by Juliet Grey
“Merci, monsieur.” I smiled and downed the remaining lemonade. “I was indeed quite parched. And you are my Samaritan.”
He clicked his heels together like a soldier. “It is always a privilege to oblige a woman in distress.”
I began to laugh. “Are you always so serious?”
The gentleman chuckled, following my lead. “We Swedes are not known for our humor. Forgive me, please, madame. The French are very good at flirting; it is their national pastime, but I have not their native skill—not being a native,” he added, leaning against the pillar.
“Nor I,” I replied. His proximity unnerved me. I found myself staring at his smile, for I could scarcely make out his eyes, impressed by his gallant manner, and intrigued by the way his jaw tensed when he was about to say something in earnest. “I am not a flirt. Nor am I French,” I admitted. “But perhaps you know too much about me already.” I glanced anxiously at the princesse de Lamballe. “I should go.”
The Swede raised his hand, as if to stop me. “No, madame; please do not leave. Not yet, anyway.” He offered me his upturned palm. “Would you care to dance with me?” His smile was warm: safe and yet inviting. I gazed up at him. Light brown hair, barely powdered. Strong jaw. Elegant carriage. His eyes—I could not discern their color because of his mask, but even so, they appeared intense, with perhaps a hint of melancholy when one peered more deeply.
My cheeks grew warm. “I-I dare not,” I replied. “Dance, I mean. I should be heading home.”
“And where is home, may I ask?” His voice sounded like the sweet, low music of a cello.
“You may not ask,” I replied gaily, “for then you might discover who I am. And what would be the purpose, then, of a masquerade?”
The stranger paused to consider his reply. Then he leaned over to whisper softly in my ear, “I already know who you are.”
“You cannot. How …?”
“Your secret is locked in my bosom, madame la dauphine,” the gentleman murmured. “I am Count Axel von Fersen and I was presented to you barely a month ago at your New Year’s Eve ball.”
I gasped. “How—how did you know it was me tonight?”
“Because, madame,” replied Fersen, offering a courtly bow, “you are by far the most graceful woman in the room. From the way you carry your head to the way you move your wrist. You wear your birthright and your nobility like a diamond necklace, for all to admire. Your laugh is easy and unmistakeable. And your accent, while you are an excellent mimic, still bears traces of the Austrian about it. Take it from another who was not born speaking French. And it is charming.”
My cheeks felt warm. “Forgive me, monsieur le comte, for not recognizing you. There were so many people that night—and I tried to speak to everyone.”
Fersen smiled. Behind the mask his eyes were shining. I endeavored once again to divine their color. Not blue; not green; somewhere in between. Perhaps even brown. “But you did speak to me,” the count said. “And I shall never forget it.”
I wished I could recall the subject of our discourse that night; and I was far too discommoded by his presence to ask if he might refresh my memory. As if he saw what was inside my mind with his powers of “magnétisme animal,” like my childhood penmanship teacher Herr Mesmer, Fersen said, “You asked me whether it was much colder in Sweden on New Year’s Eve than it is in France.”
My hand flew to my mouth in embarrassment. “What a silly question!” I exclaimed.
“I did not think so at the time, madame,” said the count chivalrously. “After all, it was like a grand cercle and you were expected to speak of something personal, yet brief, to everyone in the room.”
My poitrine flushed with color, a telltale signal of my discomfiture. My bosom was now a damasked pink and white, a state of affairs that I knew would not abate until I had regained my equanimity. “Specific? Why, monsieur le comte, I spoke to you of the weather!”
“The weather in Sweden,” he emended. “Which, to my mind at the time was quite specific enough.”
I felt a hand placed gently on my arm, a delicate hint from the princesse de Lamballe. “I must go,” I said, though there was something in Count von Fersen’s manner that made me long to linger. “My husband will worry for me … out so late, and so far abroad.”
“Your husband is a fine man,” Fersen agreed without the slightest hint of irony or envy. “You are fortunate in each other.” He bent over my hand and gently kissed the back of my fingers. His lips were soft and warm. I nodded my acknowledgment and turned to leave. The princesse helped me don my velvet cloak and adjusted the voluminous calèche hood so that my face was all but obscured. As I began to walk away I felt Count von Fersen’s gaze upon me, but I would not turn around. He had been presented at court, which meant that he was always welcome there, would have such rights and privileges as riding in the king’s carriage and attending levers and couchers. I would see him again.
As I climbed into my gala carriage and settled back against the lush upholstery, I realized that my belly was as full of trepidation as it was of elation.
THIRTY-ONE
The Beginning of the End
February 14, 1774
Your Imperial Majesty:
We are nearing the accomplishment of the destiny of the dauphine. The king ages; he constantly repeats himself. He is isolated, without comfort from his children, without zeal, attachment, or fidelity on the part of the bizarre assemblage that composes his surroundings. He has no resources in his old age but those he finds in your daughter.
But there is one point that I must stress and which merits all of Your Majesty’s attention: the dauphine understands business with extreme facility, yet fears it to excess. She never allows herself to suppose that she may one day possess both authority and power, with the unfortunate result that her character has acquired too dependent and passive a nature, displaying itself in timidity on the least occasion. She fears to speak to the king; she fears to speak to the ministers—even the persons who are her closest attendants appear to intimidate her.
In addition, the dauphin, with good sense and excellent ingredients in his character, will probably never have the strength or willpower to permit him to reign by himself. If the dauphine does not govern him, he will end up being ruled by others.
As their ascendance is inevitable, I believe that at this stage it would be judicious for us to remind the dauphine of her innumerable strengths, rather than continue to illuminate her deficiencies. With your permission I will endeavor to school her (with all due discretion) in the issues, both foreign and domestic, that it will be imperative for her to comprehend.
Your humble servant,
Mercy
APRIL 28, 1774
The court was reeling from the news. The previous day the king was suddenly taken ill during a hunting party at the Grand Trianon. The royal physician, le premier médecin, Monsieur Lemonnier, at first suspected it was nothing worse than a fall from his horse, which may have been why we had not been informed of the incident right away. But it soon became evident that His Majesty’s condition was more alarming than anyone had surmised. He had floated in and out of consciousness, confusing the hour, recalling that he had just been on his feet pointing toward a leaping stag—or was it a hare? Or a fox? Or had he been on horseback? And in the next instant he found himself being lifted onto a litter. Or had he been abed the whole time? The comtesse du Barry had been by his side from the beginning, holding his hand and hovering above him, her décolletage doubtless resembling a pair of constellations to the delirious sovereign.
Finally, the king’s first surgeon, Monsieur La Martinière, was summoned to the Trianon to assess the situation, and was shocked to discover that for two days the king had been growing steadily worse, yet had been attended by no one but his valet and his mistress. After conferring with the premier médecin, Monsieur La Martinière determined that the king’s illness was grave enough to convey him to the seat of the monarchy. With a somber countenance the royal s
urgeon told the king, “C’est à Versailles, Sire, qu’il faut être malade—you must be ill at Versailles, Your Majesty.”
Papa Roi had insisted. “I can ride—my mount.…”
But his fever had risen so high that he struggled to remember his hunter’s name. He was lifted into one of the royal coaches like one might nestle an egg into a bed of straw. The most docile teams of horses bore him to the château. The ailing king was smuggled up the back staircase to his bedchamber, the same path so ignominiously taken by countless courtesans, and was gently lowered onto the imposing bed of state, where once he had lain with them.
But nothing in the French court remained a secret for very long. By the time the cluster of medical experts—a half dozen physicians, a quintet of surgeons, and a trio of apothecaries—began to bustle about efficiently, checking the royal pulse every ten minutes without fail, the news had spread to every corridor and closet, up the wide marble staircases and down the labyrinthine warrens of secret, narrow backstairs passages.
A page boy had come running to the dauphin’s apartments, breathless with the news. I had been locked inside my private study with the comte de Mercy and the abbé Vermond. Twice a week, so as not to arouse suspicion, the Austrian ambassador had arrived at the hour appointed for my lecture with the abbé; but the discussion was of a different nature entirely than Vermond’s reading to me from The Life of Saint Anthony, the current subject of our four o’clock tête-à-têtes. Mercy was attempting to school me in the intricacies of the French government and the king’s policies. On that awful April day he had been explaining that the Contrôleur-Général des Finances, the elderly abbé Terray, was facing opposition over his restriction of the free trade of grain. Was it naïve of me to ask whether the chancellor, the equally ancient and equally sly duc de Maupeou, had anything to do with the matter?
As soon as the page arrived with the dreadful news, my first impulse was to see the king. I unbolted the doors of my study and gathered my skirts, clutching fistfuls of olive-colored silk as I glided faster than I had ever moved before through my suite of rooms. I raced through the dauphin’s apartments—where was he?—and up the grand marble staircase. My heart was pounding so hard, I could scarcely breathe. Then I ran, quite inelegantly, through the seven-salon enfilade or parade apartment that led to the Oeil de Boeuf, and from there to the King’s Chamber, dodging countless knots of anxious, whey-faced courtiers. Guards were everywhere. I tried to circumvent them to reach the secret staircase, but they blocked my way. The closest I could get was the Oeil de Boeuf, where I encountered a crowd: nobles, ministers, and priests; ambassadors; and finally, the people I sought most—Mesdames and the dauphin.
I embraced my husband. His face was pale, but whenever he became anxious, his forehead and chin would develop unsightly little blemishes. “I wish to see my grandfather,” he insisted, endeavoring to press past the sentry, but the physicians, as well as court protocol, demanded that the dauphin and dauphine keep away from the ailing monarch.
Madame Adélaïde clasped me by both elbows. “Do you have any messages for the king?” she asked me. “My sisters and I intend to remain by our father’s side day and night.”
“Tell Papa Roi that both the dauphin and I pray for his swift recovery and wish to have been able to attend him. Tell him that we are praying for him.”
The dauphin’s aunt laughed. “Well, he should be amused by that last part.”
“I am sincere in my prayers, even if he is not,” I murmured, casting my eyes toward the floor.
Mesdames tantes were admitted to His Majesty’s bedchamber. As they were not in the line of succession, whether they became ill was not a matter of national concern. The dauphin and I returned to our apartments where we ordered a cold supper, although even my husband could not touch a morsel. We sat in silence on opposite ends of his drawing room, not knowing what to say, our thoughts in a state of suspension, for no one yet knew what was the matter with the king.
That evening, a servant accidentally raised a torch, illuminating the musty darkness to which the king had been consigned by the medical men. His Majesty heard the collective, horrified gasp, the cries of “Mon Dieu—the pox!” and the scuffle of retreating footsteps that sounded like the thunder of hooves during the hunt. With the exception of the doctors and a handful of gallant courtiers and even braver servants, only his daughters—disagreeable and disapproving as they so often had been—and the comtesse du Barry, intent on martyring herself, remained to give comfort to the king during his final days.
But he would have to send her away so that he could die in a state of grace. No matter how much the maîtresse en titre meant to him, she was noble only through his making. Jeanne Bécu had been a whore, and her trumped-up coat of arms was as false as her patches and paint. As false even as the hair she took great pains to lighten, so I had heard, turning its naturally mahogany hue into spun gold.
Papa Roi was an old man of sixty-four. A dying man. One who had sat on the throne of France for nearly six decades. I had thought the sun rose and set in him when I first arrived at Versailles. Now I pitied him almost as much as I loved him.
Dread raced through the palace, spreading the terror of infection as well as the fear of the future regime. Would the dauphin keep the same ministers when he became king? Who would be retained and who would find themselves replaced or disgraced? And how much influence would the dauphine wield? they wondered. Would I persuade him to send the duc d’Aiguillon off to his country estate, and bring back the duc de Choiseul as chief minister? The Barryistes were particularly nervous, especially the duc de la Vauguyon and the young princesses’ governess Madame de Marsan, loyalists to Louis Quinze, and loyaler still to his lover.
Meanwhile, a fretful and restless crowd gathered in the Oeil de Boeuf on the other side of the door to the King’s Chamber, waiting for news, prepared to abide there indefinitely. They slumped against the walls and slumbered on the floor, forgoing all the niceties of their toilettes, strangers for a while to tooth powder and combs, to clean linen and scent, while in the royal bedchamber, the stench grew appalling, as day by day the old king’s body began to bloat and turn black with decay.
Two days later, in the bright sunshine of my library, I faced Monsieur de Clichy, who had assumed the prerogatives of first physician, elbowing Monsieur Lemonnier into the shadows. “They tell us he has remained conscious the entire time—that he is still alert. Why will you not let me go to him?”
“Madame la dauphine, your body will bear the future king of France; you cannot—the kingdom cannot—risk your exposure to the pox. It is a fatal disease,” he added condescendingly. How I wished to tear off his wig and toss it to the squirrels on the parterre!
I steeled my resolve and confronted the doctor. “Monsieur le médecin, with all due respect, I happen to know that you are wrong. Although I have lost several of my most beloved relations to the pox, I myself survived it, and have been inoculated against the disease. My mother the empress of Austria, who herself overcame it, is very forward-thinking when it comes to one’s health. It is my understanding that Mesdames tantes have not been inoculated because the French court does not believe in it. When the unhappy event arrives that places some of these decisions within my small and untried hands, I assure you that the royal family, every one of them, will receive an inoculation. It is only common sense.”
“They will not listen to me,” I later fretted to the dauphin. “And when they listen, they will not hear.” My husband and I had scarcely slept since Papa Roi had taken ill. We cleaved to each other, avoiding all but our nearest relations. The comtesses de Provence and d’Artois had already tried what remained of my nerves, sparing me no sympathy as they clucked about my pallid complexion, and the unattractive state of my eyes, swollen and red rimmed from frequent tears, and half encircled with dark demilunes of fatigue.
Louis Auguste and I spent the better part of every day in his apartments on our knees in prayer, or side by side on a settee, clutching each
other’s hands as if each of us could somehow, through that intimate gesture, transmit from one to the other what little strength we harbored. The days passed with agonizing longueur.
There was nothing to do but wait.
On the fourth of May, Louis’s confessor counseled him to purify his soul. It had come: the moment the king most feared. It was not death he dreaded so much as bidding farewell to Madame du Barry, Madame Victoire told me later. “Do I really stink that badly?” he whispered to the comtesse, a frightened little boy again after so many years a king. He could tell that she was holding her breath. His mistress had laughed through her tears and pressed his hands to her ample breast. “Yes, you do, mon amour,” she assured him. “And once I have quit the palace, it means you will be dead, and then it will be Saint Peter’s problem!”
Louis had kissed her hands. “I thank you for your levity. I thank you for many things, you know,” he added, too weak to enumerate them. His chief minister, the duc d’Aiguillon, gave him the eye; it was time to dismiss his maîtresse en titre so that he could be shriven—a moment that had been prolonged for as long as possible. Madame Adélaïde had most emphatically believed that as soon as her father heard any discussion of the Blessed Sacrament, he would know that his final hours were at hand and he would lose all will to recover. At the king’s behest, the duc had placed his château at nearby Rueil at the du Barry’s disposal. In time, perhaps, Louis hoped she might be able to return to Louveciennes, the château that had been his gift to her. Madame Victoire grew quite sentimental when she told me that her father had expressed the wish that the new king would not rescind the largesse, although it lay within his power to do so.
I had heard stories about Louveciennes. I supposed the comtesse’s heart would heal in time, if she had truly loved the king, and not merely the perquisites and influence their liaison had brought her. It would take some time for me to find it in my own heart to forgive the du Barry’s cruelty to me; and therefore, I could not spare my tears for her when I had many still to shed. Evidently, her château was a palace in miniature, where scores of servants in their crimson and pale yellow livery would wait on her and her houseguests hand and foot in the huge white dining room where the boiserie moldings were painted with pure gold leaf. Although exiled from our court, she would remain surrounded by the luxuries befitting a royal mistress—an extravagant décor, lavishly appointed, with enormous crystal chandeliers, sumptuous carpets, handsome furniture, and innumerable priceless items of bronze, glass, and china.
