The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette

by Carolly Erickson

  “I suppose it could be done, under the right circumstances.”

  “Are you a hunter, doctor?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Then let us join the king when he goes after deer, or boar, or whatever tiresome animal it is we are supposed to slaughter at this season. Perhaps he will have an accident.”

  “Not a serious accident,” I said, alarmed at what Joseph might be planning.

  “If he is as clumsy on a horse as he is on the dance floor, he can hardly avoid falling off.”

  It was true, Louis often fell when riding. Once he hit his head and was without sense or feeling for at least half an hour.

  “When does he hunt again?”

  “Now that the weather is fine, he goes nearly every day,” I said. “He brings me back trophies.” I had a cabinet full of ears, horns and stinking tails my husband had given me over the years, proofs of his skill as a hunter.

  “Then there is one more trophy to be won.” Joseph smiled. “A slice of the royal foreskin. Venery for venery, eh, doctor?”

  April 27, 1777

  They have done it.

  Joseph and Dr. Boisgilbert went along on a hunting party, got Louis so drunk he tried to jump a fence and fell. He was in a lot of pain from bruises on his legs and back and the doctor gave him a strong sleeping draught. He hardly struggled at all when they lifted him onto a farmer’s cart to bring him back to the palace. Along the way they stopped to put up a canvas over the cart because it was beginning to rain. Under the canvas the doctor hurriedly performed the surgery.

  Louis is still in pain today and resting.

  May 2, 1777

  At last.

  May 10, 1777

  Everything has changed. I am a woman now and I hope to be a mother soon. Louis is as delighted by sex as a child with a new toy. I blush to write the infantile things he likes to do. Fortunately I have Loulou and Yolande to talk to and Madame Solange as well though Joseph has cautioned me that I must never be seen speaking to her as it reflects badly on me. I tell them everything and they laugh and reassure me that my husband is acting like an inexperienced new bridegroom, which is exactly what he is.

  I am certain that Louis is performing adequately to make me pregnant and he performs often so that is also likely to produce a good result. Sophie says little but I notice she is smiling more these days and watching my belly when I dress. Joseph too is smiling these days and he has made me promise that my first son will be called Louis-Joseph.

  August 3, 1777

  This afternoon I waited for Eric in the Temple of Love at the Petit Trianon. He was late, which was unlike him, and while I waited for him I fanned myself and loosened the sash of my white lace gown. The pillows on the wooden bench where I sat were soft, and I felt drowsy, sitting there in the midst of the garden, with the scent of roses and laburnum in the air. I lay back against the pillows and let my eyes close.

  I must have dropped off to sleep when the sound of Eric’s voice awakened me.

  “How lovely you look, lying there,” he said softly.

  “Come, there is room for two.”

  “I long to, you know how I long to.”

  “My dear Eric.” I sat up and he settled into a bench next to me. He smiled but I noticed lines of worry on his handsome forehead, and a look of anxiety in his fine dark eyes as he leaned over to kiss me.

  It was hard for me to restrain myself, and I kissed him back passionately. After a time he released me, as he invariably did, his will being stronger than mine.

  “I think Amélie suspects that we meet like this, in secret. I must not see you for a while. I’m going to pretend, for your sake, that I am in love with someone else. Then Amélie can be jealous of her, and not of you.”

  He kissed my hand, and then my cheek, which was wet with tears.

  “I understand,” I managed to say. “You are right, of course. There must be no doubt about my fidelity, no gossip. Already there are rumors enough.”

  It was true. People said I was the mistress of Comte d’Adhemar, and the Prince de Ligne and the rich Hungarian Count Esterházy, and even Louis’s youngest brother Charlot, whose company I enjoy and who was known to be the lover of many women of the court.

  Eric and I took a tender leave of one another and I do not expect to see him alone for some time. Of course I see him often when others are present, since his duties as equerry bring him to my apartments or my husband’s frequently. He is also in charge of my stables at the Petit Trianon. It is tantalizing to be so near him so often, to feel the thrill that his presence always arouses in me, and yet to have to keep my correct and formal distance.

  It is tantalizing, it is unnatural. It is cruel. If only Eric were my husband instead of Louis, how happy my life would be. Meanwhile I worry, and wait.

  August 27, 1777

  Amélie is pregnant again. She brought me a medal of Ste. Lucille which she says I must put under my pillow to bring me a child.

  She curtseyed when she offered it to me, and looked up slyly with a half-smile.

  “Ste. Lucille will bring you a child,” she said, her voice sharp, “if you are faithful to your husband only, and leave other women’s husbands alone.”

  “Our mistress is a faithful wife,” said Sophie tartly.

  “I hope that may be so,” Amélie retorted. “Even you cannot observe her every moment of the day.”

  “You forget yourself, Amélie. Resume your duties.”

  “I will resume mine, your highness, if you will do yours.”

  “You should dismiss that impertinent girl,” was Sophie’s advice after Amélie had sauntered off. But of course I could not dismiss Amélie. I could not take the risk that she would spread spiteful gossip, or that she would force Eric to leave the court.

  “She does her work well enough,” Loulou remarked, knowing the reasons that I wanted Amélie to remain in my household. “I will insist that she speak respectfully.”

  October 20, 1777

  We are all wearing a new hairstyle. It is called the American Pouf. Red, white and blue ribbons and little American flags are entwined in mounds of hair and hairpieces. I began the fashion when the famous American Benjamin Franklin was brought to my husband’s levee by Joseph and Louis and Mr. Franklin talked on and on about his inventions.

  We are giving the Americans arms and food to help them fight the British but it is all done in secret.

  December 14, 1777

  Winter is dreary already and I am in low spirits. I think now that I will never have a child. Maman has sent me a girdle blessed by Ste. Radegunde, to wear to bed. It is a precious relic from the abbey of Melk embroidered with secret prayers and occult symbols and she says it has never been known to fail.

  Loulou and Yolande look at me with pity in their eyes. They know how much I want and need a child. Mercy says there is new talk of finding a way to have me put aside and marrying Louis to someone else. No one wants Stanny to become king and if Louis were to die Stanny would rule. If Stanny died then it would be Charlot, and after Charlot would come his sons. Charlot and his foolish wife Thérèse have three children already.

  When will my prayers be answered?

  January 3, 1778

  A thousand candles lit the long staircase at Yolande’s ball last night, and as I began to go up the stairs the musicians were playing a sweet Viennese tune.

  I remember thinking, they’re playing that song just for me, because they know I love it, and then I remember glancing up the staircase, and then—oh, then—my memory folds in and out on itself like a kaleidoscope and the images grow blurry in my mind.

  For I saw, coming down the staircase toward me, the most beautiful man I have ever seen. He was wearing a white uniform, and he looked so tall and slender and regal—no, more than regal, almost like a marble statue of a Greek god come to life. He had blond hair, a little ruffled by the wind as he came in from outside I suppose, and he smiled, not just with his lips but with his beautiful blue eyes and his whole face.


  I stopped breathing and stared, forgetting everything else around me, as he came down the stairs toward me. The musicians must have been continuing to play but I did not hear their music. All around me people must have been coming and going, others dancing and talking on the dance floor below. But I was unaware of any of it. I saw only the smiling blond man in the white uniform, holding out his hand to me in friendship, walking toward me with the slowness of a dream.

  “Your highness,” he said, his voice deep and inviting.

  I held out my small hand to him. He took it in his much larger one and pressed his warm lips to my wrist. I felt a spurt of flame ignite at my wrist and spread up my arm, across my chest, into my neck and cheeks. I could not speak. I could not move or think.

  Somehow the moment passed, and the next thing I knew I was standing in a circle of friends, whispering to Loulou, “Who is that beautiful man?”

  “That is Count Axel Fersen. He’s just come from Sweden.

  His father is Field Marshal Fersen of the Swedish Army.”

  “Tell me he isn’t going back to Sweden right away.”

  “Shall I find out?”

  “Yes. No. Oh yes, please find out. Invite him—invite him to a late supper in my apartments tomorrow night.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I watched Loulou make her way through the crowded room to where Count Fersen stood, taller than most of the men around him, his fair hair gleaming in the candlelight. They spoke together briefly, then Loulou turned and left him to return to me. At that moment he looked in my direction, fleetingly, and before I turned my head away I thought I saw the merest glimmer of a smile on his lips.

  Tomorrow I will see him again. Will I be able to sleep tonight?

  January 5,1778

  Last night Axel came to supper and as soon as he entered the room I felt once again the strange and wonderful impact of his presence. Our eyes met and even though he was not near me I saw, or thought I saw, a look of recognition on his handsome face. Not the recognition of me as Antoinette, but a different kind of recognition entirely, as of someone close to him whom he had known for a long time. I cannot describe it, but I felt it, and I knew that he felt it too.

  We were twelve at supper. Louis was absent. He never came to my late suppers, preferring to eat an early supper served to him by Chambertin and then retire to bed with a box of bonbons.

  Axel sat across the table from me, between Yolande and the old Duchesse de Lorme, who is seventy and quite hard of hearing. He spoke wittily and very graciously to both of them, nodding patiently when the duchess misunderstood him and turning aside Yolande’s flirtatious compliments with jokes and light banter.

  Through it all, in passing, he glanced at me again and again, each glance a thrilling reminder to me of our unspoken closeness. For I did feel very close to him throughout that long supper, as aware of him there across the table as I was aware of my own breathing, my own heartbeat. We did not speak directly to each other, yet how much was said without words! How much was felt!

  When the evening ended and he took my hand to kiss in parting I felt him slip a note into my palm.

  “Good night, your majesty,” he said. “And au revoir.”

  “Good night, count. I look forward to seeing you again soon.”

  I could hardly wait to read the note.

  “Shall I come to you tomorrow afternoon at the Petit Trianon?” he wrote. “Please say yes.”

  I sent a page to Axel’s lodgings with a note that consisted of only one word.

  “Yes.”

  January 7, 1778

  I can think of only one thing: Axel. Axel. Axel.

  My world has been turned upside down and I am happily spinning and reeling with the impact. What glorious confusion!

  I hardly know what words to put here, for there are not words to describe what is happening to me. It is as if I am newly born. As if I have crossed a threshold into an unknown land, the land of the heart.

  Abbé Vermond has read to me about the Beatific Vision, when a saint glimpses the face of God and a new world opens before him. I too have had my Beatific Vision. I have glimpsed, as if for the first time, the face of love.

  Axel came to me yesterday at the Petit Trianon and I told Loulou to send him up at once to my private rooms. He stepped across the threshold, held out his arms and I rushed into them, letting him enfold me as if he would never let me go.

  “How can this be?” I said to him wonderingly when at last he released me and we stood, hands clasped tightly, regarding each other. “How can I love you so, when I don’t even know you?”

  I spoke without thought, and was surprised at the boldness of my own words. Yet they were true. Why not speak them?

  “My little angel, I am hardly the one to ask for an explanation. All I know is, I am enraptured with you.”

  He kissed me then, long and fervently, and for the next hour I was lost in a sweet haze of joy and pleasure. He was a skillful and tender lover, and told me again and again how beautiful I was, calling me his little angel. When he stroked my cheek and smoothed my hair his hands were very gentle, and when we looked at each other I could not look away, so caught up was I in the beauty and depth and infinite sweetness in his fine blue eyes.

  I made certain we were alone all afternoon, and we dined on sweet cream and strawberries and goose liver paté while Axel told me all about his life, bending over me from time to time and kissing me as he talked. I love listening to him talk. He speaks French and German very well but with a funny Swedish accent. His voice is low and deep and he talks slowly, everything he does is unhurried and full of grace.

  His father is an important nobleman in Sweden and an adviser to the king. Axel expects to be like him. He has many military honors and decorations and has been in battles before. He jokes about it but I am sure he is very brave.

  I cannot think of anything but Axel. I feel swallowed up by love for him, afloat on a vast sea of love, basking under the warm sun of love. They say that love between two people grows slowly over time and becomes deeper and richer with the years. That is nonsense. I now know that real love sweeps into one’s life with the fury of a sudden storm. It is instant and powerful. Nothing else matters. Reason, restraint, judgment are swept away with the force of a swollen river surging past its banks, and nothing—not thought or feeling, sensations or life itself—can ever be the same again.

  January 15, 1778

  Axel is to be here only a short time. He is going to America with General Rochambeau. They are taking troops to help the Americans defeat the British, our enemies. They will fight in the savage wilderness, with the wild animals. There will be terrible danger. I am worried about his safety but he only laughs and says he thinks the court of Versailles is not a very safe place either.

  He attended Louis’s levee in full uniform and when he was introduced, Louis stared at his chest with its expanse of ribbons and gleaming stars and gold medallions. I stood by, saying nothing.

  Louis stepped very close to Axel and said quite loudly, “How did you get all those? Did you steal them?”

  Axel smiled. “They gave me this one for ducking well under fire,” he said, pointing to one of the shining medals. “And this one for staying out of artillery range.”

  Louis’s loud laugh could be heard all across the large salon. He clapped Axel on the back roughly. “That’s good. I’ll remember that. For staying out of artillery range. That’s good.”

  “I’ve never been near a battle myself,” Louis added, watching Axel as he spoke to see how he would react.

  “Your highness is much too important to the realm to be risked in combat,” was the deft reply. “You are needed to direct the course of battles, not fight in them.”

  “I suppose so. In fact I would probably be in the way,” was Louis’s frank admission.

  “I am told your majesty has a fine collection of maps,” Axel said, avoiding the awkward subject of Louis’s questionable value on the battlefield. “Have you any of the British col
onies in the Americas? I would very much like to study them.”

  I moved away to talk to some Italian dignitaries and did not hear any more. I felt uneasy standing there, so close to both my husband and the man I love most in the world. I hoped I was not growing red in the face with embarrassment. At this court, as at Schönbrunn, women socialize with their husbands and lovers in a very relaxed and matter-of-fact way. However, this deception is new to me. I never felt any awkwardness or embarrassment about my infatuation with Eric, because he was only a servant. No servant could ever be a true rival to the king. But Axel, so highborn, so much at ease in the splendors of Versailles, he was a different matter entirely. And I must admit that my love for Axel is as far above my love for Eric as the heavens are above the earth.

  January 24, 1778

  He is to leave in three weeks. I cannot bear the thought of parting from him. What will I do?

  January 27, 1778

  This afternoon Axel and I lay naked in front of the fire on a thick bearskin rug, while it snowed outside. We have had a severe storm and there is deep snow everywhere. The view from my windows is all white. Only Loulou knows that Axel is here with me, and she brings us our food and keeps the other servants away, especially Amélie.

  It was so warm and cosy by the fire, and the crackle of the logs as they burned was soothing and restful. I could almost forget, as I lay in his arms, that he will soon be gone. Almost—but not quite. When we made love I clung to him, as if by holding him as tightly as I could I might be able to keep him with me forever.

  Afterwards, while he drowsed, I traced the long lines of his beautiful lean body with my fingertips, admiring each curve and hollow, each strong muscle, the curling blond hair on his broad chest, the smooth belly and taut loins, the entirety of him. He opened his eyes, took my hand and kissed my fingertips.

  “I could never have imagined, when I left Vienna, that I would meet anyone like you. That I would feel as I do now. For a long time I wished, secretly, that I had never come to France at all. Nothing here has gone as I hoped—as my family hoped. As a wife I am a failure.”