Becoming Marie Antoinette: A Novel

by Juliet Grey

  My torso was narrow and slender, my abdomen ever so slightly rounded, yet nearly as flat as my chest. How would a baby ever fit inside my belly? And the dauphin would do what? I touched myself down there, where the flesh was soft and moist on the inside, and on the outside where the skin was like that of a peach, downy and delicate. Two fingers wide, Maman had guessed. Maybe more. And perhaps the length of my hand, fingertip to wrist. I tried to picture something matching those dimensions inside me, but I had a difficult time getting past the strangeness of the whole idea. After all, that was where things went out—liquid things like blood and urine—so how was something the size of a link of wurst going to go in?

  The whole picture became even more of an exercise in futility because I had not a face to put with the sausage, so to speak. When we had inquired (on more than one occasion) as to his looks, the abbé Vermond had assured us that Louis Auguste had a “very pleasing countenance.” King Louis’s ambassador, the marquis de Durfort, insisted coolly, between pinches of snuff, that beauty was in the eye of the beholder. “Then I demand to behold him,” my mother exclaimed. “Is the youth deformed? What has His Most Christian Majesty to be ashamed of that he refuses to send a portrait?”

  Meanwhile, I tried to make certain that my final thoughts, as I drifted off to sleep each night, were of Louis Auguste. In my mind’s eye he was tall and noble, with a playful expression in that “pleasing countenance” of his. And of course he would move with uncommon grace in a ballroom. The courtiers of Versailles—dozens upon dozens of glamorous men and women in patches and paint, sparkling with jewels from their necks to their shoe buckles—would become bilious with jealousy when the dauphin took my hand to lead me onto the gleaming parquet in the Galerie des Glaces, the Hall of Mirrors—our reflections magnified not merely in the numerous looking glasses and the weighty crystal pendants of the myriad chandeliers, but in hundreds of envious eyes.

  ELEVEN

  Renunciation

  VIENNA, MARCH 1770

  A pair of servants bustled about the breakfast room, clearing away the remnants of sweet rolls and chocolate. That morning my mother had violated her own strict dietary regimen and consumed two pots of the thick, bittersweet beverage. Her request of King Louis had been granted, but the result was worthless. Brandishing the engraving as she pointed with equal dismay to the other two very similar compositions that had accompanied it, she demanded of the marquis de Durfort, “What is the meaning of this?”

  The emissary took a half step backward, striking a haughty pose by thrusting out his right leg as his chin tilted skyward. He held the attitude as though he expected Monsieur Ducreux to arrive at any moment with his brushes and easel, prepared to immortalize him. “Is there a problem, Your Imperial Majesty?”

  “Bien sûr, there is a problem, monsieur! I engage one of your own countrymen to paint my daughter, not to mention several of her siblings—as a gift to your sovereign. We spend months in preparation for her sitting so that she will be depicted in the most flattering mode—proof to Louis that Antonia’s abundant gifts will render her an eminently suitable dauphine. All I request in return is a portrait of the dauphin. And this is what Louis sends me?” She slapped the table with such force that the trio of engravings became momentarily airborne. “Fetch me Choiseul!”

  Moments later the duc was admitted to the breakfast room. Diplomat that he was, he immediately sensed that something was amiss. “Madame.” He bowed deeply to the empress, who dismissed the formality with a wave of her hand.

  “Choiseul, does the king of France mock me?” my mother inquired in a tone that clearly indicated her displeasure. Before Louis’s minister could formulate a reply, she added, “Is it not enough that I must contend with a sheaf of documents from the French disputing the order of precedence on the marriage treaty? Do you truly expect me to agree that the dauphin’s name should be written before my daughter’s, even on the formal proxy certificate—for a nuptial ceremony that is to take place on Austrian soil, in our Augustinian Church? It is too much to bear, monsieur le duc.”

  Maman leveled her gaze at the duc. “The archduchess takes precedence in her own country, Choiseul. On that account, there will be no capitulation from Austria; and, at this stage in the game,” she added, scowling at the engravings displayed before her, “little room for compromise.”

  “Is it the wording of the marriage treaty that has so agitated Your Imperial Majesty this morning?” the duc de Choiseul inquired calmly.

  By way of a reply, my mother continued to assail him. “It is this. This is what your sovereign has dispatched in response to my request for a portrait of the dauphin. What do you see here?” She cupped her hand and beckoned him. “Come closer.”

  Placing his pince-nez on the bridge of his nose, the duc de Choiseul peered through the spectacles and examined the three engravings. He cleared his throat. “Well … I see a pastoral composition bordered by trees at either edge … a good deal of sky, a sprinkling of coaches, mounted equerries, a trio of horses—”

  “And what do the horses appear to be doing?” Maman acerbically inquired.

  Choiseul raised his monocle and inserted it in front of his right eye. He peered at the engraving in question. “That appears to be a plow, Your Imperial Majesty.”

  “And who is the figure that appears to be pushing it—the one in the tricorn, dressed like a member of the lower gentry?”

  The minister exchanged an awkward glance with the marquis de Durfort. “That would be—ah—that would be the dauphin, madame.”

  Silence descended on the room. I could hear the beating of my heart beneath my stays. Was I expected to say anything? I rose from my chair and tentatively approached my mother, who was still fuming over the highly irregular manner in which the dauphin had been depicted, sputtering like the hot oil used to fry Schupfnudeln. The engravings in and of themselves were charming; but I had to admit that Maman was fully in the right. We were certainly no closer to knowing what my betrothed looked like. They read my disappointment in my face. But it was my mother’s displeasure that mattered.

  Maman rang for a portable desk, which appeared within moments. Choiseul watched her remove a sheet of fine laid paper and dip a sharpened quill into a silver inkwell. With a fierce sense of purpose, she penned a torrent of words, barely pausing to refill the nib. A few flicks of her wrist sanded the letter from a sterling shaker. Passing a tiny spoon filled with nibs of red wax back and forth over a candle, she waited until the dripping wax pooled in a perfect circle the size of a coin, then sealed the missive by pressing into the soft wax with a stamp bearing the imperial crest.

  “See that this reaches my royal brother without delay,” she commanded, thrusting the letter at the marquis de Durfort. “I am to receive a proper portrait of His Royal Highness the Dauphin or it remains doubtful whether Antonia will marry his grandson by proxy next month.”

  A startled gasp escaped my lips, and I saw my shocked expression mirrored in the diplomats’ faces. Was Maman bluffing, or did she really mean it?

  April 9, 1770

  He is so handsome! Imagine my delight when after so many months, nay two years, of wondering, a pair of portraits of Louis Auguste arrived at the Hofburg today. They were delivered by a stranger, as the marquis de Durfort had business at Versailles—preparing the French entourage’s journey to Vienna for my proxy wedding ceremonies. Maman seemed pleased with the images, but no one could have been more delighted than I. I promptly requested one of them for my sleeping chamber, where, at long last, I have been permitted to return. Now I will be better able to picture sharing a bed with him. In the painting, the dauphin’s hair is powdered, lending him a graver appearance than his fifteen years, but that is all to the good, as I shall depend upon him to guide me. If I must put a word to his face and figure, I would say it is “stalwart,” for I find him neither slender nor stout. His eyes are a somewhat lighter shade of blue than my own, which surprises me because I had heard that his hair in its natural state is quite bro
wn. Nonetheless, their expression is kind. His mouth is on the full side. For weeks I have been trying to picture kissing it, but as I have never kissed anyone on the lips I’m unable to imagine whether the sensation would be a pleasant one. I sat on my bed and gazed at the portrait for some time, ultimately concluding that if I have to leave Austria and my family to marry someone for the benefit of the empire, I could do worse than Louis Auguste of France. My future husband is not ugly and stupid like my beloved Charlotte’s mari, King Ferdinand of Naples, who cares for naught but hunting and gourmandizing. And wenching, she wrote, without bothering to explain herself.

  I pity her. It is not Charlotte’s fault that she had to marry a lout with dirt under his fingernails and bid farewell to her homeland to rule a provincial kingdom by the sea, while I will one day be queen of the most exciting court in the world. I have not had a letter from her in weeks; has she grown jealous of me? Frankly, I am afraid to ask.

  My last week of anything resembling a normal life had drawn to a close. On the fifteenth of April, Easter Sunday, the ascension of Our Lord was overshadowed by King Louis’s ambassador, when our family Mass in the Kammerkapelle was interrupted by a tremendous commotion. The marquis de Durfort had returned to Vienna in state, at the head of the grandest cavalcade I had ever seen. Hundreds of horses, meticulously groomed and splendidly caparisoned, sporting feathered plumes of red, blue, and white, and fine saddles tooled in gold leaf, pranced and tossed their manes as if they somehow comprehended that a momentous event was about to take place. The parade of carriages clattering into the cobblestone courtyard of the Hofburg seemed never to end; I counted forty-eight—all of them six-in-hand! And that sum did not even include the two massive berlines, traveling coaches that had been commissioned especially by Louis Quinze to conduct me from Austria to Versailles.

  I had never been much enamored of the marquis de Durfort, with his mouches and his enameled snuffboxes and his pretensions to grandeur. Truly—did he need to ride into Vienna accompanied by an entourage of one hundred and seventeen servants, attired in the Durfort livery of yellow, blue, and silver, as if he himself were as lofty as a Bourbon? I was puzzled by such self-aggrandizement in a mere marquis, but Maman took a more pragmatic view. For the past four years, ever since our chancellor, Prince Kaunitz, and the duc de Choiseul had put their diplomatic heads together and conceived of a marriage between the dauphin and me—a union that would at long last create a vital alliance between our two realms—the king of France had sought to outdo Austria for pageantry and extravagance.

  The marquis made a grand show of presenting the duo of traveling berlines to Maman—and me, of course. Of course, of course, of course; with him everything was always of course, a meaningless parenthetical peppering his sentences. Although the marquis spoke of the great expense to which Louis of France had gone to build the pair of carriages, thus doing the ultimate honor to the House of Hapsburg—because (of course) their archduchess could never be expected to travel to Versailles in anything less spectacular—what remained unsaid, suspended in the gaps between his flowery words, was that we Austrians were little better than bourgeoisie, ill-equipped to provide for the family’s most celebrated bride in such glorious fashion as the French had managed to do without breaking a sweat.

  Maman pursed her lips as she ran a gloved hand over the delicate crowns and allegorical images limned on the coaches’ shiny blue exteriors. I studied her expression during Durfort’s recitation of the berlines’ numerous attributes—“built from two different rare woods, but of course the cost was nothing compared to the necessity of transporting the future dauphine of France in the manner to which His Most Christian Majesty anticipates she will soon become accustomed … the body is coated with glass, which of course accounts for the magnificent shine, and of course the windows are glass; and in case the dauphine should become bored with one of the carriages, each interior is different. Here we have the crimson velvet, and of course in the other berline you will see that it is royal blue—colors found, of course, in the Bourbon coat of arms. In both of the coaches the upholstery is embroidered in gold and silver threads; in this one you will notice images of each of the four seasons, while atop the roof …”

  I had seen that look many times before when Maman grew annoyed at something. The marquis’s self-congratulatory description of the carriages’ superlative features was as the buzzing of a horsefly about her head. “Ah, oui,” she agreed, masking her envy with an aura of appreciation at everything her sovereign brother had done for her daughter. “The gilded bouquets that garnish the four corners of the roof are indeed incomparable. You are quite right, monsieur le marquis, I have never seen anything like it.”

  Our carriages were nothing to the two berlines, and we knew it. Austria’s most lavish conveyances, the imperial coaches for “all highest persons,” meaning the sovereigns, Maman and Joseph, were distinguished from the carriages that were used by the rest of the royal family only by the color of their paint: black on top and a deep shade of green below. The golden bands that ornamented the circumferences of the deep green wheels were paltry adornments compared to the French berlines’ numerous embellishments.

  The unspoken competition was on. Maman became more determined than ever to overwhelm the French delegation with Austrian pomp and ceremony. After all, she had the hope of a vast empire at her back and the ability to harness their excitement. Was there a single soul in Austria who was not delighted that the archduchess Antonia would someday be queen of France? Many of our countrymen and women remembered well the havoc of the Seven Years’ War. The alliance created by my marriage would ensure a lasting peace.

  And yet, the bride herself was of two minds. In a few days’ time I would be handed into one of those berlines, never to see my homeland again. And as the hours proceeded apace, Maman knew it was her last chance to dazzle. In those final giddy days I saw even less of my mother. She was meeting with dignitaries and entertaining the visiting French nobility. Perhaps she recognized that it was for the best, that within a space of time that could now be counted in hours I would lack her presence altogether. Or perhaps she was simply too busy hosting the grandest celebrations to grace the Hofburg in decades.

  I caught her eye at one point and we held each other’s gaze until I saw Maman’s lips begin to twitch and she noticed my efforts to blink away the mist that heralded the onset of tears.

  This was no time for sentiment, I knew. Each of us had our roles to play.

  On the afternoon of the marquis’s arrival, in another display of diplomatic protocol before the entire court, Durfort, on behalf of his sovereign Louis of France, made the formal demand for my hand in marriage to his Most Christian Majesty’s grandson the dauphin Louis Auguste. It was only after Maman accorded her equally formal, and scripted, consent, that I was summoned to the mirrored Spiegelsaal, the grandest of the Hofburg’s formal rooms of state, to receive my due: a miniature portrait of the dauphin surrounded by a wreath of brilliants. My mother pinned it to a red sash that she fastened diagonally across my torso. Sparkling and beribboned, I felt like a Tannenbaum.

  “Hand in hand with a mother’s fondest hopes are those of your motherland and of the land in which you will become a mother yourself.”

  I bent my knees and offered a shallow curtsy. “Merci, Maman,” I murmured. She cocked her head as if to say “I’m the empress today,” and my eyes widened in mute apology. I touched the sash and pressed my fingers to the portrait of my future husband. How magnificent it all was! And how overwhelming! I stood straighter and taller than ever and lifted my chin with pride.

  Months earlier, I had attended the opera after the formal announcement of my engagement, an event that entailed four hours in the friseur’s chair while Sieur Larsenneur teased my hair to astonishing heights and affixed a number of false switches and plaits. I had to sleep with my neck on a wooden block so as not to muss his creation, in addition to being laced into a corset so rigidly boned I could scarcely breathe. In the imperial box a
t the opera house, the audience, from barons to wealthy burghers, rose as one to turn around and gawp at me as if I were a two-headed circus animal or some other accident of nature. They all wished to glimpse “the littlest archduchess,” as I heard someone say—curious to see how I was dressed, the way I wore my hair, and whether I was a beauty.

  Yet that experience, at once heady and horrifying (for I thought they would have taken a piece of me home with them, had it been possible), would be nothing in comparison to what lay ahead.

  “But won’t the archduchess enjoy being the center of attention?” Minding the difference in our stations my maid Liesl spoke as if I were not in the room, rather than directly addressing me—a ridiculous affectation when one young woman is lacing the stays of the other. She rarely remembered to refer to me in the third person, and I always found it jarring when she did so. As it was, I was feeling less and less like a living creature of flesh and blood the nearer we came to the date of my proxy wedding.

  “Maman thinks I should rejoice, of course, because of the glorious future that awaits me. But to me the glory is Austria’s, not Antonia’s. They will dress my hair for hours; I will kneel before the altar in a resplendent gown that weighs as much as I do. But when the vows are spoken it will be an empire that weds a kingdom.”

  What better proof of this could there be, but the ceremony for which Liesl was now dressing me? Within the hour I would formally renounce all claims to the imperial throne. In accordance with my mother’s directive, the corset had been laced so tightly that my spine felt like a ramrod. I slid my feet into a pair of backless brocade slippers and tied my panniers about my waist. Liesl, blinking back tears, pinned the frothy lace engageantes to the sleeves of my chemise. As loyal and kind as she was fastidious, Liesl was five years older than I and already a mother. Sometimes she would bring her little boy, Fritzi, for me to play with, and we would sit on the floor of my sleeping chamber for hours, because he loved to crawl about and get into mischief. One day I gave him a little wooden duck pulled by a string and he had never seemed happier, even though he tried to bite it. I dared not mention it to Maman, but I hoped that my servants at Versailles would let me play with their children.