TEN
June 4, 1783
I was up before dawn today, watching eagerly from the roof for Axel to come riding into the courtyard. He sent a message saying he would be in Versailles by midmorning, and just in case he came earlier I wanted to be the first to see him.
So many riders came and went that by nine o’clock I was very impatient. But then I saw the white horse and the fair-haired rider in his dusty white uniform—and I knew at once that it had to be Axel. I ran down the staircase and through the long corridors and nearly collided with Axel, who was hurrying along in the opposite direction, on his way to me.
“There she is!” he cried out. “There’s my little angel!” Three startled pages, sitting on a bench in the corridor near us, quickly got up and left. We were alone. We hugged and kissed and cried and laughed and hugged again, until my gown was covered in dust and Axel’s coat was stained with my rouge.
“How thin you are! And how brown!”
“You, my dearest one, are more lovely than ever. Motherhood becomes you.”
We spent the next hour together, secluded from curious and spying eyes, holding hands and kissing and talking. I saw Axel’s scars from the two wounds he received. His skin is not so soft as it was. All those nights sleeping on the hard snowy ground in cold tents, all those days with no shade from the hot Virginia sun. He has lived an outdoor life, rough and unsparing, and it has toughened him.
What bliss it is to have Axel here. If such a thing is possible, I am more enraptured with him than ever.
June 22, 1783
I have begun a new fashion at court. Axel brought me a box of beautiful pale calfskin gloves scented with rose perfume. I wear a new pair each day. All the ladies of the court imitate me.
July 6, 1783
Louis talks to Axel for hours at a time about his years in America and his other travels. Louis has never been anywhere and he longs to go on long voyages—or so he says. In truth I think he is too timid to go very far. And how could he bear to be without his cooks and his daily feasts, the soft featherbeds we sleep on, his workshops and plant samples and library? He could never feel safe anywhere, except in his beloved forest of Compiègne, without the guardsmen who protect us.
The other afternoon at dinner, when we were all eating together in my apartments, Louis and I, Axel, Chambertin who occasionally joins us at Louis’s insistence, and the two children, Louis was telling Axel how he has drawn up charts and navigation routes for a voyage around the world.
“Do you imagine that you might lead such an expedition some day?” Axel asked politely.
“I’m no mariner. I get sick sailing up and down our canals. Have I told you about the canals I am helping to design?”
When he said this I thought, oh no, not the canals again. He does so love to go on and on about them. But Axel, patient, kind Axel, did not betray any irritation even though he has heard about Louis’s canals many times.
“I am always intrigued by your majesty’s waterways.”
“One of them I am going to call ‘Canal La Reine.’ To honor my wife.” He reached over and patted me on the arm. “I owe you so much, my dear. Especially now that you have given France a dauphin.”
Little Louis-Joseph sat up at the table, his nurse beside him, his entire upper body twisted to one side, his head inclined toward his shoulder and his face contorted in pain. I confess that I cannot see him without tears coming to my eyes. He has learned to feed himself after a fashion, and he says a few words. But he is a sad child, and in constant pain. He is a Walking Sorrow. That is how I think of him, though I never say the words aloud. He walks unsteadily, holding onto things. I have not seen him walk more than a few feet without holding on to something or someone.
How he wrenches my heart! I have changed, I know it. When I look into a mirror I no longer see the girl I was, a very pretty girl, always ready to laugh. Now the mirror shows me a woman, much filled out in figure (though far from being fat like Carlotta or hugely fat like Louis), with eyes that still hold ready laughter but also greater knowledge of the world and its temptations. There are lines at the corners of my mouth and eyes, small lines as yet. Sophie calls them wisdom lines.
She says her mother began to get her wisdom lines at about the age I am now, nearly twenty-eight, after she lost three babies in a row. One was born dead, another one died of the cow-pox and the third one, the one she loved the most, fell into the street from a window and was struck by a butcher’s wagon. After that happened she came to my mother’s court and went to work in the kitchens. Eventually all her children became royal servants. Sophie was appointed to my nursery, and in time she became my principal dresser.
I am glad Sophie has told me her mother’s story. Servants, even when one strives to be kind to them, as I do, always seem as though they are part of the palace, as though they had always been there and always will be there. It is good to be reminded that of course they have lives of their own, and sorrows and losses like those we all must bear. Sophie understands my sadness over Louis-Joseph and often comforts me.
July 17, 1783
Louis is going to take Axel and some of the ministers to see the new Canal La Reine he is building in my honor. No one really wants to go of course.
I am reading the book everyone is talking about, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions. It is like the Confessions of St. Augustine which Abbé Vermond has read me portions of, only Jean-Jacques’s confessions are more real and more believable. Reading this book has made me cry. Or it may be that I am always ready to cry these days, because of my overflowing sorrow about Louis-Joseph. He has gotten very thin and coughs a lot.
August 2, 1783
By good fortune our route to the Canal La Reine passes near Ermenonville, where Jean-Jacques is buried. I told Louis I want to visit his grave. I feel close to him after reading his beautiful honest Confessions.
Poor man! What a strange sad life he had. But reading his Confessions, I truly felt as if he understood me, especially my feelings. He claimed that he was unique, that no one like him had ever lived before. He made me realize that I too am unique, that no one else could ever fully understand what I am living through. Especially not my terrible anguish over Louis-Joseph, and over why God gave me such an afflicted son.
I cannot possibly write all the thoughts and emotions Jean-Jacques has stirred up in me, but he has affected me deeply. I feel in a curious way almost as if he were my friend, someone I know well. So I want to go to his grave and mourn.
August 29, 1783
Our journey to visit the Canal La Reine was very dull, all except for one afternoon when I went to Ermenonville where Jean-Jacques is buried and at Louis’s request Axel went along as my escort.
There at Ermenonville, having sent the carriage away and needing no guards or servants, Axel and I were alone as we were in Sweden long ago, able to talk freely and affectionately without any fear of being spied on or overheard.
It felt so very good to be with him, as if we had never been apart and no time at all had passed. We walked hand in hand along the winding path that leads to the grave, the tomb set in a copse of trees on a small island in a lake. We met no one and were aware of the silence that surrounded us, heat rising from the warm stones under our feet and clouds drifting slowly overhead.
I sat by the tomb and put my hand on the chiseled marble. I said a sort of prayer, not for Jean-Jacques but to him, as if he were still on earth. I can’t explain it.
Axel sat under a nearby tree looking thoughtful. After a time I joined him, not caring whether the grass stained my pale gauze gown or my pink slippers.
“I admire him too, you know,” Axel said. “He treasured simplicity, as I do. He struck through all the needless complexity, to find the truth.”
I nodded, at a loss for words. We sat quietly, and I rested my head on Axel’s strong shoulder.
“One simple thing I know for certain,” I said at length. “I love you.”
He kissed my forehead. “And I love yo
u, little angel. Always.”
Since that sweet afternoon I have been thinking, especially during the long nights when I sit beside Louis-Joseph’s little bed, trying to soothe his broken sleep. It seems to me that there are really only a few things in life that truly matter. Love. Nature. Hope. To love those around us. To seek comfort amid nature. To live in constant hope.
Wouldn’t Jean-Jacques agree?
October 7, 1783
My household has grown smaller by one. Yesterday Amélie was taken away to be imprisoned in the Bastille. Her crime was rousing the villagers of St.-Brolâdre against the king and compiling a list of grievances on their behalf.
Louis has had the entire matter looked into with great care. It seems that Amélie, unknown to any of us, even Eric, has been corrupted by the radical orators and pamphleteers who preach and write ugly lies about Louis and me. She hates me anyway, because of Eric’s devotion to me. No doubt she imagines that we are lovers, though we never have been. In any case, she has become one of those who are demanding change, and trying to force it to come about through dramatic action. She has been secretly attending meetings and listening to rabble-rousing speakers and allowing herself to be corrupted by the things they say about Louis and about the government. For a year and more she has been pursuing this dangerous secret life, learning to read and write and even teaching others and spreading the new gospel of change among others of low birth like herself.
Knowing that we intended to take Louis-Joseph to be blessed at the chapel in St.-Brolâdre, she went there, harangued the villagers (whom she knew well, having grown up among them), and convinced them to make a statement to Louis and me by their absence on our arrival. After much discussion the villagers formulated a list of grievances and she wrote it down.
Her mistake came in staying on in St.-Brolâdre after the others had left. No doubt she wanted to observe our surprise and unease when we got there and found no reception prepared, no crowds to greet us. So she stayed—and was captured. Now she is receiving her just punishment.
I am sorry for Eric and his two children. I don’t imagine that Eric misses Amélie, but I’m sure her children do. How Mousseline and Louis-Joseph would suffer if I were to be taken from them!
I have intervened on the family’s behalf and Louis has given the governors of the Bastille a special order to permit Eric and the children to visit Amélie once a week for an hour.
November 20, 1783
My autumn melancholy is with me again. Axel has told me that he must leave Versailles for some time, in order to accompany King Gustavus on a tour of Italy. He will be gone many months. I have had him with me for far too short a time. I am already missing him and grieving his departure to come.
It is not only Axel’s leaving, and the bare lifeless trees and short dark days and cold winds of autumn that are lowering my spirits, but the flood of ugly writings that are sold not only in Paris but right on our doorstep, as it were, here in Versailles.
Right below the terrace of the palace is a ramp leading to the road. A bookseller has set up his stall just at the end of that ramp, so that visitors to the palace, once they pass through the outer and inner gates, must walk right by him on their way into the galleries and salons. There are thousands of these visitors, and a great many of them, I am told, buy the filth from this bookstall and read it.
Terrible, wicked things are written about me. That I am guilty of practicing the “German vice” (loving women instead of men), that I have lived the life of a prostitute, that I have no morals whatever and even seduce young boys and girls. Copies of these horrible books and pamphlets have been found in the palace, papers that picture me as a monster who can never have enough sex, always seeking new victims to seduce. Ugly caricatures of me are horrifying. I am portrayed as a greedy, grotesque demon or a harpy, feeding off the flesh of the poor while I indulge in every kind of sexual excess.
Louis says there is no way to prevent these publications from being sold. Hundreds of them are seized every week by the authorities but the printers just keep on printing more. As long as there are people eager to buy this filth, printers will print it and sell it. The bookseller near the palace has been arrested several times yet each time he is set free eventually he comes back and opens his stall for business again.
January 14, 1784
A new year has begun and before long Axel will be going. Louis-Joseph has a rheum in his chest and is being treated with plasters. I have had three of my back teeth drawn. Afterwards I could not rest or sleep for five days, the pain was so terrible.
February 19, 1784
Sophie came to me this morning during my levee and whispered to me that there was a woman to see me. She said “a woman” and not “a lady” and she implied that I would want to see this woman in private, not during my levee when the room was full of others milling about and my every word and deed would be scrutinized.
I told Sophie to bring the woman to my sitting room just before mass, when I could see her alone.
When I entered the room I saw, seated on a sofa, a middle-aged woman of ample proportions wearing a whimsically eccentric gown of red and orange silk and a jaunty hat with an orange feather. When she stood and curtseyed to me, hurriedly removing her hat, I saw that her brown hair was streaked with gray. Evidently she did not bother, as so many other women over thirty do, to dye her hair or cover her gray strands with false hair. Her pleasant, round face was smiling benignly and I could not help noticing, even through her layers of silk, that her body was strong and muscular.
I sat down on a sofa opposite her, and two of my pugs jumped up beside me. Absently I stroked their heads.
“Your royal highness,” she said, smiling, “I am Eleanora Sullivan. We have a mutual friend in Count Axel Fersen.”
My eyes widened, but I said nothing, and kept my outward composure. This was the woman who had been Axel’s mistress for many years, the former acrobat. I knew that she lived in Paris and that he still saw her, though she had a liaison with some wealthy American financier who was her benefactor and protector. I thought, so this aging woman has been my rival all these years.
Remembering my manners, I invited her to sit down.
“Thank you for receiving me, your royal highness. I would not have come, except that I have heard how gracious you can be and how you place a high value on simplicity and sincerity.”
“I place a high value on honesty, Miss Sullivan.”
“Mrs. Sullivan, if I may correct you. I was married for many years to a wonderful man, when we were both performers in the circus.”
“Very well then, Mrs. Sullivan. Why have you come to see me?”
She leaned forward, and the look on her face was very earnest.
“Because you are standing in Axel’s way.”
“In what sense?”
“His very great love for you is preventing him from living the normal life that would be best for him.”
I wanted to blurt out, how do you know what is best for him? Surely I know him best. He is happiest when with me. We could not love each other more. But I held my tongue. Queens do not quarrel with circus acrobats, no matter how far they may have risen in the world of Paris society.
“Did he tell you that he has been looking for a wife?”
I was nonplussed. Finally I managed to say, “No. He didn’t.”
“At his sister’s urging, and knowing it would have been his father’s wish, on his last leave from the American War he went to many balls and dinner parties in Stockholm. He met Margaretta von Roddinge. She is twenty-three, pretty, charming and warm, well educated, from one of Sweden’s finest military families. Her father is a general in King Gustavus’s cavalry. Axel likes her, and she admires him, as any young woman would. The family had another match in mind for her but they are not pursuing it. They are waiting for Axel to propose.”
She waited a moment for all that she had told me to have its effect.
“I have met Margaretta,” she went on at length. “Axel br
ought her to see me. I believe he wanted my approval, though heaven knows why he would feel he needed it. I liked her very much, and wished them both well.”
I felt faint. I longed to call for my orange-flower water and ether. I fanned myself rapidly, and reached out for my pugs, which were panting and licking themselves. Then my courage rose.
“Then why doesn’t he propose?” I asked Eleanora Sullivan defiantly.
“Because of you, your highness.”
“There have always been other women in Axel’s life, as long as I have known him,” I said, trying to sound as worldly-wise as possible. “Yourself among them.”
“Forgive me for speaking so straightforwardly, but we both know that he has never loved another woman as he loves you. He is bound to you by ties too strong for him to break. But you can break them, if only you will.”
“Are you asking me to send him away?” I could hardly say the words. Send Axel away? Send away the love of my life?
When she spoke, her voice was flinty. “Release him. Let him go home, marry, become the father of a family. Let him do it wholeheartedly, with no lingering hopes that somehow you and he will one day make a life together.”
Upset as I was by all that this odd and unexpected visitor was telling me, I was yet able to study her expression, in an effort to understand whether she was being entirely truthful, and what her motives were in coming to me with her devastating news.
There was sympathy in her wide brown eyes, and determination in the set of her generous wide mouth. I saw no malice or envy in her, though she might well have envied me on account of Axel’s deep feelings for me, feelings which, I was sure, had long since driven her to the margins of his emotional life. I felt instinctively that she was speaking the truth about Axel’s considering marriage, and about the girl Margaretta. He would marry, I thought, out of duty to his family, and because it was the conventional thing to do. He would choose a good woman, an exceptional woman. But he would always love me best.
The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette Page 16
