Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette

by Sena Jeter Naslund

  The Emperor left me with very serious words:

  I tremble not only for your happiness, but for your safety. I have seen enough in this country to know that the finances and welfare of the state are in a desperate condition. Your marriage and the lack of an heir is also a desperate matter. In the long run, perhaps much sooner than anyone apprehends, it will be impossible for France to continue as it has. The revolution will be cruel, and I am sorry to say that it will be of your own making.

  A BATH, 18 AUGUST 1777

  Sometimes the water in the bath is of such a compatible temperature that it is bliss to submerge my body in the fragrant liquid. I wonder if, before the Fall, the waters of Eden were just as these, and that of all Eve’s pleasures, walking among the open flowers and fondling the rounded fruits of the garden, perhaps Eve preferred bathing. My attendants always test the water, so that it is neither very much too hot or very much too cool, but they cannot regulate the water to a temperature that is consistently perfect because they do not take into account the temperature of my skin. This morning the water feels like warmed silk.

  Lifting up the hem of my gauze bathing dress, I point my toes down as my foot enters my bath. The water-smoothness creeps over my arch and encloses my ankle like the finest stocking and then up my leg almost to the knee. Then the other foot follows, and I stand in a medium that is slightly warmer than myself. My calves feel gladly surrounded. The temperature is so close to the heat of my own body that the flesh does not in the slightest flinch back. The warmth of summer air gives way to the more congenial warmth of water. As I lower myself entirely into this universe of comfort, the aroma of attar of rose with tincture of orange is released. When I am seated in my bath, I cannot resist raking my fingers forward in the water to further liberate the fragrance.

  I submerge the globular sea sponge until its cells and fissures are filled with warmth, and then my attendant squeezes water from the sponge over my back, and next she rubs my shoulders and spine with a circular stroke that stimulates the circulation and makes me want yet another pass of the warm wet sponge, and another. My flesh develops an appetite for the motion of the sponge, and then I take it from my attendant and stroke my bare neck and then my breasts, myself.

  With a hand cloth of silk, my attendant follows the trail of the sponge to smooth away any roughness. By scooting my buttocks forward in the tub, I submerge myself up to my neck. The thin fabric of my bathing dress floats around me like a gossamer lily pad. Now my knees break the water before me and rise up like round-top twin mountains. My breasts are buoyed up, and my entire body wants to float. Feeling like a fish at play—or a mermaid—I twirl myself in the warmth so that my breasts hang down into the water and twirl around again. My bathing dress twists around my body. If only I had a lovely emerald green tail to splash!—though I make quite a nice splash in my rotation.

  I see my attendants are smiling at my play, but their smiles are ones of understanding. They too would like to cavort in water of perfect temperature, smoothness, and scent.

  “Some moonlit night,” I say, “we should join the statues bathing the horses of Apollo. We could stand in the waterfall and imagine—”

  “The King is passing,” my attendant suddenly whispers. “He is walking back and forth, just outside the door.” For just a moment, I imagine she refers to the old King, Louis XV, whose luminous eye always took on a new luster when he beheld unexpected feminine beauty, even when I was fifteen and quite flat.

  “Let him come in,” I reply.

  Skillfully, she opens the door as he passes, and with the same gesture my attendants slip silently away.

  The King stands in the open door and looks at me; my hair pinned atop my head hangs half-loosened in wet ringlets. Placing my hands on the sides of the tub, I suddenly rise, my muslin gown quite transparent and clinging to my body. The water rushes off me, as though I am a living fountain.

  “Would you be so kind as to help me,” I say, and I hold out my hand.

  Gallantly, my husband holds out his hand to steady me as I step over the high edge of the bath. The water from my gown and body streams onto the floor.

  “Who was the consort of Neptune?” he asks. “You resembled her, lounging against the high back of the tub as though it were a watery throne.”

  “Toinette, my Lord,” I answer and slowly lower my eyes to half-mast, as I have seen the du Barry do a hundred times. “A towel, please, Your Majesty?”

  “First, let me help you with your wet garb,” he answers.

  Tenderly he pushes the loose wet sleeve over my shoulder, on one side and then the other. I raise my shoulders from the slumping bodice so that my bare breasts emerge. Slowly, I sit down on the edge of the tub behind me, the wet muslin falling over my lap. The King kneels, with no regard for the puddles on the floor, and takes my pink nipple into his mouth. Here is real bliss, beyond the lapping warmth of water. My bosom heaves, my head tilts back, and I know that I am panting.

  Finally I say—I can hardly speak—“My other breast is dying of jealousy.”

  Glancing up, he smiles happily, and encloses the tender pinkness of my other nipple.

  Soon he rises, and holding his hand, I too rise. With a gentle hand, my husband shoves the sodden gown down my thighs to wreath my feet. When I step on the fabric, I feel water squish between my toes. Wearing nothing more than the blue ribbon tying up my hair, I follow him as he hands me a towel and leads me to our bed.

  MY DEAR MOTHER

  Every fiber of my being thrills with happiness. Complete happiness. It has been more than a week ago that my marriage was completely consummated. I do not think I am pregnant yet but now I have hope based on the fact that I may be.

  TO HONOR THE KING, THE OPENING OF THE NEW GARDENS AT TRIANON

  I am giving a night fete, and I am sending word to everyone to collect objects to be sold. For this fete, we will contrive a fair throughout the grounds surrounding my little pleasure house! Yes, a fair such as country people might hold at the end of summer when the harvest is starting to come in. But we will have shops wherein we sell not butter and eggs and cheese, but precious objects—bracelets and feathers of exotic birds, ribbons and jeweled buckles, vases and brooches. Everyone must sell something that she knows others have much admired, and the proceeds will be given for charitable needs. Yes, a country fair! But with all the elegance and finery of the court on display. The ladies of the court themselves shall tend the shops, and I shall dress as the proprietress of a café.

  My friends can serve such pastries that the King always relishes, and for once I shall allow him to buy and feast on all the dainties that he wishes. Perhaps I shall even charge him for a kiss, which I believe he will now bestow with hearty goodwill and not a touch of embarrassment!

  By planning this open-air fair, a late summer night’s fete, we will let the people know that we wish them to share in our joy, that we do not selfishly contain our happiness in cloistered chambers hung with velvet but that we bring it outdoors, under the night sky illumined with torches, for all to enjoy. We make the night into day.

  I myself, dressed like a peasant girl, will pour from my pitcher into the flagons of all my friends the bounty of the earth—spiced cider will be the wholesome brew, stirred with sticks of rarest cinnamon, and at the top of each whorled stick I shall have affixed a pearl of some size and value, as a memento of when the King and Queen rejoiced in their marriage, and the Queen thanked the King for his great gift to her not only of the small palace of Trianon but also for the gardens, recast, as they bloomed with abandon and profusion.

  And music! Yes, the French Guard shall supply its musicians, who will twiddle and toot and blow and bow, and drum and tee-dum till ears overflow—and nostrils are full of fragrance of flowers, and eyes fill till they blear with beauty as offered by nature and artifice, and hearts burgeon with happiness.

  The King’s seed is within me. Soon I may be pregnant.

  MADAME, MY DEAR DAUGHTER

  The gazettes and
other sources tell me that your mania for gambling is worse than ever, and worst of all you stay up very late, when the King likes to go to bed early. Your brother has said all that needs to be said on the subject of gambling, and I say no more. You are losing money that the King and you could put to much better use, and you should forbid gambling at court. Everyone knows you are losing vast sums and that your finances are exhausted, and that you spend all your time whispering into the greedy ear of the Comtesse de Polignac, who encourages you in all your dissipations and causes you to ignore everyone else at court. You must not isolate yourself from the nobility. Your brother is greatly worried about the state of France, and the day may come when you will need all the loyalty of the nobility and the loyalties that they command on their own estates to surround you and protect you.

  Your brother is even more savage about the future of France.

  The news of your completion in your marriage has filled me with joy, but I am very sorry to learn that the King does not like to sleep with you throughout the night—not of course just for the matter of having children, but because sleeping in the same bed promotes unity and trust, which is also of spiritual importance. Write to me every month about your period. I fear that often my young Queen forgets to account for this most important matter. I do not forbid you at this point to ride horses as long as you are not astride, but do not get overheated. The jolts of a carriage can be worse than riding.

  I do indeed gently kiss my dear little woman whom I love, and whose essential goodness I never doubt.

  MADAME, MY MOST DEAR MOTHER

  Though it is well into October now and we have been at Fontainebleau for eight days, I often feel overheated and take many baths to cool myself. The King has had a bad cold since we arrived, but his health does not keep him from hunting every day. I do understand the importance of our spending the entire night together, but it takes time to change his habits. I am quite willing to sacrifice my entertainments in order to keep him company. I know better now about how to spend my time which is filled with reading and needlework.

  I truly love my embroidery, as it puts me in a kind of trance. I am not transported into another world as I am at the theater or even when I read an engaging book, but I enter a deep, still place within myself as I create flowers in thread. I feel calm and happy, which is a good balance for the thrill of the gaming table, though I gamble much less now and only in my own apartment; instead, I often play billiards.

  More important, I have started drawing again, and knowing how you have always treasured the artwork of Marie Christine, I hope that I may one day draw a scene worthy of sending to you. Even here at Fontainebleau, I am visited by two music masters, one in voice and one in harp, and my harp teacher tells me that I can sight-read music for the harp in a way worthy of a professional musician. I like to play music that is expressive of my mood, and, indeed, it amazes me how perfectly music embodies even the most intimate feelings of longing or of happiness.

  These are my dissipations—my diversions—and the French term dissipation properly cannot be construed in a moral sense, as the English construe it, should you have read in pamphlets about dissipations at court in which I would never dream of engaging. These pamphlets are not even the half-truths of gossip. They are vile fabrications.

  I hardly ever ride anymore because people think it stops one from having children, but I am sure that it does not hurt. Nonetheless, I am now cautious about anything that can be misconstrued as insensitivity on my part to the future happiness of this country. I cannot tell you how much it hurts me that enemies have tried to destroy the love that the French people showered on me so abundantly when I first came to France. I do not jar myself with riding during my period—not even in a well-sprung carriage.

  Happily, my brother Ferdinand writes that he is well and that Joseph has kept him current on matters here and has given him an excellent report of me.

  MY DEAR DAUGHTER

  VIENNA, 5 NOVEMBER 1777

  Your letter of last month delighted me because it was full of important details. Be assured that I am never bored by the smallest detail because I care so much for your good health and good reputation. I am especially happy to hear about your music, your needlework, and above all your reading. Gambling is a terrible pleasure because it causes other bad behavior, and you cannot win, ultimately, at Pharaon, though the game bewitches you to continue to play and increases your desire to win, but honest players never win in the long run. If you add up the sums that you wager and lose, or that anyone does, you will find the mathematical truth of the matter.

  You are losing much of your popularity too, especially abroad, because people believe that you indulge yourself in reckless gambling while the country suffers for basic needs. I know that when you are at the gaming table you think of nothing else but winning, and you allow yourself to become overly excited and egged on by the almost bodily thrill that occurs when you either win or lose because gambling cultivates both immoderate joy and desperate desire and mingles and confuses these sensations. Away from the table, your mind is occupied about other matters, and so it is my duty, as one who dearly loves you, to ask you to rein in this habit, and if you do not do so, your mother will have to ask the King himself to save you from this great danger.

  It gladdens my heart that you ask for the painting of you dancing onstage with your brothers when you were a little innocent girl here, and I will send it to you to hang at the Petit Trianon, but first you must send me a portrait of yourself as you now appear, for which I have been waiting some eight years. As a mother, I long to see your face again.

  I am sorry that gossip says you do not maintain even the appearance of friendship with the Princesse de Lamballe but bestow all your favor on the Comtesse de Polignac, and that you even treat the Princesse de Lamballe in a way such that people can easily see—and that you want them to see—you are annoyed and bored by the company of someone known for her virtue.

  You must realize that the Polignac aligns herself with the Duc de Chartres and the Orléans family—who would like to be the rulers of France themselves. The princess is of Choiseul’s party, which is made up of people who favor the Alliance between our countries.

  MY VERY DEAR MOTHER

  I was beginning to have diarrhea, along with a cold, so I danced very little at the December balls, which are just beginning. I went to the ball but did not dance, which I’m sure my very dear Mother will be glad to hear.

  With horror, I reread what I have written to the Empress. I am ashamed. Never before have I allowed such a tone of impertinence and irony in my letters to her, no matter how I chafed under her criticism or control. I do not give this nasty little note to the courier.

  THE GÉNÉRALE IS TARDY! APRIL 1778

  Who can I tell?

  The Princesse de Lamballe would keep my secret; the Comtesse de Polignac would not. And somehow those two facts make it impossible to confide in either.

  In the old days, I would have run to the chambers of my aunts; I would have sat among the three of them while they petted and flattered me as though I were their prettiest lapdog; I would have sipped a cup of hot chocolate, and over its gilded rim, my lips would have formed the words, with no fanfare: “I believe I may be pregnant.” Then their happy trio of exclamations! Their discreet questions bursting at the seams with eager excitement to know all there was to be known. But I am no longer their pet. When I am not with them, I never think of them.

  This morning Rose Bertin, down on her knees, was measuring me around my hips. Suddenly she stopped, leaned closer to examine just which line marked the end of her measure. Then, with her thumb, she ran around the inside of the measuring tape to be sure it had not folded over or deviated in its path as it encircled my form. No, the tape made its usual smooth circuit. Just once she glanced up into my eyes. Was that a sad question I saw in her gaze? I said nothing.

  “Perhaps the mere breadth of a line bigger this week,” Rose said quietly.

  I said nothing, but
I felt my posture grow more erect, and I lifted my chin. No doubt I looked a haughty queen—as those who do not know me have accused me of appearing to be—but I knew I lifted my head and stretched tall my body to better fit into my destiny. I am a Hapsburg fulfilling the role prepared for me as the mother of the Children of France. Perhaps.

  I must not tell my own mother till I am sure. Have you seen the Générale Krottendorf? I might ask her, whimsically. She has not made her usual visit to Versailles this month. How the heart of the Empress would gallop at that question! But I will not cause her pulse to race for nothing. Too many times, I have expressed hope and had it come to naught.

  No more riding, she would say to me now. No, indeed, I would reply.

  But I have the urge to walk the grounds, to parade myself past the long line of statues and to encircle the fountains. I will take Elisabeth with me, my little sister whose devoted sweetness is as great as that of the Princesse de Lamballe, but who has much more sense, despite her youth. The formal paths of Le Nôtre’s old gardens are magnificent at least for their vast size, for what they lack in intimacy and unbounded joy. With Elisabeth, I am with family. Who better, at this moment, to walk beside me? Perhaps I carry the beginnings of a child within me who will someday behold these same rows of severely pruned trees and the careful edges that form the parterres which are as well-defined as scroll-figured carpets.