Becoming Marie Antoinette (40 page)

“In order to be presented at court, a lady must satisfy two rules of etiquette,” the comtesse de Noailles had informed me that spring, when I prepared to attend my first presentation. “She must be able to prove her noble descent all the way back to the year 1400; and she must be introduced by a woman who has herself been presented at court.” I’d wondered what had happened in France in the year 1400 that made it so crucial, yet I’d dared not ask, for she would have been horrified at my ignorance.

The Salon des Nobles was stifling in the heat of high summer. Although it was considered poor etiquette to flap it about furiously
as if one were swatting at flies, I had never felt more grateful for my fan, painted especially for me by Monsieur Boucher. Even so, today the image seemed to mock me; it depicted my wedding to the dauphin, but as I glanced at my husband out of the corner of my eye, standing on the opposite side of the king, his expression vacant, I felt nothing but resentment.

Ahh … here came the first young lady now, a homely thing trying terribly hard to conceal her squint. She made it through the first of her three reverences, the shallowest of the trio, according to court etiquette. Would she fare as well on the next two curtsies? She was followed by her chaperone, the duchesse de Gramont. I knew her well, and I liked her, although there were days when I was tempted to shun her for recommending Sieur Larsenneur and his severe coiffures.

Madame de Gramont’s protégée had managed the curtsies tolerably well. The paces between them were measured and stately, and she sank to the floor with appropriate elegance, abasing herself until her forehead was a whisper above the polished parquet.

Rising from her third reverence the elegant duchesse introduced the young lady who was now all smiles at having successfully completed her three deep court curtsies.
Wait until you have to reverse the process and walk backwards out of the salon without tottering
, I thought to myself, as a smile played across my lips. It had happened—I’d seen it, and cruel as it sounds, their mishaps did provide the occasional bit of mirth in an otherwise stultifying ritual.

“Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, permit me to present Émilie Eveline l’Étoile, madame la comtesse de Saint-Pol.”

I enjoyed interviewing the débutantes; it gave me something to do besides stand there and contemplate my fan. Papa Roi never seemed to mind. In fact, he had made the requisite small talk for so many decades, that he seemed glad to be relieved of the burden
of reciting the same litany of questions; and the dauphin was far too reticent to utter a word. It was enough that Louis Auguste didn’t resort to his usual manner of shifting his weight and shuffling his feet. “And so, what qualifies you to be presented to us today, madame la comtesse?” I inquired of the young lady.

“The hithorian William of Tyre nameth my anthestor comte Hughes de Thaint-Pol ath one of the knighth who joined the Firtht Cruthade in 1068,” lisped the young comtesse. She could not have been older than sixteen.

“Well, then, your coat of arms is most certainly ancient enough.” I smiled encouragingly.

“And it ith very handthome, too,” the comtesse replied, “with a white croth on a red shield, enthircled by a golden chain of offith, and the cretht ith a crown!”

“
Très distingué
,” murmured the king distractedly. His eye was already on the next débutante, waiting her turn. She was standing in the doorway at the far end of the room, but her diamonds, which illuminated a substantial décolleté, twinkled with promise.

I decided to have some fun with the comtesse de Saint-Pol. “Tell me, why is it that you wished to be presented at court?”

“Oh, madame la dauphine, the honor ith incalculable!” The girl’s gloved hand, tightly clasping the ivory handle of her closed fan, flew to her breast. “From now on, I shall be allowed into the prethenth of the royal family on every official occasion—and have the opportunity to meet the motht important courtierth in all of Franth!”

“Are you a pious girl?” I asked coyly.

“Oh, yeth—and I will appreciate the privilege of being able to worship from the gallerieth of the Royal Chapel.”

“Anything else?” I couldn’t resist; it was becoming like a game to test her, even if I was the only one who knew we were playing it.

“Oh, forgive me, I am tho thorry!” I hid a giggle behind my fan; I couldn’t help it; her lisp made me laugh, so I wished to hear her speak even more. “Being prethented at court meanths that I may enter the queen’th bedchamber, but ath there ithn’t a queen now …” The young comtesse colored naturally behind her circles of rouge. “One day I do hope to have the honor and the pleasure and the privilege of doing tho when you are queen of Franth.”

“Prettily said,” I replied, and meant it.

One might be tempted to think that my days were passed leisurely, filled with naught but gaiety and pleasure. In truth, they were crammed with ceremony—religious, gustatory, and social. In addition to the presentations at court, I hated the
cercles
—another banality of life at Versailles. Various ladies would gather in my salon, in a sort of loose social circle; as dauphine it was my honor to act as the hostess; and I was expected to speak to each one of them directly. The comtesse de Noailles never tired of shepherding me through the
cercles
as though I were one of the Lipizzaner stallions being put through his paces at the Spanish Riding School back home in Vienna. I was to avoid all generalities; instead I was expected to say something polite (and quite specific) to each of my guests, and it was an onerous task to devise so many distinctive witty pleasantries.

Oh, how I wanted to scream, “
Who cares?
” It was all I could do not to poke fun at the ceremonies, the women, and especially the haughty Madame Etiquette. Finally, I yielded to the temptation, reasoning that if I must endure such rigidity, at least I could find some entertainment in it. So prior to a
cercle
, I would torment my
dame d’honneur
with inane questions, pretending that I was preparing myself, storing up a cache of remarks individually tailored to my guests. “What is the proper protocol, madame la comtesse, for addressing a lady who has smeared her rouge so
frightfully that the apples of her cheeks resemble pears?” Or, “If it is so important to find something singular to share with each of my visitors, what should I say to the duchesse de la Rochefoucauld, who always chews with her mouth open? Should I remark upon it?” It was worth the time it took to invent such ludicrous questions just to receive Madame de Noailles’s horrified reply and to watch the tips of her ears grow red with consternation.

Mesdames
tantes
, those mistresses of the art of
médisance
, had taught me how to turn my wit on an unsuspecting target. Frustration with my still-virginal state was relieved by raillery, and I found comfort in laughter and mockery. My targets were none the wiser if I giggled or rolled my eyes behind the safety of my open fan.

I found the elderly ladies particularly amusing, for they tried so hard to recapture the flush of youthful radiance that was the raison d’être for the mandated court maquillage. The prominent circles on their pixilated cheeks resembled wrinkled plums; and on some of the women, whose sight was evidently not what it once had been, the false blush was so clumsily applied that these aging aristocrats resembled the impoverished marketwomen of Paris who, I was told, stained their cheeks with cheap red wine because they could not afford rouge. On occasion, when boredom got the better of me, I would hide behind my fan so that only some of my ladies could see my features, and I would mimic the tipsy sway of a drunkard (as I imagined it, for I had never seen the genuine article) and roll my eyes heavenward with ennui.

One day, I was receiving some newly minted comtesses. My ladies-in-waiting were arrayed behind me like petals on a rose, including the bookish Madame Campan, who as Mademoiselle Genet had been Mesdames
tantes
’ reader, though she was but three years my senior.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the comtesse de Noailles
nodding her head up and down and emphatically raising and lowering her eyes as though she were following the progress of a fly. This odd motion was followed by a series of strange hand gestures. I could not decipher a bit of it. What had sent the comtesse into such a tizzy? It dawned on me that the furious movement was not a signal to me, but to someone standing behind me, so I turned ever so slightly to regard my ladies—and there was Madame Campan, with the white linen lappets of her cap still pinned to the crown of her head.

“Your lappets, Henriette!” I muttered out of the corner of my mouth.

“
Quoi
? What?” she whispered. “I can’t understand what you’re saying.”

“Your lappets!” I repeated, a bit louder. Endeavoring to contain my laughter I added, “Don’t you know that it is the etiquette when receiving that the lappets must be down by your ears, like a spaniel? Let down your lappets or the comtesse de Noailles will expire from apoplexy!”

I found another source of release in riding out to the hunt with the dauphin and the king. After the initial fun of suprising the party by clattering up in a carriage, the excitement subsided. So I ordered a horse to be saddled and caparisoned for me, that I might join them, if for no other reason than to enjoy an exhilarating gallop as I’d done on my pony when I was a little girl. Of course I could not accomplish this expedition alone; court etiquette dictated that my women accompany me. But several of them were afraid of horses in general, and not a single one had ever ridden astride, let alone attired in a man’s habit of split coat, breeches, and boots, as I had taken to doing.

It irked me how the royal hunting party often rode roughshod across the fields in pursuit of their quarry, heedless of the consequences to the local farmers. Frequently I insisted that the entire
cortège divert its course in order to avoid trampling the wheat fields. The compensation Papa Roi offered to these poor men for despoiling their crops was so meager that I would privately supplement it from my allowance.

The absence of charity at Versailles appalled me. Maman had taught her children to have compassion for a fellow Christian in distress, regardless of his place in society. I tried to lead by example, but the courtiers were too convinced of their own superiority to offer aid to anyone who was not born a comte or a duc. They even turned their backs on a peasant who’d been wounded by a frightened stag during a hunt near Fontainebleau. The man had been digging a ditch when the beast, pursued by dozens of galloping horses, careened into him with great force, piercing him in the belly and groin with his antlers.

Upon hearing her husband’s agonized cry, the villager’s wife tore out of their cottage, her hair and dress in disarray. When she saw him lying in a pool of blood, she collapsed beside him, wailing hysterically and wishing for her own death.

Papa Roi drew up his horse and paused for several moments, his face a picture of concern. Yet he did nothing to ameliorate the man’s suffering. It saddened and embarrassed me that he did not even offer the family so much as a sou, let alone send someone to summon a doctor.

“Here, madame.” I knelt beside the woman and cradled her head in my arms. “Your husband most needs you to be strong when he is weak. Breathe, now,” I coaxed her, until she inhaled my smelling salts. How I wept to see her so distraught; I tried to imagine how she might manage, were she to lose her spouse. I dispatched several members of my retinue to Fontainebleau to fetch the royal surgeons. When the doctors arrived they placed the wounded man on a litter and carried him back to his humble cottage, where I lit a fire, put the kettle on the hob, and brewed a
pot of coffee. Their hovel, with its floors of packed earth and walls made of mud and thatch, reminded me of some of the places I used to see when I accompanied Maman on her visits of charity. I gazed about the room at the contemptuous expressions on the courtiers’ faces and the gratitude etched on those of the cottagers. My guards were wary; my ladies of honor thought I was foolish. But I knew that God would not forgive me if I ignored the suffering of a fellow man.

Before I departed the cottage I handed the villager’s wife my purse filled with gold
écus
. Her shining eyes, appreciative not only of the coins but for my compassion, were all the thanks I needed. A few days later I sent a messenger to inquire after the cottager’s health. He would mend, I was told, but the process would be a slow one and not without pain. It would be several months before he would be able to feed his family from the fruits of his own labors. I spoke with my almoner and ordered that baskets of food—fowl and bread and cheese and wine—be brought to the cottage every week until he was fully recovered.

Why, I later asked the dauphin, was such Christian charity alien to the members of the French court? But Louis Auguste could only mumble a reply about how the Bourbons did not walk among their subjects as the Hapsburgs so often did. And yet I had seen him yield to his own philanthropic impulses, and it had gladdened my heart. There was hope for France yet.

It soon became the talk of the court that the dauphine was participating in the hunts and exhibiting her enthusiasm as an equestrienne in riding habits that resembled military uniforms—conduct that was evidently not
comme il faut
. Other distaff members of the royal family rode to hounds on occasion—in fact, Madame Adélaïde was an accomplished horsewoman—but my predicament was unique. Thus, it was only a matter of time before my
spirited activity was curtailed. Madame de Noailles put her silk-shod foot down, declaring that even a canter was too strenuous for the dauphine, who of course might have an announcement any day. I dared not blaspheme by retorting that such an announcement would give me much in common with the Blessed Virgin. But at the comtesse’s insistence, from then on, if I persisted in my wish to join the hunters, my mount would be a donkey.

On my first such adventure, I plodded along with great docility, as bored as it was possible to be, until the beast lost his footing on a root and stumbled, throwing me off his back and onto my well-padded derrière—plop in the center of a mud puddle. My ladies gasped and dismounted from their own asses, rushing to my aid.