The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette

by Carolly Erickson

  “Surely not. The Swedish ambassador has told me how good you have always been to your husband. How you have helped him and understood him when no one else could have.”

  “But I have failed. I have not given him a son, an heir to the throne of France.”

  “Not yet, perhaps. But you may be a mother in the future—unless Louis is incapable. Has he any bastards?”

  “No. I’m sure he hasn’t.”

  “Then the fault may lie with him, not with you. You mustn’t blame yourself.”

  “Count Mercy used to tell me to take a lover, some nobleman who looked like Louis, and have children with him. But I couldn’t imagine doing that, lying about who the real father was.”

  “No. Besides, the truth would be bound to come out sooner or later.”

  “Axel,” I said a little hesitantly, “there is something I need to confess to you.”

  “What is that, my little angel?”

  “There is someone I loved before I met you.”

  He smiled indulgently and stroked my hair. “Yes? And who was this lucky man? Don’t worry. I may envy him but I won’t challenge him to a duel.”

  “My groom, Eric.” My voice was very low. “We never actually made love, but—”

  “Yes, yes, I understand. It was a beautiful, innocent young love. I’m glad you told me. And I too must confess, dearest angel, that I have had loves of my own.”

  “Have there been many women in your life?”

  “Many. But only a few whom I have truly loved.”

  “And did you never want to marry?”

  At this Axel’s face grew grim, his mouth set in a firm line.

  “It is expected of me. One day, I suppose, I shall have to fulfill those expectations. Meanwhile, I have a—a friend, a very dear friend, Madame Eleanora Sullivan, who lives in Paris and whose company I treasure. She is a courtesan, and I have known her for a long time.”

  “A courtesan like my friend Madame Solange.”

  “Madame Solange is very lovely. Eleanora is far less lovely, and much more seasoned, but she has a warm heart and a generous spirit. Unlike so many people in this world, she has truly lived. She has been many things, a wife, an entertainer, an acrobat in the circus. She is fearless, and always completely herself. I admire her very much. She has taught me a good deal about life.”

  He saw that I looked crestfallen, and hastened to reassure me.

  “Ah, my little angel, I would never want you to think of Eleanora as a rival.” He took my face in his cupped hands, looked at me fondly, and kissed me. “I have never treasured any woman the way I treasure you now, this moment. You are all I think of, all I want. If only I didn’t have to leave you—”

  We stopped talking then, and made love again, and slept, and ate, and then talked some more, until Loulou came to light the lamps and Axel had to go.

  Oh, how I love him! I would walk through fire for him. I would go, if he asked me, to the ends of the earth to be with him. If only he did not have to leave for America, and risk his life there. If only I could make him stay here, in this warm room, his long, lean white body gleaming in the firelight, his soft blue eyes full of love.

  February 20, 1778

  Axel is gone and I am in mourning. I could not bear to see him go. I was in tears when he came with General Rochambeau for his formal leavetaking. His sister was there, Baroness Piper. She wept and he embraced her very tenderly. He did not dare embrace me, he merely kissed my hand and pressed a note into it. Later I read it.

  “My darling little angel, I carry your love with me. Keep mine in your heart until I return.”

  Where is he now? How soon will he come back to me?

  April 12, 1778

  I am going to have a baby. Sophie thinks all the signs are there. General Krottendorf is late, my breasts are tender and sore and I am sleepy all the time.

  Louis is the father, of course, not Axel. Axel was very careful when we made love. He told me he wanted to ensure that there were no consequences.

  Louis says we must wait another month before we announce my condition to the world, and Dr. Boisgilbert agrees. I have not written the good news to maman yet. How very happy she will be to hear it.

  April 21, 1778

  Our soldiers are gathering by the thousands in the camps in Brittany and Normandy. Mercy says we may invade England, which has declared war on us because we made an alliance with the American colonies. Louis spends a great deal of time going over lists of supplies and provisions for the troops and writing letters to the arms manufacturers pointing out defects in guns and cannon. He hates meeting with the ministers and complains to me that they ignore him and do the opposite of what he thinks is best.

  I remind him that they have been chosen for their wisdom and knowledge, which is greater than his. But he becomes stubborn when his vanity is injured, which is often.

  I throw up every morning and sleep every afternoon. I am assured that this is normal. I am carrying the next heir to the throne of France, and his safety is all that matters.

  May 3, 1778

  Axel has come back to court and I can see him often. His expedition with General Rochambeau is postponed. I could not be happier to have him here except that I know he goes to Paris to visit Eleanora Sullivan. I spend my days being sick and being sleepy and wondering where Axel is when he is not with me and sometimes going with Louis to confer with our foreign minister the Comte de Vergennes who hates Austria and hates me.

  I am helping Axel obtain a regimental command.

  June 7, 1778

  Dr. Boisgilbert says I must not fret over anything. I am learning to make net purses. Louis’s Aunt Adelaide is teaching me. I know Paris is full of jokes that Charlot is the real father of my child. I ignore these slanders.

  Abbé Vermond’s brother is to be my accoucheur. Maman does not approve. She says he is a bungler. He came to see me and made me very uneasy. He is nothing like the abbé, whom I have known all my life and who is soft-spoken and highly intelligent. Dr. Vermond is nervous and cannot hold still. When he touches me I feel his sweaty hands tremble.

  How can I help but fret when there is war and nasty gossip about me and I am to have a nervous accoucheur? And when it is all I can do to stay cool in the midst of this heat wave?

  July 9, 1778

  We are here at Compiègne and I walk every day in the cool of the forest under the great trees. The baby kicks me a lot. He is an athlete, Louis says. He will be a great warrior.

  “A great worrier, more likely,” I tell Yolande, who walks with me in the afternoons. “His father is the greatest worrier who ever lived.”

  Louis is apprehensive over the war, which has been declared but isn’t yet being fought, over his ministers, who won’t listen to him and do what they please, over the lack of money in the treasury and the growing number of rabbits in the forest. He shoots the rabbits and swears under his breath that he wishes he could shoot all the ministers.

  He is excited about the baby yet stubborn about Dr. Vermond. Everyone says English accoucheurs are the best and I ought to have one. Queen Charlotte, the English King George’s wife, is German but is having all her babies delivered by an English doctor. I believe she has had many children and nearly all of them lived. Axel has sent for a Swedish doctor who studied in Edinburgh and he will be on hand when I go into labor. Sophie has promised that there will be a good midwife present as well, she will see to it. I feel better. Of course the baby will not be born for many months.

  August 4, 1778

  I have made net purses for maman, Carlotta, Loulou and all my sisters and nieces. I cannot force myself to tie another knot! I am embroidering clothes for the baby now, though he already has entire chests full of blankets and nightclothes and knitted stockings. Gifts for him arrive daily.

  Abbé Vermond reads to me while I rest. Axel is away a lot with the soldiers in camp near the coast. My life is very dull and my belly is growing larger every week. Surely after this I will never have a small waist again.<
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  September 1, 1778

  Versailles is full of nobles. They are coming in from the country, ignoring the hunting season and moving into any rooms they can find, even the tiny cold ones in the attic. They want to be here for the birth of my child. He is not due until December but babies sometimes come early as everyone knows.

  Dr. Vermond has ordered my bedchamber sealed tight so that it will stay warm for my delivery. The windows are fastened shut and all the cracks filled with glue and paint. The doors of the room are all nailed shut except for one which is left open for people to come and go. Tall screens are being put in place all around my bed, to preserve at least a bit of privacy.

  It is very important that the birth be witnessed and I am prepared for that. I was present with Louis and dozens of others at all three of Thérèse’s births and we saw clearly that her babies came out of her body and were not secretly brought in from outside and placed in the cradle. There must be no impostors in the royal family of France.

  Thérèse screamed and swore and was cowardly during her labor, all three times. I will be brave. I will not make such a spectacle of myself. I want my son to be proud of me. One day when he is king I want others to tell him, “Yes, I was present the day you were born. Your mother bore you bravely. She hardly uttered a sound.”

  November 2, 1778

  I did not know it was possible for one small woman’s belly to stretch so far. I no longer walk, I waddle. I am twenty-three years old today but no one except maman takes any notice of my birthday. They are all watching me, eager to see a look of pain cross my forehead, or to hear me gasp and clutch my stomach.

  The servants have a lottery under way, betting on what day my baby will be born. Louis has forbidden it but they buy and sell their tickets anyway, even Chambertin.

  November 18, 1778

  A brick crashed through a window in my sitting room today. Wrapped around the brick was a foul pamphlet with crude drawings of me having sex with other women. “Down with the Austrian bitch!” was written on the back of the pamphlet. Sophie threw it away, but Amélie found it and brought it to me to read. It is very odd that now that I am in love with Axel and see Eric only rarely, Amélie hates me more than ever.

  December 20, 1778

  Yesterday morning early I woke up with a terribly sore back and the pain did not go away even when Sophie brought me willow bark tea which usually eases my backaches.

  Dr. Vermond was called in from the next room and at once ordered me into the labor bed. I was helped into bed and soon began to sweat as the fire in the hearth was blazing very high and the room was very warm.

  The pain spread to my belly and I realized I must be in labor. Sophie strapped on the holy girdle blessed by Ste. Radegunde from Melk Abbey and I clutched my rosary of ivory beads, the one maman gave me when I was a little girl at Schönbrunn. I tried not to think of all the women I have heard of who died giving birth. I remembered what Dr. Boisgilbert told me, that I was a sturdy girl who could stand up well to labor and childbirth. I am a sturdy girl, I told myself over and over between attacks of the gripping pain. I am a sturdy girl, I am strong enough to face anything.

  Axel came in along with Louis and his brothers and cousins. Before long Maurepas and Vergennes and the other ministers had come too, and I began to feel very embarrassed. The huge screens that loomed up on all sides of the bed, hemming me in, shielded me from the onlookers to a degree but they also made me feel a need for air. I called for Sophie to fan me but Dr. Vermond sharply ordered her away. He also ordered Mufti taken off my bed which made me cry. She always sleeps on my bed. She comforts me. And she is so old now she surely cannot be a nuisance to anyone.

  I could hear a buzz of conversation and the noise of many shuffling feet in the rooms next to my bedchamber and in the corridor outside. I knew the courtiers and visiting dignitaries were gathering, waiting to be admitted into the bedchamber. Between contractions I wondered idly which of the servants would win the lottery.

  After an hour the pains grew worse, and I gritted my teeth and wrapped the rosary around my wrist and grabbed at the ropes that held the screens in place every time I felt a new spasm grip me. I heard Stanny and Josephine chatting about how hungry they were and when would they ever get to eat and I wanted to scream at them, can’t you see I’m suffering?

  Again and again the strong contractions tore through me, and I thought, this can’t go on much longer, I can’t take much more of this, or I’ll surely die. I could see Count Mercy moving about in the back of the room, behind Axel and Louis and his relations and the ministers. He looked ill at ease.

  “Can’t you hurry it along?” Louis asked Dr. Vermond. “There must be some herb, some medicinal drink—”

  “Nature must take its course,” the doctor said, but he was beginning to look at me nervously and he tugged abstractedly at his waistcoat and ran his hands through his thin gray hair in a way that made me more anxious.

  I reached out for Sophie, who wriggled past the doctor, ignoring his imperious complaints, and took my outstretched hand.

  “Poor, poor thing,” she said, “you are having such a hard time of it.”

  “What if I can’t do this?” I whispered to her.

  She held my hand tightly as another strong wave of pain passed over me, making me gasp and leaving me tear-filled and limp.

  “You can, you can. But you may need some help. I’m going to get the midwife.”

  She left my side and went out. I was aware that more people had come into the room, and were murmuring and moving about. I thought I glimpsed Loulou, her pale face even whiter than usual, standing off to one side.

  Presently Sophie came back with a large, capable-looking peasant woman.

  “This is who she needs,” I heard Sophie say to Louis. “A real midwife.”

  I felt a strange pair of hands running over my belly and feeling between my legs. I shuddered. Dr. Vermond was protesting loudly. Then, suddenly, I felt as if iron hands had grabbed my belly and were squeezing it unmercifully. I couldn’t help myself. I screamed.

  At once the atmosphere in the room grew tense and expectant. The murmuring voices were hushed. I could hear the fire crackling in the hearth.

  “The head. I must move the head,” the midwife said, and began prodding and pushing at me.

  “Take that woman away!” Dr. Vermond shouted. “I am in charge here!”

  “Then you had better shift the baby,” the midwife told him calmly, taking her hands off me and wiping them on her skirt, “or they will both die.”

  Dr. Vermond blanched, and took a step backward. “I must consult with—with—my colleagues. This is a difficult case. I was not—adequately warned—”

  The more he hemmed and hawed, the whiter and more alarmed he became.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Loulou start toward the bed, then her eyes closed and she slipped to the floor. Immediately there was a commotion, and she was lifted up and taken out.

  Louis was shouting at Dr. Vermond. “Do as she says! Shift the baby!” His voice was loud, but mine was louder as I felt another immense, prolonged, agonizing pain and screamed again.

  “It is coming! The queen is having her baby!” Hearing my screams, the waiting crowd in the corridor outside was becoming impatient. Word was spreading rapidly that my baby was about to be born.

  There was no holding back the crowd of nobles and courtiers who had been waiting for hours to be admitted to the bedchamber. They burst in a noisy flood through the single open doorway and came toward me, dozens and dozens of them, all at once. I thought at first they would knock over the screens on top of me and I would be smothered.

  Suddenly the room felt unbearably hot, and I could not catch my breath. I was terrified, utterly terrified, and in such unendurable pain that everything, the people, the walls, the firelight, began to blur before my eyes.

  Then I heard Axel’s voice. Strong, commanding, reassuring.

  “Sire,” he was saying, “your accoucheur wants to co
nsult a colleague. I have just the man.” I struggled to stay alert. Through my dizziness I was able to see a man standing beside Axel, a pleasant-looking man in a black suit and with a neat bag wig.

  “This is Dr. Sundersen, from Stockholm. He has delivered all the Queen of Sweden’s babies.”

  The Swede bowed to Louis. “May I examine your wife?” he asked.

  “Yes, yes. Somebody do something.”

  I was writhing helplessly, the sounds that were coming from my mouth were groans like the pitiful cries of wounded cattle.

  Dr. Sundersen beckoned to the midwife, who resumed her painful manipulations of my belly while the doctor felt my pulse and took his gleaming metal instruments out of his bag.

  He looked over at the woman, and addressed her. “I am so glad you are here. I often find that midwives know things of which we doctors are ignorant. Dr. Vermond, no doubt you were about to bleed the patient from the foot. Would you do so now, please.”

  I felt a painful cut as the French accoucheur, looking grateful to be of use, opened a vein between my toes and held a bowl under my foot while the dark red blood oozed from it.

  Dr. Sundersen and the midwife worked smoothly and easily together, and I began to feel, despite my pain and weariness, that I was at last in good hands. Between contractions I tried to fix my eyes on Axel, who stood near Louis, a look of grave concern on his dear face. Even in those moments of agony I thought, he is dearer to me than anything, dearer than life itself.

  “There,” I heard the midwife say, above the increasing din in the room. “It will come now, the head is free.”

  “Your highness,” Dr. Sundersen said to me, “I want you to concentrate now. I need you to stay awake. I want you to summon all your strength. You are going to work harder now than you have ever worked in your life. It will not take long. Shall we do this together?”

  “Yes,” I said, as loudly and bravely as I could. As I said it I knew that I would be able to bring my baby into the world.

  “Push against my hand,” the doctor told me, “as though you were lifting a tall building.”