the artificed world of the
Hameau
or receiving guests in the château itself. Passing from one world to another—is not that the provenance of spirits?

I’ve already spoken to the artisans at Sèvres about my milk buckets, made of porcelain to resemble rough wood. Every detail will be artistically perfect, and I’ve already named the cows Blanchette and Brunette.

And so, does my attention wander from the theater? I think I am taking the world of imagination off the stage and into the real world. The sets are no longer flat paper cutouts to be slid out of the wings into the glow of the theatrical lamps, but real places, where one can go in and out.

N
OW WHILE THE
Hameau
is half finished, it seems especially to hang between two worlds. The model village was like a seed, but there is the life-size reality, half completed. I myself have often felt half created, hanging between my past and my future.

I step through the frame for a doorway and inhale the aroma of newly cut lumber. Just as easily, I pass out again between the studs of an uncompleted wall, an improvised and temporary door. In future days, this passage will be as impenetrable as the walls of a prison. I look out at the flat stone where my children sat to be painted. Now the stone is blank, but I fancy I call to them and they rise, then step forward out of the flat world of canvas to join me among the rustic cottages.

We admire the heavy thick thatch at the edge of a completed roof. A meadowlark visits to tug at a reed for her nest, but the thatch is too tightly compacted, and she flies away with nothing. I rejoice in being outdoors under the puffy clouds. The builders sit over there beneath a chestnut, eating lunch.

I will walk back to the château, change my dress, prepare to be painted myself, to be placed on a flat canvas. In this moment, I fill my lungs with sweet country air. All laziness, I recall my out-of-doors play as a child.

Having heard that
the bloom of youth begins to fade after one turns twenty-eight, I have determined to have myself painted again, and this time I look forward to the sitting, for Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun shall be the portraitist. My request is that she present herself to me in my private apartment, in the interior of the château, where all the rooms are small and cozy. Long ago, the King gave me these small rooms, and I have claimed them as my own intimate nest, exquisitely decorated. When I cannot escape to Trianon—just as my husband planned—they provide me with privacy. While I have been painted in my state apartment with my harp, by Gautier-Dagoty, in 1777, surrounded by my friends, by a singer and a reader, I do not like the expression he gave to my face—more like that of a doll than a living person. Here I will be myself, with a true friend.

Madame Vigée-Lebrun sets up her easel with an expert flick of its tripod legs, and takes out a new wooden palette on which to mix her colors. While she prepares the other implements of her art—brushes, rags, turpentine—she glances quickly at me, as though she is taking impressions and looking for just the right angle. I stroll about a bit restlessly, for it is wise to dissipate excess energy before attempting to remain immobile, for the sake of the artist.

As though she reads my thoughts, Madame Vigée-Lebrun tells me that she will not require that I stand perfectly still. Then she asks if I have forgotten to wear my pearls. Touching my throat, I find, indeed, she is correct, and I send for them. When I was painted
en chemise
I wore no necklace or bracelets. Perhaps it was the omission of jewelry that made me appear naked or half-dressed to the objecting public.

It is rather delicious to surrender oneself to an artist; I really cannot account for the pleasure to be derived simply from being regarded by an aesthetic eye, especially when that person is a friend. I find that I lift my bosom and that my flesh seems to glow, as though a magic candle moved beneath the skin. It seems satisfying in the same way that it satisfies to allow dark chocolate to melt in one’s mouth. In fact, there is a melting of the will. Now one is not in charge; now one is malleable and about to be re-created. The mind seems to empty itself of cares.

“I wonder,” I say to my friend, “if Adam and Eve enjoyed it, when God created them?”

She looks at me quizzically. Then asks, “Do you enjoy being painted?”

“Not usually,” I reply. “But today I feel all
melted
at the prospect. A languor comes upon my body.”

I am standing beside a large bouquet of pink roses, for we have agreed that I shall be painted again among the flowers I love so well. Suddenly my friend plucks one of them from the group and deftly winds a white silk ribbon around its green stem, as though to protect my fingers from its thorns. Leaving a dangling tail of ribbon, she hands me the wrapped flower. A number of attached rose leaves and two large buds are part of the arrangement, along with the spent sepals of three or four other blooms that have now vanished.

“Would Your Majesty please to hold the loose ribbon in your other hand, so that the two hands are brought rather close together.”

I do so, just as I did in the earlier painting, such that the ribbon passes between my thumb and forefinger, and I enjoy feeling its silkiness between my fingers. Keeping her vigilant eyes on me, she mimics the posture she wishes me to assume, and I see instantly how the position of my arm crossing my body makes a graceful curve under the neckline and, parallel to it, of my dress.

“And you want the pearl necklace to echo the curve of the cheek,” I say, as an attendant fastens the double strand around my neck.

“You have a lovely Grecian neck,” my friend says.

I wonder that she wants no adornment for my earlobes, but I say nothing. Who am I to question the decisions of the artist?

My dress is a medium blue satin, with a double ruffle all around the neckline, and a blue-and-silver-striped bow directly in front. The sleeves come to my elbows and terminate in a flounce of gathered lace.

For a moment I turn the rose so that I can look into its center, which is a deep rose, while the outer petals, a perfect overlapping cup of petals, are a paler pink. The darker center lends depth to the rose’s perfect face as I look into it.

“But you must let the rose face the viewer,” she says, “a smaller version of yourself looking out at us, to inspire benign admiration.”

As she speaks, I feel the soft round weight of my curls against my neck and resting on the tops of my shoulders. For this portrait, I am powdered with a silvery powder that complements the silver sheen of the blue satin as it bends around my upper arm.

She sketches and tries out dabs of color, an interplay of blue, white, flesh tones, and pink.

“The background will be quite dark—a large tree with a massive trunk, at an angle something like that of your arm, but in the background.”

“What is the most lovely place you know?” I ask her.

Now she pauses, holding the brush dipped in bright blue up in the air. I have not meant to interrupt the flow of her work, but she knows exactly how long she can hesitate before inspiration dissipates.

“Marly-le-Roi,” she replies. “I saw it as a girl and remember it perfectly. On each side of the palace were six summerhouses connected with walks covered by jasmine and honeysuckle. Behind the castle was a waterfall and a channel of water, where a number of swans swam. There was a fountain whose waters rose so high that the top of its plume was lost from sight in the clouds.”

I cannot imagine a fountain of such amazing altitude, even though the spume from our dragon near the Neptune basin climbs to a stupendous height. “How young were you when you saw it?”

“In fact, I was quite young and had little experience in viewing grand sights.”

“But now, with your success,” I say, teasing her, “they are commonplace, and it would require a great deal to impress you.”

“The beauty of the simple rose that you hold in your hand and the way that you hold it, as though you knew its fragile value, quite take my breath.”

“Ah,” I say.

I believe that there is no one I would rather talk to than this artist. She tells the truth. She is without pretension, and all her experiences in the Parisian world of art and music interest me.

“I think I shall paint pearl bracelets almost the color of your skin around each of your wrists. Three strands of pearls, near the wrist, to suggest the curve toward the hand and to bind the lighted top part of the wrist with the shadowy underside.”

“Shall I send for such bracelets? I can have them made exactly as you wish, for another sitting.”

While her brush busily plies the canvas, she does not look up but replies, “There is no need, Your Majesty, for I see them with my imaginative eye and exactly how they serve my composition. I take the cue from the pearls of your necklace, though these need to be smaller to harmonize with the wrist instead of the neck.”

Sometimes she lays down her brush, and we stroll about. When I seat myself at the harpsichord, she sings the songs of Grétry with me, and her voice is pure and true—more so than my own.

When we resume our session, she speaks again of Marly-le-Roi.

“It was later at Marly-le-Roi,” she says conversationally, “that I first saw Your Majesty. Your Majesty was walking in the park with ladies from the court, but you were all wearing white dresses. I thought everyone so young and pretty that I must be dreaming a vision. I was walking with my mother, and I felt shy and not wishing to intrude, so I took her hand to lead her down another path, when the Queen stopped me. Your Majesty guessed my intent, to make myself unobtrusive, and Your Majesty invited me to continue in whatever direction I might prefer and to take no account of herself or her ladies, that I should enjoy the park uninhibited.”

Although I try to bring the scene to mind, I cannot remember it, yet I easily envision it through Madame Vigée-Lebrun’s picturesque words.

“To think,” she adds, “that I should ever be invited to this apartment in the heart of the Château de Versailles to paint Her Majesty among her intimate furnishings.”

O
NLY ONCE, DURING
the many sittings required to complete the portrait, do I see trouble pass over the brow of my artistic friend as she paints. When I ask her what perturbs her, she stands straight up, dropping both arms to her sides, one hand holding the brush. Yes, she is exasperated.

“It is your skin,” she says. “Majesty, I do not flatter you when I say it is the most brilliant in the world. It is so transparent that it bears not a trace of umber. But I lack the colors, the delicate tints, to paint such freshness. I could not capture it before, and I cannot capture it now. I have never seen such a complexion as yours on any other woman.” She raises her brush again to continue with her work. “Though I am delighted to paint you, your beauty challenges my art.”

As she speaks, she slightly tilts her head first to one side, then to the other, as though to make the light enter the pupil of her eye at slightly different angles. Resuming her work, now with a contented air, she remarks, “Never mind, though. You are delectable, and my painting shows you thus.”

At such praise, I feel a radiance bloom beneath my skin, particularly throughout my breasts. Almost, I am tempted to lift them with my breath until they emerge above the lacy neckline of my dress. She has filled me with pride, justified pride: I am a mother who has nursed her own first babe, and I am left more beautiful for it, more pleased by the bountifulness of life, by the abundance of love and beauty, by the fulfillment in such colors as pink and blue.

Impulsively, I confide in her, “My skin always improves in radiance when I am with child. But don’t mention it to anyone yet.”

“I am so very happy for both Your Majesty and the King. No one could love their daughters more than you and I love ours, but my prayer is that you carry a second boy and for the future of France.”

Yes, I would more rather talk with the frank and sensitive Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun than with anyone.

I
N A FEW DAYS,
the King announces to the world that once again I am with child.