Abundance, A Novel of Marie Antionette

by Sena Jeter Naslund

  “How wondrous it is!” I exclaim. “How truly beautiful!” I cannot stop myself from repeating those words over and over, while everyone else sits in reverent silence, their familiar faces flushed rosy in the light of God.

  I take the princess’s hand again, squeeze till I feel the bones within her soft flesh, and whisper, “At the last moment of my life, I shall remember this dawn.”

  THE DAYS THAT PASS after our witnessing of the rising of the sun have a new tranquillity about them. Less than a week has passed, and I am inspecting my gardens near Trianon when the King appears. He is in full court regalia, and I am surprised at what a discordant note this finery strikes beside the simple loveliness of flowers. The King asks me to walk with him to the Belvedere. As we walk along he thumps the satin leg of his breeches with a rolled-up pamphlet of some sort. I tell him of some of the flowers to be planted: narcissus, hyacinth, myrtle, laurel, and how the surrounding gardens will remind my guests of some of the paintings from mythology inside the Trianon of mortals being transformed into certain flowers. The King murmurs a bit to show that he is listening, but he is abstracted and troubled.

  We stop at the edge of the water to look across its bright surface toward the grotto.

  “People say those groups of statuary are the most beautiful ones at Versailles,” the King says. He points at the figures of Titans bathing the horses of Apollo, after their day’s work of pulling the chariot of the sun across the sky. “It’s carved from a single block of Carrara marble,” he remarks. Another statue depicts Apollo’s repose among the sea nymphs of Neptune.

  “I suppose,” my husband continues, “that in some part of Greece, one can actually see the sun both rise from the waters in the east and sink into the sea on the west. I would like to see the wonder of that someday.”

  I recall my own lovely moment of watching the sun rise, but I say nothing. Suddenly I realize the King is trembling with anger.

  “Look at this,” he says, and he unrolls the pamphlet held in his fist.

  Its title is “Le Lever d’Aurore.” Something has been published about my watching the rising of the dawn. Suddenly I am cold with fear.

  “It was a beautiful moment,” I say.

  “I am sure it was. Without the slightest impropriety.”

  “The Comtesse de Noailles was at my side every moment. It could not have been more decorous. Our brothers joked a bit. But the beauty of the dawn was an inspiring event, as Rousseau—”

  “We are looking now at statuary,” the King interrupted, “of transcendent beauty, of utmost purity and power—the noble horses, the lovely maidens. Yet how easy it would be for some rude villain to besmirch them with handfuls of mud.” He fills his lungs with a huge breath, and I know he would breathe fire, if he could. “I promise that whoever wrote this pamphlet shall find that a cell in the Bastille awaits him. He has the effrontery to address you, yourself.”

  “What does he say I have done?”

  “He describes a drunken orgy that lasted till the sun rose.”

  “I was surrounded with witnesses, my family, the court, bodyguards! How could anyone imagine any such thing even to be possible?”

  “He claims that you escaped surveillance by crawling away into the bushes.”

  “I intend to greet this libel with complete indifference,” I announce, and then I burst into tears.

  The King gently positions my head on his royal chest. I feel I have placed my cheek against the flank of a volcano.

  Finally, I lift my head and say with composure, “We will not speak of such calumny at Trianon. Because of the generosity of Your Majesty, this idyllic spot is mine to be transformed into paradise. I wish Trianon and its gardens to be the place where nothing can ever vex me or trouble my tranquillity. Look how brightly the sun shines! Here the flowers will always bloom, and these small trees will grow tall as cathedral spires and just as magnificent, for the future queens of France to enjoy.” For a moment I think of the lovely pearls that Anne of Austria bequeathed to the queens of France, and I think with pride that my gift will bring with it just as much pleasure, or more.

  “It will be your refuge,” the King assures. “No one will come here except by your invitation.” The Petit Trianon is just enough removed from the Château de Versailles to give it a good measure of privacy.

  “And I will have a small theater built nearby, may I not? And when I and my family tire of the beauties of nature, we will go onstage, and pretend with one another, and inhabit a world of artifice.”

  THIS FANTASY of my own petit théâtre to be newly constructed within a very easy walk of a thoroughly renovated Petit Trianon buoys up my spirits when we return to court. Then one of my ladies confides to me that Prince Louis de Rohan has taken care to spread both near and far the news of the libelous pamphlet “Le Lever d’Aurore.” Recalled to France, that noxious Rohan weed may prove more troublesome to me than he was in Vienna. I thoroughly hate him, though I cross myself and ask forgiveness for the sentiment. But that he would help to besmirch my sunrise party. It was not only an innocent but a genuinely spiritual event in my life!

  A VISIT BY THE QUEEN’S BROTHER, JOSEPH II, EMPEROR OF AUSTRIA

  My brother comes incognito, known only as “Count Falkenstein.” They say he travels in gray with none of his medals on his chest, and he rides in an open carriage, without fanfare or entourage. They say he intends to sleep in a humble inn on the skin of a wolf.

  Because Count Mercy is in bed with hemorrhoids, I meet my brother almost alone and without the interference of protocol. When his carriage arrives, he is guided straight to me, up a private stair. Alone with my brother, I am taken into his strong arms and held close for the longest of embraces, which seems only a moment but surely partakes of the completeness of eternity. For a long time, we are silent in our embrace, for no words are adequate to express the profundity of our mutual emotion. Near the end of our moment, I begin to sense how lonely he is for embraces, since the loss for the second time of a wife.

  Finally he steps back, still holding my hand, savoring my presence from top to toe, and tells me I am so pretty that were I not his sister, he would surely want to marry me.

  We talk for two hours, and the Emperor is utterly responsive to all my lively chatter. He smiles and laughs with complete sympathy and wonderful familiarity. There is no ceremony between us. When I tell him my anxieties and struggles, his face becomes the mirror of my distress.

  When I take my brother, the Emperor of Austria, to meet my husband, the King of France, for love of me, they embrace each other with perfect cordiality. I cannot help weeping with joy, for this is the fulfillment of my mother’s dream and the reason for which I was sent here.

  To my amazement, my husband speaks in a direct, confident way to my brother, as he would to a true friend. All shyness aside, my husband enjoys himself with my brother. Our days are spent in gay conviviality, and the Emperor meets my aunts and my friends as well.

  BEFORE OUR VERY PRIVATE dinner at the Petit Trianon, Joseph delights in and admires each of the six rooms of Trianon, and he remarks on how the decorations complement the views in all directions from the large windows, and how the house, with all its elegance, is really a celebration of all that is beautiful in nature. His favorite room is the large reception room, and he exclaims with joy on seeing my harp there, standing at the ready, and a pianoforte. Lifting my hand to feel my fingertips, he says fondly, “I can feel your calluses, which means that you have kept up your practice.”

  “Our Gluck made a similar observation. My music always transports me to Vienna,” I continue, “and the happy times we had there when we practiced all the arts as children.” Of course my brother was already a man when I was a child, but I can see that my words evoke happy scenes in his memory of when he was younger.

  While we stand on the rosy carpet woven with plumy golden arabesques, I feel almost that it is a magic carpet. Perhaps it will rise and take us to tour the world, if we can but engage the charm! My broth
er asks me to explain the metamorphosis in each of the paintings above the doors, so I point and speak of Narcissus changing into a flower that now bears his name, and Adonis changing into an Anemone, and Clytia becoming a sunflower, and then Hyacinthus.

  When we retire to the dining room, he admires the four paintings of the seasons, especially the scenes of fishing and of the wheat harvest, and the painting over the door of Flora.

  “Often I identify with her,” I remark.

  “Because of your love of flowers,” he replies. His smile is so like sunshine, that I wish I, too, could turn into a flower and bask and grow under the influence of his radiance. In the presence of my beloved brother, I feel taken care of and understood.

  “I, like Flora, was taken from my mother’s world into another, stranger realm.”

  “But the King is far from being Hades,” my brother answers with a smile. What honest eyes he has!

  “Indeed,” I reply, and then say frankly, “Certainly, as you know, he does not ravish me.”

  “In this case, restraint is far from kindness. I am here to help you both on that score.”

  He has written to me that when he travels he always eats the cuisine of the place—that this habit helps him to better understand the constitution of the people among whom he moves. Now he relishes the hearty French stews, replete with six meats simmered in mushrooms and truffles, the roasted ducks, the fatted goose pâté, but I am too excited to do any more than sip a thin consommé of chicken stock and carrots. As he eats, we speak of our family, especially our dear mother, for whom he has sacrificed so much.

  When I take him for a garden walk after dining, he lectures me.

  He dislikes my rouge and tells me I could easily look just like a Fury if I put the color under my eyes and nose, as well as on my cheeks. With the rather roughened tip of his finger, he traces the space between my mouth and nose to show me just where I could add more rouge. He stops to thrust his nose against a rose, then tells me that my friends are unsuitable, that they are frivolous and know nothing. He tells me I must treat the King with more tenderness and warmth, that in his presence I appear to be not merely indifferent but cold, bored, and even repelled. He snaps off the head of an orange marigold beside the garden path and presents it to me. My brother loathes my gambling and the expense of my jewelry and gowns. Trailing my hand behind my back, I secretly drop the marigold into the pebbles. Throughout the Emperor’s scolding, I adore him and bask in his familial affection.

  I agree with him at almost every turn and promise to reform on all counts. I turn the conversation to the menagerie at home, and he speaks fondly of the visit of Clara, the rhinoceros, but he has no memory of Hilda the hippopotamus and tells me sternly that I must have imagined her. He speaks with admiration of the elephants we keep at Versailles, male and female, and suggests they be brought together in marriage.

  He promises again to have a frank talk with my husband.

  OVER THE COURSE of his visit, my brother informs me that the King is not without ideas, that he is an honest man, but weak and indecisive. He tells me that my intentions and instincts are good, that he is most pleased to find me to be both a decent and virtuous person, but I must trust my own heart—he sounds a bit like Rousseau—and not be a slave to the habits and conventions of others based on their own selfishness. All of this he writes down so that I may read his words over and over, after he is gone back to Austria, and I readily promise to do so, and really I do think that I can do more to make the King happy, and I feel more warmth toward him.

  My brother chastens me because he loves me and cares about the welfare of France.

  Only when Joseph criticizes my Yolande do I refuse to acquiesce. Standing beside my chair, he says she lacks substance and is of easy virtue. When I speak of her adorable children, Armand and Aglaië, he waves their existence aside and criticizes me for expenditures that have gone toward the comfort of her family. He does not know that I paid all of my favorite friend’s debts—some 400,000 livres—or provided her daughter’s dowry of 800,000 livres, but he has heard of many other expenditures, the commission for her son-in-law plus an income, a pension for her father, the appointment of Yolande’s permissive husband as postmaster-general, which everyone knows to be one of the most lucrative appointments in France. As my brother walks to the window, he rages that the Polignac family is costing France a million livres a year, and he quotes Count Mercy that my largesse to my friends is almost unparalleled: “Never before, in so brief a period of time, has royal favor ever brought such enormous financial benefits to a single family!”

  Far from arousing shame, the idea causes me to smile a bit, that I have used so much power for the happiness of my friend. My brother catches the upturn of the corners of my mouth and rages on. “You may call your favorite friend an angel, but those downcast, modest eyelids conceal her shrewdness. Not Madame de Maintenon, not even the Pompadour have been such a drain on the royal treasury!” This idea is delivered as we stand in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, and for a moment, he is distracted with the grand and sweeping view out the window. I believe that he is admiring the sheer size of the Grand Canal and the little boats that sit so picturesquely on its waters.

  “And the morals of this court!” he goes on, pointing out that when a certain duc was so careless as to come home at the wrong time and find his wife in bed with another, he apologized profusely to his wife for his inopportune arrival.

  “Your friends are as bad as any. Especially the salon of Madame de Guéméné, which is nothing but a dive—”

  Here I interrupt and remind him of the perfect virtue of the Princesse de Lamballe, the mistress of my household and a very close friend indeed. Now I have played a trump card, for no one ever impugns her. My brother quickly dismisses her as a “pedigreed fool,” and the truth is I cannot defend her mind. But she really has no need to make decisions of any moment about what she does or where she goes. One setting is as good as another to her. Even I feel superior to her in that regard.

  What makes the criticisms of the Emperor tolerable is that I know without doubt that he speaks only out of love, that he wishes me to do my duty. And I appreciate that he has behaved like a good family member to my husband, who has told me that my brother has been comfortable, honest, and helpful in all their conversations.

  My brother tells me that our mother the Empress warned him, before he left Austria, that he might find me so pretty and charming, so capable of conversing with lively wit and endearing manners, that he would find himself captivated by my flattery, and that, he admits, is exactly what has happened. “How often,” he says, “I have found myself surprised not only by your quick wit but also by the depth of your insights. To me, my sister is the most charming of all the women in the world.”

  LETTER OF JOSEPH II, EMPEROR OF AUSTRIA, TO HIS BROTHER LEOPOLD CONCERNING THE CONJUGAL RELATIONS OF THE KING AND QUEEN OF FRANCE

  In the marriage bed, the King has normal erections; he introduces his organ, stays inside without moving for about two minutes, then withdraws without ejaculating, believing that he has protected HIS HEALTH by avoiding orgasmic ejaculation. Still strongly erect, he bids the Queen good night. Yet the idiot confesses to me that he sometimes has night emissions in his sleep, but while inside and in the process of attempting to produce an heir—NEVER. He is happy with this style. He tells me frankly that he only performs at all out of a sense of duty and that he does not like the act. Oh, if I could only have been in their bedroom, I would have taken care of him! I would have ordered him whipped until he discharged his sperm like an infuriated donkey.

  Unfortunately, I also have it from him that our sister is as ignorant and innocent as a child lying in bed beside her immature brother. Between the two of them, they are complete incompetents. Fumblers!

  THE AFTERMATH OF THE VISIT

  Because my brother has gone home to Austria (“home”—have I really allowed myself to even think that word about any country other than France?), I read over the n
otes he has left me:

  Are you not bored or absentminded when he touches or talks to you? If so, is it not inconsiderate of you to expect a man who has no experience with carnal pleasures to be able to feel intimacy, to be aroused, and to bring his love to a successful climax? You must focus your attention on creating a physical link between you, for that is the strongest link you can forge to happiness in your life. You must never allow yourself to feel discouraged, and you must always give him hope that he will be the sire of children. Never give up. Never despair. Your only power is your charm and friendship.

  He has reminded me that our mother wants me to improve my mind, to spend two hours a day with serious books. My most serious flaw, my brother says, is not my gambling or my love of entertainment or of parties, but the fact that I do not love to read. Reading, he claims, would broaden my experience of the world. The ideas to be found in serious books would deepen my thinking about every choice I make. I do not see how reading would draw my husband to feel more passion within our marriage.

  On the table beside my chair is one of the novels the Emperor has condemned for its licentiousness. But those novels that describe the pleasure of love do help me to long for better success in the marriage bed, to display more warmth and charm toward my husband.

  All my life my mother and my older brothers and sisters, except Maria Carolina, have confused me with their directives! They tell me to follow my heart, but when I start down that path, they insist that I turn my feet in another direction!

  I hear myself sigh. I pick up the novel on the round table; my hand is hungry for the feel of its soft leather binding, for the theater it builds in my mind. Though I miss my brother and wish he were still here, despite confusion and a certain impatience, I will try to follow his advice. I lay the bright red book on the table. I will try to create a real life of love instead of experiencing it vicariously through the pages of a novel. It is necessary for me to change, and I will try again to do so.