Farewell, My Queen

by Black Moishe

  I hastily pulled back into the room. Out there in the gardens, the madman walked away.

  I felt even more lost, more orphaned, than I had before the Council meeting adjourned. So the Queen was not leaving after all. She must have given up the idea of going to Metz. Jacob-Nicolas Moreau, who was not in favor of the proposed departure, said to me:

  “A queen is not an ordinary private citizen. She may not dispose of her person simply as she wishes. It would have been a shocking thing for her to cast herself and her family out upon the highways like that. Suppose they had been attacked along the road, perhaps been injured . . . It might well have happened, for you heard Marshal de Broglie as well as I did: he is no longer in a position to offer them the protection of the army. It’s as I told you yesterday. I said then: ‘We are doomed.’ The defeat of the Court is irreversible.”

  “But when she opted for departure, the Queen was refusing to admit that the game was already over. She was ready to take the risks you describe, in order to preserve royalty.”

  “The game is over. From here on, greatness lies only in accepting divine punishment. The Nobles are going to suffer, but they deserve to. They have been selfish and profligate, neglecting every charitable obligation. They have turned a deaf ear to the lamentations of the poor. Now the poor are taking their revenge and justly so. There comes a day when the poor can no longer put up with being poor.”

  “This is all happening so suddenly. I’m frightened . . . ”

  “We should have taken fright sooner. When the Lord smites us, it is never done treacherously. He sends warnings. Remember, almost exactly one year ago, on July 13, 1788, there was that murderous hailstorm . . . God caused the sky to rain pieces of ice, each one the shape and size of a dagger. Remember, my dear Agathe.”

  I tried to take his hand in mine. But when I reached out, what I grasped was the handle of his satchel.

  In the Hall of Mirrors, I found that most of the courtiers were gone. I was surprised to see the Marquess de La Suze, standing alone and forgotten. As Grand Marshal of the Royal Household, he held the key post governing life at Versailles: he was the one who assigned living quarters. Monsieur de La Suze was accustomed to being the object of innumerable requests, outrageous flattery, and obsequious fawning, and he had developed various strategies for escaping his petitioners. He had no strategy for dealing with the unprecedented situation that finds you in a room where no one comes and speaks to you. The crowd had dispersed without so much as glancing at him. Monsieur de La Suze did not know what to do with himself. A little prompting, and he would have walked over to chat with me. He pushed aside a curtain and looked idly out over the grounds. Simply to conceal his discomfiture. He ought to have gone away like the others but could not bring himself to do so. He was finally rescued from this dilemma when one of his servants requested his attention. The Marquess turned around. A servant! When was the last time anyone had seen a servant? And this was a likeable fellow: his name was Sautemouche, and he had just come back from Paris.

  “Well, now, Sautemouche, tell me: how fares it, in Paris?” Monsieur de La Suze inquired with a smile.

  “Very well indeed, My Lord, everything is proceeding quite smoothly. The people took control of the Bastille in so orderly and methodical a fashion that it compels admiration. Messieurs de Launay and du Puget were condemned to be beheaded. Their sentence was carried out with no loss of time. Their heads, as had been decided beforehand, were paraded through the streets on the end of a pike.”

  Angst . . . I could feel a great weight pressing on my chest and, forming in beads from the nape of my neck to the base of my spine, sweat that was not induced by heat. I was having difficulty swallowing . . . as when an insect, inhaled accidentally, swells and struggles in your throat, then subsides, lies still, and nests there forever . . . Angst . . . I wiped the sweat from my brow . . . And I remembered a summer at Marly when the current fashion had been to play at being afraid . . . “Just one more being afraid! ” the circle of ladies sitting in the rose garden would beg when someone whose voice was already heavy with sleep suggested that perhaps it was time to retire . . . “Just one more being afraid! ” I wished I could recapture the smell of roses hanging in the air, the gentle softness. And I could recall quite perfectly a white dress the Queen wore, one night during that summer of being afraid. The way she smiled in the shadows . . .

  THE QUEEN’S ANGER AT THE DECISION NOT TO LEAVE

  (eleven o’clock in the morning).

  Thursday July 16. I had it entered in my notebook that there was a reading session. Nothing could have dissuaded me from going. A kind of futile, fanatical desperation held me in its grip. I had not taken time to do my hair properly or wash, and I had hastily filled my velvet bag with books chosen perfectly at random, but anyhow I was ready. To conceal the state my hair was in, I had put a navy blue mobcap over it. I had been wearing the same gray cardigan for days now, and my skirt, which I actually did pause long enough to change, was too light for the temperature outdoors and not suitable for the time of day. Resolutely, I set out. The King had not accepted the Queen’s decision to leave, and so she had given up the idea. The sting of his refusal must have left her smarting unbearably. I did not allow myself to dwell on that. One thought, and one thought only, filled my mind: I was going to see her again.

  And yes, the Queen was there. Really there. She was on her feet, very agitated, and angrily contemplating the disorder that surrounded her. Three or four of her women, making themselves as small and inconspicuous as they could, were engaged in unpacking baggage that had never been completely packed. The Queen was saying not a word, but it seemed to me that the entire set of rooms was filled with rage. I lost all vestige of self-assurance. I wished I could withdraw from the scene. I cursed myself for the stubborn obstinacy of my own behavior. As I stood uncertainly, still clinging to my bag with its foolish burden of books, I realized that the Queen had by no means intended to have this reading session canceled. (In retrospect, it is clear to me that she had not canceled it because she had not thought to do so. By this time, according to her plans, she would already be on her way to Metz.) In the corner where Madame Campan placed me, someone had set the ritual glass of sugared water, to which had been added a sweet: a dish of clotted cream sprinkled with red currants. I stared in wide-eyed bewilderment at the red berries. I seriously wonder whether I did not mistake them for rubies, somehow left out of the jewel casket. I stood there, trying to understand what they were. Madame Campan, speaking very softly, said that I might begin. My eyes were still riveted on those berries, as though I were spellbound. “Well, get on with it,” urged Madame Campan. I rummaged blindly in my bag. Nothing I pulled out struck me as being appropriate to the situation. In my weakened state of mind, I humbled myself to the extent of asking Madame Campan:

  “What do you consider might be suitable for me to read to Her Majesty?”

  And that question was the final touch, instantly obscuring my mind with a curtain of shame (I feel it again as I write; my cheeks burn as hot as they did that day). Madame Campan allowed herself the satisfaction of not answering. She and one of the chambermaids—her sister Madame Auguié—exchanged a look fraught with significance. My humiliation was complete. I took from the bag, without looking, a volume by philosopher David Hume. Whereupon Madame Campan whispered to me:

  “Come, come, Madame Laborde, surely you will not read from a Protestant author!”

  Shame redoubled. I felt relegated to the lowest of the low. I had lost all power of judgment. From a Protestant I moved straight on to a Jesuit! That was better. It was not exactly outstanding. As for the text itself, my choice was deplorable. I had opened the pages of a travel narrative, a volume of Interesting and Instructive Letters from the Missions of the Southern Americas. A letter by Father Cat. I began:

  “Here is a thing that I found worthy of remark . . .When it rains in the torrid zone, and in particular close to the equator, after a few hours the rain appears to change into a multi
tude of little white worms quite similar to those that germinate in cheese. We can be certain that it is not a case of raindrops being transformed into worms. It is much more natural to believe that the rains, which are very warm and unwholesome, simply cause these small creatures to hatch, as the rain in Europe causes the hatching of those caterpillars and other insects that consume our espaliered fruits. Whatever the truth of the matter may be, the captain advised us to set our clothes out to dry. A few individuals refused to do so, but they regretted it soon after, for they found their garments so laden with worms that they had the greatest difficulty in cleaning them . . . ”

  I ought to have closed the book and chosen something else, but I was incapable of coherent behavior . . .The best I could do was to skip a few pages and arrive at these lines, which are very beautiful, even if they do describe the ways of pagan people:

  “The Indians bestow upon the moon the name of mother, and honor her as such. When the moon is in eclipse, they may be seen pouring forth from their cabins, uttering terrible cries and howls, and shooting a prodigious number of arrows up into the air to defend the star of night from the dogs that, as they believe, have leapt upon their mother to tear her apart. Concerning lunar eclipses, several Asian peoples, though civilized, have ideas very like those of the savages in America.”

  It was too late: the downpour of maggots had had its effect. Madame Campan, her face a study in irony, was counting the chemises. She gave instructions to some ironers. Then she turned to the Queen, who had taken off her gloves and was biting a fingernail. The Queen seemed not to have heard anything. She was sitting under a large portrait of her mother, embroidered in cross-stitch, observing with a wrathful eye the comings and goings that surrounded her. At last she spoke a few words to Madame Campan, who in turn hastened to my side: “It would be much appreciated if you could call a halt to your nonsense.” She then went back to counting chemises.

  I tried Monsieur Marmontel, a man of better breeding, who was neither a Protestant nor a Jesuit. I picked up a volume of his Moral Tales, which could be counted on not to contain anything shocking: “If you remember the Marquess de Lisban, he had one of those coldly perfect faces that say to the beholder Here I am, and one of those clumsy vanities of temperament that forever miss the mark. He prided himelf on his ability in every sphere and was in fact not very able in any. He would take the floor, call for silence, get the company’s attention, and utter a platitude . . . ” At the very first words of Marmontel, the Queen had sunk down in her armchair. An attendant had come and moved the footrest closer to her. Losing patience, she had signaled to me to stop.

  “I thank you. Your Marquess de Lisban has no appeal for me. I know him all too well. Him and his ilk . . .You will resume your reading later, at which time you will essay some other tale. Do not go away.”

  She had said the same thing to me, directly or through an attendant, any number of times in the past. Her later, although spoken to the empty air, not to any one person, always bore the stamp of great courtesy. I stood up, took my folding chair, and went off into a corner, book in hand. I was in a recess decorated with a raised motif of ivy and bindweed painted in green lacquer. It was an exquisite nook, but at the time it somehow frightened me. Later got later and later. They had forgotten my existence. It felt as though the leather edge of Marmontel’s Moral Tales, pressed against the palm of my hand, was going to be permanently imbedded there.

  When another reading was requested, however, the book’s edge separated from my flesh in one smooth motion. Later did have a way of getting later and later, but most often it came, eventually. What should I read? Another tale? I did not have any others with me, and this was not the time to go hunting along the bookshelves. A serious work? Well, why not? I considered Antoine Court de Gébelin, an eccentric man of learning whose writings, for reasons I have never fathomed, the Queen enjoyed. But there was no Antoine Court de Gébelin in my bag. Instead, I brought out a Dictionary of Famous Dogs, something that, given her love of dogs, might very well have interested the Queen. I hesitated to open Father Pluche’s History of Heaven: it was so immense in scope that I feared lest it add to her anxiety. Finally, I fell back on the book that I myself was currently reading—one that even today is never far from my bedside. It was a collection of stories by Madame de La Fayette. The volume fell open almost of its own accord at a page in The Princess of Montpensier:

  “One day, as he was returning to Loches by a road with which his retinue were little acquainted, the Duke de Guise, who boasted of knowing the road perfectly, placed himself at the head of his little troupe to act as guide; but when he had walked for a time, he lost his way and came to the bank of a small river that even he did not recognize. The whole troupe upbraided the Duke de Guise for serving them so ill as leader. Having made a halt in that place, they soon perceived a small boat at rest in the middle of the river, and as the stream was not of great breadth, they easily descried in the boat three or four women, and among them one who appeared to be of great beauty, magnificently attired, attentively watching two men who were fishing close by. The two princes, being as readily disposed to enjoyment as young princes customarily are, this further adventure brought further joy to them and indeed to all those in their retinue: it seemed to them of such wise as might be found in a novel.”

  I read on. Everything around me had fallen silent. The Queen was listening. I was sure of that and did not need to see the expression on her countenance. The space where chaos had held sway before I came was becoming limpid and orderly; I refer to the very inner essence of her mind. I read on. There was softness and secret pride in my voice, for that voice had successfully wrought a small miracle: it had freed the Queen from the viselike hold of rage and regrets. The Queen was abandoning herself to the flow of words, as one does to the notes of music. She was being reborn and I was the instrument of her rebirth. Oh, let this moment go on and on! I thought, and it was as though I held her suspended in midair, or floating upon a river, like the sun-haloed vision of the princess in the story. But when Gabrielle de Polignac was announced, the Queen escaped me. The Queen’s serving women vanished. Countess La Fayette was heard no more. Madame Campan was requested to stay. I stayed as well, for Madame Campan had decided that I could make myself useful (her sister and Madame de Rochereuil were busy somewhere else) by carrying on with the task of putting things away. She had been absorbed by this quiet, painstaking transfer of objects ever since she had been informed that the departure would not take place.

  TODAY: RAIN, DOUBTS, AND MY PAGES SCATTERED OVER

  THE FLOOR. THEN, WITH THE RETURN OF

  SUNLIGHT, I AM THE GUEST OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE

  (Vienna, June 1810).

  I would do well to put into practice, now, the advice of Monsieur de Montdragon, and clap my hands all by myself in bed. My lace mittens are not enough protection, and woolen ones make my fingers go numb. The feeling of always being cold is aggravated by the pains I am suffering, brought on by a terribly humid month of June. So rainy, muddy, and generally disastrous a month that I see no hint of June as the harbinger of summer. Angst is present, anguish of the spirit. Recumbent, with eyes shut, weakened because I have lost all desire to take food, I think to myself: Why not just die, why go on waiting hopefully for something, especially the return of fine weather. Besides, what difference can summer weather make? What can it add to your existence? The scent of flowers, blue sky, voices of people outside . . . what good is all that? How is that going to give you back the energy to live? These pages of mine have fallen on the floor and are scattered over the rug. When I am forced to walk a few steps in my room, not only do I take no care to avoid treading on them, I deliberately stick the tip of my cane into the paper to crumple it, tear it, kill it. My days are deadly dull. I fall headlong into my nights as into a bottomless pit of sleeplessness. Sometimes when I am feverish, my mind wanders. On two occasions, I have caught myself starting out to say a prayer to the Virgin Mary and suddenly speaking the Queen’s name i
nstead: “O Marie-Antoinette . . . ” The second time, I gave a start of surprise when my invocation was repeated by the voice of her mad lover, exploding inside my head. Can it be, that in the place where he now is, among the dead, he continues to declaim his litanies, disturbing the souls given over to Eternal Rest, while the Queen, in her goodness, continues to pardon him? The sense of something undefined, that came to me with the snow, I now feel with the rain. Despondency—vast, immense, certainly out of proportion to what is after all merely bad weather—makes tears come to my eyes. I hear the raindrops beating on the courtyard paving stones, in a continuous, regular leitmotif. The recurring theme of vain futility, vanitas vanitatum, vanity of vanities . . . That is what I hear in the monotonous sound of the water. Against its basso, in which other noises are lost, the rain swells at times into downpours. It bangs at my windowpanes (because wind intervened, the rain a moment ago was striking the glass almost at right angles), then subsides, sinking back into its truculent, regular mode, designed never to stop; either that or it turns to a fine drizzle, so that when I part my curtains in the morning, they open to reveal a November fog. Odors of wet hay hang over the streets of Vienna. The Danube overflows its banks, as it does when the winter snows melt. One hears reports of landslides, bridges collapsing. In the poverty-ridden outlying quarters that form a belt around the city, the first deaths in an outbreak of cholera have been recorded. I do not know Paris, for I came directly from my home in the provinces to Versailles, so I don’t know whether it is a capital city dedicated to the cult of death (I mean as a vocation, not just as a result of some crisis, such as the Reign of Terror), but I know that Vienna is. This is the capital of the Kingdom of Death. If you doubt this, you have but to go for a walk on the Graben and see, in the noisy coming and going of carriages and with all the foot traffic, how you are brought up short by the towering Column of the Plague. You cannot tear yourself away; tentacular and terrifying, the column has seized you . . . I am slipping. I have lost the summer of fear but am not back in the season of the living. I am adrift, huddled under my eiderdown. I have a sensation of being cast out, expelled. If I could breathe deeply, I am sure everything would be restored to me: I would dwell once again in that ancient, antediluvian world, that world on the other side of the River of Time. The brilliance of the Queen’s eyes, looking at me for a moment when I capture her attention, has faded and died. The Princess de Montpensier is just a skeleton now, swaying over the water. And all those faces, so young, so near, with their little curls sticking out from under their white perukes and their ambivalent smiles, have retreated into the darkness whence they sprang. Their powdered foreheads, their red lips, and their white hands, hands made not to grasp and hold but to touch, caress, make airy motions . . . Is that why, when the time came, they immediately let go? From an inability to clutch firmly, to hang on? There is an anecdote that struck me when I heard it. A young boy of noble birth is authorized to go out alone for the first time. As he is aware of his family’s financial woes, he enjoys himself, but is careful not to be too extravagant. Upon his return, he proudly shows his grandfather the money he has not spent. The old man, instead of congratulating him, looks him contemptuously up and down, takes the almost intact purse the lad had been given, opens a window, and throws it out . . . Hands trained in that manner had certainly not learned how to hold fast . . . They did, however, know how to throw away. They were wonderfully skilled at throwing away. And the domestics behaved like their masters. At Versailles, it was incredible what they threw out the window. Complaints, objections, reprimands—nothing had any effect. At night, I was sometimes awakened by the smashing of glazed verandas. But I, Agathe, never threw anything away, and unlike theirs, my hands have learned to clutch firmly. How, then, did I so easily become involved with people who did not care deeply enough about anything to grasp it and hold it? Easily is not the right word. Everything is starting to desert me: words, my desire for words, persistence in applying myself to the task . . .The rain with its frenzied behavior shows no sign of letting up. Will Vienna, already half demolished, finally drown? I close my eyes. I sleep without really going to sleep. I live without really being alive . . .