Flaunting, Extravagant Queen

by Виктория Холт

  ‘The people should be told that,’ cried Adelaide.

  Her sisters nodded. They knew that Adelaide and Josèphe and others with them would see that remark was repeated throughout Paris.

  The Comte de Vaudreuil, who was Gabrielle’s lover, had lost money in the West Indies owing to the American war, and Gabrielle begged the Queen to help her lover; the result was that the Comte was found a sinecure at Court which was a charge on public funds to the tune of 30,000 livres a year. Gabrielle’s lovely young daughter was affianced to the Duc de Guiche. The King must give her a dowry of 800,000 livres because the Queen so wished to please her dear friend Gabrielle; then, of course, the bridegroom must have his gifts also. There must be a command in the company of Guards, an estate and a pension for Monsieur de Guiche.

  Gabrielle had been made a Duchesse and had been given estates at Bitche, and ever since she had been known throughout Paris as Bitchette.

  Other members of the Polignac family were not forgotten. Even Gabrielle’s husband’s father, the old Vicomte de Polignac, who was far from brilliant, was sent to Switzerland as ambassador.

  The Queen’s enemies made sure that the people knew of her follies; they were determined that her new-found popularity should not last. She lost this completely when, after a slight attack of measles, she decided to recuperate at the Petit Trianon.

  ‘This,’ she declared, ‘is what I must do, for the King has never had measles, so I must keep right away from him.’

  ‘Your Majesty must not be dull during convalescence,’ Gabrielle told her. ‘That would considerably retard your recovery. I for one shall be with you.’

  ‘If you have not had the measles, Gabrielle …’

  ‘Measles or not,’ said Gabrielle, ‘I shall be there.’

  Four gentlemen of the Court came forward to say that they had also had measles. They said it so glibly that it was quite clear that they were not at all sure whether they had or not, but that they considered an attack little to pay for the intimate society of the Queen.

  So with the Queen and a few – a very few – of her ladies went the Ducs de Coigny and de Guines, the Baron de Benseval and the Comte Esterhazy; and there at Petit Trianon they made her convalescence merry. Her bedroom was the centre of the gaiety, and it soon became known throughout Paris that the Queen entertained these men in her private bedchamber.

  Now all the old scandals were revived. The people in the streets were inventing scandals and singing songs about her once more.

  Mercy wrote frantically to Maria Theresa. Maria Theresa’s instructions came promptly in reply.

  Mercy visited Petit Trianon and, as a result, the four gentlemen were commanded not to enter the Queen’s bedchamber after eleven o’clock in the day.

  But the damage was done.

  * * *

  The finances of the country were in a tragic state.

  Turgot had been replaced by Clugny de Nuis and, when the latter died, by Jacques Necker, the Genevese banker.

  Necker was very popular and there was delight throughout the country on his appointment. A great deal had been heard about the Déficit, and it was firmly believed that Necker was the man who would put France on her feet again.

  Necker, accustomed to dealing with finance, was horrified to discover that the national deficit was some 20,000,000 livres a year, and that owing to the American war – for France was supporting the settlers – the debt was increasing rapidly. He dared not inflict more taxes for he understood that the people would have risen in revolt if he had. Instead he resorted to loans.

  With the borrowed money it seemed that Necker was succeeding. He was cutting down expenses throughout the country. He had believed in the beginning that if he could make France prosperous he would be able to repay the loans when the time came for repayment.

  This he failed to do. The war was virtually over and he realised that his only means of repaying the loans was through further taxation. This he could shelve for a little while; so, determined not to throw the nation into a panic, he published a little booklet which he called Compte Rendu, and in this he set out details of the national income and the national expenditure. As he falsely included the loans as income he was able to show, instead of a deficit, a credit balance of 10,000,000 livres.

  There was general rejoicing and the cry went up: ‘Long live Necker! He is the saviour of France!’

  * * *

  Antoinette was joyfully pregnant again.

  James Armand stood behind her chair, listening to her talking about the new baby which was coming. ‘This time,’ said the Queen, ‘it must be a boy.’

  It was a pleasure now to write to her mother. It was a pleasure to open her letters. Maria Theresa would forget to scold if there was a Dauphin on the way.

  It was, however, but a few months after the child was conceived when she had her miscarriage. She was very sad about this, and wept often, but when she was assured again and again by her friends that she would almost certainly be pregnant again, her spirits lifted.

  James Armand stood by the bed smiling his satisfaction. At least for the present there would be no other rival to be set beside the little girl in her cradle.

  Antoinette laughed at him and told him he was a wicked little subject of the King. James Armand laughed with her. He cared not for the King, he told her; he was the Queen’s little boy.

  ‘Now,’ she said to Gabrielle, ‘there will be more letters from my mother. I shall be told that I must at all costs avoid le lit à part. Poor Mother, this will be a great shock to her. Ah, Monsieur James, is it not strange that what rejoices you will fill my dear mother with dismay?’

  But the letters from Maria Theresa were coming less frequently.

  In the last few years she had grown very fat. She had suffered badly from the smallpox, and Antoinette would not have recognised her if she had seen her at that time. The Empress knew that she had not long to live; and one day, soon after Antoinette’s miscarriage, when driving, she had caught a chill. A few days later she was dead.

  * * *

  When the news was brought to Antoinette she was prostrate with grief.

  The King had sent the Abbé de Vermond to break it to her gently; he himself, guessing how broken-hearted she would be, declared he could not bear to do so. But as she lay on her bed, too dazed for speech, Louis came to her and took her into his arms.

  ‘I cannot believe it, Louis,’ she said. ‘Mother … dead. But she was so vital. I think she believed she would be immortal.’

  ‘We are none of us that,’ said Louis.

  ‘Yet she seemed so. And to think I have sometimes put her letters aside because I knew they would contain scoldings. As if she ever scolded when I did not merit a scolding. Louis, who will look after me now?’

  ‘I will,’ said Louis.

  She smiled at him tenderly. Dear Louis. But Poor Louis. How different he seemed to her from that strong woman to whom she had felt she could always turn.

  ‘I cannot believe,’ she went on, ‘that she is not there. You see, Louis, she was always there … from the moment I first became aware of anything she was there …’

  He soothed her. She felt closer to Louis than ever before; and in those days of mourning she wished to be shut away from everyone but her husband and her dear friends, Madame de Polignac and the Princesse de Lamballe.

  The finances of France were tottering.

  Necker had overlooked the fact that when he had made his drastic plans for reducing expenditure, the result would produce unemployment and the dissatisfaction of a great number of people; and that hundreds who had looked upon the service of the nobility as their livelihood would be without means of earning a living.

  Necker was idealistic. The state of the hospitals appalled him, so he prevailed on the King to pay secret visits to those of Paris; and Louis, whose great desire was to serve his country, was willing to do so. What Louis saw in places such as the Hôtel-Dieu filled him with horror. Disguised he had wandered through the wards and
seen the dying lying in heaps in corners, had seen as many as four people crowded into one narrow bed, all in various stages of misery.

  He had come back to the Palace and told the Queen what he had seen; and he and Antoinette had wept together. Something must be done for the hospitals. In the provincial cities they were moderately satisfactory; it was in Paris that they provoked such horror and shame.

  The Queen founded a maternity hospital at Versailles; the King bought new beds to be installed in the Hôtel-Dieu. This was admirable; but it cost money. Turgot, Malesherbes and Necker were all reformers, all idealists, but all lacked the means to bring their reforms into being.

  Necker was now at the height of his popularity. Only Maurepas, now in his eighties, wise and shrewd, doubted the banker. Maurepas could not believe that the country’s financial state was as good as Necker had made it out to be; to Maurepas’ practical mind it was an impossibility. Trouble started between Necker and Maurepas when the banker rejected a proposal to strengthen the Navy, which had been put forward by de Sartines, who was then Minister for Naval Affairs and whom Maurepas was supporting.

  There was an open rupture in high places. Necker, who was cheered every time he went into the streets, thought to score off the old statesman by demanding the post of Minister of State.

  Maurepas then threatened to resign and take the Administration with him, pointing out that Necker was a Protestant and no Protestant had ever held the post of Minister of State since the days of Henri Quatre; but Necker imagined that, since the people believed in him, new rules should be made on his account.

  The King and the Queen were reluctant to accept Necker’s resignation, but this was forced on them. Necker fell from power; and the men and women in the streets murmured because of it.

  There was another disturbing factor. Many French had returned from America, now that war was being brought to a satisfactory conclusion. This sent the citizens of Paris wild with joy. From the beginning they had been on the side of those who called for liberty. They had cheered Benjamin Franklin, Arthur Lee and Silas Deane when they had appeared in Paris some years before to enlist French support. Many had sailed to America under the Marquis de la Fayette.

  The King had wanted to remain aloof. It was because he was distrustful of war. He had an uneasy feeling too that, as a royalist, he would be fighting on the wrong side. All Europe was declaring against England in the struggle, not on principle but because they feared that mighty rising Power.

  And now the war was over and the Declaration of Independence had been signed. This was success for the settlers, success too for France. The stigma of the Seven Years’ War which had so humiliated the French was wiped away. Now they were victorious over their old enemies, the English.

  It had been an easy war, as wars which were not fought in the homeland should be. France had recovered her colonies in the West Indies, in Senegal and India. She had hoped to regain Canada, but that country had refused to rise against the English.

  It seemed that France was set for glory again as it had been in the days of Louis Quatorze. Here was the beginning of richness, the people told each other.

  There were certain things they had forgotten.

  The Déficit was greater than ever, for the war had cost forty-three million livres. Those reforms, which Louis had so dearly wished to put into being and in which he had ministers to support him, had had to be put off for the sake of the war.

  This was bad; but there was one thing which, for the monarchy, was more dangerous still.

  Soldiers sat in the taverns and cafés and talked of the new country. In the new land there were no Kings. There was more freedom in the New World.

  A new cry had replaced ‘Long live the King’. It was ‘Long live Liberty!’

  * * *

  The Queen was oblivious of the change which was coming over the country. Her mind was occupied with one thing. She was again pregnant, and this time she was determined not to lose the child.

  She shut herself away from the Court, took the utmost care of her health and saw few people apart from Louis and her dearest friends.

  In the streets the people had ceased to talk of the new world and were discussing the coming of the child, for a royal birth was an event to eclipse all others.

  The King was firm in declaring that he would not have the Queen submitted to the danger and indignity which she had suffered during the birth of Madame Royale. He proclaimed that only those close members of the family, doctors, ladies-in-waiting and those necessary to the occasion should forgather in the lying-in chamber. He did not forget how the Queen had come near to death by suffocation at her last confinement.

  The King called the Queen’s ladies to him a few days before the child was expected.

  ‘I am anxious on the Queen’s behalf,’ he said. ‘I remember last time. If the child should be a girl she will be distressed, I know. This fact must be kept from her until she is well enough to learn the truth.’

  The Princesse de Lamballe said: ‘Sire, if the child should be a boy, shall we not tell Her Majesty?’

  ‘No,’ said the King firmly. ‘For joy can be as big a shock as grief.’

  ‘And if she should ask, Sire?’

  ‘I shall be at hand. I shall tell her.’

  * * *

  She was waiting. She knew it could not be long now. ‘Holy Mother of God,’ she prayed, ‘send me a Dauphin.’ She paced up and down her room; she had dismissed her women; she wanted to be alone to think of the child. All was ready, waiting for him. ‘Oh, God, let it be a boy.’

  If only Mother were alive, she thought. If I have a Dauphin, how happy Mother would be. Perhaps she is looking down on me now, being happy … knowing that soon I shall give birth to a healthy boy, the Dauphin of France.

  She touched the beautiful Gobelin tapestry which lined her walls. ‘If I have a boy,’ she said, as though making a bargain, ‘I will be quite different. I will no longer gamble. I will do all I can to please the people. I will be quite sober … I will be the Queen whom Mother would have wished me to be. Oh, why was I not, when she was alive? What grief I must have caused her! Yet it was so hard … I was so bored … so utterly bored. I had to do something to stop thinking of the children I wanted. Now I have Charlotte. How I love Charlotte! And if there is a Dauphin …’

  She would see less of Gabrielle. She was beginning to think she was less fond of Gabrielle. Gabrielle was so absorbed by her lover, and should she, the Queen, faithful wife of the King, accept Gabrieile and her lover as her close friends in the way she did? Gabrielle was a darling of course, but her relations … oh, her relations! There were too many of them, and they were too acquisitive. When she thought of all they had had it seemed incredible that they could ask for more. No wonder there were complaints about them. They were every bit as expensive as Grandpa Louis’ mistresses had been. The people were right in saying that.

  She would spend more time with Madame Elisabeth, her pleasant little sister-in-law. She had always liked Elisabeth, from the moment she had seen her on her arrival in France; and, now that Clothilde was married, she and Elisabeth should be together more.

  It was true Elisabeth was a little saintly and consequently a little dull, but she adored Antoinette’s little Charlotte and she would be such a pleasant companion.

  ‘Oh, give me a Dauphin and I will see less of Gabrielle,’ she prayed. ‘I will cultivate the love of Elisabeth; I will be with my children, and soon even the citizens of Paris will have nothing of which to complain.’

  She caught her breath suddenly.

  Her pains were starting.

  She called. Marie de Lamballe, who was not far off and expecting the call, came hurrying to her.

  * * *

  The King was in the bedchamber, and with him were those members of the family whose duty it was to be present.

  On the bed Antoinette lay, the doctors and accoucheur about her. Not far off hovered the Princesse de Lamballe and the Princesse de Guémenée whose position as G
ouvernante des Enfants entitled her to be there.

  The labour was not long and within three hours the child was born.

  As the Queen emerged from the exhaustion of her ordeal she was immediately conscious of the silence all about her, and she was terrified suddenly by that silence.

  Her eyes sought those of the Princesse, but Marie de Lamballe avoided her eyes.

  Antoinette grasped the sheets. She thought: There is no child. It is born dead. After all these months!

  She licked her lips and said: ‘You see how patient I am. I ask … nothing.’

  Louis was at her bedside. He cried aloud, and his voice was like a fanfare of trumpets: ‘Monsieur le Dauphin begs leave to enter.’

  Antoinette’s heart beat uncertainly as the Princesse de Guémenée laid her son in her arms.

  * * *

  There was great rejoicing throughout the country at the birth of an heir to the throne of France. Now would be the time for pageants and merrymaking, and in such festivities reality could be thrust aside.

  Everyone was talking of the Dauphin, the King most of all. Every sentence he uttered seemed to begin with: ‘My son the Dauphin …’

  He was continually in the Queen’s apartments; he was for ever bending over the cradle.

  ‘Madame de Guémenée, how fares my son, the Dauphin, today?’ ‘My son, the Dauphin, lies very still this morning. Is that as it should be?’

  He welcomed the child’s wet-nurse, called Madame Poitrine by the Court – a gruff peasant woman, wife of one of the gardeners, a woman who cared for nothing except the Dauphin, and refused to conform to etiquette or show the slightest respect for her new surroundings.

  When asked to powder her hair, she roared in her coarse voice:

  ‘I’ve never powdered my hair nor will I now. I have come here to suckle the little one – not to stand about like one of those dummies I see all over the place. I’ll not have that nasty powder near me.’