Farewell, My Queen

by Black Moishe

  “Monsieur de Breteuil has contrived to have about him men of solid worth.”

  “I would add that his program of action is faultless. He has asked the King for a hundred million écus and a hundred thousand men to put down the rebellion. Clear, concise, admirable in every way.”

  (The man holding my ankle stirred in his sleep. The impropriety of what he was doing had me paralyzed. I wondered whether I was destined to spend the rest of the night with my foot at the mercy of a stranger.)

  “He has my full approval. A hundred million and a hundred thousand men. There, now, is a man who does not mouth elegant phrases, who does not write treatises, but goes straight to the goal. The King, for once, must pay no heed to his own pathetic, cheese-paring, thrifty bourgeois instincts (a descendant of Saint Louis with the soul of a shopkeeper!); instead, he must let Monsieur de Breteuil have money and soldiers. And then we can move on to other things. This state of turmoil has gone on much too long.”

  The sleeper had come awake. When he took in the enormity of where his hand was and the extent of my shame and embarrassment—I had exposed my limb up to the ankle in pulling away—he was overcome with confusion and repeatedly craved my pardon.

  WITH THE QUEEN, IN THE GILDED GREAT STUDY.

  HER PREPARATIONS FOR DEPARTURE

  (from midnight until two o’clock in the morning).

  My head was buzzing, my temples throbbing; I wanted a fountain to splash myself with water. Or simply my bed, to snatch a bit of rest. But just as I was starting to cross the Princes’ Courtyard, I was stopped by one of the Queen’s valets. He had a note for me; I recognized the hand of Madame Campan, First Lady of the Bedchamber. The mere sight of her rounded, careful, servile writing, as civil and stupid as the woman herself, made the weight of my fatigue twice as crushing. But knowing where the message came from, I would not have dreamed of trying to avoid complying with its instructions. On the contrary, I was filled with gratitude for the order summoning me abruptly to her apartments. It was an absurd time of day for a regular reading session, but, very early on, the Queen had introduced the custom of sending for me at all hours, whenever it was certain that, even if she put off going to bed for as long as possible, an attack of insomnia was definitely in the making. In that voice of mine, which my sponsor Monsieur de Montdragon had rated as merely “subdued” and conveniently unobtrusive, the Queen had discovered a soothing quality. I could skip a passage, or read the same one twice, and the Queen would not notice. She desperately needed to forget her cares and respond to the invitation underlying the words, conveyed by my voice: “Close your eyes; rest awhile.” I would come running, half asleep, barely decent, a dress pulled hastily on over my nightgown. I would arrive to find a little table standing ready, with four lighted candles. I would slip into the shadowy bedside space and open the book. Sometimes, in the drafts of air, the flickering flames would carry the words away in a rolling movement of waves. There were heavy seas around my printed pages, as the Queen, stretched out on a daybed, listened to me the way one might listen to a nocturne. The words followed lazily, one upon the other, reduced almost to a murmur in the troughs of the waves. Deep depression would descend upon me, soon shaken off as my voice rose once again with a strength that could save both of us, so I thought, from the agony of those hours for which no one at Versailles had ever found the appropriate ritual. Both of us; I dared to say those words, but only to myself. I blushed at my own secret immodesty. I would cast a rapid glance in the Queen’s direction, as though she might have read the thoughts I dared to harbor. She appeared to be in the greatest physical discomfort. She would stretch, sit up, take her head in her hands. Then she would lie down again and close her eyes. My function was not performed at a set time; it was tied to the phase when the sea of night was at slack water. It was dependent on that dreaded zone where the worst that has happened to you resurfaces to assail you once again and drag you to the bottom. The zone where you drown. I was the boat girl, ferrying across the water those things that have thus far refused to make the crossing.

  “Put me to sleep, Madam,” the Queen would sometimes request with a sigh.

  In his white-gloved hand the valet held aloft a torch. I followed him. As we walked past the Quarters of the Queen’s Watch, I heard a confused sound of men’s voices, glasses being smashed, weapons falling on the floor. I also caught choruses being sung in dialects so totally incomprehensible that I mistook them for foreign languages. I actually thought that these were soldiers from the army of foreign troops, come despite the King’s counterorders to offer their support to the Queen. Their noise filled the Antechamber of the Grand Couvert, which stood quite empty; but immediately beyond, a small padded door lined with heavy dark green gros de Tours, set into a corner of the Peers’ Salon, had but to open before me, and I was in the peace and quiet of the Library, and the even greater tranquility of a little adjoining room called the Library Annex. The impression of shelter and isolation culminated when I reached the heart of the Queen’s Little Apartments, a group of tiny ill-lit spaces that were known as the Great Interior Study, or Gilt Study.

  Great it was not, but gilded it was. And all that gold, applied over the white wainscoting and around the mirrors, in garlands, ribbons, delicate friezes, profiled sphinxes, over the ledges of the mantelpiece, the elbow rests of the armchairs, the table legs and harp strings, was like a wondrous curtain of rain through which, as I looked, the Queen appeared, herself covered in droplets of gold. Bent over a writing desk, she was reading letters or papers. She turned her eyes in my direction but did not seem to notice me. She no longer looked anything like the very young girl, almost a child, whom I had left the previous day, nor like the ivory statuette glimpsed on the balcony. Madame Campan was parading her own importance. Puffed up, acting the soul of discretion, she kept shoving me to one side. I was edging my way forward at an angle, curtsying deeply as I went. And she, a big, fat hen in her heavy corpulence, repeatedly obtruded her person between the Queen and me. The woman nudged me away into the Bathing Room and from there into the Bath Compartment. Why does she not just shut me up in the Commode Room? I wondered. Madame Campan handed me several sheets of paper and pointed to a table covered with flacons of perfume. I made as though to touch them with my fingertips.

  “You will not handle Her Majesty’s perfumes, I trust,” she hissed angrily. And she added: “Her Majesty is busy reading and sorting personal papers. There is not the least need for you to read to her.”

  Giving me no time to protest, she went on to explain:

  “The only thing required of you is to take a sheet of paper and write down a few titles, ten, perhaps, that you consider indispensable in the event of a removal from Versailles. Monsieur Campan (her father-in-law, whose name was constantly on her lips) would have gladly assumed this task, but has been called upon to perform a more essential service.”

  I immediately envisioned the transfer of the National Assembly to Soissons or Noyon, and a royal departure for Compiègne. I liked the idea. The request, however, struck me as illogical: in every château where the Queen stayed for any length of time, there were several libraries. But I did not argue the point; the only reservations I expressed had to do with where I was to carry out my assignment. I would have preferred to work in the Library.

  “The Library, as also the Library Annex and the Daybed Room, will soon be crammed full of baggage. With the best will in the world, you would be in our way, Madame Laborde,” replied the Queen’s First Lady of the Bedchamber, and it was as though she had punched me in the stomach with her elbow.

  So I set to work there in the Bath Compartment. I concentrated as best I could for all the whispering going on in the next room, the door of which stood ajar. The whisperers were Madame Campan and her subordinate Madame de Rochereuil, Commode-Bearer to the Queen. They were sorting undergarments. Anything not selected for the move was appropriated by Madame de Rochereuil, who, it was common knowledge, would then sell these items as dearly as she could. She ha
d fingers like talons, long, pointed fingers that seized and held whatever they touched, fingers whose fearful nails made holes in the tips of her gloves. At the name Rochereuil, I could not repress a shudder. Some day, I thought, she will gouge the Queen’s eyes out.

  For the time being, not daring to do that, she was conspiring. She was doing her best to draw the First Lady of the Bedchamber over into the enemy camp. Madame Campan resisted, but Madame de Rochereuil did not lack for arguments:

  “You and I are scorned and belittled and it has to stop. We have to say ‘No more!’ We are human beings, just as she is. We have our dignity. Why did she demand to have a closestool of lacquer and gilded bronze? Even when she’s doing that, even sitting in that posture, she has to feel superior to the rest of the world. Does that strike you as fair or just, Henriette?”

  Henriette was sick with embarrassment. She gestured at the Rochereuil woman to be quiet. She was mortally afraid that the Queen might hear. But Madame de Rochereuil took perverse delight in making fun of her friend’s natural timidity.

  “Believe me, I’m in a good position to know what she really is. When kings come closest to nature, that’s the time when a person can best see for herself how fraudulent it is to try and set them apart from the rest of the human race. They were not born to command us. No one was born to command us. There should be no masters but those we choose. We ourselves. Freely. Knowingly.”

  “Hush, oh, hush! We’ll discuss it all later, at more leisure.”

  “Come on, now, you’re already convinced; you just don’t want to admit it, even to yourself; you’re held back by a bunch of old prejudices. Listen to what your brother Monsieur Genet says . . . ”

  “Oh, don’t even mention his name to me; he’s a good-hearted man, but he’s . . . how can I put it . . . ”

  “He’s a republican instead of a monarchist. He sees things as they are and he’s made the right choice. Listen to what he says; he’s showing you the way you should go.”

  “That scamp?”

  “That scamp. You should be proud of him. He’s a decent, intelligent young man. He goes around proclaiming: ‘The very sight of a king is repugnant to me.’ That’s the kind of young people we need.”

  Madame Campan was trying to escape from the evil counsels of the Commode-Bearer. I suspected her of not being quite so upright when there were no witnesses and the Queen was not within hearing. She came to see what progress was being made, and I gave her some titles. “I shall see to it that those books are packed,” she said. Shortly afterward—and in my memory this scene is strange because it bears absolutely no relationship to any of the other reading sessions—Madame Campan and I were sent for. The Queen needed us in the Great Gilt Study.

  My task, I discovered, was to leaf rapidly through a number of books on eastern France, or maps if any were to be had (“detailed maps,” the Queen insisted), in order to determine the best possible itinerary between Versailles and Metz.

  So the Queen was leaving Versailles and going to Metz! This was something new. All the papers were gone from her table. A burning smell suggested that she had not stopped at reading or rereading. Her gestures were quick and nervous. The expression on her face was one of strain, beyond weariness. Her complexion was muddy, her skin covered with red spots. And the celebrated grimace, the downturn of the lips, that so often made her look odiously contemptuous when in fact she was perhaps feeling no particular emotion, was very marked. But in her eyes, enlarged by the leaden circles spreading all the way to her cheeks, was a hardness I had not seen before. Despondent she was not, or not completely. Or else she was despondent earlier, but not now. Now she radiated determination and vigor.

  I liked looking at her. I had acquired a sixth sense that alerted me to her unguarded moments, when she was busy either doing something or daydreaming, so that she was mentally absent but had left behind what one might call an effigy of herself that I could contemplate at will. Only rarely did I look directly at her—the way I had been lucky enough to do on the previous day, in her bedchamber at the Petit Trianon. Most often, what I was free to gaze upon was her reflected image. From the corner where I stood in the Great Gilt Study, all the mirrors favored my wishes.

  That haggard face, prematurely aged, with no remaining hint of careless adolescent grace, was still attractive. In fact, in its own way, more attractive. Between then and now, the Queen had been hard hit, beaten. Though endeavoring to give my thoughts a different direction, I could not put from my mind the Historiographer’s words: “We are doomed.” But the keenness of her gaze, the cold, hard brightness of her eyes, defied anyone to think she was prepared to accept defeat.

  The Queen had had her servants fetch what she called her “travel table.” It was an inlaid table of very fine workmanship. It had a movable top with double doors that swung open. The table was hollowed out to provide a deep drawer containing her jewel casket. Not all her jewels were stowed in it, only the ones she wore regularly. Seated at this table, she was trying to sort them into two lots, the ones she wanted to take away with her, and the others. She found it impossible to choose.

  “I shall take them all . . . and I am asking you, Madame Campan, to remove the settings. You are to assemble the stones in a travel case that I shall keep with me in the carriage. Count Esterhazy is waiting for us along the way with his regiment. At Metz we will mobilize troops and come back to Paris in strength. It is criminal for that city to think it can impose its will on the King. And on France. Paris is not France. And the Parisians are going to understand that fact, before we are done. Get up, Madame Campan . . . As for the itinerary from here to Metz, if you find you are unable to draw me a map (she had just cast a quick glance at the improbable wavy line I had traced), I shall ask my coiffeur, Léonard, to do it instead; he is a resourceful man, with a variety of talents. You, Madame, have talents as well (she must have noticed how crestfallen I looked), but geography does not lie within your sphere of competence. The King, thank heaven, has a passion for geography, and that may just give me my chance in this decision to leave Versailles and reconquer the country. What do you think, Madame Campan? Please, do get up on your feet, you cannot crawl around under that bureau for the rest of your life. You can find that pearl later on, when we have returned!”

  At that precise moment, the Campan woman gave a little crow of delight: she had spied the object of her search. She slithered farther under, then reappeared, somewhat flushed, disheveled but very happy. I loathed her.

  I had proved to be incompetent at mapping out a travel route (I suspected Madame Campan of having deliberately suggested to the Queen that this was something I could do, so she could rejoice in my humiliation). Aside from that, there was, so it seemed, no need for the special soothing effects of my voice; and so I waited in trembling expectation of being sent back to join the shadows wandering about in the dark. That this did not happen was probably due to the Queen’s haste to see the jewels pried out of their settings: she preferred to put me to work with the others. And from that point on, in the prevailing confusion, the Queen’s treatment of me made no distinction between reader and chambermaid.

  Obediently, I went and sat beside Madame Campan. She had finished doing the “travel table”; now she was taking other jewels out of a tall, carved cabinet. There were so very many of them. It was fantastic: rings, bracelets, necklaces, pendant earrings, pins, brooches, lockets, tiaras . . . I would separate out one ring, bend aside the claws holding the stone in place, extract the stone and set it carefully in the travel case. “Will the Queen, when she is away in Metz, simply wear her jewels loose?” Fortunately, I did not ask out loud. My stupidity, my obstinate refusal to understand, would have drawn Madame Campan’s sarcastic fire. We were working very fast, as fast as we could. Our fingers played nimbly over the emeralds and topazes, the rubies and carnelians, over sets of sapphires and diamonds, and, in a couple of deft movements, freed the stones.

  “I want to leave,” the Queen said again. “For royalty, for us, it i
s a matter of life or death. The King must not stay one day more in a country he no longer controls.”

  But then, oddly, instead of urging us to be quick, she stood up, as though ensnared by the sparkle of her jewels, and came over to look at them. Finally, unable to resist, she began sliding a ring over her finger, then another ring; she put several strings of precious stones round her neck, one atop the other; she covered her forearms with heavy bracelets. Transfixed, she stared at the mirror of her dressing table to see its reflected vision of her, all aglitter. Madame Campan and I dared not stir, but eventually it fell to the First Lady of the Bedchamber (who always firmly believed she was right and, on this occasion, actually was) to break the spell. With infinite respect and ever so gently, Madame Campan reminded Her Majesty that if she wished to set off on her journey the next day there was a need for haste. The Queen tore herself away from her dream:

  “Wish is an inadequate term to express what I feel. We must leave Versailles. Not to do so is equivalent to signing our own defeat, which is already a fact, our defeat and possibly worse . . . I want to go away from here. I want to leave this château. I have done everything to try and make it mine. I have not succeeded. All I feel about the château is the cold, the damp, the uninhabitable spaces . . . The neglect and disrepair. When I think that the King almost perished in his bed, crushed by a section of ceiling . . . I have really tried everything . . . I divided it into smaller and smaller rooms. I have had drapes installed, tapestries, mirrors. I increased the number of stairways so people could visit their friends’ apartments more easily and find comfort in being with them. From the very outset, Versailles rejected me. Versailles was already occupied, by the Great King, who never left. No matter what room I went into, he was there, as a young man, or an old man, or a dancer, or a lover, or a warrior, always in majesty. The château is under his surveillance. It will never be my home. Nor is it the King’s home. Any more than it was home to Louis XV.”