The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette

by Carolly Erickson

  “Because it would be good for you,” Louis said in a voice I rarely heard him use, a sort of fatherly voice, only more like a stern father than a kindly one.

  “You spend far too much time on frivolous pastimes, pastimes that do nothing to improve your character. I see the dressmakers come and go, nearly every day. You waste your time ordering new gowns, trying them on, having them altered endlessly and chatting with your foolish empty-headed friends about them. You spend half your life going to balls.”

  “I like to dance and enjoy myself. Is it not expected of the dauphine to lead others in the dancing?”

  “It is a question of finding a proper balance between light pleasures and serious work. I go hunting for pleasure, but I also lay bricks and dig cellars and study specimens and learn how to make clocks. You, on the other hand, madame, invent new styles and make up new names for stylish colors. I hear you talking about them—Burning Ashes, Gudgeon’s Belly, Unripe Pear, Dirty Rain! What silliness! Does this dairymaid wear aprons in such colors?”

  He pointed to the girl, who blushed the color of Pigeon’s Blood, aware that we were all staring at her.

  “No! She wears the same plain dark gown every day, and a clean white apron and cap. Isn’t that right, my dear?”

  “Yes, sire.” Her voice trembled.

  I went to the cabinet where I keep my needles and thread and brought out the garment I was working on.

  “I have many practical skills,” I said to Louis, holding out the colorful satin vest I was making for the king, embroidered with gold and silver fleurs-de-lis and an elaborate royal monogram. “See, I have nearly finished this gift for your grandfather.”

  “You have been playing at that embroidery for two years! And it is still not finished!”

  “But your grandfather is delighted with it. ‘Bring me my vest, my little doll,’ he says when he sees me. ‘Where is my vest?’ And you know how generous he is with me, giving me jewels that belonged to his first queen and paying all my dressmaker’s bills. He never asks me whether or not I can milk cows!”

  I saw that the poor dairymaid’s shoulders were shaking and went up to her.

  “I do like cows,” I said soothingly. “Very much. Would you please show me the one you brought?”

  I let her lead me out into the courtyard, many of the courtiers following us, where a carefully brushed brown cow with blue ribbons braided into her tail was tied to a post.

  “She’s quite handsome. Have you had her long?”

  “Three years, madame. I raised her from a calf. She has won prizes at the Giverny agricultural exhibition.” The girl’s face shone with pride.

  “Has she? Her milk must be very rich, I imagine.”

  I went on talking to the dairymaid, while the cow twitched her tail and the onlookers, beginning to be bored, wandered off. Evidently Louis wandered off as well, for when I looked around to find him, he was nowhere to be seen.

  November 14, 1771

  Stanny almost knocked me down this afternoon, running along the corridor toward the king’s salon.

  “It’s here, it’s here!” I heard him shout. “My son has been born!”

  Loulou and I followed the sound of Stanny’s excited shouts and I heard him tell the king’s major-domo about the baby.

  “I must see the king! I must announce this news to him myself!” Stanny’s face was purple and he was out of breath.

  The major-domo, impassive, stood in the doorway of the salon blocking Stanny from entering.

  “The king,” he said, brushing a speck of dust from his gold livery, “is taking a purge. He has given orders that he is not to be disturbed.”

  “But he knows that my wife is in labor. He will want to know about her delivery as quickly as possible!”

  “He has yet to acquaint me with that desire,” said the major-domo, who shut the salon door in Stanny’s chubby face.

  Hours later I was summoned to the king’s apartments. He likes me to visit him. He says I cheer him up and make him feel young.

  When I arrived Stanny was still sitting on a bench in the corridor, alongside several of the young pages who were waiting to carry out any order the king might give. Evidently Stanny had not yet delivered his good news.

  The major-domo opened the door to me and admitted me but kept Stanny out, which infuriated him.

  When I asked the king if he knew about Stanny and Josephine’s new baby he waved his thin old hand in the air in a dismissive gesture.

  “Only a sickly weakling,” he said. “And probably just as ugly as its parents.”

  August 18, 1772

  The king is aging more rapidly than ever. He looks small and shrunken in his velvet coat and silk waistcoat. The vest I made for him is too large for him now, but he wears it anyway.

  One night after Louis and I had returned from an evening of card games in the king’s apartments, Louis suddenly burst into tears.

  “Oh, I don’t want it! I don’t want it! It’s coming soon, I can feel it.”

  I had become accustomed to such outbursts and knew that if only I waited patiently, he would become calm and we could talk. When he stopped crying he began pacing fretfully.

  “Did you see how frail he is getting? He can’t remember how to play piquet any more, and he falls asleep every ten minutes. I heard Choiseul say the other day that he couldn’t last six months.”

  “And I have heard Dr. Boisgilbert say,” I told Louis, “that he may live for years. Didn’t his father live to be seventy-five?”

  “How do I know?”

  “Look it up, it must be in one of those books of yours.”

  “What does it matter? All I know is, I don’t want the next king to be me!”

  “Louis the Unwilling, is that how you want to be remembered?”

  “Better that than Louis the Miserable.”

  I knew better than to argue with my husband over this continuing fear of his. I believe that when the time comes, he will do what he must. And I will help him. Meanwhile there is to be a grand ball in a week’s time, and I am to have a new gown in the color of Rusty Sword, and I will do my best to forget our troubles and dance until sunrise.

  FOUR

  April 23, 1774

  I am now fairly certain that within a few days or weeks I will be Queen of France. The king collapsed suddenly two days ago and had to be carried to bed. Louis and I were informed and we went at once to the royal apartments where the surgeons and apothecaries had gathered. There were eight of them and they all looked very grave and purposeful.

  We have not been allowed into the king’s bedchamber, only Madame DuBarry is there. Dr. Boisgilbert says we cannot see the king because he is too ill, he has catarrhal fever and cannot recognize anyone.

  Louis and I are waiting here, hour after hour. Louis clutches my hand and says, “Will he die? Will he die?” I try to calm him and together we pray for the lord’s will to be done.

  May 2, 1774

  We are still keeping watch here in the king’s apartments. He is worse. We know that because Dr. Boisgilbert avoids answering our questions and because of the worried looks on the faces of the surgeons and apothecaries when they go and come during the day. There are ten of them now.

  To pass the time I have decided to begin writing in this journal again. I stopped last year because one of Count Mercy’s spies found the journal and broke the lock and read it.

  All my secrets became known to the count, who lectured me on how I had to grow up and do what was expected of me and not see Eric any more.

  I know where I will keep the journal now that I have begun to write in it again. A better hiding place.

  May 3, 1774

  My dressmakers are sewing my black mourning gowns. The king has called for the Archbishop of Paris to hear his confession. Everyone is amazed. He has not made a confession in forty years.

  May 4, 1774 afternoon

  King Louis is dying. He has made his confession. The servants are betting with each other what day and hour
he will die. Some of them, the ones who have served him longest, are crying.

  I have asked Dr. Boisgilbert several times if I may be allowed to see him. So far he has said no.

  May 4 midnight

  I have had a horrible fright.

  Tonight Dr. Boisgilbert, who is worn out from days of watching by the king’s bedside, came out into the anteroom and beckoned to me. Louis was asleepon a sofa and snoring loudly.

  “He has little time left,” the doctor said. “You can look in on him. Don’t touch him.” He left and I went to the door and softly opened it.

  At once a terrible smell assaulted me and I immediately remembered where I had smelled it before: when my poor sister Josepha was dying. In the candlelight I could see the king’s face, black with the pox and covered with sores. His eyes were closed and I could hear him struggling to breathe.

  Madame DuBarry was beside the bed. At first I thought she was holding the king’s hand but then I realized that she was trying to remove his rings.

  “Get away!” I shouted. “Get away, you thief! You hag!”

  I called for the guards and ordered them to remove Madame DuBarry, whose shrill, grating cries of protest were truly alarming.

  “Why shouldn’t I have his rings?” she yelled at me, with a curse. “He doesn’t need them any more! I’ve earned them!”

  “All you’ve earned,” I said with fury as the soldiers took the royal mistress out of the room, “is a dungeon cell. Now get out of my sight.”

  When she was gone I moved as close to the king’s bed as I dared. “God bless you, old man,” I whispered. “God spare you pain.”

  With a groan the king opened his red-rimmed eyes. He saw me, and knew me.

  “My little doll,” he murmured, then drifted again into sleep.

  I was trembling as I left the room. I wonder if I will be able to sleep, remembering his hideous face, and the terrible stench, and the sight of Madame DuBarry, greedy and thieving, stealing the rings from his thin white hands.

  May 10, 1774

  Today I am queen and Louis is king. The old king is no more, God rest his soul.

  May 11, 1774

  We are on our way to Choisy. Everyone refers to me as “Madame the Queen” now and not “Madame the Dauphine” any longer, even Sophie. We had to leave Versailles because it is forbidden for the new king to stay in the palace where the old king has died. Also we know now that he had the pox, not catarrhal fever as Dr. Boisgilbert tried to make us believe. Everyone fears the pox so the palace has emptied quickly.

  As soon as the news of the old king’s death was whispered along the corridors there was a rush of people to Louis’s apartments. The rooms are choked with servants and officials who all want new appointments. When they cannot see Louis they try to obtain an audience with me. I cannot possibly see everyone and answer all requests, so I escape.

  Louis promises me my own private retreat. When we return to Versailles he says he will give me the Petit Trianon, an adorable little house in the palace gardens, for my very own.

  May 25, 1774

  All is confusion. There is no order any more. Nothing operates smoothly. Nerves are on edge, we are surrounded by conflict.

  I am beginning to see what is happening, though I am not yet certain. I think that before the old king died, the Duc de Choiseul and Madame DuBarry governed everything. They were enemies, but together, between them, they governed the king and therefore all the ministers and royal servants did what was expected of them, more or less.

  Now that Choiseul has been deprived of office and sent away and Madame DuBarry, at Louis’s and my insistence, is living in exile on one of her ill-gotten estates, there is no one left to rule the court and make things run smoothly.

  Sometimes I feel as if a whirlwind were sweeping through the palace, sending people and things flying in all directions. It is all I can do to hold tightly to some heavy thing like a marble pillar or an iron statue and wait for the roaring wind to pass.

  June 1, 1774

  In the crush of people at yesterday’s levee someone cut off all the golden tassels from the curtains.

  June 9, 1774

  Louis has become obsessed with saving money. The finance minister Monsieur Turgot has impressed on him that there is little money left in the treasury. So Louis wanders through the palace muttering “Economy, economy” and issuing orders to people to lower their costs.

  He burst into my apartments when I was with my dressmaker Rose Bertin, having a fitting on my new silk gown in the color of Flea’s Thigh. Loulou was there, as I have appointed her head of my household. Louis came upto Loulou and stared so intently into her face that she took a step backward.

  “Your majesty,” she said, and curtseyed.

  “I know you,” he announced. “I saw you at a ball. You were overdressed. You spend too much on gowns.”

  He turned to me. “That is why I have come,” he told me, addressing me formally. “It has come to my attention, madame, that all your linen is replaced every three years. Is this true?”

  “It is the custom, I believe, and has been since your great-grandmother’s time.” I did not know this to be true, but I said it anyway. If Madame de Noailles were still here, supervising my household, she would have known.

  “Tell me this, do you truly need new undergarments so often? Do the laundresses wash your linen so roughly that it wears out every three years? No! The answer is no. From now on it shall be changed only every seven years!”

  “But your majesty,” said Loulou, “would you have your wife wear rags under her lovely gowns?”

  I knew that she was teasing Louis and I could hardly keep from laughing. Rose Bertin, kneeling on the floor, her head bent over the hem of my gown, was smiling.

  “Better she should go about in rags than that the state go bankrupt,” was the king’s pronouncement.

  “And while we are pursuing economy in matters of dress, I have another command. Those basket things you women wear under your dresses.”

  “The paniers,” I said.

  “They have become too wide. From now on they shall be limited to—to—six feet.”

  “Six feet! But the current fashion is now for skirts to be at least twelve feet wide. Surely your majesty does not wish to dictate fashion.”

  The king fixed Loulou with his nearsighted stare.

  “And why not? My ancestors ordained sumptuary laws in past centuries, regulating what fabrics could be worn, and what furs, and so forth. Well, these are my sumptuary laws. No baskets wider than six feet!”

  He lumbered off, leaving us to laugh. It is all so absurd, that Louis should presume to interfere in what we wear. He goes to sleep at eleven every night, just when our good times are beginning. I go to Loulou’s apartments, or we visit Yolande de Polignac who gives balls even on holy days or we take torchlit walks through the gardens. Loulou deliberately leads us all into the Heights of Satory where I occasionally meet Eric and when we get there she pokes me in the ribs and laughs. She alone knows my secret about Eric and I worry that others may guess it. So far they have not.

  June 22, 1774

  Late last night Chambertin came to my rooms with a servant, a young boy who was clutching his side in obvious pain. His face and arms were bloody and his blue velvet jacket and trousers were stained and torn. Despite his injuries the boy bowed deeply to me and would not raise his eyes to my face.

  Though it was long past midnight I was still dressed. I had been to a ball and then went to Yolande’s suite for a cup of chocolate. I was tired and a bit giddy from the pleasures of the evening. It took me a moment to realize that my husband’s valet had come on an urgent errand, and needed my help.

  “What is it, Chambertin? Has there been an accident? I know it can’t be Louis, he has been in bed for hours.”

  “No, your majesty. Please forgive my intrusion at this late hour, but I did not know where else to turn.”

  “Please come in. I’ll call for Dr. Boisgilbert to see to the boy.”<
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  “No, no, don’t summon the doctor. This must be a private matter.”

  Sensing Chambertin’s unease I took him and the servant into my bedchamber, where a startled Sophie, who had been napping on a sofa, put on her dressing gown and looked at me expectantly. The pugs came yapping happily toward me but I shooed them back to their corner.

  Chambertin led me to an alcove.

  “Your majesty, this boy has been a page to Prince Stanislaus. But he cannot return to that service. If he does he will be killed. I’m certain of it.”

  I looked over at the boy, standing with head bent, his face contorted in pain. He was quite young, perhaps thirteen or fourteen.

  “He can stay here.” I went to the boy, asked his name, and assured him that we would look after him. At a nod from me Sophie got her box of salves and ointments and bandages. I told her to take the boy up to Louis’s carpentry shop in the attic where there were empty rooms and odds and ends of old furniture.

  “Thank you, your majesty.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “As you know, the prince is very fond of good-looking young boys. Some of them return his fondness, but others do not. He becomes angry and beats them. He has beaten this boy before, but never so severely. If I had not happened to be passing, and heard the boy’s cries for help, I’m afraid—”

  “Yes, I see.” Stanny. Angry, frustrated Stanny. Stanny who, as the rumor went, preferred boys to women. Now that his hopes to take Louis’s place had come to nothing, he was taking out his anger on his pages.

  “I didn’t want Dr. Boisgilbert to find out. He would announce the incident to the entire court.”

  “No, of course not.” I thought a moment. “The question is, where will he be truly safe? If the prince finds out that I have taken him into my household, as my page, he will be furious.”

  “Prince Stanislaus bears many grudges,” Chambertin said. “He does not forgive.”