I had another hour alone with Toinette; she asked me where I was going. I told her I was going southwestward, to Orléans and Tours, toward the Spanish frontier, to do a diplomatic errand for my king. This was the same lie I’d told to Taube and Gustavus himself. “Sois toi-même”—Toinette’s phrase kept tormenting me as I exited the Tuileries into the freezing, snowy night and hailed a cab to get to my next destination. For I had decided not to ride that southwestern road toward the Spanish frontier. Instead, I drove directly to Eleanore Sullivan’s home on the rue de Clichy.
This is where I fear my readers will begin to dislike me, to loathe me even. Here goes the fickle Don Juan, they’ll say, from the bed of his great love, who lies in mortal danger, to that of a strumpet. How reprehensible. How base. The scoundrel, the cad, the rotter. I accept all these censures. Fifteen years later, in my prudish, ascetic fifties, I berate myself for my callousness. But there it was—Eleanore had been my mistress for over three years. Not only did I lust for her, she had shown remarkable devotion to the French monarchs during the preparations of the Varennes venture. It was she, along with the baronne de Korff, who had gone to the carriage maker to order a green berline that could accommodate nine persons, and who had paid for it. It was she who had gone to the Russian ambassador, Simolin, to arrange for the monarchs’ passports. So besides my affection for her I owed her great gratitude.
Moreover, I’m a voluptuary, and an aesthete. I longed for Eleanore, as I did for her wondrous house, furnished with such taste by Quentin Craufurd, filled with Watteaus and Poussins and glorious Renaissance furniture. Upon my arrival she greeted me with open arms, as ever; when had she not? She was wearing a dress of red cut velvet that brilliantly offset her milky skin, her silken dark hair, her copious white shoulders. She sat me down and immediately asked me about the queen, for whom she had always had the most intense, loyal concern. She wept when I told her of my last conversation with the royal couple, of their adamant refusal to leave the country. “They’re lost,” she whispered between tears, “they’re lost.” “Joseph would never have allowed this,” she added, referring to her former lover, the Austrian emperor, Marie Antoinette’s oldest brother. “Never, never would Joseph have abandoned his sister this way.”
She said this over dinner, weeping, in her superb wood-paneled dining room, where a group of Craufurd’s Botticelli drawings hung over the mantelpiece. She went on to describe what our living arrangements would be for the following days. Craufurd traveled a good deal and went to the theater almost every night, she explained, as he had this particular evening—he owned a stake in several Paris theaters and liked to attend at least one play a day. He usually came home at around midnight. I could dine with her on the nights Craufurd was out; but whenever he was home I would have to hide in the maid’s quarters she had provided for me on the top floor of her house. She took me to my room directly after dinner.
How lovingly she had arranged this little nest for me! There were logs by the fireplace, which had already been lit. There were flowers, a bowl of fruit, a dozen novels and historical works stacked upon the bedside tables. Although I was worn out, emotionally drained by what I sensed had been my last meeting ever with the queen, Eleanore and I made love. But making love with Eleanore was not an exerting experience; she did the bulk of the work. She was a fleshy, large-breasted woman (yes, I do love breasts) with a bounteous belly that reminded me of the Venus de Milo’s. Her favorite position—one should keep in mind that she was once a circus dancer—was to mount a man and exert all kinds of fascinating, exotic practices upon his body. She performed, at a variety of angles, many nuances of entrances and withdrawals. Her legs wrapped around me as I sat at the edge of the bed, she alternated exquisitely slow and excitingly speedy motions. Standing up, as I cradled her in my arms and she kept her plump white limbs wrapped around me, after some stupendous exertions we ended up sharing our orgasms on the floor. This all happened in my little room, whence we could always hear the front door opening and closing, and remained warned of Craufurd’s comings and goings.
Craufurd was a very large man, about my height—six feet four—but wide shouldered and big boned, with the beginning of a paunch. He had a Vandyke beard, swift, expressive hazel eyes, handsome features marred only by a slightly bulbous nose caused by his great liking for spirits. He was known for his fierce temper and physical strength, and the thought of his learning of my trysts with Eleanore terrified me.
So when Eleanore told me that Craufurd would be at home during my stay with her, I was happy to abide by the rules she had set for me. I hid in my room, taking care to keep my shoes off at all times because Craufurd’s study was directly below. When Craufurd was spending the evening at home my meals were sent up to me clandestinely on a dumbwaiter, at the very time the Craufurds were supping in their dining room or having a reception in their salon. (Eleanore, by the way, had told her servants that I was one of the illegitimate sons she’d had by the Duke of Württemberg, of whom Craufurd was very jealous.) I offered myself an excellent education during the days I was sequestered at Eleanore’s: I reread my beloved Saint Augustine, whom I’d much enjoyed since my youth; perused a few articles on the Bounty mutiny and a slough of Voltaire’s plays; and wrote a great deal in my journal. When I was sure that Craufurd was not in his study, I paced my room swiftly for an hour at a time, the way prisoners do, to activate my circulation. The most amusing nights were those when Craufurd went to the theater. On those evenings I dined with Eleanore downstairs and went to my room an hour later, and Craufurd, when he came home at midnight, would be offered the leftovers of our supper.
But notwithstanding the cheerful intrigues of my sojourn at the Craufurds’, I can’t say that I was happy there. I was far too concerned about Marie Antoinette. My anxiety about her future kept me up much of the night, and in daytime not an hour passed without my thinking, worrying about her. At times, when I compared the queen to Eleanore, I experienced a sense of disdain about the latter: her loud, full-throated laugh, which verged on the vulgar; her thick, somewhat coarse limbs; her overly agitated manner. The Prince of Wales, upon meeting her in Craufurd’s company, had compared her to “an apple vendor.” I kept thinking back to Toinette’s delicacy, the exquisite lightness of her gliding walk, the aura of warmth and gentleness she perpetually emanated, and missed her more desperately than ever. Craufurd himself had written about her “infinite grace,” her “very rare aura of benevolence.” Plagued by my longing for the queen, on a day in late February, I sensed it was time for me to end the charade with Eleanore and return to Brussels. I made an official visit to Craufurd. Leaving the house by the back stairs, I walked around the block a few times, and then rang Craufurd’s bell and was ushered into his house through the front door. “My dear fellow!” he exclaimed. “Always a delight to see you!” Craufurd was enchanted by my visit, and instantly asked me to stay for tea, and for supper. The next morning, I went back to Brussels.
THE SPRING OF 1792 was cursed by two disasters. The first was the death of Marie Antoinette’s brother Leopold II, who passed away after a brief illness in March, after a two-year reign. The queen had been disappointed by his reluctance to lead an armed congress against revolutionary France, but she had hoped that his equanimity and wisdom might help her in the future. Leopold was succeeded by his twenty-four-year-old son, Francis, whom the queen had never even met. Two weeks later we were dealt an even greater blow: on March 16, Gustavus III was shot at a masked ball in Stockholm, and he died two weeks later of his wounds. It was an ironic death for a man who had always been so passionately drawn to theatricals and masquerades. The events that led to his demise would have a long-lasting impact upon the fate of Sweden.
Gustavus had long been hated by the Swedish nobility because his numerous edicts and reforms had favored the clergy, the burghers, and particularly the peasant class at the expense of the aristocracy. He had passed a law, for instance, that allowed the peasantry, for the first time, to purchase land owned by nobles
or by the Crown. Moreover, he started wars with Russia and with Denmark without the permission of the Riksdag; and although Sweden’s army and navy eventually prevailed against Russia, the conflicts put a disastrous strain on the nation’s economy. In 1789 he had arrested many aristocrats for opposing his edicts, and the wars he had started. During a meeting of the Riksdag that same year, at the end of a speech in which he censured the nobility, Gustavus ordered all of the nobles to leave the Hall of State, where the Riksdag was being held. Never before had such an order been given. Many of the aristocrats who resisted the king’s decrees were exiled to the island of Saint-Barthélemy, which Sweden had acquired from France a few years earlier. Several others were condemned to death. Most of these sentences were commuted to prison terms, but one particular officer, Colonel Johan Hästesko, was publicly beheaded. Huge crowds attended his execution. When his head rolled into the basket, one of his officer friends, thirty-year-old Captain Johan Anckarström, swore he would avenge his comrade’s death.
Johan Anckarström, whom I’d always detested, came from a well-to-do and cultivated family and in his younger years had been a page at the Swedish court. He joined the army and rose to the rank of captain, becoming known as a tough-minded fellow who readily came into conflict with his peers. He left his army career when still in his twenties to become a farmer, but quarreled mightily with his neighbors and other landowners. Like those of many well-to-do Swedes, his fortune was vastly diminished by the financial crisis caused by our war against Russia. In 1791 he was accused of insulting the king, an offense punishable by death. While in his cups, Anckarström had publicly criticized the king’s conduct of Sweden’s war against Russia, which he thought would end badly. His vilification of Gustavus was reported to the authorities, he was taken to court, and the possibility of a death penalty tortured him. In his rage, he blamed all his setbacks in life, his economic failures, and those of the entire nation on King Gustavus.
Anckarström’s ire against Gustavus came to the attention of other army officers who wished for the king’s demise. Particularly important in the plot against the king were the noblemen Claes Fredrik Horn and Adolph Ribbing, the latter of whom would later become a lover of Madame de Staël. This conspiratorial group decided that the best occasion upon which to assassinate Gustavus was a public event attended by a large number of people. They knew of Gustavus’s predilection for masked balls, and chose a ball that was to be held on March 16, 1792, on the stage of the opera house built by Gustavus at the beginning of his reign. Captain Anckarström dressed as a harlequin—he wore a white mask and a false black beard, and carried a pistol loaded with tacks and sharp fragments of metal.
On that evening the king dined with a few friends in his private chambers. He had received a letter that very evening warning him that an attack on him was being planned. But although his friends suggested that he wear a protective vest he laughed at the idea—he knew that much of the nobility hated him, and he had received many such letters of warning before. After he finished dining, the king fussed about what costume he would wear to the masked ball—the art of costume had always been of great concern to him. He decided to wear a Venetian cape of black taffeta that hung loose over his shoulders, so that the Grand Star of the Seraphim—a decoration that only the Swedish monarchs and a handful of nobles could wear—could be clearly seen. He also put on a black tricorn, decked with white plumes, to which his large black mask had been sewn.
Anckarström saw the king approaching through the crowd, surrounded by his masked guests. He cocked the pistol at the king, aiming at Gustavus’s back. “Bonjour, beau masque,” one of Anckarström’s co-conspirators said, placing his hand on the king’s shoulder. The king had been expected to turn around, but did not do so—he simply turned to his left a little to speak to one of his friends. Anckarström pressed the trigger. The shot entered Gustavus’s body just below his cummerbund. He startled and winced, but did not fall. The pistol’s report had hardly been heard; except for the king’s friends the crowd was oblivious of what had happened. “Ay, je suis blessé, arrétez le et tirez moi d’ici!” the king said to one of his companions, speaking French, as he had all his life (“I am wounded, arrest him and get me out of here”). As the king, still able to walk, was whisked away by his friends, Anckarström thought he had failed. He let his pistol fall to the floor, then pushed his way into the crowd and shouted, “The building is on fire!” Panic did not arise as he had hoped. Upon learning that the king had been shot, a high-ranking officer ordered all doors shut and forbade everyone to leave.
Stockholm’s commissioner of police was soon on the scene. Within the next hour he had listed the names of all the guests present at the ball, and the pistol was found. The king had been taken to the castle and put on a divan in his room. His brother, Karl, Duke of Södermanland, came swiftly to his side, as did members of the court, the leading functionaries of the realm, and ambassadors from many European countries. The king was smiling bravely, greeting all, finding a special word for everyone. But in the following days his wound hurt increasingly; it became more and more difficult for him to move. His surgeon poked about and removed a number of tacks, but could not get them all. The wound festered, Gustavus developed a fever, and then pneumonia set in. Gustavus’s family and closest friends remained at his bedside. He writhed with pain, but continued to joke and make small talk, bearing his suffering with remarkable courage. In his last days he wished to speak of ancient heroes. “Come then and, like another Anthony,” he said to Armfelt, “let us show Caesar’s bloody garments so that his enemies might be crushed.” But in his very last hour he spoke more plainly. “The Jacobins in Paris will rejoice when they hear this news,” he whispered to Armfelt. He died thirteen days after being shot, at the age of forty-six.
By this time the murderer, Anckarström, had been captured, and had confessed to the crime. Swedish executions are gory events: after being whipped for several days on a square in Stockholm, Anckarström was taken to the traditional place of execution at Skanstull—somewhat similar to Paris’s place Louis XV—where he was guillotined. His body was then quartered, his head was nailed onto a pole, and the quartered parts of his body were attached to a wheel. These remains were left on public display for several weeks.
Several other conspirators were arrested, Ribbing among them. They were sentenced to death, but their sentences were then commuted and they were sent into perpetual exile, forbidden to ever return to Sweden. As one of Gustavus’s supporters remarked, “never before had the assassination of a king been punished so mildly.”
I was in Brussels when I heard of the king’s death. I was in such despair that I did not leave my room for three days. Gustavus, my benefactor, my frequent traveling companion, one of my closest comrades…“You have lost a firm supporter and a good ally,” I wrote to Marie Antoinette. “I have lost a protector and a friend. It is a very cruel loss.”
Gustavus’s successor was his thirteen-year-old son, who would later rule as Gustav IV Adolf. Until the crown prince’s eighteenth birthday, Gustavus’s brother, the Duke of Södermanland (yet another man I disliked), would reign as regent.
Adjoined to the grief caused me by Gustavus’s death was a concern for my own fate. Would my status as Swedish agent in Brussels be renewed by the regent? At Gustavus’s bequest I’d occupied an official position, with all the remuneration and privileges that went with it. Should the regent abolish my post I’d find myself without revenue or employment. Writing Marie Antoinette, I assured her that even if I was deprived of my position, I’d sell my furniture and move to more humble accommodations in order to continue living in Brussels, and remain accessible to her. My worries soon came to an end: in mid-April, the regent renewed my appointment.
But by the time I received this good news another calamity had taken place: war had been declared between France and the German powers, a war that still rages as I compose these recollections. The first to suffer from this new conflict were the French royal family, who
in a few months’ time would be moved from the Tuileries and imprisoned in a far grimmer place.
CHAPTER 10
Axel:
WAR AND DEATH
“DULCE ET DECORUM EST POR PATRIA MORI”? Not in this case. As with most pivotal events of the Revolution, the origin of the war that broke out in the spring of 1792 lay not in such noble motives, but in partisan political disputes. In March of that year the Girondin party had succeeded the Constitutionalists as the leading faction in the Assembly; and they were hell-bent on plunging France into war in order to prove themselves indispensable to the nation. Ironically, the war was also championed by Marie Antoinette, who held to the delusional belief that the Austrian-Prussian coalition would liberate Paris in a matter of months. She did not even seem to realize the increased personal dangers the war would bring her: more than ever, she would now be looked on as the inimical “Autrichienne,” an enemy alien who incited increasingly hostile public sentiment. Her Austrian patriotism, in fact, did verge on treason when she revealed to me some French military plans she had overheard at a council meeting: “They plan to attack through Savoy and the Liège country and hope to gain something this way because the two flanks can not be protected,” she wrote me. “It is essential to take precautions on the Liège flank.” Not that the queen would look at this indiscretion as a treasonable act: in her view, the revolutionaries were as much of a threat to the French nation as they were to her personally.
Neither did Marie Antoinette realize that the war would make her personal life, and her communications with me, more difficult than ever. Eleanore Sullivan and Quentin Craufurd, who had provided our principal means of contact, had fled to Brussels after the declaration of war; before leaving, Craufurd had gone to pay his last respects to the queen, whom he found affable but sorrowful. “I have no illusions; there is no more happiness for me,” she said to him as they parted. She was fortunate that the Craufurds had a dependable housekeeper, a Madame Toscani, who had remained in Paris, and it was through her that the queen’s missives were now dispatched to me, smuggled out of the Tuileries.
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