Becoming Marie Antoinette: A Novel

by Juliet Grey

  My nose crinkled as I fought off more tears. “With all my heart,” I whispered, and drew him toward me again.

  The dauphin kept his word, although I was disappointed that his newfound consideration for me did not lead to the consummation of our marriage. But his strong, if mostly silent, presence bolstered my courage to capitulate to the pressure exerted by Mercy, Maman, and Papa Roi, and publicly acknowledge Madame du Barry with a few innocuous words. At breakfast one morning I told my aunts that I had chosen the day on which I would finally speak to the du Barry. This time they did not speak a word either for or against it. I suppose they reasoned that if they resumed their denigration of the royal favorite—aware that I had already resolved to countenance the creature—they might risk losing my goodwill as well as my society.

  On Thursday, the eleventh of July, I spent the entire day in an anxious mood. Butterflies fluttered in my belly and I frequently requested a chamber pot. I could not eat a single thing at the midday grand couvert, and just stared at my supper, moving the food around my plate with my silver fork.

  In my apartments candlelight flickered everywhere, casting an amber glow on the players and their bejeweled fingers, wrists, and throats. Being a midsummer evening, the air was still to the point of stifling; my drawing room was so crowded and the atmosphere so thick with tension that I was certain everyone was aware of, and eagerly anticipating, my rencontre with the du Barry. After Madame de Noailles informed the king of my intentions to publicly acknowledge his paramour this evening, Papa Roi must have shared the information with the comtesse du Barry, who I suspect had alerted her dévots. I doubted there was a soul within the château who had remained unaware of the import of this evening’s game of cavagnole.

  Knowing that I would be the center of attention, I had undergone an extensive toilette. My hair had been dressed quite à la mode by Sieur Larsenneur, in a teased halo about my barely powdered head; the rest of my red-gold ringlets were fashioned into thick sausage curls that grazed my shoulders. My gown was the color of moonlight, with a triple cascade of lace at the elbows, drawing attention to the gracefulness of my arms.

  There was scarcely any space in which to mill about the room; in their wide panniers, many of the noblewomen were compelled to navigate the salon sideways, or, when they clustered together to gossip behind their fans, were crushed against one another like blooms in a bouquet. I spied Madame du Barry conversing with a knot of comtesses and duchesses, but I took care to be circuitous in my movement as I made my way about the room, welcoming my guests with a pleasant comment to each of them. It helped to imagine the women as stepping stones in a muddy stream.

  The comte de Mercy gave me a surreptitious smile as I began to approach the royal mistress.

  “Good evening, comtesse de Passy.” I tilted my head in greeting to an elderly woman whose rouge circles had been irregularly (and thus comically) applied. “You are looking lovely this evening. Très élégante.” Without her ear trumpet I doubt she heard a word I’d uttered.

  One step closer to my rival.

  “I hope you are well, madame,” I said softly, smiling at the duchesse de Chartres, who was with child. If only she knew how I envied her condition!

  Another step. My heart was racing. I hoped that what felt like the rapid rise and fall of my chest remained undetected. I became aware that all eyes were upon me and grew warm from the intensity of their gazes.

  “Madame, I do hope you will permit me to peruse your library now that you have arranged all of your volumes,” I told my sister-in-law, the comtesse de Provence, deliberately raising my voice so that my comment would be overheard, particularly by those who continued to depict me as empty-headed.

  “But you don’t like to read,” she whispered.

  “I do now,” I replied, between my teeth.

  The last step. No one stood between the king’s mistress and me. She was wearing a treasury’s worth of diamonds. Even the heels of her shoes, covered in diamanté pavé, glinted in the firelight. I raised my chin and fixed a smile upon my face. Lifted my foot and took a half step toward her. The room had grown completely silent. The players turned to face me as if they were one body, their hands suspended in the air holding their cards or cavagnole markers, frozen in a single moment of time.

  Suddenly Madame Adélaïde swooped down like a hawk and tightly clasped my arm. I had not even noticed her in the salon before that moment. “It is time to leave!” she announced. “Come along, we will await the king in my sister Victoire’s room!” Before I realized what was happening, she had me sailing out of the salon and down the passageway toward my aunts’ suite, with Mesdames Sophie and Victoire falling in behind. She had caught me off-guard and then knocked me off-balance just as she noticed me wavering in the mission that had been so long in coming to fruition. I had been weak; and in that moment of indecision I had permitted myself to be humiliated not merely by Madame Adélaïde in my own drawing room but in the presence of the Barryistes, who lived to see me made the fool.

  The silence we had left behind was deafening, and not until we had fully retreated from the salon did the room erupt into a roar. I could hear the comtesse du Barry’s voice rising above the din as she gave the Austrian ambassador a severe tongue-lashing. From the sound of things, her fury, humiliation, and indignation were as colossal as my own.

  “Well, monsieur de Mercy, you don’t seem to have achieved much. Apparently I must come to your aid!”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Victory—but Whose?

  October 13, 1771

  Madame, my very dear mother:

  Please allow me to justify myself by addressing the several points you made in your last letter to me. First, I am terribly sorry that you believe all of the lies that people write you from Versailles instead of taking my word (or the comte de Mercy’s) for it. I suppose you believe that we want to fool you. I am perfectly convinced that the king does not wish me to speak to Madame du Barry; he has never mentioned it to me; in fact, he is even friendlier to me now that I have refused—and if you were here yourself you would understand that this woman and her clique would never be satisfied with a single word, and I would be expected again and again to recognize her. You may be certain that I need be led by no one when it comes to politeness.

  I do not say that I refuse outright to address Madame du Barry, but I cannot, for a second time, agree to speak to her on a fixed date and at an appointed hour known to her in advance so that she can crow about her triumph. I suppose the entire unpleasant business would have been over and done with in July, if Madame Adélaïde had not exploded it. But if an appointed time were now to be fixed, it would look to the entire court as though I have announced that I hold the losing hand. At least allow me the element of surprise so that I may retain my dignity in the event of another fiasco à l’Adélaïde.

  The debacle of July 11 had left a bitter taste in everyone’s mouths, but most especially in mine. I saw Madame Adélaïde through new eyes, as an intrigante who had used me for her own sport and amusement, no better, perhaps, than the du Barry herself. It became more difficult for me to spend so many hours in the company of my aunts because the eldest of the three, and the one who was undoubtedly a strong influence on her sisters, no longer had my trust. Our conversation over coffee and needlework was now strained; my words were guarded, and Madame Adélaïde surely knew why, although Mesdames Victoire and Sophie were perhaps unaware, if they noticed at all, that I was not as effusive and ebullient as I once had been in their society.

  I recalled the conversation with abbé Vermond from several months’ past in which he had indiscreetly revealed that some at court had been against my marriage to the dauphin. At the time I had assumed it was the progressively minded Orléans branch of the family that had spoken against the alliance. But perhaps Mesdames had been the detractors. Had they posed as my confidantes and mentors purely to win the trust of a girl so naïve and eager to please that she would never comprehend their intent to undermine her until it w
as too late to repair the damage? The contemplation of such duplicity left me seething. My poitrine erupted into a rash that left my usually milky complexion damasked with splotches.

  Desperately in need of cheering, I regaled my former governess, the Countess von Brandeiss, with all the distasteful details of the ongoing contretemps. We had been corresponding every month or two ever since I had left Austria. She would write to me with news of home, and share the sort of anecdotes that Maman would never dream of imparting. The countess, always a warm and open soul, provided the friendly and sympathetic ear I so deeply craved—and sorely lacked.

  I also wrote to Charlotte in Naples, asking if she had any suggestions on the management of Maman, who had been barraging me with letters ever since my failure to address the comtesse. Our mother had never been a princess at a foreign court, never had to play a game by another’s rules. And even though I would know that if I spoke to the creature, it was really in the service of Austria; from the perspective of the courtiers at Versailles, it would appear that the Barryistes had worn me into submission. And I could not allow people to believe that a woman who had once prowled the streets of Paris was more influential at court than I; it would thoroughly diminish the respect that it was imperative I command as dauphine.

  Charlotte comprehended the delicate nature of my predicament—and precisely because she understood just how fragile it was, refused to offer me any advice on how to handle it. “It will be viewed as meddling,” she wrote. “The queen of the Two Sicilies cannot be perceived as involving herself with the petits scandales of the French court, especially when rumors have tentacles, like the polpi that they eat here, slimy legs that grip and suck and reach as far as Austria, Russia, Prussia, and Poland. Were Naples perceived to weigh in as well on the ‘crise du Barry,’ it might create an incident of international proportions.”

  So I was left to battle Maman and the comte de Mercy on my own. The months dragged on as letters flew between Vienna and Versailles, and the stalemate continued.

  But finally they wore me down and I raised the white flag of surrender. The year 1771 had come and gone, if only by a few hours; and as 1772 dawned, it seemed to represent a fresh start. It was a New Year’s Day custom at Versailles for the royal family to accept the congratulations of the courtiers. We stood for hours in the resplendent Hall of Mirrors while they filed past us in strict order of precedence, offering their reverences and felicitations on the New Year. It was a silvery day, although the crush of people obscured the tall mullioned windows, hiding the frosty vista from view. Along the parterres, the sculpted evergreens flanking the dry fountains resembled lonely sentinels. Snow lightly dusted the branches of the trees that lined the long allées leading away from the château.

  I was clad in a gown of striped satin, pale blue on silver, with dyed ostrich plumes in my hair and a triple strand of pearls at my throat, the better to emphasize my long neck. On one side of me, in a suit of deep gray velvet, stood the dauphin, his dark hair abundantly powdered; and on my left was the king, in cloth of silver. I hoped that no one would see me shift my weight from side to side, because my feet were beginning to ache. As the ladies of the court filed past us with studied grace and maddening longueur, and I continued to offer innocuous remarks in reply to their congratulations, I knew what I had to do: put the whole unpleasant business—finalement—to rest!

  Here came the fat, fabulously wizened, and ostentatiously overdressed duchesse d’Aiguillon with her piles of false red hair, the mother of the even more repugnant duc d’Aiguillon, who, precisely one year earlier, had replaced our beloved duc de Choiseul as Minister of State. As she rose from her reverence, I complimented her on the beauty of her ivory-handled fan. She nodded and simpered. Then I drew a deep breath and addressed the woman who accompanied her and who had just made her curtsy. Madame du Barry sparkled with rubies. Her court gown of rose-colored damask set off the pink flush of her cheeks.

  Our eyes met. I parted my lips to speak. “Il y a bien du monde aujourd’hui à Versailles—there are a lot of people at Versailles today.”

  There! I had done it! The entire hall seemed to exhale a collective breath. Papa Roi broke into a wide grin and clasped me in his arms. Blushing with pleasure, Madame du Barry turned away and thrust her round chin into the air, but it was the triumphant look in her eyes that made me wish to decapitate her. My capitulation turned to humiliation.

  After the ceremony, comte de Mercy came over to congratulate me, taking my hands in his and thanking me, on behalf of both Austria and France, for finally speaking to the du Barry. I froze my face into a cordial smile and between my teeth, assured the ambassador, “I have addressed her once, but that is as far as I will go. That woman will never hear my voice again. Happy New Year to you, monsieur le comte.”

  Later in the day I closeted myself in my private study, sat down at the inlaid escritoire, and informed Maman, writing:

  January 1, 1772

  Madame my very dear mother,

  I am sure that Mercy has told you of the momentous event that transpired today, and I hope you are pleased; but there is more to it and I wish you to hear it from me directly. Rest assured that I will always be ready to sacrifice my personal prejudices, provided that I am not required to do anything that would contradict my sense of honor.

  Your loving daughter,

  Marie Antoinette

  But Maman could not see things through my eyes, nor look with my heart. At the end of the month I received another scolding.

  January 21, 1772

  Antoinette, you make me laugh if you imagine that either I or Mercy would ever want (or expect) you to act contrary to your “sense of honor.” Your remark makes me see just how much you have been influenced by bad advice. And when I read that you should work yourself up into a tizzy over a few words, declaring that you will never again speak to Madame du Barry, I tremble for you. I have your own best interests at heart. Once again I must remind you that no one else at court can better advise you than my minister, who knows your country better than any other and is fully aware of all the factions that must be pacified.

  But my new vow of silence did not seem to matter to the king, who was kinder than ever to me, lavishing me with gifts and honoring me with his presence in my rooms at breakfast. He even brought his own coffee maker, a silver urn of which he was tremendously proud—and which I found frightfully amusing, for he had thousands of servants who could have brewed it for him. Yet the most powerful man in the kingdom took great pleasure in doing this one small thing for himself. Sometimes I thought of mentioning that the pride he took was perhaps akin, in some small way, to the happiness the dauphin derived from his lock making or his cabinetry, but I was afraid of saying the wrong thing, and incurring His Majesty’s displeasure, so I kept my own counsel.

  ——

  France agreed to turn a blind eye to Austria’s support of the tripartite partition of Poland and the agreement was signed in Vienna on the nineteenth of February, 1772, less than two months after I had publicly spoken to the comtesse. But the royal mistress was much mistaken if she took my single civil sentence as an offer of friendship. She wrote several letters to me, seeking some sort of rapport between us, but they went unanswered. For me to have responded would have implied, even tacitly, that we were social equals. But Madame du Barry was undeterred by my silence. In fact, she raised her stakes. When she realized that I was maintaining my intention to ignore her, she employed an unnamed intermediary (though I was sure it was the king) to purchase a pair of diamond earrings from Herr Böhmer, the court jeweler, which she then offered me as a gift, knowing my fondness for fine jewelry. I dared not consider the loveliness of the setting or the quality of the gems, because au fond, when all was said and done, the offer was highly inappropriate. After all that had transpired, how could the dauphine of France be seen accepting a present from a trollop?

  Consequently, I employed a liaison of my own, the princesse de Lamballe, to inform the du Barry that I already owne
d plenty of diamonds and had no need of her gift. The princesse was no mere attendant; and she had not been assigned to my household. Rather, she was the first woman I had met in the twenty months I’d spent at Versailles with whom I immediately felt sympathique, and she quickly became my only true friend and my sole confidante.

  Although the princesse de Lamballe had been presented at court and attended nearly every ceremonial event, I did not become truly acquainted with her until one of our sleighing parties during the early months of 1772. I had not gone a-sleighing in years, and the jingle of the bells as the runners glided over the snow, the horses’ heads bobbing in time to the motion, and their snorting in the brisk air, the sharp tingle of snowflakes on my cheeks and the chill on my tongue as I tried to catch them—what memories they conjured! How I missed my family! I recalled how my dear sister Charlotte and I would descend from the sleighs and build snow forts from which we pelted our brothers with snowballs, usually ending up the worse for the battle ourselves. The Countess von Brandeiss had been our captain.

  But I had not heard from my former governess in several months. Maman had forbidden it. Because the countess was always so open and unguarded, my mother feared that she would be too indiscreet in her correspondence. Charlotte, too, had been prohibited from writing to me anymore because our mother did not trust the Neapolitans; she was certain that my sister’s letters would be opened by spies and their content disseminated among those who would seek to damage the Hapsburgs.

  My recollections were tinged with such sadness that wintry day that perhaps I recognized in the princesse de Lamballe a kindred spirit. When she pushed back her ermine trimmed hood, and gazed at the cold gray sky, with her halo of palest blond curls and her sweet, doleful expression, she resembled a melancholy angel.

  I wished to know everything about her. Side by side we sat in my rooms with our embroidery silks; I was still working on the vest for Papa Roi that I had begun upon my arrival in France.