Abundance, A Novel of Marie Antionette

by Sena Jeter Naslund

  I am amazed at the number of our friends among the nobility who bitterly resent our attempt to economize. Besenval, deprived of some of his income, has said, “That kind of dispossession used only to happen in Turkey.” The Assembly of Notables is disbanded. When I appear at the Opera, I am hissed. At the theater, it has long been the custom of the audience to respond to some accidental line in the script as though it were intended to apply to the world beyond the stage. When a line from Racine—“Confound this cruel Queen”—was pronounced, the audience cheered and applauded ferociously. Yet I have done nothing to them. I have cut the positions in my household by 173 people in an attempt to economize.

  Still, they call me Madame Déficite.

  Of the national budget, 41 percent is allocated simply to pay the interest on the national debt. The new minister of finance, Brienne, whose appointment I very much favored, for he is an old friend of the Abbé de Vermond, who taught me when I was a child, consoles me by pointing out that the expenditure of the entire court is only 6 percent of the annual budget.

  WHEN I BEG my friend Count von Fersen to describe truthfully to me my own position and that of the King as others see it, he asks me, with utmost kindness in his eyes, to withdraw my request, but I insist.

  “If you will have it so,” he answers, and he extends his hand to me as he speaks, as though by this means, he offers consolation. “It profoundly grieves me to report that the Queen is quite universally detested. Every evil is attributed to her, and she is given no credit for anything good. People claim that the King is weak and suspicious; the only person he trusts is the Queen. People say that in these days, the Queen must do and is doing everything.”

  I know that my loyal friend—his eyes filled with sadness—has spoken truthfully about our miserable reputations. “Promise me,” I say to him, “that you will never repeat those words to the King.”

  SOPHIE

  Though she was born a big baby, my daughter has not thrived. She has grown very little, and between worrying about her, and the health of the Dauphin, and the deficit, my mood has become pessimistic. I recall how my believing in his future health has often helped Louis Joseph to make amazing recoveries, and I try to do the same for Sophie.

  I sit beside her crib and tell her over and over—she is only nine months old this June—she is beautiful and good. I tell her that I love her, and when she grows older I will play tea set with her and teach her to play the harp, but she is too young to understand these promises.

  From restlessness and fever, she progresses to convulsions.

  Her death is the saddest moment of my life.

  Madame Elisabeth stands beside me to view her little corpse at the Grand Trianon and calls her “my little angel.” They say that it was the emergence of three tiny teeth that caused her to suffer convulsions.

  “She would have been my friend,” I murmur.

  I SEE THAT Madame Royale has learned the bitter lesson of death. Her sympathy with my loss moves me to more tears. The child looks lost—as though she had never thought the world capable of such cruelty as the death of an infant. I tell her that in such matters we can do nothing but submit to the will of God, whose wisdom far exceeds our own. We cannot know his reasons.

  LATER, AFTER CONFERRING with the King, I instruct my friend to paint Sophie out of the red velvet portrait with my children. In the painting, the crib now appears to be empty. The Dauphin still points at it, as though to remind whoever might gaze at the painting of our poignant loss.

  However, when the time comes in August to exhibit the Vigée-Lebrun picture, I am advised by the chief of police not to appear in Paris. The hatred for me has grown more virulent because Jeanne La Motte has escaped from the Salpêtrière prison and fled to England, from which she has authored and autographed a description of her “Sapphic” relationship with none other than the Queen. Was I ever in her presence at all? Furthermore, she reinforces the rumors that as a tribade I have also made love to the Princesse de Lamballe and the Duchesse de Polignac.

  In the empty place where my portrait should have appeared, someone has displayed a note which reads “Behold the Deficit!”

  IN THE WAKE of the failure to receive the approval of the Parlement for the financial reform, the King has simply made the age-old pronouncement “I ordain registration.” Thus, the new law imposing financial reform is legitimately registered. It has long been the right of monarchs to declare from their bedrooms, if need be, what will become the law.

  Our cousin Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, has protested the legitimacy of such an utterance. Flouting tradition, he claims that because votes were not counted in the Assembly of Notables, the new law is invalid. The King has been forced to send his cousin into exile.

  To the reconvened assembly, the King declared in a fury, “It is the law because I wish it to be.”

  A terrifying silence followed.

  I hear my own sigh as I write of these troubling events to my brother Joseph II. I take up my pen and add: “I am upset that these repressive measures have had to be taken; unhappily, they have become necessary here in France.” I am ready to drip wax onto my letter and to press my seal into the hot wax, when I remember the most dreadful and dreaded piece of news. I unfold the paper to write again that the King has hoped to quiet the unrest we witness through France and especially in Paris by calling within a time period of not more than five years a meeting of the Estates General.

  ON THE FATE OF CHARLES I, OF ENGLAND

  5 October 1788

  Knowing that the fall season will soon turn to winter, I have taken the opportunity to sit for a while beside the fountain of Ceres. When a messenger brings a request for an audience at the château with the Abbé de Véri, I gather my warm woolen shawl about me and send word that I will meet him in the Peace room. I am glad that I have come into the gardens in an enclosed sedan chair, and I am happy to enter its cozy little space and to have the door closed behind me. Here the fall breeze cannot reach me.

  As we progress back toward the château, I wonder what has brought the abbé to call. He is a friend of the King’s, and they often have scholarly conversations together about the course of history. I have never had much reason to converse with him. These are sad days, so it is nice that someone from outside the walls of Versailles has sought out my company.

  WHEN THE ABBÉ DE Véri enters the room, I note that he is carrying a large leather-bound journal, stamped with the year 1788 in gold, and that his countenance bears the mark of serious thought.

  His complexion is sallow, caused no doubt by his long hours away from the healthy effects of the outdoors. He has a rather knobby nose, but his blue eyes have a straight and piercing gaze. At this moment, he opens the book that I have taken to be a journal and asks if I would like to read something that he has written therein. “Or would Her Majesty prefer that I read aloud to her?”

  Noting that his handwriting is tiny and crabbed—the better not to waste paper, I suppose—I invite him to read to me.

  “It was intended just as a note to myself,” he says in a humble way, “but as I wrote it, a vision of Her Majesty came to my mind, and I felt that I was being led, perhaps simply through my own imagination, to share my thoughts with Her Majesty.”

  “Please be so kind as to read to me,” I repeat encouragingly, but suddenly I have an almost violent craving for chocolate, which I ignore.

  “‘The current of opinions tends toward some sort of revolution.’” He pauses to see my response, but I merely nod for him to continue. “‘It is a torrent which is steadily increasing and is beginning to burst the embankments.’”

  “I wonder if there is something in particular that you have observed?” I ask.

  “It is not so much observation as scholarship that has given me pause,” he answers. “I have also recorded in my journal a conversation that I overheard earlier today between your husband, His Majesty Louis XVI, and his minister Malesherbes. If you will allow me to continue, then your ears will be present, ev
en as mine were.”

  “Please do continue,” I say. His tone of voice is so gently coaxing that I do not want in any way to be impolite in the face of his concern for his King. At one time, I would have had grave reservations about Malesherbes because, in the eyes of Louis XV, he wished to weaken the monarchy. But my husband has admired Malesherbes’s willingness to use compromise as a means of preserving the monarchy.

  “Malesherbes began by saying, ‘You are a great reader, Sire, and you are more knowledgeable than you are thought to be. But reading counts for nothing if it is not accompanied by reflection. I have recently reread in David Hume’s History of England his passage on Charles I.’”

  “Yes.” I interrupt the good, eavesdropping abbé with some enthusiasm, for I recognize the reference. “When I first came to France, a girl of fourteen, the Dauphin confided in me his interest in the thought of Hume, whom he had actually met.”

  “Yes,” the abbé replied and then continued peering through his lens and reading aloud. “‘Your positions have much in common. That Prince was mild, virtuous, devoted to the law, never insensitive, never taking the initiative, just and beneficent; he died, however, at the hand of the executioner upon the scaffold. He became king at a time when argument was arising about the prerogative of the crown as against those of his subjects, and you are in a similar position. The question has arisen here in France, as it did in England in the last century, between the usual practices of authority and the complaints of the citizens. An important difference is that here in France there is no religious element in the dispute.’

  “‘Ah! Yes, very happily,’ the King responded at this point to Malesherbes, even placing his royal hand upon his minister’s arm. ‘There will not be the same atrocities committed in France.’

  “‘And besides,’ replied Malesherbes, ‘our gentler manners will set your mind at rest about the bloody excesses of those days. But they will strip you by degrees of your prerogatives unless you make a definite plan as to what concessions you can make and on what matters you should never yield. Only your own resoluteness can preserve the monarchy. I would be willing to swear that the unrest will not go so far as taking Your Majesty to the fate of Charles I, but I cannot reassure you that there would not be other excesses.’”

  The abbé closes his journal.

  “I think it is the matter of resoluteness that has brought me to Her Majesty. Others may have a different opinion of Your Majesty, but I know you are the daughter of Maria Theresa, of Austria. I know that you must have witnessed that august person exercising a certain resoluteness of will, when the occasion called for such measures.

  “You know that I am not speaking of any need to strengthen the ties between France and Austria as we now live. But I am asking Your Majesty in the days ahead to embody the spirit of her mother, to remember her courage, her compassion, and her resourcefulness.”

  “So it is,” I replied with soft gravity. “Just as Malesherbes would remind my husband of the fate of Charles I of England on the scaffold, so would you remind me of the strength of the Empress of Austria.”

  “Just so, Your Majesty.” The Abbé de Véri stood, bowed, and began to take his leave. “And may your gracious Majesty remember that she is always in my prayers.”

  IN THE TOWN OF VERSAILLES, MAY 1789

  From the parish church named Notre Dame, here in the town of Versailles, at the head of the Procession of the Deputies of the Estates General, the King and I follow the canopy hovering over the Blessed Sacrament. The members of the three estates—nobility, clergy, and commoners—each walk with their own groups. Slowly, we cross the Place d’Armes. The King and I turn our heads toward the window in one of the royal stables for the Dauphin to see us pass. Yes! There he is, his tiny, frail body propped up on a great pile of cushions. How bravely he smiles at us, his parents, as we pass by below! He is a noble child. Tears try to flood my eyes, but I must be as brave as he is, only age eight. It is his spirit that is noble, a fact of much greater importance than any social position can convey.

  If these people aspire to nobility, let them practice courage and compassion. A little child could lead them.

  Having passed his station, I fasten my eyes again on the sacrament as it leads the way from the local church of Notre Dame to the Church of Saint-Louis. Every window is filled with spectators and lining the streets are vast crowds, who sometimes cheer. Often, when they see me, a dark silence falls. I lift my head higher. It is a dazzlingly sunny day. No one here has ever witnessed such an historic event: the Estates General will convene tomorrow, here in the town of Versailles. We are right to entreat God’s guidance—all of us, today. Some of these deputies have disavowed God or renamed him simply as the Supreme Being, who cares little for the fate of humans. I do not believe that.

  EARLIER WE SAT for a moment with the Dauphin, who sometimes struggles to breathe. His spine has become quite crooked, and he can hardly stand erect. Some of the vertebrae jut out. He has become embarrassed by his hunchback appearance and does not like to be seen unless he can trust in the love of his visitor.

  “Your dress is very beautiful,” the Dauphin said to me quietly, and I was glad that he took pleasure in the splendor of my wide court dress, made of silver cloth all ashimmer wherever the light touches it. The King is dressed in cloth of gold studded with brilliants; he sparkles all over, as though touched by a magic wand, with diamond buttons and shoe buckles, carrying a diamond sword, and decorated by the order of the Golden Fleece and the Order of Saint-Ésprit. He wears the enormous diamond known as the Regent, and my hair is ornamented with the flawless and starlike diamond named the Sancy.

  “My papa must be the King of Enchantment as well as of France,” the Dauphin said.

  Then he began to cough, and I could see a flush of feverish red cross his face. Gallantly, he calmed his heaving and managed to ask, “Is light more silvery or gold?”

  I gasped and said, “My darling, I asked the same question when I rode many days across Europe inside the regal coaches to meet your father.”

  AS I WALK forward in the procession, someone steps before me and shouts in my face, “Vive le Duc d’Orléans!” The insult causes me to stumble, such an insult, almost an assault on my dignity. I regain my balance.

  Yes, to ingratiate himself with the people, the King’s cousin opposes the compromises the King would institute between the old regime and the new demands of the citizens. I am sorry that the whole branch of the family has not been consigned to and kept in exile. D’Orléans does not march in his proper place as a Prince of the Blood but establishes his preference for those who lack nobility by walking with them. Should there be a revolt, d’Orléans wants the people to count him as a friend. The cries of the people make me feel as though I may faint, but I lift my chin.

  AT THE CHURCH of Saint-Louis, the bishop sermonizes about the riches of the nobility in contrast to the poverty of the people. I watch the eyelids of the King half-hood his eyes. Then they completely close. So it is with him. He escapes into sleep, when he cannot hunt in the countryside. I can only hope that he does not snore.

  At the end of the sermon, the King is awakened by the applause. In the old days, we were taught it was disrespectful to applaud when the Blessed Sacrament was uncovered. These are a people lacking in manners, cruel and wild.

  Here in the Church of Saint-Louis I vow, always, to treat the people of France with civility, in the hope that it will be returned to me and my family. Perhaps such a hope is to be pitied.

  AT THE OPENING of the assembly of the Estates, 4 May, the King stands in his majestic robes, sparkling with jewels. He invites me to be seated, but I curtsy and continue to stand. From his high throne, just as he begins to speak, a shaft of sunlight enters through a gap in the curtains and shines on his face like the approval of God. I wish the Dauphin were well enough to see his father so blessed by heaven.

  When the noblemen are seated, they don their hats, as is their habit to do in the presence of the king, as a sign of
their own privileges; it has been so from ancient times. All of the plumes sweeping up together make me wonder if they are not like the cresting foam of an ocean wave, as the King has described to me. I wish my children could visit the ocean, where they say the salt breezes are restorative to the lungs.

  Standing on the royal dais, splendid in my clothes, violet and white, I know that I cannot help but look sad: I fear the Dauphin is dying. I am glad that we have moved him to Meudon, overlooking the Seine river from the highlands not far from Sèvres, where the air is noted for its purity. As a boy, the King was once taken to Meudon to recover, but the health of the Dauphin does not improve.

  The King’s speech goes well, after having been rehearsed last night over and over. He speaks of the financial crises as mainly a result of our expenditure in the American war of independence from England. He calls it “an exorbitant but honorable war.” And now it has been won. His voice is firm.

  I but half listen to the interminable speech of Necker, even though it is through my own advice that he has been restored as minister of finance. My alarm grows as it becomes clear that he has nothing of substance to say, not even on the issue of how the Estates will be allowed to vote.

  My thoughts drift to the Dauphin. I think of my young son’s great tenderness to me, and how when he asked me to eat my favorite dinner with him in his room, I swallowed more tears than bread. For all his frail condition, I rejoice to have given birth to such a child.