Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette (P.S.) (4 page)

We set off again
on a journey that I am told will continue many days before we arrive at our destination. I am to meet my husband in the forest near Compiègne, deep within France, but still a day’s ride from the Court of Versailles. Then I shall be presented for the first time, in my person, to His Majesty Louis XV, and his grandson, the Dauphin, said to be quiet and awkward, but fair-haired like myself and very pleasing in his portrait.

Because it showed him plowing, the first portrait of my Dauphin was rejected by the Empress. I, however, was charmed by the image of a king, like a farmer, at his plow. Perhaps he was only playing at plowing. I myself quite love to pretend, for it is the very best kind of diverting play. And pretending is so portable. One can pretend anywhere.

When the Empress and I first saw the portrait of the Dauphin, his ambassador also presented me a diamond brooch, which I promptly pinned to my dress, just outside my heart, to show my willingness to be wed with Louis Auguste. I said, “Already he is close to my heart,” and my mother was surprised and most pleased with the appropriateness of my comment, which we both knew would be repeated when the ambassador returned to the Court of Versailles.

As this coach sways and rocks forward, I ask my companions about the pleasures of the Dauphin, and they say he likes to pick locks and to fashion new locks. And he likes to hunt. I myself love to ride.

When Charlotte left Vienna for her wedding trip, she stopped the coach to leap out and embrace me and to cry over me because she was leaving. At home, when one of us got sick, so would the other, to keep her company. In our portraits, one can scarcely tell Charlotte and me apart, though people say I am a little prettier. I don’t think so, nor do I want to be. She is my darling, and my mother says I may still write to her, but our letters should be channeled through Vienna.

When I was married at home, ceremonially, in a gown of glittering silver that spread behind me like a wing, my brother, the graceful Ferdinand, substituted for Louis Auguste and represented the groom. I represented myself. At the altar in the Church of the Augustine Friars, when I knelt with Ferdinand, most seriously, I hoped he would wink, or at least smile. A little round of gold slid down the knuckles of my finger. I rolled the ring over and over like a tiny wheel on the axle of my finger.

In the old days, custom required that witnesses watch as the bride and proxy groom climbed into bed together. And then! Then! Yes, he was required to cock his knee and place it between her thighs! I would have laughed out loud to have brother Ferdinand nudge his knee against me, but this charade is not required in modern times. It is comforting to think that sometimes ridiculous practices are abandoned, but by what means? Perhaps there is a gradual
erosion
. I know that water can wear away a stone.

My mother has schooled me about the marriage art, and I know well what organ is represented by a knee between the thighs of a bride. But I cannot imagine what that organ resembles. Certainly not a
knee
, even a small one, or I would have noticed such a shape in men’s trousers. My mother said,
His part will become like a finger—somewhat enlarged, surprisingly firm, straight and rigid.

All depends on the wife, on her being willing, sweet, and amusing.
The Empress herself has instructed me.

This carriage
takes me farther and farther from home. When on the island in the Rhine, I threw myself into the arms of the Comtesse de Noailles, the result was only a lecture on etiquette.

I feel only sorrow that I have failed to please. Sorrow—and not resentment—for my mother says that resentment is the most readily visible of all the sinful emotions, but sorrow can enhance one’s sweetness and appeal. Resentment, the Empress says, is like a snake that nests in the bosom, and it can turn and strike her who harbors it.

Outside the carriage window, beyond the veil of dust rising up from our wheels, the countryside is full of fields of green-growing grain. I too would like to stretch and feel green. In the fields, I see a million
Marie Antoinettes
spread around me, like loyal subjects basking and stretching in the golden sun. When we roll into the shadowy forest again, the dark green leaves reflect spots and glances of brightness as though coated here and there with silver.

Is light more silvery or gold?

Behind us,
in a long and jointed tail, are dozens of carriages, all part of the procession to Versailles. I’m sorry that they must breathe our dust. I sigh. Sometimes, as we go round a curve, I see the lead horses, their great flanks and flowing manes and tails. Because they are changed frequently, I have no favorites, but I especially enjoy a large, dappled gray pulling us forward with his easy strength. For countless hours at home, I could study Clara the dangerous rhinoceros or watch Hilda the innocent hippopotamus lolling in our menagerie that our father populated with the most exotic animals from distant continents.

To see a creature so rare as slick, wet Hilda makes the whole scalp crinkle with pleasure, as though the brain is about to sneeze. To best give delight, my dear Papa used to tell me, one forgets who she is and simply floats and shines, like Hilda in her element.

Inside, this blue box is always the same, and I can scarcely enjoy the nobility of the trees for Madame de Noailles’s droning away like a musette, or as we would say in German, like a
Dudelsack.
It makes me miserable to think that she is my most honored lady-in-waiting and yet so ordinary, so tedious. Yes, she is a
Dudelsack.
I doubt if she has any talents to enliven her soul.

The landscape seems to my eye more French at every turn of the wheels of this blue upholstered coach. The carriage wheels will roll down many days, with stops along the way, before I meet the Dauphin and the King. It is the King above all others whom I must please (but my husband, Monsieur le Dauphin, as well, of course), so says my mother, for the King has the right to send me back if he chooses.

As we jiggle along, I draw from a soft red morocco case all tooled with gold a map of the entire route from Schönbrunn to the heart of France. I carefully spread the map across my lap and study those places marked for me to note. I am to meet the King and his grandson, my husband, at a place where a far end of this very road crosses a river, at the Bridge of Berne, in the forest of Compiègne where the King and the Dauphin like to hunt.

I put my right finger on the map to keep my real place and my left finger on the Bridge of Berne, far ahead. I practice moving my right finger along the road drawn on the map till the right finger meets the left one. It appears that such a distance
can
be traversed and such a meeting
can
occur.

But will they love me?

On our journey,
we stop to visit Madame Louise, a nun, and the youngest of the Dauphin’s aunts; the other three aunts (all daughters of Louis XV, all unmarried) await me. But Madame Louise, like myself, has herself changed her name—to become Sister Thérèse Augustine. She too has been born anew, but as a nun living in a Carmelite convent.

I like her face, framed with starched linen of the whitest white. She has kind eyes.

But I feel sorry for her locked away from the world. I speak to her of our journey, of the beauty of the chestnut trees in bloom and how the creamy panicles stand among the leaves like candelabra. I wonder if she ever considers her life to be a mistake.

When I am about to leave the convent, escorted by Count Starhemberg, Sister Thérèse suddenly draws me back to her. She smooths my cheek with her holy hand and then whispers in my ear, “You are the most perfect princess as to face and figure.” She bends her face yet more closely to me, and I hear her wetting her lips with her tongue.

“You have an air,” she breathes into my ear so softly that her words are like a pleasant dream, “all at once, of possessing grandeur, modesty, and sweetness.”

In a swirl of black, she turns and floats down the crimson corridor. Those words, more precious than any diamond brooch, I pin to the inside of my heart.

Inside the coach again, I vow, by the heavenly blue of the curtains that surround me, to try to be worthy of her terms:
grandeur
, which I owe my origins, my own royal blood, the gift of the Hapsburg dynasty, six hundred years old;
modesty
, which I owe my gender, as the descendant of Eve and as a mere human child of God;
sweetness
, which I owe to myself, because it is my true nature.

Surely her three sisters, those aunts of the Dauphin who remain in the world and live at the Court of Versailles, will guide and love me. With new dedication to obedience, I remember my mother’s instruction to spend much time with Madame Adelaide, Madame Victoire, and Madame Sophie.
These princesses,
the Empress said,
possess many virtues and talents; you are fortunate to have them; I hope you will behave so as to deserve their friendship.

My mother also wrote the King a letter about me, already anticipating that I shall make many errors.
Her intentions are excellent, but given her age, I pray you to exercise indulgence for any careless mistake.

But I shall make no mistakes.

The horns of our entourage
have sounded, and through the forest of Compiègne come the answering calls of France. I hear them again!
They
are present someplace in this wood. We rush forward, and so must they be rushing forward under the trees. Again and again the horns call to one another. Louder and louder as we grow closer, and it seems my heart is sitting on my tongue thumping away like a drum. I love to feel my beating heart, the excitement—the
life
of life! But oh, in what golden voices the trumpets speak!

Their royal coach, the first coach—all magnificence—containing I am told the King of France, his grandson, and his three aunts rushes into view! Behind them follow a great spectacle of colors, coaches, the guards, the light horsemen, musketeers, all with drums, trumpets, timbale, and oboes with their nasal bleat.

Suddenly we stop. We have arrived.

A long, ceremonial carpet is stretched over the forest floor from their carriage to ours. At my coach door stands the Duc de Choiseul, who has arranged my marriage, and will be presented to me by Prince Starhemberg, whose honest eyes I have failed to appreciate adequately, despite the length of our journey together.

My hand shakes as I balance my body, so richly clad, in the open door and gather my skirts about me. Prince Starhemberg’s face is all seriousness (perhaps he is sad our journey is almost ended and now he must hand me over). I must not fling myself into the arms of anyone; I must preserve my poise and dignity.

To Choiseul, whose smooth face is proud and pleased, I promptly speak my gratitude: “I shall never forget that you are responsible for my happiness!” My speech is not planned, but there it is: the exact truth of my heart emanating from my lips.

“And your presence is the cause of the happiness of France,” he replies, and I smile at his pretty compliment.

At the other end of the carpet, the King steps from his carriage, and others, but my gaze is all for him, said to be not only the most powerful but also the most handsome man in Europe and surely he is (how can he be sixty years of age?), with large but piercing eyes of passionate blackness and a large majestic nose. His eye is pleased with my face and figure. He likes me.

Now I fly to him, fling myself upon my knees before him, my brother in royalty, my dear grandfather, who will be my papa, the King. Confused by his greatness, I cannot move, but quickly he takes me in his arms, raising me up and kissing me again and again on both cheeks. I can scarcely contain my joy at his fatherly proximity and the strong sincerity of his welcome. Modestly, I look down, but I have seen his eyes, his approval! To think, it is my own self, arrived, that he holds between his hands. I am encompassed by and have my being within the circle of his arms. With kindness that touches me to the quick, he calls me his dear daughter.

In the forest, he stands as natural as any tree but gloriously majestic.

Because I can scarcely embrace this moment as real, my spirit soars aloft and looks down on us from above; from up there I view throngs of people and carriages, banners and musical instruments—tiny, all of us—dabs of bright colors intermingled throughout the green of a woodsy tableau.

The skin of the King is brushing my own cheek. It is I myself standing in the forest, and his kind kisses are claiming me as daughter, as Dauphine, and the hope of his kingdom for its future peace and prosperity. The honor and joy of this meeting! The distinction of his person and yet his friendliness!

And here beside the King stands my future, the Dauphin. He
is
shy and clumsy. I see the truth of that characterization at once. The lids of his eyes are heavy, and he seems drugged with sleep. He lacks the courage to enter this moment; but, never mind, I give him the trust of my uplifted face—for he is quite tall—and in a moment he is reassured. He leans forward and kisses me on both cheeks. His lips are large but tender and careful. He straightens up and is all awkwardness again.

He can find no words to say to me. His eyes lift to the forest: how he wishes he were
there
in reckless pursuit; yes, hunting is his passion, as I have been told.

These woods must be full of game
, I murmur and see the surprise in his eyes. I have no fear. I shall win his heart by proving that I would be his friend, and to him, above all others, I wish that my presence will bring pleasure. I am for him.

Next are introduced the three graces, the daughters of the King and the aunts of the Dauphin, who also stand beside the carriage. Madame Adelaide, they say, is a devotee of music, as I myself have always been, but she is not graceful, and I am surprised at the heaviness of her body. (Louis Auguste, too, is much heavier than his miniature suggested; his eyebrows are fiercely hairy and dark, and his countenance suggests nothing of the liveliness in the King’s dark and luminous eyes.)

Madame Victoire, even more musical and one who plays the harp, as I do, might well have been pretty once, but I look at her and recall that her father’s nickname for her is “Sow.” Already the King calls me fairy and Flora. As his gaze passes quickly over these ladies to settle upon me, I realize the great advantage of possessing a light and graceful form: in it lies power.

Lastly is presented Madame Sophie, who carries her head tilted to one side and looks frightened, as though she might like to run away. To her, I give the reassurance of my most gracious smile: from me, she has nothing to fear. It is unkind that she was nicknamed “Grub” in her childhood, according to my sister Christine. My aunts look at me and think of me, I fear, as Austrian, foreign, but my mother has told me to rely on their guidance, and I shall nestle against them, as harmless as thistledown.

Quickly, the King begins to chat. He is much at ease, I see, with girls my age, glancing at me quickly but fully and then away. He is telling me of his own mother, who also came from far away to join the royal family, who died when His Majesty was only two, but, he says, that for a moment when he saw me, I reminded him of the goodness and charm of his own girlish mother. “I think she would have been as spontaneous as you,” he tells me, and he is imagining and enjoying again how I glided straight to him and fell humbly upon my knees.

F
ROM THE FOREST
near the bridge where the road crosses a small river, we progress to the Château de Compiègne for the evening. There, many of the Princes and Princesses of the Blood are presented to me, but the one whose fair countenance incites my instant admiration is the Princesse de Lamballe. When we traveled in the carriage, the Comtesse de Noailles said this young widow’s face framed by shining hair shows a spiritual nature, and that she not only looks like an angel but also bears the nickname “the Good Angel.” She is half German and half Italian, but the German side has lent her both a pure blondness and an air of melancholy, which clashes pleasantly with the fairness of her complexion. My mother wished me to be like an angel to the French, but when I compare myself to the Princesse de Lamballe, I seem more a sprite of green earth than she who is soulful as a sweet blue sky.

To his brothers, Louis Auguste presents himself just as he has to me: he has little to say. He stands ill at ease, with an almost sulky expression on his face.

Just as my sisters and I were all named Maria, several of them bear the first name Louis. Louis Xavier, the Comte de Provence, is my own age, but he would make three of me, he is so fat. Much fatter than Louis Auguste, Louis Xavier is as full of chatter as a magpie, and many lively expressions animate his face. His body is ponderous, but his mind and tongue are agile.

The third and youngest of the King’s grandsons is dashingly handsome and resembles his grandfather Louis XV. This brother, who is only twelve, Charles Comte d’Artois, is slender and fair of face, but his eyes lack the darkly luminous warmth of Papa-Roi.

“You are so light,” the Comte d’Artois says to me. “Someday we must have a race.” When he smiles, he looks as ready for fun as one of my own brothers.

“I look forward to your friendship,” I reply.

I guess that Artois would be a graceful dancer. His fair hair floats around his face; he nudges the Dauphin with his elbow and does not treat him with proper respect.

To the Dauphin, he says, “I imagine she is fleet as any doe. You’ll have to pant to catch her.” His pleasant smile makes me forgive his impudence, but the Dauphin jerks his head up, stares at the ceiling, and looks miserable.

I am the center of everything. Not having seen me in the flesh before, they are full of curiosity. There are too many of them for me to have the luxury of curiosity, but the color and splendor of their clothes makes me giddy with excitement. En masse, the spectacle of their dress, their jewelry, their dazzling bosoms, their heavily powdered hair, their style of gesturing, sings to me in a different key than that of the evening galas of Vienna. Nothing of the froth in my chest is manifest as frenzy in my manner; I give off only a quiet and gracious sparkle. Through a chain of whispers, the King’s verdict is wafted close to my ear: “She is a most satisfying morsel.” Eventually the King comes to me, and in his best fatherly manner Papa-Roi suggests that I have traveled long and far and should now take my rest.

Tonight I sleep by myself, of course, and my new ladies put me to bed with cheerful talk of dresses and bracelets and hairstyles and ribbons. My mother would call their quick French frivolous, but I like the lightness of their chatter. They speak of tomorrow when we go south to the lovely Château de La Muette for more festivities. La Muette lies closer, much closer, to Versailles, only a morning’s drive from the site of my wedding.

When they have left me, I squeeze my eyes hard shut and think ahead: tomorrow night when I lay my head on the pillow of my chamber in the Château de La Muette, it will be my last night as my virgin self. The next morning after La Muette, which will be Wednesday, 16 May 1770, I arrive at Versailles, where my marriage will be signed again and the marriage ceremony enacted again, but that night I will share my bed for the first time.

My hands seek the cool blank spaces lying on either side of me.
In which blank will he lie? Like two blind moles, my fingertips explore the low flatness between the sheets. I pretend it is a landscape all its own, where field and sky are scarcely separated. Perhaps Madame de Noailles will inform me there is a rule of etiquette that answers the question. What is etiquette and what is it for? It makes life orderly, the Empress once explained to all of us little ones at lesson time, for we had notions of etiquette in Austria too. But these people are conscious and proud in their etiquette in a way we were not. It is as though they are always dancing a minuet.

On which side of me will he lie?
Nature, not etiquette, gives me an answer: the Dauphin will lie on the right side in our bed, for then he can, more comfortably, reach across his own body with his right hand to touch me. His hands and fingers are as big as a man’s.

For my deportment so far, the Empress would be pleased with me. Tonight, I wish that she could know, now, in France, I have made no mistakes—at least I know of none. The King, who is of course the most important, likes me and I like him. With success and no mistakes, I have met the three aunts and treated them as my most dear mother has instructed. If I have not yet become an angel to the French, I have seen someone here who embodies the idea of goodness because of her beauty: the Princesse de Lamballe. I wish to know her better.

With wide-open eyes, I turn my head and press my cheek into the pillow to look to my right. The white wall reminds me of the pale side of the moon, as though she has come down and stands close to me, over there. The chamber walls are embellished with gilded arabesques; moonbeams make the gilding gleam like graceful curls and swirls of light. Ah, there is a high oval window, uncurtained, that admits the moonlight. Beyond this château, the endless trees of Compiègne lie all about us, and deer hide among the trees from hunters.

Just yesterday, I was riding, confined, in the glass coach through the forest.

I think of my three new aunts, like three good fairies, plump and perhaps soft, but I do not know, for they did not embrace me. My thoughts retract inward, like the sensitive eyestalks of snails. When I close my eyes to the visible world, immediately, the moon has gone back to the sky.

I think of Charlotte and how she made the coach stop. She was leaving Vienna to go to Naples and live a married life, but she stopped the coach so she could descend and hug me farewell once more. When we embraced, our bodies melted together, and I could not tell which was Charlotte and which was I.

To my surprise, behind our hats, she kissed me right on the lips and whispered
I will always love you best, my beautiful little sister.

The Dauphin will close his eyes and I will close mine and then I will feel his lips covering mine.

To my sleepy mind, Sister Thérèse Augustine appears. She turns around, fluttering away from me like a raven down the corridor of the convent. That snowy Saint Nicholas’s Day when I was only seven, half a lifetime away, I saw ravens walking on the snow, leaving their prints behind. With a rush of wings, they all rise up together and fly toward the western mountains.
Hold on tight, Marie
—the wintry mountains whisper. The sled rushes over the snow as I watch till the birds are mere black specks against the thin blue sky. I blink, and they are gone.
Hold on, Marie Antoinette.