Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette (P.S.) (42 page)

31 May 1786

The question before
the jurors is whether Rohan was an accomplice in a swindle or whether he was duped, as he claims to be.

Nicole d’Oliva, who played the role of the queen, did so unwittingly, they decide, and she is acquitted with a reprimand. (Surely she knew of our resemblance, and it was for that resemblance that she was paid to meet someone in the Grove of Venus. But it is pitiful to read that she thought she was serving me in some way, that she was performing before the eyes of a hidden Queen. I look at her and remember the girl who haunted Versailles many years ago who resembled me. Could this be she? I don’t wish to inquire.) She wore a simple white muslin dress with a ruffled neckline, like the one I have been painted in by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun. Like the one declared indecent—underwear—by those who saw it in the salon exhibition. That most innocent and unpretentious of frocks!

The man who forged my letters—he admitted to having written hundreds of love letters in my name to the cardinal—was banished, and all his belongings became forfeit. They were not much. I suppose they meant a great deal to him. And how much had he enjoyed pretending to be me when he took up his vile pen?

The La Mottes, man and wife? The man is sentenced in absentia, for he is safely in England (selling diamonds), to flogging, branding, and life imprisonment. Jeanne La Motte, the instigator of all this misery, has been stripped naked, then beaten by the public executioner. Next she was branded, screaming and fighting so hard that the red-hot letter
V
, for
voleuse
, to mark her as the thief she is, is burned into her breast instead of her shoulder. It saddens me to think of her pain, though she has been hateful in besmirching my name. She was taken to the women’s prison at Salpêtrière, where she will spend the rest of her life.

And the Cardinal de Rohan. He entered the session of the Parlement de Paris in his purple robes, which is the color a cardinal may wear to express mourning. His entire powerful family, dressed in black, attended the trial. In addition, all of Europe, figuratively speaking, was watching him. As Frederick the Great said, “The Cardinal de Rohan will be obliged to use all the resources of his considerable intellect to convince his judges that he is a fool.” The cardinal’s own lawyer, a man named Target, argued that the cardinal was the victim of deceit. The forger having already confessed; the impersonator in the Grove of Venus, Mademoiselle d’Oliva, having admitted she played the part of the Queen; the cardinal himself having urged the two jewelers to go and thank the Queen on the very day the contract was made—“With all these facts established,” the attorney argued, “it can be convincingly proved that the Cardinal is a fool” and has already received his disgrace.

After imposing certain requirements, the court acquitted my tormentor, and he is to remain free.

The court requires that the cardinal apologize for criminal temerity in believing he had had a rendezvous at night with the Queen of France, and he is to seek pardon from the monarchs. He must give up his position as Grand Almoner, donate alms to the poor (from his own coffers, not the King’s), and be banished from court.

Despite these requirements for the cardinal, he is to be thought of as an innocent and free man. The judges were applauded. The King’s direction through the
procureur général
had been that the cardinal should admit that he acted in a “malignant” fashion and that he knew the Queen’s signature was a forgery by means of which he might deceive the jewelers. Neither of these directions in favor of the Queen’s position were accepted or acted upon. Nor was the King shown respect.

What does all this mean about me, the Queen in question? She whose reputation was on trial, though she was not present? It means that they believe the cardinal was justified in assuming that I am such a woman as one who would agree to meet him in the dark of the Grove of Venus. They believe I am such a person who might be expected to do anything necessary to acquire a diamond necklace for myself, and that it is reasonable, given the context of my history, for a prince of the Church to believe that I might write a hundred letters describing my lust for his body, though no one has actually read any such letters, even in their forged state. It means that the honor of a prince of the House of Rohan is taken more seriously than that of the Queen of France.

The verdict means the spirit and the heart of the Queen, who has done nothing to the people of France and who has worked for their peace and prosperity, is broken and trampled upon.

The people do not remember that in coming here from Austria to marry the Dauphin I gave my existence for the Alliance that yet protects the peace of Europe. They forget that I protected them from the additional tax that was my legal due after the marriage. They forget or do not know of a hundred other times I have remembered their burdens, as has the King, whose authority they now flout.

In my inner chamber I ask only to see Madame Campan, who has known from the beginning of my innocence and of my struggle under the weight of such growing suppositions. “There is no justice in France,” I say to her, and she does not know how to reply.

After he asks to be admitted to my chamber, the King says quietly that the Parlement de Paris was determined to see only the robes of a prince of the Church, when in fact he was just a greedy man who needed money. The King feels certain Rohan has stolen the necklace from the jewelers.

I find my mind has become a dense, opaque cloud of confusion. And what has become of the part of me that I mean when I say “I”? I am lost in a fog. I have little sense of who I am. But I know I am not what they imply.

She has not
yet painted me with my children, and it is with them, we agree, that I will reestablish my reputation—as the fecund mother-queen. The dress is red velvet, trimmed in dark fur, with a matching plumed hat. With my feet on a tasseled cushion, I am seated beside a large crib, wherein my new child will be placed. The Dauphin will point toward the crib with one hand and with his other hand toward his little brother, Louis Charles, my “love cabbage,” dressed all in white, who will sit plump and happy on my lap. On the other side of me, when she is brought in for her sitting, leaning against me, nuzzled against my side in an attitude of adoration, will be my daughter.

“Do not idealize my faults or make me too beautiful, Elisabeth. I don’t wish to incite envy.”

“Dignity, maternity,” she echoes. “A little fullness under the chin?”

“No necklace. Of any kind.”

“I hear the King has gone to Cherbourg and the seaports to review the naval installation.”

“And Count von Fersen, following the trial, left for England and then to his regiment.”

“Your sister is expected to visit next month?”

“Marie Christine, born on my mother’s birthday. When I was a child, she always tried to make me feel small and unimportant. The Duchesse de Polignac is in England too. She writes me that the English refer to Count von Fersen as ‘the Picture,’ because of his handsomeness. I should like to see the English gardens for myself someday.”

“I’m painting a garden of roses at your feet in this portrait. In the carpet. So, we bring the outdoors to the inside, with a rich golden background for the roses and the greenery.”

“The carpet as garden will be my favorite part of the portrait. What color will my daughter’s dress be?”

“Madame Royale wears deep claret, darker than your true red dress. Claret with a good bit of black in it.”

B
ECAUSE THOSE DEAREST
to me are away, I feel that I have been somewhat abandoned. But as I sit for a new portrait, a new image, with Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, I feel that I begin to heal from my humiliation. To be envisioned by her, to sit before her as she works, loving her work, gives me peace. Once I almost say to her, “Your brush—as it creates me anew on the canvas, I feel almost that I am being licked, cared for, as a kitten would be by the mother cat.”

I do not need to say this to her. She, like Fersen, intuits my feelings and I do not have to represent them with words. She is such a keen observer that she notices that as she paints me, I relax, feel at home within myself, that my eyes and skin come alive and glow.

“I like very much,” she says, “the new needlepoint you are making. You paint the flowers with your thread.”

I tell her that it is for a waistcoat for the King. “I noticed the fine needlework adorning the cardinal, when the King summoned him to his inner chamber. I would like the King to have something even finer. The colors are those of Trianon, pale greens and blues, pink and lavender flowers. Pastels and spring colors. When he wears it, he will remember that he has a refuge when he visits me in my little palace that he so kindly gave me to hold in my own name.”

W
HEN THE
K
ING
returns from the seacoast, he is a very happy man.

All three of the children and I wait for him on the balcony of the château, above the Marble Courtyard. We watch his coach approach with great excitement, as it grows larger as it comes closer. He passes the outer grille and the wide courtyard where we watched Montgolfier’s balloon ascend, past the bronze equestrian statue of Louis XIV—I cannot help but recall the first day I came here, not yet fifteen, and how each courtyard became smaller, and the arms of the buildings enclosed me ever more closely. Perhaps he sees us standing here—the Queen with her three children—waving to him. When the coach stops, all three of the children cry out “Papa! Papa!” He flings himself out of the carriage to run up to us, puffing and panting, embracing all three of our happy children—Madame Royale, the Dauphin, the Duc de Normandie—and myself as well.

T
EN DAYS HAVE PASSED
since the King’s return. Having viewed the sea for the first time, Louis tries valiantly to describe its
sublime
effect to me. Although I would like to see the ocean sometime, I know that things of vast size—the starry sky, for example—often frighten me with their natural magnificence.

“For me, gardens are the reminders of paradise,” I say with a smile.

“You are a medievalist at heart,” he teases. “You must see the tapestries of Cluny, the lady in her enclosed garden, with her unicorn and lion. She is a devotee of the five senses, even as you are.”

“While I truly enjoy tapestries, I do not require an enclosed garden,” I reply in a bantering fashion. “The gardens at Trianon stretch on and on.”

“Yes,” he says, “once you have been admitted. Actually, the whole estate of Versailles is enclosed. The walls are just too far away for you to take much notice of them.”

When I congratulate him again on the success of his visit to coastal Normandie, he replies, “The love from my people touches the deepest springs of my heart. You must judge for yourself if I am not the happiest king in the world.”

I
FEEL THE BEGINNINGS
of my labor, but I choose to ignore them so that I may first attend Mass. Since my humiliation, it is a part of my healing to enter the Royal Chapel, to enjoy the space between the colorful splendor of the marble floor and the high painted ceiling, where I was so innocently wed, and to be succored by taking the holy communion. As the organ of Couperin begins to play the gritty, deep notes from pipes as big as my waist, the sound always makes my heart swell, and I gladly give thanks for the goodness of the Creator. The very words of the liturgy give me a sense of connection as I renew my beliefs: “God the Father, Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth…”

I smile at Mesdames Tantes during chapel and remember how they welcomed me when I was fifteen; I have forgiven them for how they tried to use me to lever apart the old King and his mistress. I am happy to have pleased them by suggesting that if the new child is a girl she shall be named Sophie, after the one of their number who has died. I do not signal my secret: that my labor has already begun, for to do so would only increase the length of their anxiety for me.

I return to my chamber to conduct my labor. Three hours after the official ministers are summoned to witness the royal birth, at seven-thirty when it is not yet dark on this July night, 1786, I give birth to another daughter.

I like the message sent by the Spanish ambassador to the King: “Though Your Majesty must keep his Princes at his side, with his daughters he has the means of bestowing gifts on the rest of Europe.” Still, I remember how I myself was once a gift to be bestowed on France in the name of an Alliance and the peace of Europe.

I do not particularly enjoy the visit, just three weeks after the birth of Sophie, of my sister Marie Christine, whom our mother allowed to marry for love. Count Mercy—always avid for stronger ties between me and anyone Austrian—has urged me to give up old ideas about her. I suspect that it was she who kept the Empress so very well informed of everything concerning my life. I know that she has sent my brother the Emperor some of the disgraceful pamphlets circulated to destroy my reputation. She considers herself quite superior to me, and I plan not to invite her to Trianon. She and her Albert will return to the Netherlands without having any opportunity to judge my private, tender life.

Would that she were Maria Carolina, my Charlotte! I would show
her
all my favorite roses and trees at Trianon. Skipping, I would take her across the bridges to visit the Temple of Love. We would eat berries together on the balcony of my retreat at the
Hameau
, and we would feed bread to the fish in the pond. I would even show her the secret cave and grotto close to the Belvedere, and everything would be illuminated magically at night for her, followed by an extravaganza of fireworks.

After Christine and her mere Prince of Saxony have left Versailles, I rather saucily ask Count Mercy if he deemed the visit a success.

Truthfully and too seriously, he replies, “The renewal of acquaintance between the two august sisters has not been without its clouds.”

“Then let me be ‘the Queen of Clouds,’” I reply. Though the words are haughty, I smile at him when I pronounce them, for he has been my constant friend these many years, and I love him. He returns the smile. I know he prefers me to my sister.