Becoming Marie Antoinette: A Novel

by Juliet Grey

  “Madame la dauphine, you look radiant,” observed the king, raising me to my feet and kissing me on each cheek. “Tell me, how are your nerves this afternoon?” He glanced at the dauphin, whose complexion was as pale as his wedding suit.

  “I am quite well, merci,” I lied, and quickly changed the subject. “My husband looks so handsome today, oui?” In truth, Louis Auguste, despite his pallor, and the fact that he had not stopped anxiously chewing his lip, did look extremely distingué, even with a little black mouche masking a ripe pimple on the side of his chin. His unruly chestnut hair had been hidden under a fashionable perruque styled into a queue that hung down past the nape of his neck; and the formal attire lent an air of majesty to his tall, stocky frame. I was suddenly struck with a frisson of pride. Were he to dress with such formality every day of the year, it would not overburden one’s imagination to envision him as king of France.

  “Bonjour, monsieur le duc!” Papa Roi had turned to jovially clap a much shorter man on the back. “Your pupil looks quite the grown man today, eh bien? Up to the mark, I hope. Regardez! The poor boy looks like he bears all the weight of France on those broad shoulders.”

  The shorter man, clad in mustard-colored moiré, lifted a monocle from a ribbon dangling at his breast and inserted it in the crescent-shaped hollow above his cheekbone. This must be the dreaded duc de la Vauguyon. Our gazes locked. In his eyes I read a look of pure disdain. So I decided to confound him by favoring him with my broadest and most disarming smile. I relished my little victory, although the entire exchange was over in a matter of seconds and I don’t believe the king noticed a bit of it.

  A flash of lightning illuminated the oval window and was followed seconds later by a sonorous clap of thunder. “Well, well, Jove has seen fit to attend the royal wedding!” His Majesty declared with a laugh. “A little rain is a sign of good luck.”

  I grinned at him. “So I’ve heard, Sire.” He would never know that beneath my skirts my knees were knocking together like a pair of drumsticks.

  The murmurs of countless conversations were overtaken by a hush that filled the room. All eyes turned toward the windows to regard the torrential downpour.

  In the way that boys of a certain age are wont to do, the dauphin’s younger brothers began to joke about how uncomfortable it would be for the aristocratic spectators—those lucky thousands who had been granted the privilege of witnessing the royal wedding—to stand about the chapel with their silks and satins stained and dripping all over the marble floor. “And imagine all the muddy footprints!” sniggered the comte d’Artois.

  “They’ll consider it another honor,” the comte de Provence sneered. He was dressed almost as lavishly as the dauphin, but his costume did not lend him the same regal aura; to me, he merely looked rotund. “They’ll wipe up the mud with their handkerchiefs to show to their grandchildren.”

  “The lottery winners will be jammed together like sardines as well,” said Artois.

  “Lottery winners?” I echoed.

  “Six thousand,” the dauphin explained, “selected from the general populace, who have the honor of witnessing part of our wedding procession and ceremony. Versailles is the most democratic palace in the world,” he added proudly. “Almost anyone can gain admittance, so long as the men are wearing a hat and sword.”

  “On any day you can see the vendors outside the gates renting them to visitors!” Artois added.

  “Enterprising peasants,” sniggered Provence.

  Artois grinned. “Even loose women are welcome, as long as they don’t try to … well … ply their trade, so to speak, in the private appartements.”

  What did a thirteen-year-old youth know of loose women, I wondered. Had my brothers Ferdinand and Maxl spoken of such vulgar topics in the company of their sisters and other ladies of quality, they would have received the sternest of rebukes from Maman. These Bourbon orphans lacked a firm parental hand, or that of an astute governess or tutor. Mentors such as the nasty little duc de la Vauguyon were apparently too busy prejudicing their charges’ minds to prevent them from speaking like the residents of a barracks.

  I despaired of ever understanding the intricacies of the French court. Even at its most rudimentary, it presented so many contradictions. For all their formality here at Versailles and all our simplicity in Austria, Maman would never, with the exception of state occasions, of course, dream of opening our doors to the riffraff.

  At the stroke of one o’clock the bridal procession commenced the long walk from the State apartments to the chapel. Hand in hand, Louis Auguste and I walked together behind the Grand Master of Ceremonies with his tall staff. Thinking about how contented Maman would be to see me now, minutes away from taking my wedding vows, I found myself smiling, and out of excitement and impatience I squeezed the dauphin’s hand. How tall he seemed beside me! He gave me a shy smile, then turned his head away with a wince that made my stomach dip. On this day of all days, I wanted him, if not to be able to love me, at least to like me. I did not love him, of course; I scarcely knew him. But there was something about his plodding and deliberate manner that put me in mind of a horse yoked to an overburdened cart and made me wish to slip under the harness myself so that we might lighten the load by pulling it together.

  Out of the corners of my eyes I watched our reflections as we passed through the twinkling Hall of Mirrors. Tiers of chairs had been placed along the entire length of the room. For two hundred and fifty feet on either side, five thousand invited guests sat elbow to elbow to witness our parade. They looked so splendid in their grands habits de cour: the men in their silk coats, hats, and swords, and the women in their enormous panniers and deep décolleté. And everyone, absolutely everyone, was wearing formal court maquillage, their faces so heavily painted that some defied recognition. I prayed I wouldn’t falter (or worse, trip) as I passed this aristocratic audience!

  A magnificent procession snaked along behind us. Smartly dressed pages—such adorable children, I could have hugged each one for an hour—carried my voluminous brocaded train. In their wake followed the comtesse de Noailles, chin raised, with her angular nose in the air. The royal princes walked behind her—all the ducs and comtes who had dined with us, with the comtes de Provence and d’Artois at their heels, red heels, quite literally, a courtier’s privilege since the days of Le Roi Soleil. The king was the last of the men in the procession; from mirror to mirror I glimpsed him beaming, the only ray of sunlight on an otherwise inclement day.

  The dauphin’s sisters, as excited to participate in the processional as Mesdames tantes were blasé about it, walked behind Papa Roi; and finally, a panoply of ladies of the court, sparkling with jewels from their powdered perruques to their shoe buckles, brought up the rear. We passed through the Salon de Guerre and the numerous rooms named for the gods of Roman antiquity—bright Apollo; clever Mercury; warlike Mars; chaste Diana; and finally, fittingly, the chamber named for the goddess of love, the Salon de Venus.

  Some members of the bridal train were still on the marble staircase when the dauphin and I reached the cream-colored doors of the chapel, adorned with the gilded image of a Cupid. I smiled at the putti’s unseeing eyes, then impetuously touched my hand to his golden wing for luck. The Grand Master of Ceremonies threw open the doors and rapped his staff against the floor three times.

  “They do that when a play is about to begin, too,” the dauphin whispered to me.

  “Perhaps we are all actors in one way or another,” I replied. I squeezed his hand again. “Only today, you and I are the leading players.” By now I was eager for the whole spectacle to be over. I was seized with the sudden fear that the dauphin would glance at his tutor as we knelt before the altar; that a secret signal would pass between them and that Louis Auguste would suddenly exclaim, “I cannot wed this Austrian woman!” and run screaming from the chapel.

  I stole another peek at my bridegroom to make sure he was still beside me. From the frightened expression in his pale blue eyes he seemed far too
intimidated by the magnitude of the event to be contemplating flight.

  We entered the chapel to a fanfare of flutes and drums. My husband’s brothers had hazarded correctly; the entire nave as well as the galleries high above the soaring Corinthian columns were tightly crammed with the highest nobles in the land, craning their necks for a glimpse of us and looking a bit the worse for the weather. Their watered silk was truly so; and adornments of jewels and feathers drooped from dripping wigs.

  “Do you think they can see that my knees are shaking?” murmured Louis Auguste.

  “Surely they are looking at your face. And your magnificent ensemble,” I assured him. I didn’t admit that my own limbs shook with fright, though at least my legs were hidden from view.

  The enormous pipes of the organ filled the rococo chapel with melody as the dauphin and I traversed the length of the nave and knelt before the Archbishop of Rheims on silk cushions beneath a silver canopy. I was sure I overheard whispers regarding the back of my bodice, as well as about my general appearance. “She looks so young! Are you sure she is really fourteen? I would have staked the entire contents of last night’s cavagnole banker’s bag against a wager that she isn’t a day older than twelve.”

  The dauphin fidgeted all through the Mass, tugging at his lace cravat, picking at his nails, and touching his cheeks and chin as if to discern whether we had been on our knees so long that he had begun to grow a beard. We recited our vows and he slipped the little golden wedding ring I had chosen onto the fourth finger of my left hand. “I’m yours forever,” I whispered. Our eyes met and his pale cheeks flushed with crimson.

  The vows completed, the archbishop recited the paternoster. I mouthed the words silently, because the prayer has always stirred me. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us … For a moment, my eyes became dimmed with tears. And then, some of the butterflies in my belly mercifully departed, leaving me with a sense of joy and relief. As the archbishop spoke the final words of the prayer, countless rays of sunshine beamed through the windows of the galleries, as if they had responded to some divine cue. Now that the Mass had been consecrated, and our vows had been exchanged, the wedding ceremony was over, at least from God’s perspective. But from the vantage of Vienna and Versailles, there were formal documents that had to be executed in order to seal the bargain, not with a kiss but with pen and ink and sand. Like all royal brides I was married not so much by an archbishop but by an international treaty.

  The king signed his name with a flourish; then the dauphin did, writing with methodic precision. Now it was my turn. Behind me stood Louis Auguste’s brothers and Mesdames tantes as well as the ducal cousins, ready to add their names for posterity. I dipped the quill. Oh, for the Countess von Brandeiss to write my name in pencil for me to trace! It was not such a silly wish; I was expected to sign my new name, Marie Antoinette Josephe Jeanne, with all the francofied spelling. I froze. I had never written it. And I couldn’t spell for all the world. Not only that, the Countess von Lerchenfeld had once scolded me for my childish hand, insisting that a chicken would have had nicer penmanship.

  They were waiting for me. The entire royal chapel was silent. I dipped the pen again and began to inscribe my name on the marriage document. It was difficult to keep my hand from quivering. M … I made it through Marie and had gotten halfway through Antoinette when I realized I needed to leave space for the rest of my names. As a result, the ette became too squashed together; “There is not enough air between the letters,” as Lerchenfeld would have said. I panicked, trying to figure out a way to remedy the situation. But while I pondered my predicament, I made the error of leaving the nib of the quill on the paper instead of raising it. The result, to my extreme mortification, was an unsightly blot in the middle of my signature. I hastily scrawled my last two names—Josephe, which came out smaller than I had planned, followed by Jeanne. What an unholy mess!

  But I had done it. I was now married—to my real husband, not a political proxy. It was no longer a mere courtesy to address me as “la dauphine.” The dauphin clasped my hands and leaned over to whisper in my ear. “I’m so glad it’s over!” He sighed heavily. “Finally, we have the part of the celebration I’ve been looking forward to ever since I woke up this morning.”

  Could it be? I smiled at him nervously. “And which part of the celebration is that?”

  “The wedding banquet!” he exclaimed with more energy than I had seen him display all day.

  I tried to conceal my disappointment. I had no stomach for a meal, but clearly my husband had been thinking of little else all day. “Is it really true that we are to dine on the stage of the new opera house—in the presence of six thousand spectators?” I asked him.

  Louis Auguste nodded. “Grand-père commissioned the opera house just for our wedding banquet. La Salle de Spectacle, he calls it.”

  “La, then!” I forced a chuckle. “If we are to sit upon a stage like mummers, while the whole world watches us eat our oysters and pigeons and pastries and sip champagne, it will certainly be a spectacle!”

  “That part happens every day,” said the dauphin. I had discovered that if a topic had anything to do with food, hunting, or locks, like a curious turtle he emerged from his shell. “Eating in public, I mean. It’s called a grand couvert, and it takes place at one o’clock in the afternoon—at déjeuner, luncheon. But tonight, a voyeur must have a coat of arms that goes back several centuries in order to gain admittance to the salle.”

  What an absurd custom! “Don’t people have better things to do with their time?”

  My husband regarded me as if I had asked whether horses could fly. “No,” he replied succinctly. “And in any case, I never pay them any attention. Once you’re busy eating, you forget they’re there.”

  Perhaps you could forget, I wanted to say. Just imagining thousands of people staring at me while I ate was enough to rekindle my anxiety. What was the purpose of such an assembly? Did they memorize the menus and ask their own chefs to re-create them the following week? Did they wait for members of the royal family to spill food onto their garments or grow tipsy with wine, and then go home and tell their friends all about it?

  The wedding dinner was not scheduled to commence until dusk, and I was grateful for a few hours’ reprieve. Rather than returning to my temporary apartments, I was escorted to the dauphin and dauphine’s rooms, a double suite of salons and bedchambers, with its own music room and library. Here was where we would live and entertain as husband and wife until that fateful day when we would no longer be the heirs to the throne of France, but her king and queen. This, too, was a great deal to absorb. I was now a bride, but more than that—a wife. Becoming dauphine was no longer the speculative topic of conversation at Schönbrunn and the Hofburg; I had fulfilled Maman’s plan for me. It was real: in the marble floors and fluted columns; in the painted screens and sparkling chandeliers.

  My trunks were already in the Salle des Gardes, the guardroom where the men who protected our persons ate, played cards and other games, and waited until their services would be required.

  Apart from the dauphine’s bedroom, which was capacious, but dreary—the heavily embroidered tester and bed hangings had belonged to my husband’s late mother—I found the rooms to be bright and airy with a charming view. Most of the salons looked directly onto the landscaped parterre at the rear of the château.

  Launching myself onto a chaise of pale blue damasked silk, I kicked off my slippers with gusto. One of them landed in a corner of the room; the other lodged itself in the andirons, where it would surely end up smudged with months-old soot once it was retrieved. I already detested the grand corps, the beastly corsets worn every day by Frenchwomen of the highest rank, for they were the most unforgiving, having no shoulder straps and being laced in the front with rows of diamonds. They were much more severe than those we wore in Austria, but of course I was not to compare the two. “Would someone kindly unlace me?” I inqui
red of the dozen aristocrats and fourteen maidservants who hovered about the chaise like bees at a hive. My dame d’atours, or Mistress of the Robes, the duchesse de Villars—who made sure to tell me that she had performed the same office for the late queen, Marie Leszczyńska—glanced warily at my guardian.

  But the comtesse de Noailles nipped in the bud my attempt to enjoy a degree of comfort. “It is not proper etiquette for the dauphine of France to lounge about like a courtesan or some loose woman from the Parc aux Cerfs.”

  “What’s the Parc aux Cerfs?” I inquired. She gave me a dark look, then wrinkled her nose at my errant slippers. I grinned, if only for my own amusement. Would she scold them, too?

  “It is not the time for relaxing. You must greet the members of your household now. It is the proper etiquette.”

  Under my breath I muttered that last sentence along with her. A noblewoman, one of the few who was young and pretty, smiled knowingly at me. I gave her a wink. “Et alors, bring them on,” I told the comtesse. How I would rather have taken a nap before the command performance of a wedding banquet!

  A maid fetched my slippers and I was reshod by the duchesse de Picquigny, who, I was gladdened to realize, had a sense of humor. The sweet-natured comtesse de Mailly placed a small bolster behind my back to make me more comfortable. And there I sat for well over two hours while a parade of men and women paid their homage as if I were some sort of monument, or vestal virgin, with a deep bow or curtsy, and—if their rank permitted it—touching their lips to my raised hand. The comtesse de Noailles remained at my right elbow for the duration of the presentation, informing me of the name and duty of each member of my household entourage and whether I should offer them my hand to kiss. Yes to the gentlemen and women of honor; and yes to my controllers general, who would superintend my expenses. Yes to my maître d’hôtel, or chamberlain, and yes to the equerries. No hand kissing was appropriate for the nineteen valets de chambre; the almoner, who would dispense my charitable largesse; or the five chaplains and the pair of preachers. No to the four surgeons and the duo of doctors, and of course the fencing master deserved no such honor. Absolument pas—absolutely not—for any of the tradesmen and women: the dauphine’s tapestry maker, clock maker, apothecaries, and wigmaker, as well as the kitchen attendants, a panoply of cooks, butlers, wine bearers, and scullery maids.