“Do you agree,” the Dauphin asks me, triumphant in the chase, “the next-to-the-last stag was the most beautiful? He ran the most swiftly, threaded his way most gracefully.”
“Lying on the ground,” I say, “he did not deign to look at us.”
“I noticed that as well. His gaze was on the sky.”
“Or, perhaps, at the scalloped edge, where the treetops meet the sky.”
The odor of a savory soup, one with parsley, greets my nostrils, but I do not want to bring anything hot into my mouth. I hated it when my ladies reapplied the circles of rouge to my still hot cheeks. The King asks me if I desire some token of our hunt, and I reply a necktie fashioned with lace of gold, one that will not wilt in heat.
“Our huntress deserves the gold,” he answers enthusiastically. “You ride like Catherine de Medici.”
“I think Your Majesty guides his horse with the hands of Apollo.”
“But he had a chariot,” the plump Comte de Provence puts in. “I wish I did.”
The King asks me if I have been to the foot of the garden at Versailles and seen the fountain there of Apollo. When I say I have not, he offers to escort me on our return.
Quickly, the Dauphin reminds me that we are to have days of hunting before we quit Compiègne, and I smile encouragingly at him, for I do not want to leave either, till all of me is as tired as my hands. And I smile because I remember his promise as to what will happen between us, now that we are at Compiègne. The Dauphin quietly asks if there is any other part of my costume I would change.
“Not the pants,” the King exclaims. “I adore her in pants, and how she rises from the saddle for the leaps.”
Artois mischievously tells his older brother the Dauphin that I ride faster than he, though it is not true. “You will have to pant to catch her,” Artois adds, and I recall that he has uttered this sentence before. But the Dauphin does not spare himself in the hunt—no one could urge his horse or himself with greater passion. When he draws to a stop, both he and the horse are gasping, and their eyes are wild in the same way. Now the Dauphin’s eyes look down, heavy, sleepy, and hooded again. I wish he would not guzzle the hot soup, but he nods for another bowl of the creamy stuff on which float small islets of butter. I lay my spoon beside my soup plate, as though to give a signal.
Slender Artois also lays aside his spoon. He asks me if I prefer the lighter rigor of dancing to the wild rides on horseback.
“Today, I prefer the wildness of the hunt,” I reply, “but when next we dance, you must ask the question again.”
“Comtesse de Noailles plans a small dance in her rooms,” the King says. “She attends to every detail and even consulted me on the guests—so much would she wish to please you.”
Suddenly I am aware that part of my feeling of freedom is occasioned by the absence of Madame Etiquette. Beneath her insistence on forms is nothing but envy of my youth and energy.
“The King is so kind,” I say, “as to wish all his family and subjects the greatest possible happiness at every possible moment.”
“In that,” the Dauphin adds, “he is like God, according to Leibniz—”
“One of his philosophers,” Artois interrupts.
“But you read him as well,” the Dauphin says to his bright little brother.
“However, I do not discuss him after the hunt.”
“Please,” I mediate, “Leibniz is an interesting name—German, I would guess.”
“The princess would not leave all things German behind?” the King questions, but his eyes are kind and full of understanding.
“My mother wishes me to read books on devotion, as does the Abbé Vermond.”
“Leibniz has his own thoughts,” the Dauphin continues, but with some reluctance because of his brother’s criticism of the topic. “Leibniz addresses the question ‘How can a benevolent and all-powerful God allow evil to exist in the world?’”
Immediately, I think of the sudden death of my beloved papa, and the injustice of his taking, but I have never uttered that thought aloud, and I do not do so now. When the news of his death reached us, my mother looked at me, however, as though she could read my thoughts, and she ordered me to fall to my knees, handing me a cushion, and to pray for the soul of my father, which I did at once, with all the urgency of my being.
“What is the answer?” I ask timidly.
“Monsieur, you frighten your wife,” the King cautions. Still his glance at his grandson is merely advisory, not unkind, not even a nuance of reprimand in his tone. Truly, I do love the King despite his moral weakness in concupiscence.
“Leibniz’s answer is full of consolation,” the Dauphin replies.
I recall the tenth stag, his neck presenting its curve for the knife, his eye rolled up to heaven.
“Your Majesty is so kind as to make my sensibility his care,” I say, “but I am not afraid—of anything.” Nervously, I laugh a little at myself.
The King chuckles. “Then your heart is still that of a child who has received perfect care.”
“And are we not all God’s children?” Provence asks. “It is a belief that none of us question. And yet we fear. We lack control in so many matters—”
“Such as the order of our birth,” audacious Artois quips.
“I am my mother’s tenth daughter,” I say. “Yet here I sit, among you.”
Oh, that was not wisely said before these boys whose turn at kingship is behind that of my husband and any progeny we may have! Around the edges of my ears, I seem to hear the crinkle of encroaching fire.
Papa-Roi rescues me. With the smile that shows him completely at ease in his own power and ordering of the world and in this moment most happy, he says, “Without doubt, God’s wisdom rules the earth and all that comes to pass. Nothing could bless this moment more than the presence of our darling princess, the tenth daughter of our fortunate friend, the Empress.”
“And that is Leibniz’s very point,” the Dauphin concludes. “This is the best of all possible worlds.”
“Who can doubt it?” Provence speaks with his mouth full of venison, lifts his glass of wine by its slender crystal stem, and tilts outward to indicate the splendor and abundance that surround us.
“Voltaire thinks the idea absurd,” Artois amends, with something of his own sneer.
“And where is Voltaire?” the King asks.
We all know that he is exiled to Switzerland for his attacks on piety and religion in general, so no one speaks.
“Voltaire…the philosophes,” the Dauphin muses. “Our tutors were chosen, my brothers, mainly to exclude those who sympathized with that crew.”
I think of his hatred of his tutor Vauguyon which my husband has privately expressed to me. I eat another grape from the compote. I am eating very little tonight. I am almost too tired to eat. A sigh slips out.
“Are you thinking of your home?” the King asks. “Tell us, what image comes to mind?”
“I am thinking of the menagerie,” I say. “My father kept many amusing animals for us.”
“Monkeys?” the King asks, glancing around the crowded room, as though to be sure that all of his guests enjoy their conviviality.
I recall that Madame du Barry keeps a pet monkey. “I do not like monkeys,” I say. “They are too mocking.”
Artois laughs. “I heard that what’s-her-name’s monkey went on a rampage. He got in her cosmetics and powdered himself in a flurry and rouged his cheeks, just like his mistress.” When Artois imitates the monkey, hunching his back and chattering his teeth, we all burst into laughter.
“What animals did you like, in the menagerie at Schönbrunn?” the King inquires of me.
“Clara, the rhinoceros, with her armor covered in red dust.” I do not want to tell him of beloved Hilda, the hippopotamus, floating among the hyacinths, so peaceful and vulnerable. “And a leopard, with golden eyes lounging in the shade of a lilac bush.”
“You must have a leopard skin,” the King says, “to place under your saddle.�
��
A HEAVY SILVER platter is brought forth, loaded with cakes in fanciful shapes, some like eggs, some like stars, or hearts. A whole group resembles the houses and shops of a small village, and all are covered in glittering sugar as though a great snowstorm had struck this darling hamlet. A golden platter is covered with pastries, their golden-brown crusts are shaped to make nests for jellies and cooked fruit, apricots and pears freckled with cinnamon, and some have a puddle of molten chocolate in their center. A large porcelain bowl decorated with Chinese bridges and blue willow trees holds an enormous pudding, and the aroma of cooked raisins and plums and cherries rushes through my nostrils to my stomach and makes it writhe with greed.
Nonetheless, I choose one of the snow-draped structures from the hamlet to nibble. The Dauphin has his plate covered with some of each of the wondrous sweets, and Provence has his plate covered, and then another layer, a second story, so to speak, of dessert built up on his plate. I have no doubt he will eat it all, but slender Artois, and I, and the handsome King have some sense in this matter of eating. I am sorry when the Dauphin asks for more.
Provence says, “I intend to live in the most delicious of all possible worlds.”
When it is time to retire, the Dauphin accompanies me to our chamber door. He looks at the beautiful white bed, which is as bedecked with lace and satin-sided pillows as the little cake-houses of the village were with white icing and sparkling sugar, but he tells me he has indigestion, and, indeed, it is best that he sleep elsewhere, lest he disturb me in the night. He knows that he will be sick and need attending.
All my eagerness melts, but I speak with the utmost good cheer and genuine concern for his discomfort.
In bed alone, my legs are restless, as I anticipate the motion of the hunt tomorrow. My eagerness returns, and I think of squeezing the horse between my knees to make him jump at just the moment of my choosing.
Tomorrow our object will be the foxes, and we hunt another quarter of the forest.
Tomorrow night my husband will surely want to come to me—if the hunt is successful. Yes, it will be a sign. If the hunt goes well, surely he will want to bed his wife.
A VOW
The day has been a delirium of dust, speed, leaping, riding. I am triumphant not in the animals we kill but in the joy of the hunt, the excitement, the color of costumes, the sound of the horn, the hard thudding of horses’ hooves, the independence of my own body, rising and settling, rising to fly, the good ache in all my limbs.
When we left the woods, I heard the quiet reclaiming the countryside. The trees seemed to be part of something almost holy, a vast cathédrale. But it was the quiet that called me back.
AT DINNER, we are loud and boisterous. The King always keeps his dignity, but the grandsons seem childish in their jubilance, especially the younger brothers. My Dauphin has moments of sullenness, which I have not seen in him for some time. Finally, he says to me, “I would hunt now, in the dark, if I could.”
I understand: he is bored; it is only the chase he craves. The bounty of the table, the steaming meat pies, the piles of peeled fruits, and green stacks of haricots are poor substitutes for plunging into the forest astride a willing mount. Because he must wait for what he wants, he withdraws and sulks.
“The morning comes quickly,” I say. “Refreshed, we will ride all the better.”
“You love it too?”
“I do love the hunt, and all that pleases you gives me double pleasure, for I experience both your joy and my own.”
His eyes look fondly into mine, with gratitude for my understanding, but they do not go so far as to promise any connubial joy for me. He needs, and he appreciates what he receives, but he is not strong enough to give.
The trays of candies arrive, nuts cooked in patties of brown sugar, a cake in the shape of a fox covered in raspberry fondant with a green grape eye. The Dauphin licks his lips. A lovely meringue shell holds a rich swirling whirlpool of chocolate pudding; a deep bowl with a scalloped golden edge cradles large mounds of beaten cream studded with strawberries and sprinkled with crystals of white sugar, and more and more; he eats it all.
At the door of our chamber, the Dauphin folds his arms over his stomach and bends forward in pain.
“I’m sorry,” he gasps and runs doubled over away from me, as fast as he can, for a commode.
AM I TO GROW miserable at Compiègne? Soon will he not even accompany me to the door? I do not need to be a Bohemian Gypsy to predict the future. I know the answer is yes.
And what is my recourse?
I will remain patient. And I will visit the gardens of Versailles, and explore the bosquets, and revel in the basins of cavorting waters. I am his friend. Though the whole court laugh at him, from me, he will receive nothing but sympathy, mounds and mounds of sweet concern, as though each rejection were without history and engendered no impatience.
Act Two
THE PRINCESSE DE LAMBALLE, CARNIVAL 1771
I am so eager to reach the apartment of Madame de Noailles that I take the Dauphin’s hand; we all but run through the rooms of the Château de Versailles, and we do run through the Hall of Mirrors. I watch us in the mirrors as we hasten out of one frame and past another, and another and another. It is the Versailles glide, smooth as ice-skating, but at a fine clip. Our attendants can hardly keep up. We shall have fun, we shall have fun! I remember how we rode lately to the hounds, leaping across ditches and over fences on horseback.
Before my husband and I reach the entrance to the apartment of Madame Etiquette, we can smell the aroma of roast pork and apples and cinnamon and game birds stuffed with sage, and something that must be a venison stew with much of celery and onions—all of the wonderful meaty smells and dishes that we shall have to forgo when Carnival is done and Lent has us in its fishy, forty-day grip. I know the Dauphin’s appetite is keen, and everyone will attend the dance with a special eagerness to make merry. Over the winter months, without his beloved hunting, my husband has put on flesh.
It is time to walk more sedately. Slowly, slowly, we are becoming friends. When he comes to my bed, I chatter and amuse him with great success. Once after a fit of laughter, he suddenly fell asleep, with a mighty snore. My own laughter erupted, at him—but he did not awaken. Then I cried. Huge sobs—the bed shook with them.
As for me, tonight, the young Artois and I will dance till our slippers fall off, if I have my way, and I can feel the brightness already inhabiting my eyes. To dance, especially with the innocent and graceful Artois, is to forget that I am far from home and will never go there again to see the shining faces of my brothers and sisters. It is Carnival, my first celebration of Carnival, and I am fifteen. I have been here in France more than half of an entire year!
When the door opens, whom do I see but the beautiful Princesse de Lamballe. She is accompanied by her father-in-law, the Duc de Penthièvre, the richest man in France next to the King; his valet carries two simple pots of creamy clay holding living violets. With graceful gestures, the good Penthièvre indicates that one is for his hostess Madame de Noailles and the other is for his beautiful, widowed daughter-in-law.
To my amazement, the Princesse de Lamballe bursts into tears. Rapidly a seat is placed behind her, and half fainting, she sits upon it and weeps.
“Their sweetness is too great,” she says, wiping her eyes.
To my second amazement, I find that tears have quickly come to my own eyes and are ready to spill. So appealing are the flowers that they appear to have been dug from the forest floor and brought by courier in all their freshness.
“She is overwhelmed by their naturalness,” the duc says sympathetically of his daughter-in-law, and he gestures to have the potted violets removed.
I find that I am on my knees beside the princess, touching her hand, and looking into her eyes to console her.
“I too have been touched by the poignancy of their faces,” I say, “when I rode to the hounds in the forest of Compiègne.”
“Don’t take them a
way,” the sensitive princess sobs. “But, dearest Papa, may I make a present of my pot to the Dauphine, whose sensibility I share.”
And suddenly, she smiles at me. The sun has come out from behind the cloud, and I am enchanted by the beauty of her wide-spaced blue eyes, and the steadiness of her gaze. She is neither afraid of me nor impressed by my position. It is myself whom she claims as a kindred spirit. And then I recall that she is of German origins, like myself. She continues to smile at me and clutches my hand in return, and I think of Charlotte, my sister, and how when we were girls at Schönbrunn, we would gaze into each other’s eyes and hold the gaze, till the exact thought passed from one mind to the other, without a single word spoken.
So it is now, and my heart fills itself and sighs with happiness, for I have found a friend.
Oh, Mesdames are upon me in a moment. They would pry me away from her, but elegant Count Mercy steps forward and with his hands cups each of us under the elbow, the princess and myself. I rise with the pressure of his fatherly hand, as does the princess.
“Let me guide you to a more comfortable settee,” Count Mercy says, “where you may speak of flowers and the friendship that I see blossoming between you.”
The aunts dare not follow and intrude. Mercy has known my needs, and he stands close by now, an elegant sentinel, at his ease and in complete command as the guardian of our tête-à-tête.
The fair princess is twenty-one to my fifteen, but purity has kept her suitable for my confidence. She compares Count Mercy to her dear father-in-law in his thoughtfulness, and I tell her how I admired the family group of the Duc de Penthièvre as depicted in the painting The Cup of Chocolate in Madame Adelaide’s apartment, and how I had wished that I might have entered that frame and become a part of that happy family picture.
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