Abundance, A Novel of Marie Antionette

by Sena Jeter Naslund

  WHEN I AWAKE to morning sunshine, 17 May 1770, a new day, I see my husband is already dressed. I notice the stubby row of dead candles with their tiny black wicks bent this way or that.

  The draperies have been parted, and the sunshine streams in. Illuminated by a shaft of sunlight, the Dauphin sits at his desk and opens a book I know to be his diary, his hunting journal. He writes in it very briefly, the quill scratching into the paper.

  Though I am still in the bed and I would never read his private accounts, I know what he has written; the word that he chooses to represent futility in a day of hunting is chosen now to represent the wedding ceremonies of yesterday and last night and our marriage bed.

  He writes the word Rien, which means Nothing.

  Later, to my mother, the Empress, I must tell the truth. I will allow myself to tell the truth, that he did not even do so much as to touch my hand.

  THE NEXT NIGHT

  Again, both our heads, at the very same moment, touch our pillows. But this time, his face is turned toward me, as mine is toward him, and we look more longingly at each other.

  I am loving the caress of the cool linen against my cheek and hope his pillow gives his cheek the same smooth pleasure.

  I feel my lips part, but no sound disturbs the air. Ever so slightly, the corners of my mouth suggest a slight smile.

  “Your lips are the same shade as the flower so aptly named the rose,” he says to me.

  “Thank you,” I say modestly. And nothing else, for every instinct tells me Wait.

  I feel myself to be beautiful in his eyes. Pearly pink.

  His hand is moving toward me. Slowly, palm first, the hand approaches the soft gathers that cover my chest. He has guessed the right place, and the palm presses against my slight mound of flesh and my small nipple.

  He withdraws his hand.

  “They will grow,” I say shyly.

  He only looks at me. His eyes, though sympathetic, are sleepy.

  “I am a woman,” I say. “Inside my body, I’ve changed already.”

  I would like to embrace him, but I dare not move. Steadily, I must present a docile manifestation of my charms. Waiting, barely breathing through parted lips, I slowly lick my lips, and then, with his flat palm, he touches my chest again, as though wondering if, before, his palm landed, perhaps, on the wrong quarter of my frame.

  “They will grow”—I say with a slight smile—“as surely as the resurrection.”

  He throws back his head and howls with laughter.

  “The resurrection?”

  “The resurrection of the body and the life everlasting,” I explain, for he has not understood my reference.

  He controls his laughter for a moment, and then it squirts out of him again. He tries hard to tuck down the corners of his mouth into the proper seriousness for the congress of France with Austria.

  “You are devout?” he says.

  “I have no wish to be a nun,” I reply.

  Now he rolls away from his side onto his back. He stares at the ceiling. All mirth has left his body.

  “I see you are a wit.”

  “Oh, no,” I say sincerely. “That is something I have never wished to be, for wit is cruel, and my first wish is always to be kind.”

  “I believe you, Marie Antoinette.”

  Again, he turns onto his side, the better to look at me. He cocks his elbow and props his head up with one arm. I think he has a noble nose, very large, and powerfully arched.

  “I like best to be called ‘Toinette.’”

  He places his hand on my waist, but he does not draw me to him. His fingertips amuse themselves by making small swirls in the fabric of my loose and mobile gown. He speaks slowly. “If you have not wit, most certainly, you have will. You tell me what you like.”

  “I like best to please you,” I whisper, for I do not want to frighten him again.

  “With saucy talk of resurrection?” he asks.

  I remain silent, waiting.

  “—when I have none to offer,” he concludes.

  I am puzzled and wonder at his meaning. Before I ask for explanation, I remember my mother’s caution: I must curb my curiosity. A tear forms at the corner of my eye, and I feel ashamed. I am failing her. It is ever my duty to be light, cheerful, and encouraging. He sees the tear and touches it.

  No, he takes it, on his finger.

  The Dauphin of France puts his finger in his mouth to taste my tear.

  “You need not cry,” he says, and his voice is chilly and restrained. He sighs. “I would not have you cry, Little One.”

  It is my mother’s pet phrase for me, her youngest daughter. But he must not think maternally of me. “I am…,” I begin, but as I unspool those words I remember the wanton, languishing look so openly displayed by Madame du Barry. Before my lips have completed the phrase “…the Dauphine,” the sultry expression of the du Barry inhabits my own face, for I have been well taught the arts of the theater.

  My husband plops down and rolls again onto his back. Staring at the ceiling, he says wearily, “You need not try to look like her.”

  It is a shocking moment, for he has divined my thoughts.

  “The fault does not lie with you,” he says, but he speaks to the ceiling.

  I think I see a tear forming at the corner of his eye.

  I touch his shoulder gently. “Would you like to hold my hand?”

  Without a word, he reaches toward me, and our hands find each other as though by magic. Like two magnets, our hands fly together. But he does not turn to me. I roll also onto my back, and our firm-clasped hands lie between us with fingers entwined in a pleasant knot. I think of the sarcophagus coverings of kings and queens who lie in marble majesty side by side. His large hand perspires against my flesh.

  “Another night,” he says.

  “I am sorry for my awkwardness,” I say.

  There is silence, but then he replies, “And I for mine.”

  THE CUP OF CHOCOLATE

  When I awake, I am informed that the Dauphin has risen earlier to join the hunt, and the royal aunts, Adelaide, Victoire, and Sophie are hoping that I visit them in Madame Adelaide’s apartment, before Mass.

  Because the aunts are maidens, they cannot imagine anything about this pair of nights in the marriage bed, any more than I could have imagined a night sleeping in the same bed as a man when, while still at a distance from the Heart of France, my carriage paused on the crest of the hill, and I looked through the three courtyards of Versailles, each smaller and more focused than the one before it, to the windows of the King’s bedchamber. At the heart of the heart of Versailles, I could only imagine some sort of bed. And that is all they can imagine. When they will see me, by all outward appearances, I will be the same, beautifully dressed—cheerful and hopeful.

  But they will know, as everyone here knows, the conditions of the bridal linens the morning after the wedding. And again, this morning! There is no blood on the sheets. I am not yet truly made a wife. Most important, there is no hope of an heir. Now I long for that corporeal color—red! Perhaps when the Générale arrives, I will leave some of that blood on the sheets in order to trick them all.

  But I have great and real hope that the Dauphin and I will very soon make true amends for this slow start. My spirits are not the least dismal in nature. I have slept so long and well, I am impatient to have my satin slippers put on my feet and to sail through these long corridors, across the rooms of state, as though pulled forward by silver strings. The Versailles “glide” they call it, and all my dancing at Schönbrunn, Laxenburg, and even the Hofburg assures that my graceful gliding will be the admiration of the court. It already is, according to precious, tubby Clothilde.

  “MY DEAR AUNTS,” I say and embrace them each in turn, from eldest to youngest. And then, oh horrible, I have failed to notice the King first, and to curtsy first before him. But he is not displeased—not much—I amuse him, and my apology is very pretty, for I make it more extravagant than it needs to be. I tell
him the little comet of myself was so dazzled by the sun that I became confused and orbited by mistake the fair planets of my most beloved aunts instead of his august person.

  He tells me that I have scarcely been introduced to the splendor of the château and not at all to the gardens and that I have much left yet to see of the glory of Versailles, and that he himself—like his own illustrious predecessor, the real Sun King, Louis XIV—will serve as my guide from time to time. “The Dauphin hopes to kill a fat goose for you,” he adds. “Do you like goose?”

  “I am myself a goose,” I say, “and naturally admire my feathered cousins.”

  “But not a fatted goose,” he says, his black eyes glowing. I know that he would like to pinch me, in play, to see if he could find an ounce of fat, but he is far too courteous and courtly to stoop to such.

  Nonetheless, the aunts are alarmed, and they flutter around, truly like fowl in a barnyard, their having caught a whiff of fox.

  “I do not know why you want the company of anyone outside the walls of this chamber,” says Madame Adelaide, rather coquettishly to the King, “when you have such fine company here, and of the very best morals.”

  “I see I have not admired you often enough of late,” the King replied. He is at ease with such banter, quite different from Louis Auguste. “There seems to be a new light, though, in the room”—he inclines his head toward me—“and everyone else basks in her glow.”

  “She is a darling,” Madame Victoire chimes in.

  “We love her already as though she were family,” says Madame Sophie, somewhat infelicitously, with her head tilted to one side. I know she is not appraising me. It is just that her awkwardness of posture has become habitual.

  “What a lovely painting,” I remark, to move their attention to some subject more interesting than myself.

  “It’s known as The Cup of Chocolate,” Madame Adelaide explains. “By Jean-Baptiste Charpentier, painted only two years ago of the family of the Duc de Penthièvre.”

  “That much loved family, I believe, of Princesse de Lamballe?”

  “So you remember!” Aunt Sophie says, in a congratulatory manner.

  In the painting, which is indeed lovely and intimate, the composition is centered on a small table and is unified by the fact that each person holds a cup of chocolate. For most of the figures, one sees nothing of their legs, but the fourth man, the duc himself, is painted so that he is present from head to toe, and the way the light catches on his gleaming calves attracts the eye. Some of the figures are looking straight at the viewer, but one of them, the second man, the duc’s son, gazes not outward, but to the side, in the direction of his wife, the Princesse de Lamballe.

  “There are so many things to admire in this lovely painting,” I say. But my focus has strayed to the round, plain face of young Prince de Lamballe, dead now from disease that came to him because of his licentious behavior. How could the princess bear to lie in the same bed with her husband?

  “I always enjoy the little spaniel,” Madame Victoire says in a genuine way, “and the fact that beautiful Princesse de Lamballe loves her little dog and reaches down to give him a tidbit of her affection.”

  Suddenly my heart is stirred, for I know that Madame Victoire, like myself, also values receiving affection from those around her, even as I do. I think of Mops.

  “It’s very clever of the painter,” Madame Sophie puts in, “to position a mirror in the background so that one sees Princesse de Lamballe’s coiffure from the back and the mirrored profile on the other lady. At first, I thought there were six people in the painting.”

  “When Madame de Lamballe’s young husband died,” Adelaide says, “the King himself called upon her.”

  “She is all purity and loveliness,” the King says in a tone of genuine admiration.

  “Not to any other living soul,” Victoire says, “has the King ever paid a private call. It is the mark of his very highest esteem for a woman of the greatest purity in the face of incredible difficulty.”

  She alludes to the fact that the husband of the princess was a terrible debaucher. And I know also that she wishes to contrast the character of Madame de Lamballe with that of the du Barry, though she does not say so directly. Madame Adelaide is quite clever, and by just such subtle indirection would I too hope to loosen gradually the esteem and attachment that the King has allowed himself to feel toward that creature.

  I remark, not looking at the King, “Nothing so becomes a lady, my mother says, as virtue.”

  “The Empress of Austria,” the King replies, “will always outrank anyone in Europe for moral rectitude, and you must extend to your dear mother my most profound compliments when you write to her.” Thus, he deflects the implication of my comment.

  Still, I glow to hear my mother so praised. Because the King clearly wishes to discuss other less pressing subjects than female virtue, I compliment all the ladies on their appearances this morning, but privately I think Madame Adelaide is the most comely. She wears a court dress of blue velvet, with rows of white lace on the sleeves and one standing row across the bosom. After an expanse of lovely, smooth skin, a blue bow nestles directly under her chin. Madame Adelaide is rouged to a similar degree as myself, with large pink clouds on her cheeks, but not so large or dark as her sisters’ unsubtle circles of rouge. Such defined spots of color could serve as an archer’s target.

  A number of small dogs lounge where they will on the floor, and I would like to play with them, but I restrain myself, for I must not untidy my clothing. On a table, a book of bound music lies open and spread wide. Madame Adelaide follows my gaze and tells me it is the music of Mozart.

  Quickly I tell her that he and I are the same age and met as children at Schönbrunn. (I note I have gone too far in saying aloud the name of my beloved Austrian home.) A bit flustered, I add prettily, but really I prefer the music of Christoph Gluck, who was my teacher at the keyboard, to that of Mozart.

  “We shall have Maestro Gluck here,” the King says gallantly, “if that is your wish.”

  I am truly overcome with gratitude, for Master Gluck is Austrian, and he likes me very much.

  “He has,” I say, “such mastery of the Italian idiom in his compositions.”

  Before we leave for Mass, I glance again at the apartment: it is a very pretty room, if somewhat underdecorated. One of the fireplaces is framed by a blue marble, or perhaps lapis lazuli, the exact shade of Madame Adelaide’s blue velvet dress, and I suppose that she has had her dress made, in fact, to match, so that her movements in this setting would appear especially harmonious. The chairs here are white, and each has a medallion of pink flowers in its seat and on its back. The white skirt of Princesse de Lamballe in The Cup of Chocolate also has large sprays of pink flowers of the same lovely hue as the beautiful pink bodice that rises so gracefully from the skirt. I see that I was mistaken in thinking they all held cups of chocolate; the standing lady on the right holds a tiny bouquet of pink flowers.

  To Madame Victoire, I add, as we exit, “It is the intimacy of the family portrait, is it not, that provides its ultimate charm?”

  THE PROGRESS toward Mass is slow because we are often approached by others as we pass through the state rooms. Their doors line up to suggest a kind of passageway; instead of having a wall on our right side, the entire room, through which we pass along its edge, is visible to us. It seems to be the custom here that anyone may approach the King as he progresses toward Mass. In each room, we halt for a moment, then the King moves forward, chatting, with his petitioner keeping pace for a few steps. Apparently, it is a great honor if the King comes to an absolute halt to pursue the conversation in greater detail, but such a gesture causes its recipient to add many flattering curlicues to the substance of his request, thus clogging the delivery of the real message.

  It is taking a very long time to pass through the Mars drawing room, as it is the largest of these state rooms so far. It is called the Mars room because the Roman god of war is featured in the centr
al panel on the ceiling in an enormous painting called, Madame Adelaide explains, Mars in a Chariot Drawn by Wolves. Indeed, his chariot is pulled by wolves, a pictorial idea both fascinating and repugnant. I had not noticed these dogs of war—there is so very much to look at in these baroque paintings—and I politely thank Madame Adelaide for sharing her erudition with me. She names next a more reassuring painting: Victory Supported by Hercules Followed by Plenty and Felicity.

  As we begin to move, my gaze fastens on a truly frightening painting. My entire body gives an involuntary shiver. Madame Sophie, hoping no doubt to be helpful and thus praised, as I praised her older sister, now supplies the awful words to accompany the painting: Terror, Fury, and Horror Seizing the Earthly Powers.

  I am happy to see the King nod, which dismisses his petitioner and for us to leave these cerise walls to pass into the Diana Drawing Room. On the ceiling is a painting called Diana in Her Chariot Presiding Over Hunting and Navigation, and I cannot help but hope she is indeed watching over the safety of my husband as he rides to the hounds in this morning’s hunt.

  I am most enchanted, though, by a white marble bust of Louis XIV. As in the bronze equestrian statue in the Royal Courtyard, he is depicted with the most magnificent flowing hair. It billows like rushing water curling over stones upon his chest. His curls frame his noble face with vital complexity. His eyes possess great intelligence, and his nose is chiseled fine, as are his lips. Even the lace beneath his chin is rendered so finely as to suggest airy fabric instead of stone. Across the bottom of the bust is an arch of fabric, off center, like a windblown sash. The rush of that arch forcefully suggests the energy and the power of the man, though the statue is but a bust.

  This bust of Louis XIV stands in marked contrast to the antique busts from Roman times, also displayed at intervals around the room, where their drapery hangs decorously but with no zest to it. Such baroque energy has made possible the magnificence of this entire palace.