July 20, 1780
My precious time with Axel is almost at an end. In two days I must return to France, having stayed away longer than I thought I would. I miss Mousseline very much. When we arrived at Drottningholm there were five letters waiting for me, telling me that Mousseline has begun to say “give me” and “no” and “do it” and to say the name of her little pug dog which I named after my dear old Mufti.
Chambertin writes to say that Louis has been fretful without me. Twice he locked himself in his workshop with a basket of pastries and refused to come out for several days. No one could persuade him. The ministers were mortified because important talks were under way concerning the American War and the king’s presence at dinners and receptions for the ambassadors was essential. Chambertin says only I could have made Louis do his duty. When I am there he is less timid and rebellious and much more willing to do what is required of him.
King Gustavus took Axel and me through the palace rooms he is renovating, so that I could see the final outcome of my suggestions. The artisans have been very busy and the results of their work are very fine indeed. Gustavus favors Roman and Greek design with fluted columns and Pompeian friezes and mosaics made of shards of glass. One room I helped to plan was nearly finished, and the effect was very striking. Deep blue walls, white Doric columns, carved white plasterwork in an antique pattern of flowers and fruit. There will be deep blue carpets to match and a ceiling painted by an Italian artist from Verona. He arrives next week but I will already be gone and won’t be able to meet him.
While walking through the immense, expensively decorated rooms one thought nagged at me more and more. Why should a king live on such a lavish scale while his people spend their lives with many families packed into one dirty, stinking room with bare walls and a leaking ceiling? My few hours spent among the peasants have affected me deeply. Even as I walked amid the tranquil splendor of King Gustavus’s palace I could not rid my mind of the images of the dark rooms I had seen, the hungry faces, the squabbling and brutality I had witnessed at first hand.
I turned to Axel. “Those people we ate with, the day it rained so hard,” I said, “what can be done for them? They are so poor—”
To my surprise, Axel only laughed. “Those were rich peasants. They had a large house, animals, food. You should see how the poor ones live.”
King Gustavus was curious about our exchange and Axel explained to him that we had been forced to take shelter with some farmers.
“You have never before seen how peasants live, I think,” the king said to me.
“Only from a carriage window.”
“Life is very harsh for those born with so little.”
“Is there no way of improving their lives then?”
“King Gustavus has improved their lives,” Axel said loyally.
“He has abolished torture. No one is put to death any more for crimes they have committed. He has reformed the state finances. Taxes are lower, and the peasants now are able, if they can afford it, to buy their lands and own them as free men.”
“Yet there is so much misery, even so!”
We walked on, through the Malachite Dining Room, its walls covered in panels of the brilliant green gemstone, and into the Crystal Salon, where dozens of glittering chandeliers sparkled in the sunlight and threw reflections on the gilded walls.
Axel seemed thoughtful. At last he shrugged. “I love and admire the peasants, and have lived among them, from time to time, all my life. But they are like children. They wander through life ignorant and weak, unable to rise above their station. Unable to accomplish anything but hard labor. For most of the men, drink is their only consolation. For the women, it is religion.”
“Come now, Axel. You are too pessimistic. The countryside is changing, even here. Farming methods are improving. Crop yields are increasing. People are eating better and living longer. If only nature cooperates, giving good harvests, there will be much progress in our lifetimes. More health of bodies and minds. Meanwhile, my dear,” Gustavus said to me, “you may donate your pearl earrings to the poor.”
I felt my earlobes. I was indeed wearing pearl earrings, though not my most elaborate ones.
“Only you mustn’t do that,” said Axel, “because if you do, they will murder each other to get the pearls. It only causes harm, you see, to cast pearls before swine.”
I didn’t argue with Axel or the king. But I have promised myself that when I return to Versailles I will arrange to send some money to the Swedish peasants. And I will double the amount of bread Abbé Vermond distributes at the palace gates.
EIGHT
November 27, 1780
My dearest, dearest, most beloved maman is dead.
December 13, 1780
I can hardly write anything, I am so wretched. I look in the mirror and see someone I don’t recognize. A woman with a pinched face and gray cheeks and sad sad eyes. Will I ever eat again? Will I ever be able to think, and move, and take delight in anything?
I sit day after day in my darkened rooms, black velvet curtains covering the windows, unable to do anything but weep and read my Bible and light candles for maman’s soul. Poor Mousseline cries. She doesn’t understand the change in me.
Abbé Vermond comes to pray with me but I am beyond all consolation. I read and reread the letters from Joseph and Anna, telling me of maman’s last days. She had wanted to die for a long time. In the final week of her life she sewed her own shroud, of white silk embroidered with the imperial emblem.
If only, instead of preparing for her funeral, she had written me one last letter! If only she had praised me for doing my best in a difficult life! How I would cherish that proof of her love and approval.
December 25, 1780
It is a sad Christmas day. The palace is still in mourning for the great empress and our usual celebrations have been subdued. We go to mass daily and I light a candle for maman and repeat my prayers with Abbé Vermond, who has been very faithful to me during my grieving.
Sometimes I simply feel nothing. I am empty of all feeling. It is terrible.
January 4, 1781
I try to busy myself with a project I began before maman’s death. I decided I would do more than talk about the misery of the peasants. I would sell my most valuable possession, the great yellow diamond called the Hapsburg Sun, and have the money distributed to the poorest of them. I have ordered the diamond brought up from the palace vaults where my jewels are kept.
In the past few days I have been haunted by the memory of the blind old soldier Axel and I met in the tavern in Sweden. He wanted to sing us a song, and said something like, “It should be a funeral dirge.” Did he have a premonition about maman’s death? How could he have known?
The yellow cat I brought back from Sweden is growing fat and sleek on thick cream and sweetmeats. He is deaf in one ear and one of his legs is crooked but otherwise he has recovered. Maman had a yellow cat that always sat on her desk. This one reminds me of her.
January 6, 1781
I am recovering from a great shock. I sent Sophie for orange-flower water and ether to calm me.
Something terrible has happened and I don’t know who to turn to. Axel is away. If only Joseph were here! But I am thinking, I don’t dare to tell Joseph. So much damage could result if the truth came out.
It may not be safe to write this in my diary. But I have thought it over, sipping my orange-flower water and ether, and finally decided that I need to set the truth down somewhere.
I am fairly certain that while I was away in Sweden last summer, Louis took the Hapsburg Sun and pawned it to a rich Genevan moneylender whose acquaintance he made through Necker the banker. I found out because when I had the jewel brought up from the vault, and summoned M. Christofle the jeweler from Paris to appraise it, he told me that the stone was not a diamond but a paste imitation!
At first I couldn’t believe it. But when I questioned the head guard of the vault, he finally told me that in June of last year the king o
rdered the Hapsburg Sun brought to him and he did not return it to the vault for over a month. What was returned must have been a paste replica.
I confronted Chambertin, who knows nearly everything Louis says or does, and he admitted that the controller Necker brought a Swiss man of business to Louis’s levee and that a package was later delivered to that same man under guard.
Chambertin is trustworthy. He will tell no one about this. I must be certain none of the other servants find out, or suspect something. If a rumor started that Louis had pawned my celebrated jewel, it would be assumed that the treasury was empty and the government unable to repay the huge loans M. Necker has been taking, loans of millions of francs. It would be interpreted as an insult to the Austrian Empire, which could anger my brother Joseph, who is now emperor. And it would cause a great personal scandal around Louis himself, who would be seen as a thief.
Indeed he is a thief, and I intend to tell him so to his face.
January 9, 1781
After much searching I found Louis at last upin the attic, crouching on the floor, picking the lock of a long-unused door. It was very cold in the attic and he had put on his father’s old black coat, so worn and threadbare it has faded to gray in places.
When he heard my angry footsteps he turned toward me, shrinking back in fear, a cowardly look on his face.
Ignoring etiquette, which I usually do when we are alone, I walked right upto him and glared down into his frightened eyes.
“I know what you did. You stole the Hapsburg Sun. You pawned it. And you put a bit of paste back in the vault. You stole the most valuable thing in my dowry. You deceived me. And you risked scandal, and dishonor, and the alliance between France and Austria.”
He wept, sitting on the dusty floor in the old overcoat. His face crumpled, like Mousseline’s when she has been disobedient and knows she must be punished.
His weakness made me angrier. I began to pace up and down.
“Stop it!! Stopacting like a child and stand upand talk like a man!”
With a huge sigh and an immense effort he heaved his large bulk off the floor and leaned against the door. He wouldn’t look at me.
“I have so many faults I cannot answer you. I am ashamed of what I did, but I had no choice. Necker and the others came to me. The interest on the loans was due. They said they had miscalculated. There was no money to pay the interest. The loans were about to go into default. I couldn’t let that happen.” His voice was mournful, plaintive.
“But the crown of France has many treasures of its own. Chests of gold, your mother and grandmother’s jewels, paintings, statues—”
“I have been selling crown possessions for six years, ever since I became king. Before that my grandfather sold a great deal. Many of the art works on display are copies. Many of the jewels are paste.”
“You had no right to take what was mine, without asking.”
He raised his eyes to my face. “And if I had asked, would you have given me your precious gem?”
“No. Never.”
“Of course not. I had to take it by stealth. I was assured the copy I had made was of excellent quality. I thought you would never find out. I would not have chosen the Hapsburg Sun to pawn except that Necker knew a man who had always coveted it. A Genevan, a rich trader on the stock exchange. He offered to pay all the interest on our debts in return for the gem. At the time I thought we had a chance to pay him back, to get the jewel back, in a year or two at most. Now I doubt it.”
I was furious. At Louis, at M. Necker, at the ministers who hate me and who must have felt a private delight in the plan to rob me of my treasured gem.
“I want it back,” was all I could think of to say. “Get it back—somehow.”
I left Louis then, the image of wretchedness, and began to walk away. I made my way back to my apartments, still full of resentment and exasperation, and it took me several hours to compose myself sufficiently to meet with Loulou and Sophie and give the necessary orders to my household.
January 13, 1781
I have been thinking long and hard about Louis’s deception in pawning the Hapsburg Sun and after much thought I realize that I have been selfish.
Yes, Louis was deceitful. He should have come to me to explain why he felt he had no choice but to pawn the jewel. And he waited until I was gone, far away in Sweden, to do what he did. Yet I too was engaged in a deception, traveling with my lover, relishing the time we had together. Although the risk was small, I too was risking scandal. Indeed had Axel been less careful when we made love, I would have been risking the succession itself. Dear maman, if she were still alive and knew the truth about Axel and me, would say that I am an adulteress, and that I should be brought before the Chastity Commission to be reprimanded.
Father Kunibert would say I should be sent straight to hell.
Louis is a thief, and deceptive, and terribly weak. But I am an unfaithful wife, and just as deceptive as he is, and weak for giving in to the force of my love for Axel.
Are we not equally to blame?
January 14, 1781
Yesterday I made my confession and then went to Louis who was taking a nap. I took him in my arms and told him I forgave him for pawning the Hapsburg Sun, and asked his forgiveness in turn for any wrongs I may have done him.
He wept in my arms, and I wept a little too, for in truth I am very fond of Louis and pity him in his miserable and unwanted role of king.
January 18, 1781
Axel is taking his regiment to America. Before he left he came to me to say goodbye and we both know there is a chance I may never see him again. Many officers die in battle, or of wounds or illness. Many more are maimed or crippled for life.
“My darling, I am going to say something that may shock you,” he told me just before he left. “After I’m gone, think about it seriously, and remember it.”
“It is this: Louis is not well. His mind is weak. Such people are fragile, and their apparent sanity can shatter at any time. It happened to King George in England not long ago, and could very easily happen here.
“If Louis should become worse, and the doctors decide he must step aside to allow Prince Stanislaus to rule, I want you to remember that you and the Princess Royal”—he meant Mousseline—”will always have a home in Sweden. With me.”
He gave me a piece of paper. On it was written the name of a military contractor in Paris. I could always get a message to him through this man, he told me. And in case of urgent need I could always go to the court of King Gustavus, who would gladly make me welcome.
“Joseph would make me welcome too, in Vienna,” I reminded Axel.
“Unless Austria and France are on better terms than they are at present, you would be well advised to go to the Swedish court.”
Saying goodbye to Axel was like tearing out part of my heart, yet I was glad he was going—going, not only to war, but out of my life, at least for a time.
I will try not to miss him too much, or worry about his safety, or think of his dear mild eyes, his warm touch, his kisses—I will try my best to be a good and faithful wife.
I will try.
March 10, 1781
My cheeks are pink again and my face looks more like myself. In the past week I have become very hungry and have sent Eric to Sweden to fetch reindeer cheese of which I became very fond while I was there. I would have sent for cloudberries too only they are not in season yet.
Louis brought me a basket of his favorite pastries, full of sweet cream custard and sugared almonds and rich chocolate icing. Together we ate every single one, and we both got sick afterwards.
March 21, 1781
I am pregnant again. Hardly anyone knows, only Dr. Boisgilbert and Sophie and Loulou and of course Louis. Count Mercy, who has spies in my household, and who constantly tries to get information from Dr. Boisgilbert, may know as well because whenever he sees me he smiles to himself.
We will make the announcement soon, perhaps next month.
April 22, 17
81
Joseph is coming for another visit in a few months. He is very pleased that I am expecting another child and says it must be a boy this time.
If only I had news of Axel.
May 12, 1781
Charlot came to the Petit Trianon in his green carriage and offered to take me to the races but I told him the ride would be far too rough and I might lose the baby. He visited awhile and admired some renovations I am making to the upstairs rooms in the Pompeian style. He told me of some exciting experiments being made by a M. Montgolfier who is able to make an immense linen bag rise up into the air and sail over houses and fields and then come down again. He wants to attach himself to the linen bag and go sailing through the air with it.
June 3, 1781
Finally I have heard news of Axel. He is safe, and has been in the Carolinas where the British have seized important towns. He is now in Virginia.
June 20, 1781
Mousseline sang all of Frère Jacques today and threw her bowl of soup at her nanny. I have been telling her that she will soon have a little brother or possibly a little sister (pray God no!) and this upsets her a good deal. She frowns a lot and disobeys.
If maman were here she would be shocked at how I fail to discipline my daughter. Maman was always very firm with me and my sisters and brothers. If we disobeyed we were shut out on a landing of the staircase with our hands tied behind our backs for hours at a time, and then given only bread and milk for supper. Mousseline is reprimanded, but never very firmly, and is never deprived of food or restrained in any way. I only hope she will grow out of this rebellious phase soon. Louis says he was completely unmanageable as a child. Probably she is just like him. Will my next one be equally hard to manage?
Louis has gone off to hunt and collect plants in the forest of Compiègne, taking only Chambertin and a secretary and a valet with him. He invited me to come along, but I said no. I know he would ignore me most of the time and I would have very little to do. He imagines that I would enjoy helping him collect his plants and that we would read his books on forest flora together. How little he knows me! And after so many years of marriage.
The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette Page 13
