Becoming Marie Antoinette (45 page)

Aware of my impatience with reading, the comtesse de Noailles looked as if she wished to humor me. I don’t suppose she realized that the dauphine of France needed cabinets to rival the magnificently carved bookcases that had been made for the comtesse de Provence. No, not rival:
exceed
them.

“And I would like this mess disposed of.” My broad gesture encompassed the entire suite of rooms—both the dauphin’s and the dauphine’s. “We shall commission miniature houses for the dogs so that each has its own place.” In addition to my little Mops, the maréchale de Mirepoix, hearing of my fondness for pugs, had made me a gift of four of them. “Please see that the apartments are thoroughly aired and cleaned and the broken furniture repaired. If there are stains, the upholstery and carpets are to be replaced.” The comtesse de Noailles looked astonished, her mouth and eyes widening. But I was not finished. I pointed to a pile of dirty clothes, some of which had been shredded by little canine teeth or ripped by the servants’ children when they played “dress-up” in them. “Please see that those are patched and distributed among the poor. I will no longer have it said, madame la comtesse, that the dauphine glides about Versailles looking like a match girl.”

“Absolutely, madame la dauphine. It shall be done
tout de suite
!” Madame Etiquette looked so elated that she was almost ready to scoop up the offending garments herself.

“One more thing,” I said, as the chambermaids began to bustle about, doing my bidding. “Because such shabby gowns are not in keeping with the dignity of the first woman in France, I should like to see the royal dressmakers first thing tomorrow.” The comtesse de Noailles dropped an obliging curtsy.
Well then
, I said to myself,
take
that,
Madame du Barry and Comtesse de Provence. From now on there will be no mistaking who is the future queen of France
.

When the dauphin returned to our apartments, I began to regale him with all the events of the day, but he interrupted me with news of his own. “Monsieur Gamain is teaching me how to make a new kind of lock,” he said proudly, as Clery, his chief
valet de chambre
, helped him out of his coat and waistcoat. Then, grimy and exhausted from spending several hours at his forge, he flung himself onto a chaise and extended his arms expansively across the emerald-colored damask. His batiste chemise was marred with unsightly yellow rings beneath his armpits. I knelt at my husband’s feet, my salmon silk skirts billowing about me like a
macaron
, and gazed into his light eyes. “I do believe that if you had not been born a Bourbon, you would much rather have been apprenticed to the royal locksmith,” I opined candidly. He did not demur. “I will send the servants to fetch a basin and ewer,” I said, with wifely solicitousness. “We can’t possibly host your brother this evening with you looking like that.”

The dauphin clapped his hand to his head. “Oh,
mon Dieu
, I’d forgotten! After a long day with Gamain, I lack the stomach to parry with Provence.”

I laughed. “No matter—he has stomach enough for both of you! And so does his comtesse.” I settled onto a stool beside him and told him about our little tête-à-tête that afternoon. “You should have heard her abuse her maid,” I told the dauphin. “Or
perhaps not; it was hardly a pleasant thing to witness. But the comtesse is quite particular about her treasures.” I glanced about the room at the faded splendor of our furnishings. “When we are king and queen, considerable renovations must be done!” I declared. “In the meantime, I will not have the comtesse de Provence lord her library over me, as if to say not only are her accoutrements finer than mine, but her mind is superior as well.”

The dauphin reached for my hand, entwining his fingers with mine in a rare gesture of intimacy and affection, particularly as it took place in the light of day and in the full view of his
valet de chambre
. “Envy,
ma chère
, is an ugly thing.” He chuckled to himself and squeezed my hand. “And yet we cannot seem to avoid it. But all the
friseurs
and
tailleurs
and
marchands de mode
in the kingdom have not the magical arts to transform that fat, hairy, ill-tempered sow into the charming and radiant beauty who is the dauphine of France.”

He raised my fingers to his lips, practically lifting me off the tabouret in the process, and gently kissed my knuckles. I felt a blush begin at the bridge of my nose and spread from my cheeks up into my hairline and down over my
poitrine
. And then I smiled more broadly than I had ever done since I arrived at Versailles. “Merci,” I whispered. “
Tu es très gentil et doux
. Now, let us show the Provences our mettle this evening!”

But things did not quite turn out as planned.

The other young royals detested cavagnole as much as I did, so we had one of the gaming tables set for piquet. Provence and I had sat down to play, while the comtesse, her lawn green silk made bilious in the candle glow, leaned over her husband’s shoulder observing his hand and whispering strategies in his ear as to which cards to discard and how many to draw from the stock at the center of the table. As it would have been unseemly to openly snipe at each other, we found common ground for our
médisance
at the royal mistress’s expense, taking delight in performing the ribald songs and repeating the scathing jests that were making the rounds of the palace.

“Brother, have you heard this one about the
ci-devant
Mademoiselle l’Ange?” Provence asked the dauphin. For some reason, Louis Auguste had decided to hang back from the table. As he observed the game, he toyed with one of his riding crops, petulantly striking his brother on the arm from time to time.

The comte slid his chair a foot or two away from the gaming table and declaimed,

“
Oh
,” I gasped, “you have managed to
skewer
the duc d’Aiguillon, too!” It was now commonly surmised by all but the king that Madame du Barry was also pleasuring his foreign minister, and
aiguille
was the word for “needle.”

My portly brother-in-law was very clever, and far more articulate than the dauphin. It made his company refreshing, but only in modest doses; the comte could just as easily turn his sharp tongue against his purported friends.

Thwack
went the riding crop against Provence’s upper arm. It had to have been the seventh or eighth time my husband had struck him. I caught his eye and shook my head. “
C’est tout
,” I mouthed. “Enough.” I knew what could happen when the boys allowed their baser natures to get the better of them. I knew they were envious of his place in the birth order, even though it was all because their oldest brother had died. But Provence was the clever boy and Artois was the handsome one, and both believed
themselves to be infinitely more accomplished—let alone ambitious about becoming king of France, a fire that admittedly did not burn in my husband’s belly, regardless of his birthright.

I don’t know whether it was Provence’s pointed refusal to react to the first several blows that angered my husband, or whether the dauphin was jealous that his brother and I were having such fun (for Louis Auguste had never before expressed the slightest envy when I amused myself with his siblings), but evidently, he struck his younger brother one time too many for the comte to continue to consider it a game. With a sudden movement Provence grabbed the loop of the leather whip, abruptly pushed his chair back from the table, and tugged my husband toward him. The two boys faced off, fists raised against each other.

“
Arrêtez!
” I shouted, as the comtesse tried to squeeze herself into a corner. “Both of you, stop this nonsense!” I ducked under Provence’s arm and snatched the whip from him. Then I flung the riding crop across the room; it landed under a chaise. Mops and my other pugs, frightened by all the commotion, began to bark. The comtesse held her ears as she released a string of oaths in her native dialect. Then she grabbed her husband by the sleeve and the pair of them waddled out of our apartments without so much as a
bonne nuit
.

Later that evening, when Louis Auguste dutifully came to my bed, I scolded him for behaving like a jealous fool. The comte de Provence was my brother and although I admired his wit, I saw nothing else of merit about him. “We are one, you and I,” I assured the dauphin, “and you must never doubt my fidelity. And I’ll tell you something else.”

“What?” he demanded sullenly.

I tentatively touched his arm, feeling his warmth through the sleeve of his nightgown. “Although our union was not of our making, I am more and more convinced that if I had to choose a
husband from the three of you—yes, Artois included—I should prefer the one Heaven has given me.” True, Louis Auguste was awkward and ungainly; he was diffident to the point of exasperation; but in his own odd way I think he was finally trying to show me every possible attention and kindness, and for that I was immensely grateful. How much worse it could have been!

J
UNE
15, 1771

My mother’s letter quivered in my hand, so livid had I become at her words. After months of filling my head with sermons and warnings about falling prey to the licentiousness of the French court, after endless lectures assuring me that no matter how louche, they would love me all the more for adhering to my sturdy German morals,
now
Maman was encouraging me, in no uncertain terms, to set aside all she had taught me.

But why? Had her piety been naught but platitudes? If so, then her entire life was a sham, for the world knew that the Hapsburg court, and the empress herself, were above reproach. This I would not believe. And as she was so free with her opinions and her undisguised efforts to encourage me to become an agent of Austrian interests, if there were a motive behind her insistence that I countenance the comtesse du Barry, surely she would have revealed it to me.

The only consistency I could salvage from any of this was her
perpetual insistence, then and now, to make myself beloved. And yet did she really intend the dauphine of France to bow and scrape so low that she picked up the refuse from the gutter? I could only surmise that Maman did not know the full story of the du Barry’s lineage, her origins as a natural daughter—of a friar, no less! How she had been passed from one nobleman to the next before she was judged ready to be dangled under the nose of the king the way a dog is teased with a tempting morsel of meat. She was coarse, and cutting, and cruel. I had even told Maman about the conversation I had overheard at the masquerade ball, about the du Barry’s spiteful sobriquet for me,
l’Autrichienne
—and still, my mother urged me to set aside my pride and tread the higher ground.

How could she expect me to be cordial to the woman? Instead, she had accused me of being
hochnäsig
, or high-nosed, about the whole sordid affair.

J
ULY
1, 1771