by Juliet Grey
The Countess von Waldheim approached my chair, her humorless reflection hoving into view. She had doused herself with lavender water that morning, and the aroma made me wish to close my eyes and go back to sleep. She extended her hand to me. Mops explored her fingertips with his moist black nose. “It is time to change, madame.”
I grinned and attempted a jest to relieve some of my own jittery nerves. “Haven’t I changed sufficiently for His Most Christian Majesty and Her Imperial Highness?”
“Your garments, madame.”
I gave my minder a puzzled look. “What is wrong with the ones I have on? Are they not pretty enough?”
“It was agreed that you must be reattired.”
“By whom?” I demanded. “Who has the right to tell me how to dress?” She did not answer me. Instead, I was escorted into the antechamber of the salle de remise, where I was surrounded by women of honor and ladies’ maids, garbed in peach and lilac, robin’s egg blue, buttercup, and apple green, like so many colorful spring blooms.
Three wardrobe trunks were opened, revealing only a fraction of my costly trousseau. With the sort of reverence reserved for vestments and chalices, my noble attendants removed a pair of silk stockings from Lyon, panniers and petticoats stitched in Tours, and a preposterously heavy grand habit de cour, a formal court gown fashioned of cloth of gold with a deep, square neckline that enhanced my still-modestly sized bosom. A ladder of blue silk bows descended the length of the stomacher and accented the fitted sleeves at the elbow, drawing the eye to the filmy and delicate engageantes.
A pair of gloved hands fitted the clasp of a choker fashioned from a triple strand of pearls as large as peas; this was a mere backdrop for the enhancer—a sapphire the size of a walnut, which was a gift from King Louis. Another minion knelt at my feet, sliding my insteps into slippers of shimmering satin with high heels and pale blue rosettes on the vamp. Long white gloves were smoothed over my arms.
My Austrian garments—the petal pink robe à l’anglaise and underskirt, and the underclothes I had donned upon awakening, as well as my ivory damasked shoes and pink kid gloves—disappeared into grasping hands, eliciting gleeful cries from those who succeeded in claiming them as souvenirs.
The women positioned a trio of cheval glasses enabling me to admire my reflection from all sides. I resembled a coruscating cream puff. Wide blue eyes gazed back at me, wearing the expression of a frightened fawn. Mops sniffed about the hem of my new gown in search of a familiar scent. I sank down into a deep plié, for I could scarcely bend at the waist, and scooped the pug into my arms. The bows on my bodice must have looked like bones to him and he began to take one of them in his tiny teeth.
“Ach, nein!” exclaimed the Countess von Waldheim, and reached for the dog. Mops flinched and I cradled him more tightly. “That, too,” said the countess, attempting another effort to remove him from my arms. “He is not among the possessions you are permitted to take with you into France.”
“What?” My voice was small and horrified. “But he is the dearest thing in the world to me.” Tears began to form in the corners of my eyes. If I gave them free rein they would snake down my cheeks like watery vines, marring my maquillage. Maman would have been appalled and embarrassed. But I couldn’t help it. Except for the abbé Vermond, I had traveled to France in the company of strangers; Mops had been my only comfort. “But he is my pet—my companion!” I clutched his sturdy body to my chest as a half dozen hands reached for him, stopping just short of my person.
“Your little Mopshund is a German dog,” someone said, as if to talk some sense into me. Well, of course he is German, you silly man (I very much wanted to reply).
“They have dogs in France, you know, madame la dauphine. I am sure that the king will make certain you are given a French dog to delight you.”
“But I don’t want a French dog. I want Mops,” I insisted. My lower lip trembled. They were really going to do it; they were going to take him from me.
“You may bring the gold watch your father gave you, but you may not take the hound.”
“Why the timepiece, but not my dog?” The words choked in my throat.
“Because your father was a Lorrainer—born in France,” the Countess von Waldheim replied testily, sensing the onset of a storm. “Well, what is now France,” she muttered under her breath. I was certain she was not relishing the idea of informing my mother that la dauphine displayed a violent fit of pique on the threshold of the salle de remise, humiliating the Hapsburg empire and staining her bodice with her tears.
For an instant I imagined upending Maman’s grand plans and changing the fate of an empire—if not all of Europe—for refusing to part with my pet. I could envision the shrieks and tears, the threats to immure me in a convent for the remainder of my days before yoking me, with tremendous embarrassment, to some minor prince from Saxony. Maman’s anger would be so enduring and intense that I would have wished myself a novitiate instead. But of course I was not permitted to alter my destiny. And of all the sacrifices I had made thus far, this moment was, if not the most painful, then surely the most shocking.
I feared they would do Mops some injury if they applied force to remove him from my arms. I buried my face in the thick fur of his neck stifling my sobs and darkening it with my tears. Inhaling his musty scent for one last time, I kissed the top of his boxy little head and gently, if reluctantly, handed him to the countess. In exchange I was given a linen handkerchief and a few minutes to compose myself.
The door to the salle de remise was opened by our chief envoy Prince Starhemberg, and I entered the center room of the pavilion. Ahead of me lay two more rooms—and France. Here was where the formal handover would take place. “You can thank the Archbishop of Strasbourg for the loan of these magnificent tapestries,” said the prince, gesturing to the elaborate, and enormous, wall hangings. The thick carpets, too, came courtesy of His Excellency, as did the ornately carved chairs and the grand table, draped with a heavily embroidered blue silk cloth, that sat at the precise center of the room, marking the symbolic border between Austria and France.
On the far side of the table sat Starhemberg’s French counterpart, the comte de Noailles, the man who had paid me so little mind when he greeted me two days earlier on behalf of his monarch. And behind the count stood a phalanx of French courtiers, dressed like popinjays in shades of putty and puce and wearing more powder, patches, and paint than the actors at our Burgtheater in Vienna.
In order to be able to thank the archbishop for his generosity with more than platitudes, I gave his tapestries a closer inspection. The theme was a popular one: classical allegory. At Maman’s insistence the abbé Vermond had tutored me in the myths and legends of the Greeks, with specific reference to the moral lessons contained within them: Pandora’s box; Icarus’s hubristic flight and fatal fall. I stole a closer glance and blinked in disbelief. Here, in the very room where I would become a bride of France, hung the story, told in silks, of the marriage of Jason and Medea. Even I, with my rudimentary schooling, knew that the tale ended in the most horrific tragedy imaginable—a fiery murder and a double infanticide after Jason abandons Medea for a princess from his own domain! I might have considered it an ill-starred omen, had I not been Maman’s daughter. She taught us to place no stock in superstition. But truly—the choice of tapestry was in the poorest taste. I wondered if anyone else had noticed the theme. Then it struck me: Had the archbishop chosen it deliberately? In any event, accidental or otherwise, it was a cruel joke and an even meaner welcome.
Two versions of the remise documents rested on the table. In one of them, King Louis’s name was written before those of the Hapsburg rulers; the opposite was true of the other set of papers. In accordance with the protocol of the remise, after offering a few words of greeting to me and to the Austrian delegation, the comte de Noailles read aloud from the documents. It was dreadfully boring and stilted and much of the formal language was outside the still-limited scope of my French vocabulary. But when t
he comte asked me if I understood the terms of the agreement, I made sure to nod my head sagely and favor his entourage with a warm smile of appreciation.
I heard a creak and glanced in the direction of the noise. The door at the far end of the room—the portal to France—had been opened by someone; someone who craved a peek at the proceedings, or me, or who was too impatient to wait a few minutes more for my entry into the next room. For the briefest moment I caught a glimpse of a woman’s face: heart-shaped with perfectly arched brows framing an alert, almost unforgiving, gaze.
Finally, the comte de Noailles completed his recitation of the formalities concerning my remise. With an efficient flourish he rolled up the individual sets of documents and secured each with a length of black ribbon and a wax seal before handing them to a deputy who gave them to a second deputy, who then placed them inside a lockbox.
Now came time for the formal farewell and leave-taking. In a procession as choreographed as a minuet, each of my Austrian attendants approached me and kissed my hand as they genuflected in a bow or curtsy. Then, with studied grace and infinite slowness, as if they were wading through mud, they retreated backwards through the open door of the salle de remise, into Austria. The last of the German courtiers and dignitaries to bid me farewell was Prince Starhemberg, his great mission completed. Was it my imagination or did I detect an expression of intense relief suffusing his face as he raised his head from my fingertips?
The door to the Austrian side of the pavilion closed with an audible click. My entourage of countrymen and women had exited the chamber, leaving me entirely in the company of foreigners. A sour bubble of panic and dread formed inside my mouth. Never had I felt more vulnerable and small, and less certain that I could manage the weighty burden that had been lowered upon me. And never was I more aware of the importance of not revealing that secret. The comte de Noailles walked to the edge of the table and offered me his hand. As I accepted it I felt a lump rise in my throat and the tickle behind my eyes that heralded the onset of unwelcome tears.
Others wage war, but you, fortunate Hapsburg, marry! Our family motto resounded in my ears. A crucial alliance hung in the balance. Duty and destiny summoned, beckoned with the firm hand of the comte de Noailles. Maman and her vast empire of tradesmen, artisans, and farmers, ministers and milkmaids, relied upon me to fulfill it. A strong bond that would keep both Russia and Prussia at bay would also keep sons and sweethearts, fathers and husbands in the countinghouses, at the forges, and behind the plows.
The door to the nearest of the two French chambers was opened to its fullest by a pair of unseen hands, and I was promenaded through a gauntlet of gaping French courtiers who offered their reverences as I passed. As I no longer heard the sound of rushing water, I guessed that the torrential rains of the past few hours had ceased. The only way to move was forward; a few more steps and I would receive my first glimpse of the French sunlight. I would embrace my new home, family, and kingdom. Besides giving my husband the dauphin a son, I had but one office: to make them love me. I swallowed hard, then thrust my chin into the air, proud, as Maman used to say about me, of my swanlike neck on slender shoulders.
But the magnitude of the event proved all too overwhelming. For more than two weeks I had been traveling across the Austrian empire. King Louis’s berlines were the epitome of comfort but I had never imagined I would often be spending as much as ten hours in a single day inside the conveyance—alongside the Countess von Waldheim who had the tendency to snore and wake up with a start, finishing the sentence she had begun before she dropped off to sleep. My journey was punctuated by myriad speeches in town squares and taverns, and long nights of card playing and conversation. I had scarcely slept, although I always remembered to favor everyone—hosts and gawpers alike—with my warmest smile; they would long recall seeing the dauphine’s procession and I wanted them to think well of me and of Maman and Joseph, their rulers. The morning’s preparations for the formal handover had unnerved me; and then, in the final moments left to me before I was to quit my homeland forever, they had taken Mops.
Poise and dignity failed me.
Inside the salle de remise, the periwigged old men with their red court heels, long-winded speeches, formal documents, and big words; as well as the thorough scrutiny of my person—my gait, my gown, my hair, my eyes, my hands—by dozens of faces, both jaded and curious, reminded me how much I was the object of a bargain, an exotic curiosity to be added to King Louis’s Wunderkabinett of treasures.
At the center of a cluster of French dignitaries stood the woman who had stolen a peek through the doors. Surmising quickly that she was a welcoming soul in a sea of strangers, and realizing at the same instant how much I missed my mother, I launched myself into the woman’s arms, clasping her about the waist and sobbing against her bosom. As my hot tears stained her pale blue-and-fawn-striped bodice, I felt her stiffen in my embrace, her own arms remaining firmly at her sides.
“This is not comme il faut,” she said. Her voice was soft but her tone and manner were as rigid as the boning in her stays. I disengaged myself and stepped back a pace or two, touching my fingers to my eyes to blot away my tears. “It is not at all the proper etiquette. My husband is the highest-ranking personage present and he must be the first, not I, to formally greet the dauphine.”
Confusion, humiliation, and rejection filled my senses. “Who then is your husband, madame?” I inquired timidly, momentarily feeling like a whipped dog.
“Why, the comte de Noailles,” she replied, gesturing graciously to her spouse.
“Ah.” I smiled with delight and recognition, sniffling back the tears. “But we have already met! Monsieur le comte and I are old acquaintances by now, are we not?”
Neither of them was amused by my impish grin. The woman drew me closer and sternly whispered near my ear, “It will not do for you to mock that which you do not know or understand, madame la dauphine. The etiquette instituted by our sovereign’s great-grandfather—the Sun King—is the backbone of the court of Versailles, the stays that bind our conduct and behavior.”
A poor comparison, I thought. If only the woman knew how much I hated to wear corsets—or anything that constricted the movement of a supple spine! “Oui, madame, je comprends,” I replied, though I really didn’t understand a thing about their manners and protocol—or etiquette. The comte de Noailles bowed to me, though not as deeply as others had done. I wondered if he was so old—I was certain he must have been at least in his forties—that his knees bothered him too much to make a leg.
“Why does everyone bow or curtsy to different degrees?” I asked the woman, who had by then been formally presented to me as the comtesse de Noailles. She had not sunk as deeply into a curtsy as did some of the other women in the entourage.
“One abases oneself according to one’s rank, and the difference in rank between themselves and the person to whom they are showing deference,” answered the comtesse. Even my late governess, the Countess von Lerchenfeld, had not lectured me in so priggish a tone. “Do not despair of learning the proper etiquette, for I will teach it to you.”
I gave her a grateful smile. “Merci, madame.” Madame Etiquette, I wanted to call her.
“You are most welcome, Your Royal Highness,” the comtesse replied. “As your dame d’honneur and titular guardian—given your extreme youth—I will always be at your side to offer you corrections whenever I see that you are faltering or neglectful.”
Oh, dear. So this was the lady who would be superintending my royal household, the highest-ranking woman in my retinue. I had hoped for someone much younger, one who could be my friend and companion, or at least someone who had adorable little children I could play with in my rooms—not a nanny or governess, or worse, a surrogate mother. I managed another smile, this one a good deal more wan than the first. “I look forward to it,” I lied.
I craned my neck to see what had become of the abbé Vermond and Sieur Larsenneur; not spying them, I imagined they had been ushered back int
o one of the coaches transporting the minor members of the French entourage.
The comtesse de Noailles took her seat beside me in the traveling berline. Just across the river from the Ile des Epis lay Strasbourg, the first city I would visit within my new homeland. Everyone was out of doors as if it were a state holiday or festival; the air was filled with music, as though the gates of heaven had been thrown open for my arrival. Colored banners and pennants snapped in the breeze like dragons’ tongues. The balconies of the stucco-and-half-timbered houses were bountifully hung with flowers or trellised with creeping vines of ivy. Children, charmingly garbed as shepherds and shepherdesses, danced in the street with beribboned crooks or skipped alongside our procession, rolling wooden hoops. Mothers with infants cradled in their arms lined the roadsides and waved to us or hoisted their precious darlings high into the air to catch a better glimpse of me as I passed. We paused for several minutes in front of a hostelry to watch women, clad in regional costume, performing a traditional peasant dance in my honor.
I was charmed beyond measure; my smile became broader with each passing moment. Waves of mirth and merriment—of laughter and (dare I say it?) love—emanated from the citizens to my coach. Had there ever been a warmer or more joyous welcome for a foreign princess?
A brass fanfare announced my entry into the main square. Strasbourg’s dignitaries had gathered to greet me on the steps of the Gothic cathedral. Shielding my eyes from the bright sunlight that filled the square, I followed the church’s lacy tracery skyward. Surely God was pleased with such a breathtaking monument to His might. Among the Swiss Guards standing stiffly at attention were a number of little boys attired in miniature uniforms; the oldest could not have been more than ten or eleven. My carriage halted in front of the cathedral; the door was opened and I emerged to a thunderous cheer and ascended the steps of the grand church to cries of “Brava, la Dauphine!” I turned and waved to the throng; unable to resist a chubby-cheeked tot with the blondest hair I had ever seen, I blew her a kiss.