Flaunting, Extravagant Queen

by Виктория Холт

  ‘Now, Louis, let us consider this disability of yours. Tell me all about it. Speak frankly. I am your elder brother, you know. Feel no embarrassment. There is too much at stake for embarrassment. There are operations – simple operations, you know – and our doctors have skill, greater skill than ever before. A little circumcision and then … all would be well, if what I have heard ails you is the truth.’

  The Emperor took his embarrassed brother-in-law by the shoulders and shook him affectionately.

  ‘Now, Louis, have I your word that you will submit to an examination? But of course I have. You cannot so fail in your duty as to fail me … and your Queen and your country. We will give orders immediately, and the operation shall be performed.’ Joseph gave the King of France one of his hearty bourgeois slaps on the back. ‘Then I doubt not that all will be well in France.’

  And such was the persuasive power of the Emperor that, before he left Paris, the operation had been performed.

  It was not long after, that Antoinette was writing to her mother:

  ‘I have attained the happiness which is of the utmost importance to my whole life. More than a week ago my marriage was thoroughly consummated. Yesterday the attempt was repeated. I was in mind to send a special messenger to my beloved mother, but I was afraid this might attract too much attention and gossip. I don’t think that I am with child yet, but at any rate I have hopes of becoming so from day to day.’

  * * *

  The Court was seething with excitement.

  ‘Have you heard … ?’

  ‘It was that petite opération …’

  ‘Is it really so?’

  ‘Indeed yes. Have you not noticed the dark circles under the Queen’s eyes?’

  It was indeed so. The King could not resist talking about it. He was so delighted.

  Adelaide was at his side; the other two aunts not far off.

  ‘Dear Louis, but there is a change in you. You are a deeply contented man.’

  ‘I am indeed a contented man, dear aunt.’

  ‘It was … perhaps the petite opération?’

  All the aunts came a little nearer. Three pairs of eyes studied him intently; they were like gimlets trying to probe his head, uncover the thoughts behind his eyes.

  ‘Yes, aunt, yes. It gives me great pleasure.’

  ‘It gives him great pleasure,’ said Adelaide to her sisters when they were alone. ‘Depend upon it, it will not be long before the marriage is fertile.’

  Provence and Josèphe shared a great fear. Could it possibly be true? And if it were, there would be an end to hope, an end to ambition.

  ‘Watch the Queen,’ said Provence. ‘Watch her as we never watched her before.’

  The Spanish Ambassador, the Sardinian Ambassador, the English Ambassador, were writing long letters to their governments.

  The whole Court was waiting.

  Provence breathed a little more easily. It was becoming clear that the new pleasure, discovered by Louis, did not appeal quite so much as hunting or making locks. A good sign. A very good sign.

  Maria Theresa wrote frantic letters to her daughter. ‘Make sure that you retire early, at the time the King retires. Do not stay in your single bed at Petit Trianon.’

  Then one day there was a certain brooding serenity visible in the Queen’s face. She was absentminded when people spoke to her. She had given up dancing through the night; and she no longer seemed interested in cards.

  All noticed it, except the King. He was therefore surprised when one morning the Queen stormed unceremoniously into his apartments.

  She frowned and stamped her foot.

  ‘I have come, Sire,’ she cried, ‘to complain. One of your subjects has been impertinent enough to kick me in the belly.’

  Louis stared at her in momentary alarm; then great floods of joy swept over him.

  The tears sprang to his eyes and he held out his arms.

  They kissed, embraced, and kissed again, their tears mingling.

  ‘It is the happiest moment of my life,’ said Antoinette. ‘There can only be one happier. That will be when I hold our Dauphin in my arms.’

  Louis was silent, but that was because words did not come easily to him. His joy was no less than hers.

  Chapter VII

  MADAME ROYALE AND THE DAUPHIN

  That was a happy summer and autumn for the Queen. She spent a great deal of time at her Petit Trianon; now she could watch the children playing on the grass with quiet pleasure, for soon there would be a royal child to play on that grass, to come running to her, to pull at her skirts and demand bonbons. A Dauphin! She was sure the child would be a Dauphin.

  There were so many pleasant matters with which to occupy her mind, and she discussed them continually with Gabrielle and the Princesse de Lamballe.

  ‘He shall not be swaddled, my little Dauphin,’ she declared. ‘That is not good. It is old-fashioned and we shall employ no old-fashioned methods for Monsieur le Dauphin. He shall have everything that is modern. They say that children nowadays should be carried in a light cradle or in one’s arms, and that little by little they should be put in the open air and sunshine. And when they have grown accustomed to it they may be in it all the time – little legs and arms free that they may kick at will. That is the way to make them strong. I shall have a little railing built on the terrace, and there the Dauphin will have his own little kingdom. There he shall stand on his dear little legs and walk and grow strong.’

  They listened to her; they discussed the garments he should wear; they planned the whole of his days. There was nothing which delighted the Queen more.

  ‘There is only one thing that plagues me,’ she said. ‘Monsieur le Dauphin, you are so long in coming.’

  She could not feel very interested in anything else. When Artois made his customary bow to the stately statue of Louis Quatorze in the Orangerie at Versailles and cried: ‘Bonjour, Grandpapa,’ she no longer thought it as funny as she had hitherto. When the Prince de Ligne suggested he should hide behind the statue and, immediately after Artois uttered his greeting, reply to it in hollow tones to give the irreverent Artois a shock, she was only vaguely interested.

  It was so difficult to think of anything but the Dauphin.

  Little James Armand noticed the change in her. He would stand at her side, leaning fondly against her, his anxious eyes looking up into the beautiful face; for while she caressed his hair he sensed an absentmindedness in those delicate fingers, and a great fear came to him that even while she touched him, even while she smiled, her thoughts were far away.

  ‘Come back,’ he would say in panic. ‘Come back.’

  Then she smiled. ‘What do you mean, my dear? Come back? I am here, am I not?’

  ‘You are going far away,’ he said.

  ‘You are an odd little boy, Monsieur James,’ she told him.

  She noticed that his hand clutched her sleeve as it had that day when she had gone into his grandmother’s cottage; and she told him about the baby she was to have.

  ‘I have so longed for a baby. And now I am to have one.’

  ‘You have your Monsieur James,’ he reminded her. ‘Is he not enough?’

  She laughed. ‘I am so greedy. And I love my Monsieur James so much that I could do with twenty like him.’

  That made the boy laugh. But later she would find him standing in a corner, listening to the talk about the expected baby, a faint frown between his eyes.

  She would call to him and make much of him, give him sweetmeats, those which he liked best. But he was disturbed, for he wanted more than sweetmeats.

  It was during this period that Comte Hans Axel de Fersen came to the Court.

  He was brought to her in the salon at the Palace of Versailles while she was with the King and surrounded by members of the Court.

  As he knelt before her he saw the sudden recognition dawn in her eyes.

  She spoke without thinking: ‘Ah, this is an old acquaintance. Welcome to the Court, Comte de Fersen.’r />
  He murmured: ‘Your Majesty is gracious.’

  The King scarcely noticed him. His mind was occupied with state matters. His enemies, the English, were at this time engaged in war with their colonists in America, and this war could prove of the utmost importance to France.

  ‘It pleases me to see you here,’ the Queen told the Comte. She was remembering that night at the Opéra ball and how bold this man had been; how he had snatched off her mask and known her for the Dauphine, as she had been then.

  She had thought about him a great deal at the time; then other matters had claimed her attention. She was not surprised, studying him now, that he should have impressed her so deeply.

  He was tall and very slender and the Swedish uniform became him well. His complexion was very pale but so clear as to seem almost transparent; his eyes, which were inclined to darkness, were very large, his nose straight and perfectly shaped, his mouth beautifully modelled, and his expression was both manly and tender.

  Antoinette could readily understand how he had stirred her emotions at their romantic meeting.

  She made him sit beside her and tell her all that had befallen him since their last meeting, of life in Sweden, of his father, the Senator, whom he greatly reverenced and admired.

  He said suddenly: ‘There is one occasion in my life which I shall never forget: that night when I danced at the Opéra ball with Your Majesty.’

  ‘Did it shock you very much to discover who I was?’

  ‘It was the greatest shock of my life.’

  ‘You exaggerate, Comte,’ she told him.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I do not.’

  She knew that she should not have kept him beside her talking, but she could not resist the temptation to do so.

  ‘I was a Dauphine then,’ she said. ‘Now I am a Queen I have greater liberty to do what I please.’

  ‘Queens,’ he said, ‘have less liberty to please themselves than Dauphines, Your Majesty.’

  She laughed lightly. ‘I believe you have been listening to tales of me.’

  ‘I have treasured every word I ever heard spoken of you.’

  ‘Evil tales?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing could be evil in my eyes if it concerned you. The fact that it did so would banish evil from it.’

  ‘That is a charming thing to say.’ She lifted her fan with the quizzing glass set in it, and looked at him. She was somewhat short-sighted and she wanted to see clearly every line of his face.

  ‘You find me changed,’ she said. ‘Different from the Dauphine with whom you danced.’

  ‘I find you changed … yet the same. I find you perfect, although I had thought the Dauphine that. Should I not pass on now? We are being closely watched.’

  ‘A plague on their watching eyes. They watch me continually. If I dismiss you that would surely be wrong, for everything I do is wrong in the eyes of those determined to condemn me. I merely have to do it to make it so. Therefore I will be wrong in commanding you to stay, for I surely should be if I dismissed you.’

  ‘Your Majesty is a very happy woman,’ he said wistfully.

  ‘I am to have a child and I have longed for a child. I have been wildly happy since I knew it was to be so. Now … an old friend, or one whom I think of as an old friend, returns. That makes me happier still. Do not worry about staying beside me. The King is busy with his ministers. They talk endlessly of this war between England and her colonists in America.’

  ‘French sympathies are with the settlers,’ he said.

  ‘Of a certainty. French sympathies are always contrary to English sympathies.’

  ‘Throughout France many are saying, Good luck to those who rise against the English crown.’

  ‘I know. Joseph, my brother who was here recently, was disturbed by such talk. When people praised those who were rebelling against the English crown he would grow a little angry, I must confess. Only, being Joseph, he never showed it. He used to say: “Mon métier est d’être royaliste,” in his very curt crisp way which seemed to announce: “I, the Emperor, say this; therefore it must be so.” Dear Joseph! He is the best brother in the world, but I cannot help laughing at him.’

  Fersen laughed with her because her laughter was so infectious.

  He told himself then: It was a mistake to come back to the Court. If she were Dauphine then, she is Queen now. She is even further away.

  Antoinette kept him at her side until she left the salon for her apartments.

  Josèphe and Thérèse were watching. They decided that the very next day they would visit the aunts at the Château of Bellevue where they were now installed. They would be able to talk of the Queen’s outrageous behaviour with the Comte de Fersen. It was a pity of course that the Comte had not been in Paris a little earlier. Then they might have started the rumour that the Queen’s condition might not have so much to do with the petit opération as most people had been deceived into thinking.

  Still, it was always pleasant to gossip at Bellevue, where were gathering now all the disgruntled men and women of Versailles who were determined firmly to establish the growing unpopularity of the Queen.

  * * *

  Fersen must be a guest at the Petit Trianon; he must dance with the Queen on the lawn at her informal parties. ‘We stand on little ceremony here,’ the Queen told him. ‘This is our escape from Versailles. We must have our escape. The solemnity of the Court is something I could not endure all the time.’

  Therefore dancing on the lawn was yet another reminder to them both of dancing at the Opéra ball in Paris.

  Fersen had been deeply attracted by Antoinette from the first moment he had seen her. Within a few days after his arrival at Court he was deeply in love with her.

  Antoinette was charmed with him; he was so handsome, so attractive, and so much in love. He moved her to a deeper emotion than Lauzun ever had; but her mind was largely occupied by the child she would have, and she was not by nature a promiscuous woman. Her physical desires were moderate; she had been afraid of her relationship with Lauzun because of the state of affairs between herself and Louis at that time; and the continual reproaches of her mother and those about her, on account of her failure to produce a Dauphin, had given her those affectations nerveuses of which Mercy had thought it necessary to write to her mother and which had been mainly instrumental in bringing about the visit of Joseph.

  Fersen was wise.

  Once before he had disappeared from her life; now he felt that the need to do so was even more urgent.

  He spoke to her one day as he sat with her and some of the members of that little entourage of intimates assembled in the garden of Trianon.

  ‘Your Majesty,’ he said, ‘I shall soon be leaving the Court.’

  She was startled and, he was delighted to see, deeply disappointed.

  ‘Monsieur de Fersen,’ she cried imperiously. ‘You must not leave us. We should miss you too sadly. You must not go back to Sweden. We shall not allow it.’

  He lifted those handsome eyes to hers – for she was sitting on her chair which was like a throne, and her courtiers were ranged about her on the grass – and he said slowly: ‘Your Majesty, I am not going to Sweden. I am going to America.’

  ‘To … to fight!’

  ‘To fight against the forces of the King of England,’ he said. ‘To help in the fight for freedom.’

  ‘You shall not!’ she cried; and tears filled her eyes. She was silent for a while; then she went on: ‘But if it is what you wish … then you must do it.’

  * * *

  She was saddened. Her eyes followed him, and many noticed that they were filled with tears as she did so.

  The Princesse de Lamballe begged her not to show her feelings for the young man so openly.

  ‘People are watching you all the time. Your sisters-in-law lose no opportunity of maligning you.’

  ‘I know it,’ said Antoinette. ‘And they are more angry with me still now that I am to have my Dauphin. But what do I care!’

 
‘You must care,’ said the Princesse. ‘They can do so much harm.’

  ‘I cannot help feeling sad when I see Axel. He will soon be far away, and I like my friends about me. It is so sad to think that soon he may be dying on some battlefield because he has interfered in a cause which is not his own.’

  ‘He has said that it is the cause of freedom, the cause of righteousness.’

  ‘I believe he is going away because he is afraid of staying here, because of the slander that is being spoken against us.’

  ‘Then he is wise to go,’ said the Princesse.

  ‘I am unlucky to be treated as I am,’ said Antoinette sadly. Then she laughed. ‘But if it is malicious of people to presume I take lovers, it is certainly very odd of me to have so many attributed to me and yet to do without them!’

  The Princesse laughed with her; but Antoinette continued sad, contemplating the departure of Fersen.

  And even after he had gone she thought a great deal about him until her mind was entirely occupied with her approaching confinement.

  * * *

  During the evenings she would walk on the terrace of the château with her friends. The summer had been unusually hot and Antoinette had spent the days resting, doing fine needlework while she listened to music and talked of the Dauphin. Therefore it was pleasant in the cool of the evening to walk on the terrace which was illuminated with fairy lights. Music would be playing in the Orangerie; the old custom was that at such times the people of Versailles might have free admittance into the château grounds and even to the terraces.

  The Queen, with her ladies, was dressed in white muslin with a big straw hat and veil which were the fashion and were copied by many. Thus, as they sat or strolled on the terrace and the people wandered freely about, many would speak to the Queen without knowing who she was.

  One night as she sat there a man came and stood beside her.

  ‘What a beautiful night!’ he said, and took a chair next to hers.

  ‘It is very beautiful,’ she replied.