Becoming Marie Antoinette: A Novel

by Juliet Grey

  She giggled. “I’m not a bonbon; I’m a girl.”

  “Ho, really?!” I tickled her under the chin, and before I could ruminate any further on the realization that these five royal siblings had been orphans for years, I discovered that I was being watched by Mesdames tantes, the dauphin’s maiden aunts, Adélaïde, Victoire, and Sophie—or Rag, Piggy, and Snip, as their father inexplicably called them. Having never wed, King Louis’s daughters seemed quite miffed by the antics of the energetic young child.

  The three princesses, born in consecutive years, were now in their thirties. They seemed terribly worldly, and had opinions on everything, which they proffered as general pronouncements. The duchesse de Penthièvre looked sickly in puce (said Sophie, who was somewhat gaunt herself); the chamber musicians played flat (according to Adélaïde, who was proficient on the French horn and the mouth organ, so she told me); the bishop’s sermon at Mass that morning had been dreary to the point of deadliness (Adélaïde again); the current price of Lyon silk was absurd (insisted Victoire, who needed many more yards of it to cover herself than did her sisters); and only Sèvres porcelain was suitable for, well, anything (a general agreement, along with the princesses’ unanimously shared view that spaniels were far and away the best sort of dog). Eager to introduce me to life at court, Mesdames tantes made me promise to visit their apartments daily, where they would share the latest news.

  Little Princesse Élisabeth announced that she could balance a spoon on the tip of her nose and proceeded to demonstrate her new talent, to the delight of her brothers and sister. I could see the dauphin wrestling with whether he dared hazard the trick himself. I might have encouraged him if I thought it would have made him laugh. If he did not know how to have fun, I supposed that it would fall to me to show him. But the comtesse de Noailles, grim-faced and thin-lipped, looked as though she would turn blue with horror.

  “Who is the corpulent gentleman seated to the left of the king?” I asked, in order to distract her. The man’s ceremonial sash strained to contain his girth.

  “One does not point with one’s fan, madame la dauphine.” Madame Etiquette then proceeded to demonstrate the method of selecting someone from within a crowd with the most subtle of gestures. “That is the duc d’Orléans,” she said, with an almost imperceptible tilt of her own fan. “He comes from another branch of the Bourbons. And so you will never refer to it, the Orléans famille does not get on very well with the royal family.”

  At my insistence, as I wished to know the names of everyone at the table as well as their functions at court, the comtesse identified the ducs de Penthièvre, Chartres, and Bourbon, the comte de la Marche, and the princes of Condé and Conti, all of whom were interrelated, most often by marriage. Because their names sounded so similar I was sure I would confuse the titles of Condé and Conti forever, and so I would have to remember them by their looks. The prince de Conti had a supercilious air, and seemed fond of various shades of green. The prince de Condé had the look of the aesthete about him, an opinion I was quick to share with Mesdames tantes, who lauded me as a sharp judge of character and informed me that Condé was indeed exceptionally passionate about gardens. I made a mental note to inquire about the hameau, or little village, and the follies he had designed for his newly constructed Château d’Enghien.

  Thus far, the prince de Condé, although I had not been able to converse with him as he was seated so far from my chair, was (with the possible exception of Princesse Élisabeth and her silver spoon) the most intriguing person at the table.

  Above the strains of the violins and the tinkling of crystal and porcelain, a silvery laugh pierced the air, drawing all attention toward the head of the table. The woman seated at the king’s right had grabbed a morsel off the royal plate with a heavily jeweled hand and popped it into her own mouth. She wore no powder in her flaxen hair, a shade or two more yellow than my own. Her complexion was the color of fresh dairy cream—the better to show off her enviable poitrine in a gown of silver tissue spun with gold and spangled with rubies, from a sprinkling of them on her sleeves to a crimson crust that framed her deep décolleté. The sapphires in her ears and the triumph in her eyes lent her more airs of an empress than Maman ever had. My eyes strayed downward. Immediately I felt inadequate and wished that my own bosom was as pulchritudinous and had been molded to such perfection.

  I gazed at her coiffure, which sparkled with emerald combs. Perfectly applied circles of rouge enhanced her natural blush. I surveyed the length of the table; here sat the highest-ranking nobility of France and yet none of the women were so bedecked in brilliants as this fascinating creature, who was so bold as to eat off the king’s plate. I could not take my eyes off her. She took another bit of squab from His Majesty’s dish and fed it to him. Louis took not only the pigeon but her fingers into his mouth, enjoying both with gustatory relish. He shared a full-bellied laugh with the woman.

  “What an intriguing person!” I exclaimed. I turned to address Madame de Noailles. “S’il vous plaît, madame la comtesse, dites-moi—qui est cette belle dame-là? Tell me, who is that very beautiful woman—and what is her office here at court?”

  My dining companions grew silent. Madame Etiquette’s back stiffened perceptibly. At the far end of the room, Louis of France and his personal guest of honor paid no heed to anything other than their amusing little game of feeding each other. Mesdames tantes muttered behind their fans in voices too low for me to discern the gist of their discourse. All I could hear, and the word was uttered repeatedly with a derisive intonation, was “elle”—her.

  The aunts looked to the comtesse de Noailles to furnish a reply; after all, I had posed the question to her directly. All three, Adélaïde, Victoire, and Sophie, had screwed their mouths into odd little smirks that I did not understand. The dauphin coughed quite audibly into his napkin. His younger brothers stifled a snicker and collectively regarded my dame d’honneur through narrowed eyes, waiting with undisguised amusement for her answer.

  “That woman,” began the comtesse, speaking with painstaking deliberateness—and I had yet to hear her speak so slowly—“that woman is Madame du Barry, ci-devant—formerly—the lowly Jeanne Bécu, although some knew her as Mademoiselle l’Ange of the rue de la Jussienne; and her office is to … to amuse the king!”

  Her nickname, Mademoiselle l’Ange, intrigued me. The Angel. Surely I appeared more seraphic; and it would be my pleasure to charm His Majesty and make him laugh. “Well, then!” I clapped my hands with glee, for nothing would have made me happier than to delight my new grand-père. “I shall be her rival,” I exclaimed.

  The dauphin, his brothers and aunts, and most particularly Madame de Noailles, froze as if a portraitist had asked them to hold a pose—cutlery and crystal goblets held aloft, halfway between the table and their lips.

  Was it something I had said?

  SIXTEEN

  Finally!

  MAY 16, 1770

  “They say it is a sign of good luck when it rains on your wedding day.” I was being laced into my gown by a duchesse (of all things!) who offered me this platitude, although I’m sure her words were intended to reassure me.

  “It’s only a spring drizzle,” I said, making polite small talk. Then I realized I had made a pronouncement and because the duchesse was my inferior, she could not disagree.

  “Ah, oui. Only a drizzle,” she echoed.

  Sieur Larsenneur, a familiar pair of hands, was waiting patiently with several lengths of pearls to be threaded into my coiffure. It had taken him two hours to frizzle my hair with his heated wand and curling papers, after which he teased my tresses over a cage fashioned from wood and wire that had been precariously perched atop my head. Then, having swathed me in a length of muslin to protect my gown and shielded my face with a little mask, he had pumped powder onto my towering hairstyle with his little bellows.

  I heard my friseur murmur something to the duchesse de Ventadour. The two of them stepped away from me to better regard the back of my gow
n.

  Turning my head, “Why the frowns?” I asked them. They beckoned to the comtesse de Noailles and solicited her opinion, which was offered without a moment’s hesitation.

  “Il n’est pas comme il faut.”

  I felt my stomach clench. What wasn’t right? They referred to something behind me, so I tried to get closer to the mirror in order that I might see for myself.

  “It will not close; there is not enough fabric,” the duchesse de Ventadour said ruefully. “Regardez. I have pulled the laces as tight as I can, but you can still see the dauphine’s shift.”

  “And the wide bands of diamantes on either side of the grommets emphasize rather than distract from the problem,” observed my friseur.

  Madame de Noailles allowed herself a rare moment of unchecked behavior. “How could they have gotten it so wrong? They had her measurements.”

  I heard the trio whispering among themselves, and the worried murmurs from the noblewomen who had been accorded the honor of witnessing the dauphine’s bridal preparations. No, I wished to say to them, I did not eat two desserts last night and I did not grow broader in these last few weeks and I do not know why the bodice of my wedding gown is too small and how the measurements provided by my mother months ago could have been so misconstrued. The nervous butterflies that fluttered in my belly became as large as hummingbirds.

  Was this little last-minute mishap supposed to bode good luck as well? Maman would have scoffed at such superstitious nonsense. But—after all the money she had lavished on my trousseau and all the pains she had taken to prepare me for this day—she most certainly would not find a single note of amusement in the current state of affairs. I thought of the crate of fashion dolls that had been sent to us in Vienna so that I might select one of the bridal gowns. The robe I had fancied most was modeled by the doll I had named for my beloved sister Josepha and was fashioned from cloth of gold and cloth of silver with a rose-colored underskirt and a lavishly embroidered train several feet long. But had the silkmakers, weavers, and royal seamstresses fitted the dress to the figure of the four-foot-tall grande pandore instead of me? We had not been all that dissimilar in size, especially then.

  The comtesse de Noailles tutted and sighed and muttered under her breath. She ticked off a number of possible solutions on her fingers and, with the acknowledgment that time was of the essence, ultimately resolved to turn an embarrassing gaffe into a display of glamour. “We will remove the dauphine’s chemise,” she announced.

  “Quoi?” I was shocked. Was there to be nothing under my wedding gown but my whalebone stays, and beneath that, naught but bare skin? Evidently, oui. In France, the most fashionable women, though admittedly those who tended to be rather outré, had taken to exposing themselves beneath a bodice deliberately designed to leave an expanse of flesh in the back, in order to call attention to their pale skin. In transforming a disaster into a triumph, albeit a risky one, my dame d’honneur deemed it better for the dauphine to appear au courant with the newest fashion than a country bumpkin in a wedding dress that had been cut too small. Nevertheless, Madame Etiquette cautioned me that her decision was bound to elicit comment among the more conservative elements of the aristocracy.

  I hoped the gap would not become the subject of international gossip; if Maman were to hear that after all we had undertaken, my gown had not been properly made, there would be no end to her displeasure.

  For so many months a great part of me had dreaded the day I would wear my wedding gown, yet since my arrival in France I had anticipated this moment with something closer to excitement. The events of the previous evening—the sumptuous dinner with my new relations, and in particular the visit I received later on in my apartments from the king himself, had truly set my stomach thrumming with exhilaration.

  The king had presented me with an enormous chest covered in crimson velvet, so large that it took two liveried servants to wheel it into my salon. “As you know, I am a widower,” Louis began.

  I thought about the voluptuous blond woman with whom he had flirted during the meal. Madame du Barry.

  “And with no queen, the dauphine is the first lady in France, and must own the most beautiful jewels,” Louis continued.

  Then I recalled the multitude of vibrant gems that had adorned the du Barry’s throat and arms, her hair, and her gown.

  His Most Christian Majesty regarded me with a chuckle as he gestured grandly to the jewelry chest. “Yet I have no doubt that you will outshine all others whether you wear these or no.”

  The doors of the massive coffer were unlocked and the drawers, lined in pale blue silk, were tugged open to reveal treasures beyond compare, resting on their own cushions—among them an ivory-handled fan encrusted with precious gems, and a choker of pearls the size of filbert nuts that was first worn by Anne of Austria, the mother of the Sun King. Perhaps being of noble birth myself, I was expected to react to such a magnificent gift with a sense of innate poise, but I was unable to suppress a gasp of awe. The necklace had been worn by every dauphine since Anne herself became the bride of the future Louis XIII. In that moment I felt like a part of history, a tiny fragment of a great whole. And one day, I would be fastening that same choker about the throat of the wife of my oldest son.

  There was yet another gift from Papa Roi—a pair of bracelets fashioned from gold and enamel. Their clasps were decorated with sapphires that spelled out my cipher: MA.

  Overcome, I slipped the bracelets over my wrists and fell to my knees before my grand-père, promising to be all he had hoped I would be, as dauphine of France, and some day as her queen.

  Now I surveyed myself in the looking glass. From the front, at any rate, I was pleased with my appearance. Anne of Austria’s necklace had been clasped about my throat. I also wore a pair of diamond bracelets and ear bobs. They were perfectly white and when I stood in just the proper way, they refracted the light into colorful sunbursts that appeared to emanate from my limbs.

  When Sieur Larsenneur’s back was turned, I tugged at my coiffure to soften the look of my hairline. For years now, the friseur and I had performed our little comedy: He always yanked my tresses tightly off my forehead and I routinely loosened them. I never asked him to style my hair differently and he would pretend not to notice my improvements.

  My head felt heavy from all the pearl adornments, but it was nothing compared to the weight of my gown and train. Cloth of silver and cloth of gold were hardly flimsy textiles and I was both encased and enveloped in yards and yards of it. Would I be expected to glide across the floor as Monsieur Noverre the dancing master had taught me? I softened my knees, rose onto the balls of my feet, and took a few stuttering steps. I would not want to appear clumsy during the wedding processional. After a minute or so I began to grow accustomed to the heaviness of my accoutrements, taking several turns about the room as my train swished like a mermaid’s tail behind me. It became a game to avoid knocking over the delicate tables and footstools, and the distraction helped to calm my nerves.

  The marble clock on the mantel struck the half hour. At the chime, the comtesse de Noailles began to coordinate the journey from my temporary apartments to the State rooms above them. A bevy of noblewomen assembled with military precision to manage my train as I glided through the corridors and climbed the ornate marble staircase. From the Grande Salle des Gardes, we proceeded through the State rooms until we reached the Oeil de Boeuf, the antechamber to the king’s suite, named for its oval-shaped “ox eye” window. I gazed up at the window, which led my eye to the heavily gilded figures carved in deep relief—cupids cavorting with garlands. A fitting image for a wedding day, I thought.

  Here, on an ordinary day, explained my dame d’honneur, was where courtiers and ministers would gather with the hope that His Majesty would hear their petitions. “Sometimes they wait all day,” the comtesse added with a perceptible sniff. “And sometimes longer.”

  I sniffed, too, but not out of hauteur as my minder did. I was smelling something rank that seemed to
emanate from the corners of the room, something that had permeated the parquet. I thought of the lavender-clad lady who had relieved herself in the vestibule yesterday. Were the French too proud to use chamber pots, I wondered. Or was everyone at Versailles too lofty to empty them, even as they vied for such ridiculous tasks as handing a member of the royal family a facecloth or hairbrush?

  With each passing moment my nerves began to get the better of me. As the members of our entourages mingled, a cacophony of conversations bounced off the gilded friezes and marble walls of the Grande Salle des Gardes like the chatter of a flock of magpies. Standing a few feet from me, alone, the dauphin looked uncomfortable—no; more than that—resentful, his bulk stuffed into his wedding suit of white satin and cloth of gold. I hoped his glum expression had naught to do with that awful duc de la Vauguyon, poisoning his mind against an Austrian bride. I had spent hours convincing myself that the comte de Provence should never have divulged such a thing, let alone to the bride herself … unless the young comte had his own schemes? We had just been introduced; how should I know whether to trust him? Perhaps he had lied to me after all. But if that were the case, why did Louis Auguste look so unhappy?

  My fifteen-year-old groom pouted sullenly. “I feel like a trussed bird,” he murmured. He regarded his reflection in the large mirror that hung over the enormous mantel. Fingering the fabric of his heavily embroidered coat, he made a helpless gesture that encompassed his entire person. “The comte d’Artois bet me that all this weighs as much as the plate armor worn by the knights in our European History books.” He sneaked a surreptitious sniff at his armpits and wrinkled his nose. “Forgive me, madame la dauphine,” he said, his cheeks coloring, “I perspire a lot.”

  By 12:45, the dauphin’s siblings had arrived, as had Mesdames tantes and all of the ducs and comtes I had seen at dinner the previous day. Ten minutes later, Louis entered the Oeil de Boeuf and we offered His Majesty our bows and curtsies according to our rank. I had asked the comtesse de Noailles to write out the etiquette regarding the specific curtsies, or reverences. I intended to keep the scrap of paper in a reticule or a pocket, stealing glances at it until I had memorized the entire protocol.