Little

by Edward Carey

  M. le Roux, Bibliothécaire de Mad. Elisabeth

  Mlle. Payan, Lectrice

  M. Simon, Maître de Clavecin

  M. Boilly, Maître de la Harpe

  Mlle. Grosholtz, Maîtresse de Cire

  I studied this page a great deal. In solitary moments, I read it out loud to myself. And soon, not long after it appeared, I found myself at last in the presence of the queen.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Small incidents connected to a National Event.

  It began in the early hours of the morning with the ringing of the bells of the Chapel Royal, of Saint Cyr, of all the churches of Versailles, followed by the arrival of the Princesse de Lamballe in our corridor. I opened my cupboard a little and peeked out from my mound of blankets. It was December, we were under the weather of Guéméné, and I was very cold. With my bedding wrapped about me, I saw the astonished princess arrive with a great deal of fuss, trailed by servants and women, all looking alarmed.

  “Madame Elisabeth!” she cried, knocking on her bedchamber door. “The queen! The queen is in labor!”

  In our own small way, Elisabeth and I had already been preparing for the coming expansion of the royal family. We had made some twelve small wax babies, laying them out in a perfect line—a dormitory of them—in Saint Cyr. We set all other requests aside for a while; the birth of the royal child was all we could possibly consider. “Everyone in the palace,” Elisabeth said, “is quite desperate with expectation.” And now at last the moment had arrived, and the bells were sounding, and so was the Princesse de Lamballe.

  As Lamballe scurried off in a state of high agitation (something like a bony chicken shrieking through a farmyard), our corridor bustled with activity. Sitting in my open cupboard, still in my nightdress and sleeping bonnet, I dangled my legs off my shelf, pulled my blankets about me, and peered off to my left and then my right. The cracked windows along the corridor had been sealed off from the winter cold, but this was only partially successful; when I breathed, I could see the results.

  At length Elisabeth appeared, fully dressed and trailed by three of her ladies. As she made her way toward the place for royal births, the servants on either side of the corridor bowed as she passed. I bowed too, but Elisabeth stopped.

  “Oh, my body, my heart, what are you doing? I shall need you today more than any other. You must dress yourself and quickly too. Should the queen need our prayers, you must hurry to our workroom and quickly assemble in wax a little baby to be rushed to Saint Cyr. Do stir yourself, my heart, my person!”

  And so, on the day of the birth of the first child of Marie-Antoinette of Austria and Louis XVI of France, I dressed myself in public, in that chilly corridor, with many looking upon me and urging me to hurry. When I was ready—and not a moment too soon, they made quite clear—little Elisabeth marched on, intent on being an aunt. I brought up the rear of her procession, just behind the Marquise des Monstiers-Mérinville. The farther we traveled, the harder we must push, for the whole palace was desperate to be as close as possible to the birth of the new Bourbon. Elisabeth, being the king’s sister, caused a parting in the sea of people, and Moses-like we pressed on, the waves of people crashing back behind us as soon as we passed. I felt the palace, not without pleasure at first, growing warmer and warmer as we journeyed toward its center. The population had been moving in since the bells sounded, people growing thicker and thicker and louder and louder and hotter and hotter the closer to the birth room we progressed.

  The hottest location of all—a baker’s oven of a place—was the queen’s bedchamber that very early morning, and the hottest part of that boiling address, the very red burning coal of the Palace of Versailles, was the swollen belly of Queen Marie-Antoinette. French law mandated that various selected people must sit in on the queen’s birth to ensure that the child born was genuinely from the queen’s womb.

  We were in time. The child had not yet arrived. Elisabeth took a seat near the front, with other important personages upon chairs with armrests; only benches had been provided for lesser attendees. I was left to fend for myself. I could not yet see Elisabeth’s eldest brother, the prospective father, the king himself, but he must be somewhere in the room. I squeezed around, pushing a little against some very noble sightseers, until I had a tolerable view. There—at last—I saw before me Maria Antonia Josepha Joanna, or Marie-Antoinette, or the Queen of France.

  The royal head was sweating under the strains of the moment. It was a long head with pale blue eyes, rather far apart: I lost sight of it, then by maneuvering a little found it again. A sizable prominence of aquiline nose, a lower lip that stuck out rather more than the upper, a nicely rounded chin: once more I lost sight, then found it again. Above all else, a great expanse of forehead, covered at this moment with many beads of sweat. In that hot bedchamber, I had quite forgotten my chill of the morning, or that this was December.

  The queen sat up, causing a good stirring from all around, as we all strained to see her better. What a creature! What a long white neck. What sloping shoulders. But then she took a gulp of air and lay back down—to another stirring from the populace—and I lost her entirely from sight.

  I looked around for a place where I might be guaranteed a good view. There were no windowsills, and the few benches in front of the windows had already been taken. In that busy room with all its objects—mostly people by now—there seemed to me only one place where I could be guaranteed a truly unrestricted view. In one corner sat a mahogany chest rising five feet from the ground, an object with a top, which I might term a roof, and I thought I might happily sit myself there and observe all without fear of visual interruption. I tried to climb up its marquetry walls, but they were highly varnished and I didn’t get far up before slipping down. I tried to open the drawers, thinking I might climb them like steps, but they were locked, the object holding its five jaws firmly shut. And yet I was certain this was the place for me. I waited anxiously, and all the while still more people came in, and I could see less and less of the queen, gathering only that I had not missed anything very much; she had not yet said more than a few muffled sentences, and the royal people nearest her had made only a few muffled replies, but there was no yelling nor any screaming of baby, so I was certain I still had time.

  At last my opportunity arose. There was a great commotion—not the birth moment, but a sudden scramble to secure the tapestry in the room, lest the crowd somehow dislodge it and send it toppling atop the queen. There was a deal of fussing, and almost everyone stood, and I seized the moment to borrow a chair and drag it over to the chest, where I added to my height by standing upon it. At last I managed to heave myself onto the roof of the chest. And there it was.

  A perfect uninhibited view.

  There were by now more than fifty inside the room, I could see them. The queen lay in her bed, surrounded by doctors and her family, talking a little and trying to pretend, I think, that there was no great crowd of people waiting for her to entertain them. And so we all waited, and we watched the region of that hot belly, which was covered at the moment by loose sheets, but still nothing happened. After a time my gaze wandered about the golden room, and I began to study the crowd of nobles beneath me. Cravats had been loosened; every forehead was clammy; ladies jerked fans about them; makeup began to run. The Princesse de Lamballe, in the second row, looked particularly agitated by the warmth. Then, quite close to the front, I saw someone I recognized: it was my friend, the palace locksmith! How wonderful, I thought, that this man so beloved by the people of Versailles should be permitted entrance to such an event.

  Then Queen Antoinette made a loud groan, and the real performance began.

  There was much activity and much noise from Antoinette, and much advice given by the doctors, and the Princesse de Lamballe began to look extremely white. People whispered to themselves, shifting about to attend better every gasp and moan, every push and wince, every strain and gasp
of the queen. The poor woman puffed and panted and went very red in the face and heaved and yelled, and yet no child was forthcoming. The baby would not come out, indeed it stayed inside a good while longer, and during the intervening moments of quietness, as the poor queen lay panting, the audience sat down again and talked among themselves, only to be roused to their feet again by groans from the queen. So it went on, the audience rising and falling with the tides of the queen’s labor, until at last, sometime after eleven o’clock, a baby began to appear.

  Soon there was a whole red head, and then a pink-and-red body, and two arms and two legs. And with it, to much joy, came the baby’s first noise. Up there on the roof of a chest, I thought to myself, I know that: there’s the umbilical cord, just as Doctor Curtius said it would be, and there’s the mucus membrane he spoke of—and there, after a while, as my master had described, there was the placenta! How marvelous it was! What new lessons I was learning! What miracles may a woman perform: look, look at the new life come out of her!

  The room had grown fearfully hot and filled with an awful reek of vinegar and essences, on account of the doctors. I had undone my bonnet and loosened my dress, and many other people had made similar adjustments. During those last moments, as the baby came out into the world, the audience pressed farther and farther forward. But as soon as the child was free it was hurried out in cloths by the medical scrum; the king must have been among them, I suppose, though by the time I thought to look he was nowhere to be seen. Then, after the room had cleared a bit, I was able to see the queen once more. Suddenly she had become only the second most important person in the drama. She had grown appallingly white, I saw, and I wondered if she had perhaps died—there was certainly blood on the sheets—until she sat up and called out through the heat.

  And no one noticed.

  The audience was clapping and clapping, for nature is such an astonishing thing, especially when it applies itself to a queen. But then the audience began to worry, very much out loud, what sex the child was, whether a boy or a girl, a Dauphin or Dauphine. And the word began to go around in a whisper, a disappointed whisper: “a daughter, a daughter, a daughter, a daughter.”

  But no one noticed the queen.

  From my perch atop the chest, I waved to get people’s attention. “The queen!” I called out. “The queen!” For I could see, from my vantage point, that Her Majesty was having convulsions.

  And still no one noticed.

  In a moment, someone else had. The Princesse de Lamballe, always very pale, always on the brink of fainting, her hands flailing wildly about, had seen the queen, but traumatized as she was, she was unable to get the words out. Standing up, I suppose, to try to collar someone and alert them to the danger, Lamballe began to totter, and those great eyes began to go blank, and then she collapsed in a great swoon, falling backward and knocking into whatever was in her path, which was quite a lot, and which caused several loud crashes, and this had the result of centering everyone’s attention on the collapsed princess, distracting even further from the troubled queen.

  And so it was only after the Princesse de Lamballe was carried out, and I became quite desperate with my hand-waving, that at last someone noticed me. It was the locksmith. Standing right there, in the thick of the crowd, he couldn’t hear me through the deafening noise, but I caught his eye and pointed urgently to the queen. Seeing Her Majesty suffocating upon the maternity bed, he launched himself bravely through the crowd, but not in the direction of the queen; rather, he set out in the opposite way—perhaps this was all to do with their no-touching rule, and he could think of no other way to be useful—pushing people aside until he reached the windows, sealed like those in my corridor against the winter cold. With his brute strength, he started to strip the seals away, and at last the locksmith had them open and fresh air was coming in. Then many other people, of a lesser bravery and lesser strength, tugged other windows open, and December came hurrying. But those other people had no idea quite why the locksmith was ripping the windows open; they seemed to think it was to call out to the crowds in the courtyards below; and so now the heroic locksmith had to force himself back through the room to reach the queen where she lay still upon her bed, very white, sheets soaked with blood for all to see. And all did see then.

  Great commotion followed; hot water was called for but never arrived; the doctors prodded Her white Majesty, at first to no effect. They began to bleed her from her foot. They drew five saucers full, which I suppose was considered the correct amount, and at last the queen showed some life. And all this time the locksmith, hero of the moment, never left her side. There were tears, unmistakable tears, in his eyes. Was she dead? But at last the queen gasped, and all was well again. And the locksmith looked enormously relieved. He put his handkerchief to his face to hide his tears. It had all been very exciting indeed.

  When the locksmith stood up from the bed, people bowed to him, out of thanks, I supposed. Then I saw him turn around and look at me, and, very briefly, nod. The bowing continued, and it was only then that I began to understand something new, something incredible.

  The queen had married a locksmith.

  The locksmith she had married was called Louis XVI.

  I wanted to cheer. I wanted to tell someone. But who could I tell? I couldn’t tell Edmond. Who then? I made up my mind to write to my master to inform him, to tell Jacques about this very opposite of a hanging, but then came the worry: if I did write, Doctor Curtius would be reminded of me, and the widow would wonder why I had not yet secured permission to model the queen. Still, how marvelous it was: I knew the king! I did! Little! And so I did a little clap, just as Curtius would.

  This king I knew, this king I had almost shared pastry with, now called for the room to be cleared at once. The queen was to be left alone. Everyone was ushered out. This king, my roof companion, my umbrella sharer, had his servants rush everyone from the place and then rushed off himself, in his unsteady gait, to be with his little daughter. By the time I looked for her, taken as I was with my extraordinary discovery, I saw that Elisabeth and her ladies had already gone. They had left me there.

  When the nursemaids came in, the queen called out for her baby. They calmed her. The baby, they said, was perfectly healthy. She wished to see him, to see the new Bourbon, the heir to France she had produced. No, they told her, not an heir, not at all, a girl, a daughter, not an heir, I’m afraid, yes, we are sure, madame, a girl, a very pink, healthy girl, but a girl all the same, yes, yes, we are quite certain. And then the queen, exhausted from the day and the crowds and the result, began to weep.

  I had a suspicion then that I no longer belonged in this room. It was becoming a private place. And yet I remained, the last member of a very noisy public. I thought to leave, and yet before me at last was the queen, and she was less busied now, things were getting quieter all the while, so I wondered if now, after all, might in fact be the time to approach her for a casting. Not to be done instantly, of course, but perhaps I could make an appointment for Doctor Curtius. These opportunities, after all, do not happen every day. The room was growing quieter and quieter, the queen’s sobbing grew more controlled, and I counted this a sign that the moment was propitious. I quietly clambered down, dropping the last few feet to the floor, with a little bump. This little bump caused the eyes of the queen to open and look at me. I smiled and took a few steps toward my goal, grinning now I suppose, almost laughing, but before I could make my gentle proposal, the queen opened her mouth and uttered these very inappropriate words:

  “A devil! A very devil!”

  And all hope was gone with me in an instant. I was frightened, and she increased this fright by screaming, and in a torment of upset, of cruel disappointment and horror, I rushed from the screaming locksmith’s wife through the doors, through the remaining people, all the way to my cupboard. I hurled myself inside, slammed the doors behind me, and hid under the blankets.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-
NINE

  A servant and a king.

  Far from the cramped darkness of my own cupboard, closer to the core of the palace even than the queen’s bedchamber, I found myself two days later. Never show your back, bow down, speak when spoken to, do not approach closer than three and a half feet, certainly do never touch. I had met the king before and had even felt quite relaxed on those occasions; I had conversed with him freely and had even once shared a portion of his overcoat; but then the king had simply been the palace locksmith, one of many in France, thousands I should imagine, since so many people insist on locking things away from other people. But there is only ever one king to a country. That is a rule. Otherwise bloodshed.

  I had seen portraits of the king; his profile was stamped upon every French coin. But the king’s head on coins and the king’s head eating pastry seemed to have very little resemblance, and so I had not known him.

  Nevertheless, at this moment, His Majesty the King of France Louis XVI by the Grace of God was sitting in a chair before me.