Abundance, A Novel of Marie Antionette

by Sena Jeter Naslund

  Who leads the people?

  It is the market women.

  I recall their leather skins, how they pumped their arms obscenely, how they tried to shame me for not producing an heir.

  “But now there is yet a Dauphin,” I exclaim.

  Elisabeth says, “They protest the high cost of bread.”

  The Comte de Provence says, “They wish the King to remedy the condition of lack of work.”

  I learn that these women are armed with sickles, pikes, and guns and that it is myself whom they blame for the financial crises, for the famine last winter, for the fact that the weather was colder than in any year of the last seventy-five. It is I, and not the American War, who have emptied the treasury, and I who have enacted the thousands of pornographic deeds depicted in the pamphlets, and I, most heinously of all, who have seduced the King into activities that have left the people destitute. Not even I hold myself blameless, but I am not a harpy and I have lived the life dealt to me with as much kindness as I could.

  Their appellation for me is L’Austrichienne, and they clamor for my head as they march, but really what they want is a “scapegoat”—someone upon whom to heap all their suffering and misfortune and disappointment and anger. Yes, if I alone am responsible and they dispatch me, they tell themselves, all will be well. They are to be pitied.

  They have no more reason than a troupe of insane children burning with rage.

  Some of the ministers say we should flee to Rambouillet, some all the way to Normandie. I will go nowhere till the King returns.

  AT THREE IN THE AFTERNOON, the King and his hunting party ride up to the château. They come like a whirlwind, like knights of old, their horses and themselves covered with sweat and dust. But once they have arrived, I know well what will follow.

  Talk.

  The indecision of the King reigns supreme. The time passes while more and more people arrive from Paris.

  But they have stopped in the courtyards. They do not enter the château—yet.

  At eight o’clock at night people still arrive and begin to camp in the vast Place d’Armes. Torrents of rain descend on the crowd; still they keep little fires burning. We hear that they are butchering and roasting horses, and I can smell the meat of the animals, bloody raw, cooking, and burnt.

  In a flurry of confusion, first I tell the ladies to prepare the children to leave. Then I tell the ladies that the King and I and the children will not be going after all. Next, I tell them the carriages are now prepared. “Pack what you can! Hurry.”

  We hear that when our horses and carriages emerge from the royal stables, they are surrounded by the mob. The harnesses are cut to bits, and the horses are stolen. They disappear into the sea of people on foot. Perhaps the horses are slaughtered and eaten.

  Yes, we could yet go to other carriages—they have been offered by Saint-Priest and by La Tour du Pin, their very own carriages waiting beyond the Orangerie. The King and I look at each other. We have lost heart for flight, if we cannot go in our own carriages—I do not understand my own sense of identity. Besides, it is raining so steadily, surely the rain will drive them away, will drench their spirits.

  I see our inability to impose our wills on this situation. We must wait and see what will happen.

  SOMETHING DOES HAPPEN. At midnight arrives the Marquis de Lafayette, commander of the new National Guard, which marches with the populace. Because Lafayette reassures the King, and the King trusts him, my husband agrees: it is time to go to bed. Here before me stands his valet, repeating with his young and trembling lips the words of the King: “Your Majesty may set her mind at ease concerning the events that have just transpired. The King requests that Her Majesty retire to bed, as His Majesty himself is doing at this moment.”

  IS IT TWO IN THE MORNING? I hear unnatural sounds, struggle, fighting.

  “Save the Queen!”

  It is the voice of a bodyguard stationed in the guardroom. From the sounds of desperate fighting, I learn my guards are being slaughtered, their heads severed from their bodies. I leap from the bed, pull on a skirt, something falls softly around my shoulders, and run for the secret door cut in the wall beside my bed. My two ladies are behind me, and I run through the inner rooms toward the inner entrance of the Oeil-de-Boeuf.

  The door is locked! I hear my own voice shrieking that the door be opened, that my friends come to my aid, and suddenly! the door opens. A bailiff stands before me. Running past him, I enter the King’s bedchamber and find his bed is vacant, but now there are people to help, kind people who speak of safety in the King’s dining room.

  And just in a moment, here is the King with our son in his arms. And Madame Royale?

  There is an interior stair leading to her room. I descend it with wings, then pause, and say with utmost calm that we must quickly leave. I take my daughter’s hand—how slender and helpless it is—and guide her back to the others. Here with their coiffures askew are Mesdames Tantes, and I am very glad to see them and embrace them warmly.

  I hear desperate fighting in the Oeil-de-Boeuf. But the Dauphin has fetched a chair, and he stands on it, so he can better reach the top of his sister’s head. He twines his baby fingers into her hair. He is in a rapture of touching, gently touching, her hair, sliding the strands through his fingers, curling them around a stubby pointing finger. He has no idea that men are fighting and dying outside the door.

  Suddenly the Dauphin says, and repeats, “Maman, I’m so hungry.”

  Outside, in the courtyard, the people are congregating and shouting.

  “You must appear on the balcony over the Marble Courtyard,” Lafayette says to my husband, who merely nods in agreement.

  First Lafayette steps out to face the crowd. They fall silent, as though before a god. “You have sworn loyalty to the King,” he yells in a terrible voice. “Swear again!”

  “We swear it.” What a sound! Is it hundreds, or thousands, or hundreds of thousands, speaking in unison, as though a mountain had spoken. Almost, I faint.

  Hold on tight, Marie Antoinette.

  I remember. I remember who I am.

  Now the King and I and our children are on the balcony beside the hero, but my husband cannot speak. Some of the people begin to cry at the sight of us. I can see their faces melting in awe and an astonishing mixture of terror, love, pity.

  Lafayette promises, speaking in the King’s name, that the people will have better and cheaper bread, lumber to repair their homes. But the people are no longer silent. They have begun to chant, louder and louder, and then to shriek their demand: “To Paris!”

  Quickly, while Lafayette tries to continue his speech about the condition of the country, the King, the children, and I step back inside. Soon I can no longer hear Lafayette’s words, though I can see the side of his face, and the force with which he shouts. But they are shouting too. “The Queen. Let us see the Queen again!”

  The children begin to cry. I take their hands—all those around me beg me not to go out—“I will appear to them.” And I step out onto the balcony, with the children, into the damp, outdoor air.

  “No children!”

  Ah, so they may wish to kill me. Better I am alone. My hands first turn the shoulders of Marie Thérèse, then gently push in the middle of the Dauphin’s back, and they are inside. Now I turn and merely face the people. I am full of sadness, but I face them. Fear leaves me. I bow my head. Then I bow my body in the deepest of curtsies. Across my heart, I fold my wrists. My strong dancer's legs hold hold hold the curtsy.

  “Long live the Queen.”

  It is more than I dared hope for. The cry is repeated. Over and over till the courtyard rings with it. But there is another cry too: “To Paris. To Paris.”

  The people wish to possess their King and Queen.

  Slowly, with dignity, I stand and nod my head, to left, to center, to right, so that no group, regardless of where they stand, has been ignored. Then I reenter the bedchamber of the King of France, and of the King before him, and of t
he one before him.

  First, I hold my son in my arms and wash him with my tears. Then I whisper to Madame Necker what I know will be our fate: they will take us to Paris, preceded by the heads of our bodyguards on pikes.

  Outside, the people roar and roar till we know we must address them again.

  This time the King speaks forcefully in a confident and clear voice: “My friends, I am going to Paris with my wife and children. They are far more precious to me than my own life, and I entrust them to you, my loyal subjects, believing in your love and your goodness.”

  We return inside. In my own apartment, I quickly put my diamonds in a chest to take with me, and I make gifts of other pieces of jewelry to those who have served me. I notice an odd shining on a ruby pin, and then I see that the sun is rising and a shaft of light has passed through a slit in the curtains to strike the heart of the ruby and make it glow.

  “The sun is rising,” I say gently to my daughter. “Go see.” And then I remember, and the remembrance is bitter as gall on my tongue, that the calumny about me began when I innocently wished to see the sun rise. That was one of the first of the pamphlets that dragged my reputation into the mud and began to prepare my image as one to be hated and reviled.

  THE JOURNEY OVER the mere twelve miles between Versailles and Paris takes seven hours, such masses of people jam the road. During the trip my husband is utterly silent. I sit as though turned to stone. But I can hear the chants beyond the carriage: “We’re bringing back the baker, the baker’s wife, and the baker’s little boy.”

  The Dauphin, half asleep on my lap, mumbles in a baby voice, “Bake me a cake.”

  WHEN WE REACH THE GATES of the city, we see that Paris has turned out to greet us. Now in the love phase of their paroxysm of hate-and-love, their worn and crusty faces beam at us. Their faces are pink, and tan, some pale, some sallow—what varieties of complexion flesh can assume! I see a black face and remember the little black page boy of Madame du Barry. For the first time, I wonder without malice as to what her life may be like. Are these happy, careworn people those who marched out to Versailles, or are they some other, more benign, citizens?

  Mayor Bailly, who is also a man of science, an astronomer, comes forward. For an awful moment, I think he is bearing the black head of Louis XV.

  No. It is a dark velvet cushion, and on it, in the rays of the afternoon sun, glint the silver Keys to the City.

  Holding the pillow and its keys in outstretched arms, Mayor Bailly pronounces with utmost sincerity: “What a beautiful day, Sire, on which the Parisians welcome Your Majesty and his family to come into their city.”

  “Long live the King!” they shout.

  Mayor Bailly turns to the King and in a private voice says, “His Majesty’s illustrious ancestor Henri IV, acting as general, once conquered Paris. Now it is the challenge of the city to conquer Louis XVI with our hearts.”

  I suspect that the mayor is trying to exhibit his knowledge of history, as well as his affable wit. To me, his words drip bitter irony.

  The King replies loudly, with astonishing warmth. “It is always with great pleasure and happy confidence that I find myself amid the worthy citizens of my good city of Paris.”

  So well does my husband act the part of a king who delights in his subjects and their deeds that I almost believe he has convinced himself we are glad to be here, safe among loyal subjects.

  Act Five

  THE TUILERIES, PARIS; FALL AND WINTER 1789

  In the morning I am awakened by a soprano soloist on one hand and by a choir of singers on the other, in a sort of antiphonal arrangement. Yes, I know where I am. I am at the Palace of the Tuileries, in Paris, where I keep a pied-à-terre, though the kings of France have not made this place their home for almost two hundred years. I breathe deeply and smell the ancient dust of the place. Louis XIV left Paris to create Versailles.

  The soloist is not a singer; it is the piping voice of my son, the Dauphin, and he is saying over and over in a singsong voice, “Mama, could today still be yesterday? Is today the same as yesterday? It’s ugly here, Mama, and dirty. Is this more of yesterday?”

  I open my eyes fully and hold out my arm to him while I yet lie in bed. He comes into the circle of my embrace and stamps his foot. “Make it be a different tomorrow, Mama!”

  “We are at the Tuileries Palace, an accommodation that we will never criticize in any way, my son. It was good enough for Louis XIV, and we must not be more particular than he was.”

  Then I hear coming from the terrace not a choir of altos, but the angry murmur of coarse female voices. Ah, I must watch this tendency to transform devils into angels, or I shall not have the wits to survive. As quickly as possible, I dress, put on my hat, open the glass doors that separate us from the terrace, and step outside.

  Into the faces of anger, I smile and bid the market women assembled on the terrace a good morning.

  A few of them suddenly freeze in whatever attitude they happened to have assumed before my appearance. Awestruck in the presence of royalty, they are like statues. Others become more excited and call for explanations.

  “Please tell me,” I say pleasantly, “exactly what you wish me to explain. It is my honor and pleasure to address your questions.”

  “Why do you have servants, as though we are not all equals, and you are privileged?”

  “It has not been my choice to have servants. I like to dress myself and my children, even as you do. Attendants have been customary for so long at court that people have forgotten life can be conducted otherwise. But I intend, every day, to do more and more tasks for myself. If I were to dismiss my servants immediately they would have no livelihood. Surely you can imagine what it would be like to be suddenly deprived of one’s living wage.”

  They are satisfied with the humanity of my answer, and I call for any other questions they might choose to ask.

  In a furious tone, I am asked why we had planned to besiege their city on 14 July.

  “It is true,” I say, “that soldiers were gathering on the perimeter of Paris, but that was because a violent element had been detected in certain quarters of the city. The presence of the soldiers was to protect the good citizens of Paris. Please remember that the soldiers did not fire on the citizens when they wished to enter the Invalides. It was the defenders of the Bastille who were already present in the fortress who tried to defend it, unfortunately resulting in deaths. Our soldiers did not nor would they ever have attacked the good people of Paris. My heart is full of sadness at the shedding of any French blood. It is not what I wish. The King and I always work for peace and reconciliation.”

  It amazes me that I am able to speak the exact truth within the context of giving them answers that are meant to be reassuring. It amazes me that by using my stage voice, I am able to project my words clearly so that they can hear me, and at the same time, my voice loses nothing of its sweetness.

  “It would be criminal for the King to flee to the frontiers. Why do you encourage an illegal flight of our sovereign?”

  Now I explain that the King has no wish to leave, that we are at our new home at the Tuileries, and it is always and always will be my duty and honor to live at the side of the King. I see that they believe in my devotion to the King, and hence to them, for they identify with the person of the King in a way that is a part of their religious faith. They believe in my loyalty to the King, for I believe in it myself.

  “Is it true that you have nursed your own children, even as we do?”

  “It is true,” I reply simply.

  And suddenly our conversation is about caring for our children, and education, and their difficulties in affording adequate food and clothing for their families.

  Before I go back inside, those closest ask if they may have a flower or a ribbon from my hat as a souvenir of our meeting. “With pleasure,” I reply, reaching up to remove a blue cornflower from the satin ribbon encircling my hat.

  When I reenter the room, I am surprised to see my husb
and and Count von Fersen standing there.

  “Her Majesty has soothed the savage beasts,” Count von Fersen remarks.

  “I only spoke with them,” I reply modestly. My heart is racing with the success of my encounter, a success in which it is difficult to believe. Still the faces of the women are before my eyes, as their features modulated from hostility to friendliness.

  “Simply the speaking voice of Her Majesty is like music,” the count continues, bowing his head toward me.

  “I knew that you would wish to thank the count,” the King says, smiling at me, “as I have already done, for being among those who made it a point to be here at the Tuileries when we arrived last night, so that we might be greeted by friendly and familiar faces.”

  Count von Fersen explains to us both that he is arranging to sell his horses and his house in the town of Versailles and to arrange to borrow an abode close by, in Paris, but I am reliving the horror of our journey, the bloody heads on pikes, the cries of pain as our bodyguard was cut down, the terrifying faces presented to me just now as I stepped out onto the terrace.

  “My dear, you are trembling,” the King says.

  “It is my intention to appear calm at every moment,” I reply, “but I cannot control this shaking.” And then I begin to sob.

  The King takes me tenderly in his arms while Count von Fersen, his face stiffening in sympathy, courteously turns his back on the scene. Ah, my chevalier!

  WHEN MY HAND is no longer shaking, I pen a note, using as my address the Tuileries, Paris, to Count Mercy: “I’m fine. You mustn’t worry.”

  Soon the King and I take a tour of the palace, begun so long ago in the sixteenth century by Queen Catherine de Médicis and completed by Louis XIV, before his departure to Versailles. Because there are nearly four hundred rooms here, we do not attempt to see them all. They must remain terra incognita, the King remarks, as was true of certain areas on the old maps. He chooses three rooms on the ground floor opening onto the gardens for his study, where he will contemplate geography. The apartment immediately adjacent has been redecorated by the Comtesse de La Marck, and I ask the King to buy her furnishings for me, and I request that some of the furniture made by Riesener be transported here from Versailles, particularly my little mechanical dressing table that I enjoy so much.