Becoming Marie Antoinette (48 page)

Here came the fat, fabulously wizened, and ostentatiously overdressed duchesse d’Aiguillon with her piles of false red hair, the mother of the even more repugnant duc d’Aiguillon, who, precisely one year earlier, had replaced our beloved duc de Choiseul as Minister of State. As she rose from her reverence, I complimented her on the beauty of her ivory-handled fan. She nodded and simpered. Then I drew a deep breath and addressed the woman who accompanied her and who had just made her curtsy. Madame du Barry sparkled with rubies. Her
court gown of rose-colored damask set off the pink flush of her cheeks.

Our eyes met. I parted my lips to speak. “
Il y a bien du monde aujourd’hui à Versailles
—there are a lot of people at Versailles today.”

There! I had done it! The entire hall seemed to exhale a collective breath. Papa Roi broke into a wide grin and clasped me in his arms. Blushing with pleasure, Madame du Barry turned away and thrust her round chin into the air, but it was the triumphant look in her eyes that made me wish to decapitate her. My capitulation turned to humiliation.

After the ceremony, comte de Mercy came over to congratulate me, taking my hands in his and thanking me, on behalf of both Austria and France, for finally speaking to the du Barry. I froze my face into a cordial smile and between my teeth, assured the ambassador, “I have addressed her once, but that is as far as I will go. That woman will never hear my voice again. Happy New Year to you, monsieur le comte.”

Later in the day I closeted myself in my private study, sat down at the inlaid escritoire, and informed Maman, writing:

But Maman could not see things through my eyes, nor look with my heart. At the end of the month I received another scolding.

But my new vow of silence did not seem to matter to the king, who was kinder than ever to me, lavishing me with gifts and honoring me with his presence in my rooms at breakfast. He even brought his own coffee maker, a silver urn of which he was tremendously proud—and which I found frightfully amusing, for he had thousands of servants who could have brewed it for him. Yet the most powerful man in the kingdom took great pleasure in doing this one small thing for himself. Sometimes I thought of mentioning that the pride he took was perhaps akin, in some small way, to the happiness the dauphin derived from his lock making or his cabinetry, but I was afraid of saying the wrong thing, and incurring His Majesty’s displeasure, so I kept my own counsel.

——

France agreed to turn a blind eye to Austria’s support of the tripartite partition of Poland and the agreement was signed in Vienna on the nineteenth of February, 1772, less than two months after I had publicly spoken to the comtesse. But the royal mistress was much mistaken if she took my single civil sentence as an offer of friendship. She wrote several letters to me, seeking some sort of rapport between us, but they went unanswered. For me to have responded would have implied, even tacitly, that we were social equals. But Madame du Barry was undeterred by my silence. In fact, she raised her stakes. When she realized that I was maintaining my intention to ignore her, she employed an unnamed intermediary (though I was sure it was the king) to purchase a pair of diamond earrings from Herr Böhmer, the court jeweler, which she then offered me as a gift, knowing my fondness for fine jewelry. I dared not consider the loveliness of the setting or the quality of the gems, because
au fond
, when all was said and done, the offer was highly inappropriate. After all that had transpired, how could the dauphine of France be seen accepting a present from a trollop?

Consequently, I employed a liaison of my own, the princesse de Lamballe, to inform the du Barry that I already owned plenty of diamonds and had no need of her gift. The princesse was no mere attendant; and she had not been assigned to my household. Rather, she was the first woman I had met in the twenty months I’d spent at Versailles with whom I immediately felt
sympathique
, and she quickly became my only true friend and my sole confidante.

Although the princesse de Lamballe had been presented at court and attended nearly every ceremonial event, I did not become truly acquainted with her until one of our sleighing parties during the early months of 1772. I had not gone a-sleighing in years, and the jingle of the bells as the runners glided over the
snow, the horses’ heads bobbing in time to the motion, and their snorting in the brisk air, the sharp tingle of snowflakes on my cheeks and the chill on my tongue as I tried to catch them—what memories they conjured! How I missed my family! I recalled how my dear sister Charlotte and I would descend from the sleighs and build snow forts from which we pelted our brothers with snowballs, usually ending up the worse for the battle ourselves. The Countess von Brandeiss had been our captain.

But I had not heard from my former governess in several months. Maman had forbidden it. Because the countess was always so open and unguarded, my mother feared that she would be too indiscreet in her correspondence. Charlotte, too, had been prohibited from writing to me anymore because our mother did not trust the Neapolitans; she was certain that my sister’s letters would be opened by spies and their content disseminated among those who would seek to damage the Hapsburgs.

My recollections were tinged with such sadness that wintry day that perhaps I recognized in the princesse de Lamballe a kindred spirit. When she pushed back her ermine trimmed hood, and gazed at the cold gray sky, with her halo of palest blond curls and her sweet, doleful expression, she resembled a melancholy angel.

I wished to know everything about her. Side by side we sat in my rooms with our embroidery silks; I was still working on the vest for Papa Roi that I had begun upon my arrival in France.

I knew she was a Savoyard by birth, a cousin to the garden-loving prince de Condé as well as the comtesse de Provence, though the princesse was as lovely as Madame de Provence was homely. “You know, I think I was predisposed to like you because you have the same names as my mother—Maria Theresa,” I said to the princesse. “So, your father is the duc de Penthièvre? He is a very kind and generous man. There are not many of those at
Versailles.” As I chuckled, I wondered if I had said anything to upset her. Her eyes were so sad that one might have been tempted to think that her dog had just died.

As if he’d read my thoughts, Mops peered at us from his new abode, a blue velvet doghouse studded with golden nails.

“
Non
, madame la dauphine, the duc de Penthièvre is my father-in-law. But you are right about his kindness. He took me in as if I were his own daughter after the Prince de Lamballe passed on.”

I had heard the rumors: Her late husband, Louis Alexandre de Bourbon, was a grandson of the comte de Toulouse, one of the Sun King’s natural children who had then been legitimized. Monsieur de Lamballe had been fabulously wealthy and just as wild—a dissolute, a gambler, and an adulterer with a penchant for the most disreputable women imaginable, all of which had hastened him to a premature grave.

“Alexandre died in my arms,” said the Princesse de Lamballe. “I was only nineteen. And everyone in France knew about his … his behavior,” she said diplomatically. “There were all the women. And he gave them so much money.” She swallowed hard. “I am sure you heard that he sold my diamonds to pay the debts he incurred keeping an opera dancer. Everyone else did.” I wondered if she had loved him despite his debauchery, for her deep brown eyes were wet with tears.

“Are you crying for your husband or your diamonds?” I asked, trying to make a little joke to cheer her. I reached into my bosom and withdrew one of my monogrammed handkerchiefs. “Here,” I said, pressing it into her hands. “You are quite courageous to hold your head so high in the face of such adversity. I have heard nothing but praise for your character. As soiled as the prince’s reputation was, yours, madame la princesse, is spotless.”

Even though she was about five years older than I, I saw myself
in her. A little bit lonely, a little bit frightened, highly principled, and very much in need of a friend. In the absence of my siblings, whom I thought of every day and still missed terribly, I saw the princesse de Lamballe almost as a sister.

At my request, the princesse was the only one keeping me company in my music room one afternoon in late February when my harp lesson was interrupted by an insistent knock at the door. I lowered the instrument to the floor so that it rested fully on its pedestal and looked up. “Please see who it is,” I told Madame de Lamballe. She rose to her feet and crossed the room with studied grace, her ice blue train forming an elegant wake.

An agitated comte de Mercy was ushered into the salon clutching a letter, his face a mask of fear. Even from across the room I recognized the seal immediately. My brother Joseph’s. “I have news of your mother, madame la dauphine.” The music master bowed and made a discreet exit.

Mercy offered a brief reverence to the princesse de Lamballe. “Madame la princesse, I suggest that you help the dauphine to a chaise longue.”

With the calm manner and swift efficiency of a good nurse, she immediately saw that I was comfortable, removing my brocaded slippers and easing a cushion behind my back.

“What is it, monsieur le comte?” I reached my hand toward the princesse and she knelt beside me, clasping it tightly in her own. My flesh had suddenly grown quite cold.

“The empress is gravely ill,” said Mercy solemnly. “She has twice been bled and her fever has not abated in four days.” His lips pressed together grimly.

My complexion turned as pale as parchment. “
Heilege Gott!
” I breathed, making the sign of the cross on my breast. I couldn’t breathe. The princesse de Lamballe began to untie my bodice, deftly working her fingers through the laces at my back. “Send
for the dauphin!” I gasped. A footman set off down the corridor, fleet as a greyhound. I turned my frightened gaze to the ambassador. “Will she … is the empress expected to live?” The thought that Maman might not recover, that there would never be the possibility of seeing her alive again under any circumstances, was too terrible to contemplate.

Comte de Mercy’s expression was grave. “At this point, no one knows what will happen. She recovered from the pox in the past, and has survived several other illnesses, besides the birth of sixteen children. But she is nearly fifty-five years old.”

It was almost an hour before the dauphin arrived. Wheezing and breathless, Louis Auguste fairly slid into the room, wig askew, and dripping with sweat. “It’s Maman,” I told him. “They don’t know what’s wrong.” He gently stroked my cheek and I clasped his hand; I noticed there was dirt under his nails from working at his forge.

As I couldn’t think of what else to do, I asked him to pray with me. My eyes were moist, beseeching. The princesse de Lamballe fetched the little chaplet of beads that Maman had given me on the day I left Austria. I clasped them in my hands and knelt beside the dauphin. We closed our eyes and murmured the paternoster and a couple of psalms before offering orisons of our own, both voiced and silent.

I stole a glance at my husband, looking so earnest, so devout, so concerned, and my heart flooded with love. I knew he was not enamored of Austria, and was not much fonder of Austrians. He had never met Maman, and assuredly was not terribly enamored of
her
, if only because of the dreadful epistolary scoldings I received with such alarming regularity. But he had seen his own beloved mother, Marie Josèphe of Saxony, waste away from consumption; he recognized and understood the terror and sadness in my eyes.

That evening, he came to my bed. “I thought you might want company tonight,” he offered shyly.

I burrowed against him, as if his back were a bulwark, sheltering me from unpleasantness and pain. “You know, if Maman”—I could scarcely say the words for weeping, even as I tried to see my own life with my mother’s unsentimental vision. “If Maman … does not recover, it would mean the world to me to know that she went to her reward in Heaven with the knowledge that we … that we …” In the darkness, I groped for his hand. I felt his entire arm stiffen with fear.

“I … I am … no, not tonight,” he whispered hoarsely. His breath was ragged with apprehension. “Please forgive me. I am so sorry, Antoinette.”

For yet another night I swallowed my pride. “What a husband you are,” I said with forced gaiety. “Do you know that I could have married young Herr Mozart instead?”

Relieved from his conjugal obligation, the dauphin’s tone brightened. “No! Really?”

“Yes!” I told him about the command performance Mozart and his older sister Nannerl gave for the imperial family at Schönbrunn in 1762. “Wolfgang was all of six years old, and I was only seven. And after the concert, he was making his way across the drawing room to where Maman was seated so he could offer her a reverence, when he slipped and fell on the highly polished floor. Down he went on his little bottom in his blue satin breeches. You can imagine the collective hush. But then the entire court began to laugh at him and he grew red in the face. I felt so dreadful for him; he had played so magnificently and we all thought he was so remarkable; we had never seen such talent, and in a child no higher than your waist, and then—plop—he was just for one moment a clumsy little boy. My heart went out to him, so I scampered to the center of the room and helped him to his feet and
gave him a little kiss on the cheek. ‘You are so kind,’ he said to me, ‘I would like to marry you!’ ‘Whatever for?’ I asked him. I’m sure I was blushing. ‘Why, out of gratitude,’ he replied. And then he finally made his way over to Maman and she lifted him onto her lap and gave him a sweet to eat. She gave him a proper present as well, to thank him for his performance.” My mood darkened as I grew thoughtful. “Do you know that she never did as much for any of us? Her own children, I mean? No laps and petting and soft words and sweets.”