Becoming Marie Antoinette: A Novel

by Juliet Grey

  I knew that the dauphin had been dreading this audience with his grand-père for weeks. The king’s legendary appetite, not for the gustatory pleasures in which my husband derived such satisfaction, but for the amatory delights he found in the arms of his mistresses, only heightened the dauphin’s humiliation. Papa Roi was still a vigorous lover at the age of sixty-three, while my eighteen-year-old husband, after nearly three years of marriage, remained as chaste as the day of his birth.

  “Please come with me tonight,” Louis Auguste had whispered, just before our respective couchers. We had undressed in our separate bedchambers and waited, abed, until our clocks struck the hour of half past three. Then, with the aid of a single, trusted attendant to dress us—the princesse de Lamballe for me; and Monsieur Clery, the dauphin’s young valet de chambre who was so much wiser than his years—we crept out of our rooms and independently began the lengthy walk to the king’s apartments.

  My husband had arrived before I did. He was seated on the edge of the enormous bed of state that dominated the room in which Louis XV officially slept and held court. I had never before seen it at night. By day the bed conveyed such majesty; from the white plumes above the golden fringe on the tester to the bedskirt of woven brocade, it represented the potency of the sovereign, the patriarch and father of his subjects. But by night the crackling warmth of the fire and the softness of light conferred upon it other qualities entirely: a frightening, almost thrilling melding of sensuality, power, and magic.

  I regarded the dauphin, too terrified to firmly plant his derrière on the coverlet of red and gold brocade, too timid to own the bed in which he would one day sleep as king of France. Even in the gentle, amber candle glow, I could tell that the armholes of his suit of pale blue satin were dark with nervous sweat. Clery had not tamed his snarled mass of thick brown hair. My heart was breaking for him. I sat beside him on the vast bed and took his hand in mine, but Louis Auguste seemed too absorbed in his own terror to notice. Instead, his head was bent like a penitent as he picked at the embroidery on his waistcoat.

  The king was conferring softly with another gentleman, the bespectacled Dr. Joseph Maria Francis de Lassone, the dauphin’s physician.

  “Well?” demanded Louis anxiously. “I am heartily sick of the volley of letters I have been receiving from the empress of Austria. Please tell me something that will set her mind—and mine—to rest. We are of the same vintage, you and I, Monsieur Lassone. Surely you understand the imperative of ensuring one’s legacy. Without an heir to follow Louis Auguste, France could descend into chaos. Factions will form, if they have not done so already, in favor of one or the other of his brothers. And they may produce sons, although Provence and his wife seem to be as slow off the mark as the dauphin and dauphine. The comte d’Artois will be married in November—” The king began ticking off the months on his fingers. “That’s eight months from now, and he’s very much in my own mold—nothing like his elder brothers—so add nine months to eight and we still have more than a year and a half before there’s even a chance for a little duc d’Angoulême—” Papa Roi threw his hands into the air in disgust. “And if I worry about whether the duc d’Orléans will try to claim the throne in the absence of an heir, you will be treating me for apoplexy.”

  I wasn’t so certain that the comte d’Artois could be depended upon to become the first of the Bourbon grandsons to become a father. He was to be yoked in matrimony to his own sister-in-law, Marie Thérèse, the younger, and even uglier, sister of the comtesse de Provence. Papa Roi had granted the comtesse du Barry the honor of arranging all the wedding festivities, as she had done for the comte de Provence; and it rankled every fiber of my being that she should be given a role that the queen would ordinarily assume.

  I wondered if the smirk would disappear from Artois’s too-handsome countenance when he found himself in the dark with a girl who had been described as having a thin, vulpine face, an ugly tip on the end of her long nose, crossed eyes, and a large mouth! And if her hygiene was as nonexistent as her sister’s …

  The king and the dauphin’s physician approached the bed. Monsieur Lassone was a dignified-looking man who dressed in black and white from head to toe, and was obviously fastidious about his toilette—a reassuring quality in a medical man. “Why is madame la dauphine present?” he inquired. “It is most irregular.”

  “Because I asked her to be here,” the dauphin mumbled.

  Papa Roi shrugged. “Perhaps the dauphine would prefer to wait behind the screen,” the doctor said. He gestured to a six-paneled gilt-edged screen embellished with floral motifs.

  “Will the physician insist on examining me without my clothes?” Louis Auguste asked. His voice was high and frightened. He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his fists until Monsieur Lassone assured him that he could remain fully dressed, although he maintained that he could not observe the dauphin’s heartbeat unless His Royal Highness relaxed his hands.

  “Then if I am not to disrobe, my wife may remain.” The dauphin patted my hand. His palms were damp and cold.

  Monsieur Lassone raised his lorgnette and peered at him. Then he felt his pulse. Louis Auguste held his breath. I watched while the doctor assessed my husband’s height and measured his girth. He pitched forward on his toes to relevé and examined the dauphin’s eyes. “Myopic, but not rheumy,” he informed the king. “Well, at least we know he can see madame la dauphine!”

  The men discussed the dauphin’s customary activities as well as his prodigious appetite. I listened with avidity, for Maman would expect a full report. I would tell her that my husband’s physician had declared that the dauphin’s constitution was lethargic from overexerting himself during the hunt and at the forge, and from devouring too much rich food and confections. “As such he lacks the fire in his belly to do his duty,” were Monsieur Lassone’s words.

  “I wish I were dead,” the dauphin whispered in my ear. I had never heard him sound so glum. His eyes were moist and he swallowed hard, as if he were trying to fight back the tears forming in his throat. “They have no idea what it feels like to be me. To be discussed as though I were not in the room, or worse—am present, yet have no feelings.”

  The king pulled the dauphin to his feet. “So, my boy, Monsieur Lassone’s diagnosis seems to me to be well reasoned. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  “I like to eat,” the dauphin muttered defensively.

  “Speak louder,” the king commanded. “This is a serious matter.” He began to grow agitated. “The fate of France hangs in the balance like the sword of Damocles. Close your eyes and imagine people cheering Vive le roi Stanislas Xavier, le ci-devant comte de Provence. And if he is carried away by disease, imagine the cries of Vive le roi Charles Philippe, le ci-devant comte d’Artois! And if your brothers both die young, are you going to let one of those ugly Savoyard sisters married to them bear the next Bourbon heir? Or will the princes of the blood fight it out? Will your successor be an Orléans? The son of the pretty little duchesse de Chartres?”

  “I like to eat,” Louis Auguste repeated emphatically. “And I like to ride. And hunt. And to build my cabinets and forge my locks under the tutelage of Monsieur Gamain.”

  “That’s all very well and good,” replied the king. “But if they interfere with your ability to do the one thing that is required of you at this stage in your life, such activities will have to be curtailed.”

  The dauphin was horrified. “For how long?”

  Louis Quinze glanced at me. “I would say, until madame la dauphine is increasing.” He turned to the physician. “Would that be a reasonable assessment, Monsieur Lassone?” The doctor nodded his assent. “I am certain Her Imperial Majesty Maria Theresa would approve as well,” the king added, meeting my gaze.

  I said nothing. Whenever I was in Papa Roi’s presence, I felt more like a child than a woman. Seated on the bed of state, whose inescapable symbolism seemed to mock my own conjugal inadequacy, I was cowed all the more. The only thing that could ha
ve made it worse would have been the presence of the king’s most powerful minister, the duc d’Aiguillon, lording his triumph over my misfortune. I could just imagine the creature of the comtesse du Barry’s advancement, standing beside the bed and urging the king to send the inadequate Autrichienne back across the border, for surely there could be nothing wrong with His Majesty’s grandson.

  Louis Auguste shuffled his feet and stared glumly at his diamond shoe buckles. “It’s not the food,” he mumbled. “Nor the riding, neither.”

  “Oho!” The king’s eyes widened with mock horror. “So you know better than your physician now.”

  A log exploded with a loud pop and shifted precariously on the andirons. The candles hissed and guttered. The dauphin looked like an old dog that had been kicked for stealing table scraps. After several moments of silence, he found his voice. “It is not from exhaustion that I am unable to … to do my duty. I find my wife charming, Papa Roi. I love her, but I still need a little time to overcome my timidity.” Was it the warmth from the fire, or his embarrassment that caused his face to blush?

  I began to tremble, not from fear, but with amazement. Adjusting myself on the great bed of state, my eyes wet with happiness, I pressed my lips to his warm and rosy cheek.

  He loved me? Why had he never said so before?

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The Joyeuse Entrée

  JUNE 1773

  Ever since I’d come to Versailles, I had been begging Papa Roi to arrange a formal, official visit to Paris, but the answer was always a resounding non! I had even tried to wheedle Mesdames tantes into pleading with him on my behalf, and had spoken to the comte de Mercy as well. “Do you think my grand-père is afraid that the dauphin and I will be received there with too much enthusiasm?” I jested. But as time wore on, I had overheard, from vendors in the courtyard and corridors, from hopeful petitioners, and from backbiting courtiers, that Louis Quinze was no longer considered “le Bien-Aimé,” by the Parisians.

  In the three years since my arrival in France, the scales had fallen from my eyes. At first I had revered Papa Roi with appreciation and awe; he was tall and handsome, with a noble profile—in short, everything a king should appear to be to an unschooled girl of fourteen. But I was seventeen now, and had absorbed enough of the jaded ambience of the French court to adopt a certain cynicism. My fervently held beliefs as a good Catholic, and the prolonged contretemps over my refusal to acknowledge Madame du Barry had taught me much; I had come to see the king for what he was: a vain and selfish man with alarmingly fluid morals.

  But finally (and more than likely because Papa Roi felt the cold breath of his own mortality on the back of his neck), as it was the custom for the king’s heir to present himself to the people of Paris before the reigning sovereign died, Louis relented and set the date of June 8, 1773, for the “joyeuse entrée,” the joyous entry that would mark the first formal visit of the dauphin and dauphine to the capital. Even Louis Auguste grew excited at the prospect, so much so that he was willing (along with his brothers) to become a party to a scheme I was concocting. I was certain the joyeuse entrée would be a grand and glorious event, but would it not be just as exhilarating, if not more so, to first visit the capital incognito? To see the areas of the city beyond the narrow scope of our previous excursions to the Palais Royal and the adjacent opera house! After the eighth of June we would never be able to do so with such surety because by then everyone would know what we looked like.

  The comte d’Artois, who of all his brothers possessed a playfulness of character most similar to mine, elected to undertake the planning of the adventure; and thus it was on the night of June 1, 1773, two hours past sundown, that the five of us—the dauphin and I, the comte and comtesse de Provence, and the comte d’Artois, cloaked ourselves to the point of anonymity in voluminous black dominoes, their capacious calèche hoods tugged over our heads. The comtesse and I feared for our highly piled coiffures at first, but the wicked pleasure we derived by flouting court etiquette in sneaking into the capital unattended far outweighed our vanity. A burgundy-colored carriage, unmarked, conveyed us the ten miles from Versailles into Paris, rumbling along the rutted King’s Road, the coachman having been bribed with the promise of a bottle of Imperial Tokay at the conclusion of the illicit excursion.

  Upon our arrival at the city gates, four footmen alit from the carriage, and acting as runners or linkboys carried torches to illumine the capital’s dark and labyrinthine streets. I parted the curtains and peered out of the window. I had expected broad, cobblestone allées, lined with grand and imposing facades, like our streets in Vienna. Instead, the narrow houses leaned against one another like a string of drunken sailors intent on holding themselves upright as they faced their admiral’s inspection. The coach almost immediately became stuck in the mud, muck evidently being an omnipresent symptom of the unpaved rues.

  By another comparison, the city’s stench made the dank, urine-permeated corridors of Versailles as fragrant as lilacs in May. “Are you sure this is Paris?” I breathed, tempted to hold my nose and unsure what to make of it, as fascinated as I was repelled.

  Although they were none too pleased about such a filthy and onerous task, the footmen managed to disengage our coach with a minimal amount of difficulty and we were able to continue our adventure. At length the carriage clattered over a narrow bridge onto the Ile de la Cité, arriving in the public square outside Notre-Dame de Paris. There in the looming shadow of the cathedral, even after nightfall, and just like the Cour Royale of Versailles, were every sort of vendor imaginable, from ribbon sellers to pamphleteers. University students perused the bookstalls, and sharp-eyed marketwomen surveyed the cheap pottery. Live chickens scrabbled and squawked in their crates. A young woman trudged past our coach, her slender figure nearly doubled over by the weight of a large wicker basket on her back.

  “Oysters, fresh oysters,” she cried, her clear voice rising above the hubbub.

  “Oysters?” exclaimed the dauphin. He rapped on the roof of the carriage with the golden pommel of his walking stick. “Halt!”

  Our coachman drew up his teams. In a trice, the doors to the carriage were opened and the traveling steps lowered. The comtesse and I were handed out first, descending straight into a mud puddle. I burst into a fit of giggles. “However shall I explain this to Madame Etiquette? Five gold louis to whoever comes up with the best story!”

  The comte d’Artois clapped me heartily on the back. “I accept your challenge, madame!”

  “You accept any challenge where there is wagering to be had,” the dauphin retorted prudishly. “And one day you will ruin yourself by it.”

  “Papa Roi will pay my debts,” Artois replied cockily.

  “When Papa Roi is dead I won’t pay them—you can be sure of that,” my husband retorted.

  “The dauphin is far too earnest,” the comte de Provence teased. “Did he ever tell you about the day—this was many years ago—when he told off his equerry during a riding instruction?” Without waiting for a reply, the comte continued his anecdote. “The dauphin here was not performing terribly well; his horsemanship was an embarrassment to everyone. So the equerry scolded him. ‘Monsieur le dauphin, don’t you know that a prince who is destined to become a great king must know how to ride?’ And my brother, his face all serious, pushes his hat further down upon his big head, as if it would help him to assert himself, and says to the equerry, ‘No, sir, I was not aware of it. I only know that a great king should be just and make his people happy.’ The equerry and I laughed so hard at that!”

  “It’s not funny,” the dauphin insisted. “In fact, it’s true. And, besides, no one could accuse me now of being a laggard on horseback,” he added sullenly.

  “Oh, come, come, mon cher! Don’t be such a”—I discovered that my blue satin slipper had become entirely trapped in the muck—“a stick in the mud.” His brothers began to laugh heartily at his expense. The comtesse de Provence clasped her husband’s arm and tittered behind her ebony-
handled fan.

  “Ho, there!” my husband called to the oyster seller. “How much for two dozen?” From a hidden pocket in his domino he withdrew a velvet purse with his initials worked in silver thread. I stifled a gasp, for his insatiable hunger threatened to give us all away. Mercifully, the oyster girl, her eyes as round as the golden coins counted into her palm by my husband, showed not the slightest glimmer of recognition. Of course, how could she? It was not our profiles that graced the currency, and one well-fed nobleman in a large hooded cloak with a fat purse probably looked the same to her as any other.

  With nothing in which to carry his precious cargo, the dauphin enlisted the aid of his brothers; there would be some additional explaining to do at the palace when the crowns of the comtes’ tricorns smelled of oysters and brine. This my husband found utterly hilarious. His braying laugh, so unmistakeable to the rest of us, echoed off the stone façade of the cathedral, and we found much amusement in the fact that Louis Auguste’s gaping maw was a mirror image of the grinning gargoyles overhead.

  We took a stroll about the square, stopping to admire the organ grinder and his monkey, who was dressed in a little silk suit, complete with embroidered waistcoat and frothy cravat. “Don’t you think he looks exactly like the duc de la Vauguyon?” I exclaimed as the creature leapt onto my shoulder. “Although I daresay this little stinker is much more clever!” A few yards away a stiltwalker whose face was made up to resemble a Pierrot strode through the crowd, high enough above it to become the perfect lookout for his confederate, a scrawny pickpocket who could not have been above the age of eleven or twelve. Vagrants, some shoeless and clad in rags, huddled in the gloomy recesses of the cathedral’s façade. I had seen their like before, on occasion. Beggars who had parleyed the coin they solicited into the proper accoutrements rented from vendors at the gates sometimes wandered the corridors of Versailles, making themselves at home by dozing off in various remote corners of the château, but were invariably detected by the royal bodyguards with their spaniels.