by Juliet Grey
“Why would He take the life of an innocent?”
“He does so all the time.” I wound my arms around Louis’s neck and pressed my lips to his cheek. “I have learned the lesson nonetheless,” I added tearfully. “And I pledge to you with my entire heart that we will try again, as soon as we can, as soon as Monsieur Lassone tells us it is safe.” I felt like a drowning woman, flailing for a passing shard of wood.
Twenty-five years from the day my mother had brought me into the world, I had lost a child of my own, perhaps through my own selfishness in insisting upon celebrating my natal day in Paris. In a few weeks we would resume relations, asking God’s forgiveness and praying for His munificence: to let me conceive quickly and bring a heathy babe to term. But this night would remain forever imprinted on my memory and I would never cease to mourn my loss.
Yet before the month was over there would be more to grieve.
DECEMBER
Louis found me in my music room practicing the harp. From the moment he entered the salon I sensed something was terribly wrong. Rarely had I seen his expression so sorrowful. And he had never before interrupted my afternoon lesson. As he crossed the threshold my servants and attendants made their reverences and he dismissed them with a terse “Leave us, s’il vous plaît.”
Once the room was empty he walked over to me and proffered his hand, raising me to my feet. The knots inside my belly grew tighter with every step we took toward the sofa. The king seated me as gently as if he were nestling an egg into a bed of straw, and sat beside me, still holding my hands. “I know I have not always been kind when it comes to my opinions of the Empress of Austria,” he began. “And I-I,” he stammered, searching for words, meeting my questioning gaze. He shook his head dolefully. “I am not terribly good at this … and there is no worse role than the bearer of bad news, but it has just reached us from Vienna. The empress”—he broke off, realizing how ridiculously formal he was sounding at such a time.
“I am so sorry to tell you this, ma chère, but I thought I should be the one to break the news to you. Maria Theresa has …” and then with quiet simplicity he said the words that cracked my heart. “Your mother has died, Toinette.”
At that moment, my world ceased to spin. I shivered, releasing a soul-shattering wail. My tears flowed copiously and my breath exploded in ragged gasps.
I knew Maman had felt ill for the past few weeks. I was aware, too, that she always worked herself to the point of exhaustion. But I had always thought her invincible, surviving smallpox and the births of sixteen children as she balanced the extraordinary pressures of governing a vast empire, fending off foreign enemies, and often crossing swords with my brother Joseph. She had never made my life easy, but she made it what it became. I was queen of the most glamorous and sophisticated court in Europe because of her indefatigable efforts to solidify an alliance with the French.
Louis reached over and stroked my hair, endeavoring to soothe me as he spoke. “The note we received from the emperor stated that she had caught a chill on the twenty-fourth of last month. She took to her bed with an inflammation of the lungs, but her physician Herr Stork feared that this time she would not be able to conquer the illness. Forty-eight hours before the end she gave her blessing to her absent children, reciting them by name in the order of their birth. Herr Stork writes that Her Imperial Majesty paused just before your name, and after a moment’s silence, shouted with all her breath, ‘Marie Antoinette, Queen of France!’ ”
A cry escaped my throat. My hand flew to my mouth.
Louis softly continued. “She requested that last rites be performed on November twenty-eighth and departed this world for a better one on the following evening at nine o’clock. Your brother was at her bedside; she expired in his arms.”
Today was the sixth of December; it had taken fully a week for Joseph’s letter to reach us. I clenched my fists and shut my eyes. Although she had often visited Papa’s tomb in the Kaisergruft and looked forward to the day when they would be reunited, I did not wish to picture Maman cold and stiff and still. Instead, I searched my memory for reminiscences of our happiest times: the arrival of Louis XV’s formal offer of his grandson’s hand in marriage; the first visit of Générale Krottendorf after so long a wait. Maman’s letters from Vienna had angered me as often as they delighted me, for so many of them bore endless scoldings and warnings; but the realization that she would never pen another, and that she had left me adrift amid a sea of enemies without further benefit of her guidance, wisdom, and experience, was too much to bear.
I didn’t think I was capable of rising from the sofa; wracked with convulsions, I had lost the will to go on. How could I face the frivolous courtiers of Versailles the following morning as if I had not received such a blow? The thought of masquerades and games of blindman’s buff seemed absurd. Although I was as near to collapse as I had ever been, Louis managed to convey me to my bedchamber, where I hurled myself upon the mattress and buried my face in the silk coverlet, staining it with weeping as I sobbed myself to sleep.
In the middle of the night, troubled by my thoughts, I left my bed and lit a candle, placing it on a table near my bedside. Opening a portable writing desk, I sharpened a quill and uncapped the ink, penning a note to Joseph on the stationery embossed with my cipher.
Utterly crushed by the most dreadful misfortune, I cannot stop crying as I write this. Oh, my brother—my friend! You are all that is left to me in a country that is, that always will be, dear to me! I beg you to please take care of yourself, watch over yourself: you owe it to all your subjects; to me. Adieu, mon très cher frère. I have stained the page with so many tears that I can no longer read what I write. I kiss you. Remember, we are your friends, your allies. Love me.
NINETEEN
My Greatest Dream Fulfilled
1781
In the wake of Maman’s death I departed for le Petit Trianon, seeking solace and privacy. And as the months progressed I absented myself with greater frequency from the superficial, if glittering, world of the court. The delights of gossip and fripperies had lost their luster and now seemed a discordant frivolity, an insult to my grief.
Our prayers had been answered as well, and both the king and I admitted our surprise at my ability to conceive within a few months of my miscarriage. Although perhaps it was purely my perception, I seemed to be increasing at a more rapid rate than I had previously done. Rose Bertin’s lightweight muslin gaulles, with their puffed sleeves and ruffled décolletés, suited both my condition and my moods, for only the pastoral atmosphere of Trianon, which I was continually improving in an effort to recapture the essence of my Viennese summers, could soothe me.
One crisp April afternoon, I summoned Jean-Louis Fargeon to Trianon to create a fragrance for me that would distill the spirit of my beloved little idyll. The trees and shrubs were coming into bloom. “Having experienced, of late, so much loss, the reassurance that the world will become green again after so many bleak days is a comfort to me,” I confessed, as we wandered through the gardens. “Smell that,” I said, inhaling deeply. “It’s so clean and pure.” Glancing below the wide pink sash wound about my midsection I sighed. “Another new beginning.”
Fargeon, a dapper little man seven years my elder, nodded deferentially. “And may I convey my felicitations and wishes for your continued good health, Majesté.”
“This is the scent I would like you to create for me with your perfect nose,” I said, spreading my arms as if to embrace my entire estate within them. “Top notes from the lawns and gardens, middle notes from the bosky woods and grottoes, and the scents of the interior of the petit château at the bottom.”
I showed him my rose-modèles, where all my favorite varieties grew along white trellises, nine feet long. Then we strolled over to a moss-covered bench facing the Belvedère, my bright and airy little pavilion, and I invited Monsieur Fargeon to sit beside me and soak in the view. He took a small leather-bound book and a stub of pencil from his pocket and began to scribbl
e a few lines. The pale yellow jonquils were already in bloom, and the bearded irises would come in soon enough. Lilac bushes, roses, and myrtle abounded. At night, the sultry fragrance of jasmine wafted through the trees, and with the warmer weather approaching I would be taking moonlit walks again, serenaded by nightingales. Even when I strolled alone, meaning that I was discreetly shadowed by a pair of footmen, I found release there. “And this, all of this, is what I wish you to capture and bottle for me so that wherever I may be, when I wear it, I am at le Petit Trianon.”
I was almost loath to return indoors, for the day was such a glorious one, but I noticed the perfumer taking note of the various aromas within the rooms—polished wood, citrus, and beeswax. Meeting another client, the princesse de Guéméné, who had introduced me to his products, Monsieur Fargeon bowed in greeting and said hello to her little charge, ma petite “Mousseline la Sérieuse,” who was studiously learning her alphabet.
I stopped to listen for a few moments, partially hidden by a screen so that I would not interrupt the lesson. After she had recited her A to Zed without a single error I revealed myself and gaily applauded her. “Très bien, Marie Thérèse! You are coming along much more quickly than your maman ever did!”
I could tell that Monsieur Fargeon was amused by the sartorial resemblance of mother, child, and gouvernante, in our filmy white gaulles and pastel-colored sashes. In fact there was no way to distinguish attendant from monarch, for not only were our frocks unadorned with furbelows, but it was not the fashion to accessorize them with a multitude of jewelry. About my neck, instead of diamonds, pearls, or a riot of precious gems, was a pink velvet ribbon with a cameo in the center, depicting me holding an infant.
“Every woman in Paris is wearing gowns like this,” the perfumer remarked. “They are calling them ‘chemises à la Reine.’ My wife already owns one and she has asked me for the money to buy two more, for the muslin is so delicate that it cannot withstand too many wearings. But she, too, is with child, and is certain the dresses will be more comfortable than a rigidly boned bodice. As for me”—he chuckled and shook his head—“forgive my bluntness, Majesté, but I see many women in my shop, from princesses to demimondaines, and I do not understand why great ladies who can afford the finest fabrics would choose to look like peasants. Or exactly like one another, for that matter,” he added. Aristocrats had long complained that courtesans frequented the same milliners, seamstresses, and modistes, but at least with an inexhaustible supply of textiles and furbelows in every color under the sun, a woman could display her personal taste. The new fashion for these flimsy white dresses confused him. It would be as if all the women in France wore the exact same scent.
After I had finished conducting Monsieur Fargeon through the château we returned to the Belvedère, not only because I had forgotten to speak with him about its interior décor, which I wished to devote entirely to flowers and fragrances, but because I wished for privacy, as I had an additional commission to give him. “I would like you to create a unique toilet water for a gentleman,” I told Fargeon.
He scratched his powdered head. “I could devise any number of blends from hundreds of ingredients, but I would know better where to begin if you were to tell me something about his personality.”
I paused for a few moments, not because I did not have a ready reply, but because I feared saying too much. “The recipient is very elegant,” I said simply. “But with nothing of the dandy about him. He is virile, as virile as one can possibly be.”
And always in my thoughts and nightly prayers, forever in my heart.
Along the banks of the Seine at the Château de Bellevue where Mesdames tantes, the king’s maiden aunts, had retired after the death of their father Louis XV, the trio, removed from the hubbub and glitter of Versailles, held their own far more informal court. At first their visitors were from the old guard, their intimes in the days of the late king; but as the mocking young queen had alienated many courtiers from the most ancient families of France by ostracizing them from her own intimate circle, Mesdames eventually amassed a devoted coterie, all of whom shared a single-minded hatred of l’Autrichienne, as Madame Adélaïde herself had secretly dubbed Marie Antoinette after pretending to take the innocent dauphine under her protective wing. Presided over by the three embittered princesses, Bellevue had become a satellite court where médisance was always on the menu and the chief subject of most of the backbiting and rumormongering was the queen.
So when a delegation of silk merchants from Lyon sought protectors, and petitioned Mesdames for an audience, they were welcomed with smiles and fine wines. Six men from the biggest factories in the city arrived wearing the fruits of their labors on their backs, richly embroidered suits sewn from mouthwatering textiles of all textures—satiny and slubbed, matte and moiré, damask and brocade.
“In a sentence, madame la princesse, we have come to ask you to speak to the king on our behalf,” declared their spokesman, Monsieur Bouleau, to Madame Adélaïde. “This new fashion of Her Majesty’s to attire herself like a dairymaid is threatening our livelihood. No one is buying silks anymore because they all wish to adopt the queen’s new mode of simplicity.”
“Orders are down considerably,” interjected one of his confederates, sucking on his teeth. “The tailleurs and seamstresses only want muslin now.”
“And we cannot sustain ourselves merely on the yardage used to make sashes.”
“Of course you will continue to have our patronage.” The corpulent Madame Victoire, swathed, furbelowed, ruched, and beribboned in a considerable amount of satin, offered the men some cold roast meats. She arched an eybrow. “Is it true what I have read: that women are taking lovers to pay for their dresses because they have already bankrupted their husbands in order to imitate the queen?”
“In that case she is corrupting the morals of France,” Madame Sophie interjected tartly.
“Pardon, messieurs, but I cannot help but be amused, for that’s what everyone said when she was spending so extravagantly on silken confections,” Madame Adélaïde snickered. Not bothering to conceal her sarcasm, she added, “Poor lady; condemned for dressing opulently, and damned now for looking like she has forgotten to dress at all.”
“You should ask where the muslin comes from,” Madame Sophie whispered into her older sister’s ear. She darted a wary gaze from one merchant to the other, looking as though she feared one of them might lunge forward and touch her.
The question was put to the delegation. “The muslin mills are in Flanders—the Austrian Netherlands,” said Monsieur Bouleau.
Madame Adélaïde considered his reply. “Then perhaps Her Majesty is not as stupid as I believed, for every chemise à la Reine that is produced enriches the coffers of her brother, the Holy Roman Emperor. What conclusions might one draw from a Queen of France who pretends to have forgotten her mother tongue and yet chiefly concerns herself with the interests of Austria? I am sure people might be curious to know the origin of these charming muslin gowns that the queen has ensured are all the mode.” The princesse extended her hand, sheathed in a scented glove, to the silk merchant. “And, as the daughter of a king, I give you my pledge, monsieur, that they will.” She smiled serenely. One word to the duc d’Orléans and his son and it was as good as done.
OCTOBER 22, 1781
My labor pains commenced on the morning of October 22; but this time, although etiquette demanded that the birth be properly witnessed, I refused to have a noisome throng crowding about me. Courtiers and other curious souls had begun to crowd the State Rooms and galleries of Versailles that morning, but my bedchamber door was locked, shut to all but an exclusive few; and this time the windows were open. Mesdames tantes were in attendance, of course, as were my primary ladies in waiting: Lamballe, Guéméné, the princesse de Chimay, and a trio of comtesses—d’Ossun, de Tavannes, and de Mailly. The comte d’Artois was there as well, and although it was de rigueur for him to attend, given his rank, his presence would unfortunately fan the flames of
the gossipmongers, who required little tinder as it was. If they cared about whose bed the comte was really warming in his hours of leisure, they might look no further than the boudoir of Gabrielle de Polignac’s sister-in-law Diane.
Unlike the ordeal surrounding the birth of my daughter, the atmosphere in the room was more like that of a party than a circus. A little white delivery bed, surmounted by a coroneted canopy whose bed hangings had been tied into swags so that the witnesses’ view would not be obscured, was set up within my bedchamber. It was cozier than the vast bed of state; and in it I felt more like any other mother and less like a national symbol.
The torment of giving birth was not nearly as arduous as it had been the first time, but as I had nearly expired after pushing Madame Royale into the world, they did not tell me right away whether I had given birth to a boy or a girl for fear that I would make myself sick with weeping. The baby was cleaned and loosely wrapped in a soft blanket before I could discern anything; I tried to read my ladies’ faces. I did recall that the comtesse de Mailly rushed out of the room, somewhat disheveled and excited, for Louis had not been there at the moment when our second child was born at 1:15 that afternoon.
I sank back against the pillows; Monsieur Vermond, the accoucheur, felt my pulse. I was relieved that this time the surgeon’s services had not been necessary, and allowed myself a little smile of triumph, as my preferences for a quieter, cooler room had yielded healthier results than the French court’s age-old etiquette had done during my first delivery. But still, I was longing to know about my child. “You see how reasonable I am,” I assured the medical men. “Monsieur Vermond himself can attest that I am quite calm.”