Abundance, A Novel of Marie Antionette

by Sena Jeter Naslund

  Our carriage winds its way through the streets of the city, sometimes beside the Seine river, where hundreds, no thousands of people have gathered to see us pass and to smile and wave at us. The size of the city, the enthusiasm of the populace make our hearts swell with joy. Triumphal arches have been erected at intervals, but my heart leaps highest to see the twin towers of the Cathédrale de Notre-Dame rising from the midst of the Seine on the Île de la Cité. I saw an engraving of them when I was only a girl, in Vienna, and someone explained that they were left square, the intended spires never having been erected. Now, not tiny ink lines but the monumental edifice itself rises above the trees.

  We pass over the Pont Neuf, that ancient bridge with the stone statue of good Henri IV, and into the throng of people massed in front of the high arched doors. I raise my eyes to the long outward-extended bodies of the high gargoyles mounted near the top of the cathédrale. When I speak lightly of demons, I think of nothing so sinister as these medieval realities, but now we are walking rapidly past the throngs of cheering people, and my ears are ringing with their glad greetings. A carpet has been spread for our feet, lest the paving stones bruise our heels.

  Inside the enormous Notre-Dame de Paris, a solemn Mass begins. The aroma of the incense, the sight of the slow smoke rising and coiling ever higher, fills me with reverence. As the Mass is celebrated and we hear the solemn Latin words, I thank God in French and in German that he has made me acceptable to the people of my new country and for the joy all of us share in meeting on this day. Surely the little boy sopranos are not mortal children, but angels selected for the purity of their voices.

  When we emerge past the carved saints that flank the door, the people are still there, and they call out their blessings. The Dauphin squeezes my elbow affectionately, extravagantly pleased with the acclaim and joyful goodwill expressed on every side. At one point, he whispers in my ear, “The future, the future! All this bodes well for our future.”

  Never has the sun shone with more cheerful radiance than on this June day! Both the Dauphin and I are dressed in gleaming white satin. We move like mirrors reflecting the light from our clothing onto the faces of the people. This is what it means to be loved and to love in return.

  Slowly we progress by carriage to the palace of the Tuileries—where sometimes kings have dwelt—and therein to a lavish dinner. While the Dauphin eats with his usual good appetite, I can only savor a tidbit of meat here, and a few nuts there, some spoonfuls of soup. “How your eyes are glowing,” the Dauphin whispers to me, and we agree to appear before the people yet again, on the terrace.

  To my amazement, the greatest throng of people of all has had time to assemble in this one place while we dined. A mighty roar of love is lifted as soon as we appear—“Mon Dieu, how many of them there are!” I exclaim—and I cannot help but smile and wave, and then the second roar is even greater in their joy at our acknowledgment. Our civic hosts crowd about us, and the governor of Paris says that he hopes my husband will not take it amiss that two hundred thousand people are ecstatically in love with me.

  “How could I blame them?” he replies with graceful aplomb. “They would be remiss if they did not fall in love with my wife.”

  To be yet closer to the people, we decide to go down from the terrace into the gardens of the Tuileries, and when we step forward, the people swarm past the barriers of the police toward us. “Let no one be harmed—no one,” both the Dauphin and I say simultaneously to the chief of police who passes the order to his lieutenants.

  For almost an hour we stand smiling and nodding, moving neither forward nor backward, but when we are both weary and take a single step back toward the stairs, and the police loudly but pleasantly shout that it is our will to depart, the crowd opens its ranks with utmost courtesy and alacrity. As we retreat inside the Tuileries, still we wave and smile, though my face is tired with smiling. My heart is brimful of a medley of feelings: love, happiness, triumph, and not at all the least of my emotions—gratitude to the innumerable citizens of Paris.

  RIDING BACK to Versailles, neither the Dauphin nor I can speak. We are exhausted, but our spirits and memories are suffused with gratitude—we both speak of it, over and over—for the love the people have shown us. Their roars of love become the universe. Our attendants are amazed at the magnitude of our triumph and full of awe.

  Along the route, many people have waited throughout the day and into the night, hoping to see our return, and occasionally we open the curtain at the window and smile and wave again, but we are too tired to continue our acknowledgments for more than a few minutes at a time. The Dauphin and I hold hands and nestle against each other.

  AT THE CHTEAU, as soon as I alight from the carriage, Count Mercy tenderly congratulates me and tells me that every soul who saw me is under an enchantment. Messengers have brought the news ahead of our arrival.

  Quite privately he whispers that the popularity shown us is in inverse proportion to the esteem held for the aging King, whose life of debauchery has appalled everyone.

  “Your youth, beauty, and innocence promise a new age,” he explains. Count Mercy has barely time to instruct me. “Here at the château, express your delight at your Parisian welcome with your usual gracious tact.”

  When we are brought to the King, I say with humility, “Sire, Your Majesty must be very greatly loved by the Parisians, for they have feted us well.”

  MADAME, MY DEAR MOTHER

  Mercy gave me your precious letter the day before yesterday, and yesterday a second letter so that I feel doubly connected to my dear mama.

  Now I hope that my letter will serve, in its turn, as a conduit for joy flowing to you in Vienna. Last Tuesday, the people of Paris gave to me a fete that I shall never forget no matter how long I am to live. It was our official entry to the city, and every conceivable honor was heaped upon us. But it was not the honors bestowed by dignitaries that most moved me. What has touched me to the quick of my being is the love and eagerness bestowed on us by the poor people of France. Although they are burdened with taxes of a very heavy sort, they were in a transport of joy—merely to behold their future monarchs. Mercy tells me that everyone cried out about my beauty and charm and how they delight in our youth and innocence. In us, they see the rebirth of hope for the future of the country. I felt it most keenly and will work hard, as will the Dauphin, to alleviate the suffering of the people.

  When we came out onto an open terrace, after dinner, and stayed there for a half hour, I cannot describe to even you, my dear mama, the intensity of delight and love which they manifested again and again. When I kissed my hand to them, or smiled, or waved my handkerchief to them, they went mad with joy. When we have so much and they so little, and yet they give us trust and love, I know that no experience can be more precious. I will never forget that they have given me this gift. I felt and do feel and will always feel profound gratitude. Were I to live a hundred years, I would not forget the outpouring of love given to us when we made our official entry to the city of Paris.

  The King rejoices with us. Two days after our entry, the King freed 320 persons imprisoned for debt. The King made good on the debt which was owed to the wet nurses who had been paid to breast feed the children of the debtors. I am much moved that the King wants the helpless babes to be nourished in this way and for those who provide such nutrition to be honored.

  I am glad to know that Mercy has told you he is pleased with the way I understand affairs of state. Really, it is my heart I count on for understanding, rather than my head, but Mercy has told me my first spontaneous response to persons and their words is something to trust, and not to be second-guessed. Even more than my intuitions, I trust the advice of Mercy, for I believe that it really is your advice that I follow when I follow his. I smiled to read your description that he thinks in a French way but as a good German. I believe that we have in his perspective the best of two worlds!

  Now that we have made our official entry into Paris, the King says we may go as
often as we like. Monsieur le Dauphin and I intend to see the shows at the Opera, the Comédie-Française, and the Comédie-Italienne every week, and we are to be greeted with just as much pomp and rejoicing as though it were the Monarch himself approaching, that is, with the welcoming roars of the cannon at the Invalides and the Bastille fortress. Now my life is much happier because the people of Paris have opened their hearts to me. If you had heard the mighty roar of the Bastille cannon, you would have exclaimed, “What punctuation!”

  THE LAND OF FANTASY: A SNOWY NIGHT, 30 JANUARY 1774

  Snow has been falling all night, and the Dauphin, who loves me so much, like a protective brother, has wondered aloud several times if we should travel to Paris tonight for the Opera Ball. I tell my husband that in the snow, Paris will appear like a Land of Fantasy.

  “You have been happier these last six months,” he says to me.

  “Since Paris…,” I begin. “Ecstasy. Perpetual ecstasy. I did not know life could be so amusing, so inexhaustibly entertaining.” I am in a grand mood.

  The Comte de Provence, who loves me (or anyone but himself) not at all but who can sometimes be amusing, insists that we must not hesitate to pile on our furs and climb aboard the sleigh waiting just beyond the stairs of the Marble Courtyard. He and his wife have come no closer together in the bedroom than have the Dauphin and I.

  Comte d’Artois, who is always amusing and the best dancing partner to be had, has already announced that he and his wife prefer to sport at home tonight. Though Artois is full of little jibes about his marital pleasures, knowing that both his older brothers suffer from a painful disorder of the too-tight foreskin, I always forgive him. Perhaps one of his jibes will someday spur the Dauphin on to greater achievement, despite pain, but I doubt it. Perhaps I forgive brother Artois because his jibes are not directed at me. Or perhaps it is because he is slim and lively and loves, as I do, the pretend world offered by theater.

  My Partner in Pretend. Sometimes when the six of us play together, I pretend that he is my partner in life, instead of the stolid Dauphin. Had I been married to Artois, I would not find myself eighteen years old and still a virgin. But then I would not be Dauphine, a position I am learning to enjoy, since we can now visit Paris as often as we like. The fall season was jammed with theater, opera, dinners, balls, and receptions—a warm chocolate pudding embedded with darker chocolate morsels and iced with chocolate ganache!

  After putting on my fur cloak, I cross to the window, so that I may look out at the snow in the courtyard before we ruin it. The sledges wait for us below, furnished with drivers and postilions, footmen, horses, but, without us, the scene seems empty and unreal. No, I witness an instance of simple being, caught in a still moment. It does not depend on us to have its reality. A footman leaning back against a sledge moves his shoulders forward, steps into new snow, and the scene is animated. It exists perfectly well—complete—without my presence.

  Behind me sounds the ponderous voice of Comte Provence, and Artois is whistling the tune of a bawdy song. It is another way of bragging that he prefers his warm bed in Versailles to a cold trip to Paris in a sledge. Artois, in Paris, you are interchangeable with other swains. If not you, some other young man will help me pass the time. I need the stimulation of the city. Paris itself will divert me from my imprisonment in a body that fails to allure its proper mate.

  The three brothers debate again whether the weather is too mean to permit our attendance at the Opera Ball. What is the speed of thought? Of intense imagining? It must be faster than anything that moves on earth, faster than a slate falling from a roof, or lightning. I wish that Artois were going with us. He is such fun to play with.

  “Of course we’re going,” I say. “Anyway.”

  Full of merriment, I twirl from the window with so much vivacity that the heavy skins of my cloak fly out from my body.

  “She looks so big, like a bear,” Provence says. His own mountainous shape is shingled with animal pelts.

  “I’d rather resemble a warthog,” I reply and bare my side teeth as though they were tusks and run at him.

  Taking careful stock, the Dauphin asks again if we have our dominoes, and all the garb suitable for a masked ball. He would be the shepherd to our frivolous flock. By taking responsibility for us, he fancies he prepares himself for assuming more serious royal duties. Why did my mother ever trade the lightness of pleasure for her somber desk and interminable work? But she would say that she always takes time for proper fun.

  AS WE DESCEND the wide stairs, the cold of the night comes up to greet us. I feel it in my feet, and then my ankles, and then the calves of my legs, even though the fur cloak is long. At the foot of the stairs, my attendant ties on my separate hood with a silk cord under my chin. Now I look like two balls of fur stuck together, a big fur body, a smaller round furry head. I will need all this protection, for our sleigh is open to the night. From the footman’s leather-gloved hand swings a small metal stove. Through the perforations of the metal, I see a red glow, for the heater is filled with hot bricks and glowing charcoal, to warm our feet.

  It is ten o'clock, the perfect moment to embark on a starry drive. When I cuddle close in the narrow space to my husband, the lap robes of shaggy fur, lined with woven wool, are drawn up almost to our noses.

  Hold on tight, Marie.

  “What did you say?” he asks.

  I have to laugh. “I didn’t know I’d spoken aloud. I was giving myself advice, such as I was given when I was a child, about to descend a snow slope.”

  “But did they call you ‘Marie’?”

  “In Austria, I was called Antoine by those who loved me. Or as we say, Toinette. But, as a girl about to descend a snowy slope in the mountains, I seemed to hear advice: Hold on tight, Marie. It seemed to come from the mountains themselves, or from the future.”

  Suddenly another haunting phrase echoes from memory, but I do not articulate it aloud. Now do you love me? asked by little Mozart of my mother.

  The driver takes his place high above us, and the postilion mounts behind. I recognize the postilion but cannot remember exactly where I saw him. When the sleigh suddenly draws us forward, it is as though my brain is hitched to the horses and is surprised that some external force transports its stillness into motion.

  Between the blackness of the sky, glimmering with stars, and the whiteness of the snow-covered world, we slide toward Paris. Already I imagine the large room, the masks, the music, the jostling of bodies and the human heat, the vibrating sense of Opportunity and Surprise.

  “And did you obey?”

  “Obey?” Hold on tight, Marie. “Ah, you mean the voices of authority. Yes, I have always tried to obey. For example, did I not speak to the notorious du Barry?”

  “Does it gall you still?”

  “You like her no better than I. Does it gall you?”

  “Always, we must be cautious. Then and now. Did you ever read Mr. Hume’s History of England?”

  “I began it—not only in obedience but because you wished it." I can feel my nose and cheeks growing pink with cold.

  “And?”

  “I found it quite interesting, but one has to remember that it was composed by a Protestant.” I see a star overhead that I would like someone to pluck for me. That desire, as well as the snow, makes me think of my dear papa, for once I asked him to give me a star. Smiling, he said he could not, shaking his head from side to side. Princes will give you diamonds, he said and called me his beautiful daughter. But I replied that I’d rather have stars than diamonds, and he kissed me on the cheek.

  “Maurepas, a former advisor who no longer lives at court, has sent word to the King that he foresees the weakening of England,” my husband confides.

  “Who is this Maurepas, who speaks of England?” I turn my head and glance at him to signal that he has my attention in a matter that has interested him.

  “You don’t know him, for Maurepas has been in exile for more than a dozen years.”

  Even in t
his bracing cold, as he looks ahead, the Dauphin’s eyes remain hooded and sleepy. Because he rises early to do the manual work that he says “makes a man of me,” I know he must really be sleepy, but voicing not one complaint, he enters into the spirit of fun.

  “Still, this Maurepas advises the King?”

  “He is a loyal subject; he would help his sovereign to see the future, if he could.”

  “And why was Maurepas sent into exile?” The Dauphin has sometimes complained to me of Louis XV’s rather arbitrary use of power.

  “Before Madame du Barry, the King’s Favorite was Madame de Pompadour. Maurepas unwisely criticized her. For that he has been in exile these decades.”

  “I see,” I reply soberly. My mother the Empress and Count Mercy should have told me of the fate of Maurepas. Perhaps they did not wish to frighten me. But it is said that Louis XV does not love the du Barry with the same intensity he felt for the Pompadour. Now, I fancy, he reserves a measure of his affection for me.

  “We are so much stronger, with the Alliance between Austria and France, are we not?” I ask. “It’s vain of me to feel pride, I know, but I do.” It comforts me to know that my marriage has helped to strengthen France and assure peace, at least between our two countries.

  “You and I are true friends,” he says happily. “We can tell each other our true feelings. We do not betray our private confidences to others. You may not know how rare that is at the Court of Versailles.”

  I feel a moment of shame, remembering how I so unwisely told the aunts of my husband’s plan to begin conjugal relations on a certain significant date, but I do not speak of this shame or remind him of my failure in the very area he praises. With gratitude, I think of how he is a kind and forgiving soul, a noble heart, and I wish to be more like him.