Becoming Marie Antoinette (54 page)

That evening, a servant accidentally raised a torch, illuminating the musty darkness to which the king had been consigned by the medical men. His Majesty heard the collective, horrified gasp, the cries of “
Mon Dieu
—the pox!” and the scuffle of retreating footsteps that sounded like the thunder of hooves during the hunt. With the exception of the doctors and a handful of gallant courtiers and even braver servants, only his daughters—disagreeable and disapproving as they so often had been—and the comtesse du Barry, intent on martyring herself, remained to give comfort to the king during his final days.

But he would have to send her away so that he could die in a state of grace. No matter how much the
maîtresse en titre
meant to him, she was noble only through his making. Jeanne Bécu had been a whore, and her trumped-up coat of arms was as false as her patches and paint. As false even as the hair she took great
pains to lighten, so I had heard, turning its naturally mahogany hue into spun gold.

Papa Roi was an old man of sixty-four. A dying man. One who had sat on the throne of France for nearly six decades. I had thought the sun rose and set in him when I first arrived at Versailles. Now I pitied him almost as much as I loved him.

Dread raced through the palace, spreading the terror of infection as well as the fear of the future regime. Would the dauphin keep the same ministers when he became king? Who would be retained and who would find themselves replaced or disgraced? And how much influence would the dauphine wield? they wondered. Would I persuade him to send the duc d’Aiguillon off to his country estate, and bring back the duc de Choiseul as chief minister? The Barryistes were particularly nervous, especially the duc de la Vauguyon and the young princesses’ governess Madame de Marsan, loyalists to Louis Quinze, and loyaler still to his lover.

Meanwhile, a fretful and restless crowd gathered in the Oeil de Boeuf on the other side of the door to the King’s Chamber, waiting for news, prepared to abide there indefinitely. They slumped against the walls and slumbered on the floor, forgoing all the niceties of their toilettes, strangers for a while to tooth powder and combs, to clean linen and scent, while in the royal bedchamber, the stench grew appalling, as day by day the old king’s body began to bloat and turn black with decay.

Two days later, in the bright sunshine of my library, I faced Monsieur de Clichy, who had assumed the prerogatives of first physician, elbowing Monsieur Lemonnier into the shadows. “They tell us he has remained conscious the entire time—that he is still alert. Why will you not let me go to him?”

“Madame la dauphine, your body will bear the future king of France; you cannot—the kingdom cannot—risk your exposure to the pox. It is a fatal disease,” he added condescendingly. How I
wished to tear off his wig and toss it to the squirrels on the parterre!

I steeled my resolve and confronted the doctor. “
Monsieur le médecin
, with all due respect, I happen to know that you are wrong. Although I have lost several of my most beloved relations to the pox, I myself survived it, and have been inoculated against the disease. My mother the empress of Austria, who herself overcame it, is very forward-thinking when it comes to one’s health. It is my understanding that Mesdames
tantes
have not been inoculated because the French court does not believe in it. When the unhappy event arrives that places some of these decisions within my small and untried hands, I assure you that the royal family, every one of them, will receive an inoculation. It is only common sense.”

“They will not listen to me,” I later fretted to the dauphin. “And when they listen, they will not hear.” My husband and I had scarcely slept since Papa Roi had taken ill. We cleaved to each other, avoiding all but our nearest relations. The comtesses de Provence and d’Artois had already tried what remained of my nerves, sparing me no sympathy as they clucked about my pallid complexion, and the unattractive state of my eyes, swollen and red rimmed from frequent tears, and half encircled with dark
demilunes
of fatigue.

Louis Auguste and I spent the better part of every day in his apartments on our knees in prayer, or side by side on a settee, clutching each other’s hands as if each of us could somehow, through that intimate gesture, transmit from one to the other what little strength we harbored. The days passed with agonizing
longueur
.

There was nothing to do but wait.

On the fourth of May, Louis’s confessor counseled him to purify his soul. It had come: the moment the king most feared. It was not death he dreaded so much as bidding farewell to
Madame du Barry, Madame Victoire told me later. “Do I really stink that badly?” he whispered to the comtesse, a frightened little boy again after so many years a king. He could tell that she was holding her breath. His mistress had laughed through her tears and pressed his hands to her ample breast. “Yes, you do,
mon amour
,” she assured him. “And once I have quit the palace, it means you will be dead, and then it will be Saint Peter’s problem!”

Louis had kissed her hands. “I thank you for your levity. I thank you for many things, you know,” he added, too weak to enumerate them. His chief minister, the duc d’Aiguillon, gave him the eye; it was time to dismiss his
maîtresse en titre
so that he could be shriven—a moment that had been prolonged for as long as possible. Madame Adélaïde had most emphatically believed that as soon as her father heard any discussion of the Blessed Sacrament, he would know that his final hours were at hand and he would lose all will to recover. At the king’s behest, the duc had placed his château at nearby Rueil at the du Barry’s disposal. In time, perhaps, Louis hoped she might be able to return to Louveciennes, the château that had been his gift to her. Madame Victoire grew quite sentimental when she told me that her father had expressed the wish that the new king would not rescind the largesse, although it lay within his power to do so.

I had heard stories about Louveciennes. I supposed the comtesse’s heart would heal in time, if she had truly loved the king, and not merely the perquisites and influence their liaison had brought her. It would take some time for me to find it in my own heart to forgive the du Barry’s cruelty to me; and therefore, I could not spare my tears for her when I had many still to shed. Evidently, her château was a palace in miniature, where scores of servants in their crimson and pale yellow livery would wait on her and her houseguests hand and foot in the huge white dining room where the boiserie moldings were painted with pure gold leaf. Although exiled from our court, she would remain
surrounded by the luxuries befitting a royal mistress—an extravagant décor, lavishly appointed, with enormous crystal chandeliers, sumptuous carpets, handsome furniture, and innumerable priceless items of bronze, glass, and china.

I heard that Madame du Barry was weeping when she departed Versailles. I wondered if she looked back as the duc d’Aiguillon’s carriage rumbled through Mansart’s majestic gateway for the last time, or if she embodied her motto,
Boutez en avant
, and continued to push forward.

On May the seventh the king discovered that he was nearly bereft of speech. And yet he had to make his final—and as court etiquette required, public—confession. He had not done so in nearly forty years; yet now he literally
could
not utter words he
would
not speak for so many decades.

Monseigneur de la Roche-Aymon, the Grand Almoner of France, made his way from the chapel to the king’s bedchamber amid a candlelit procession of clerics and courtiers, past a phalanx of Swiss Guards and Household Cavalry that lined the grand staircase, through the parade apartment and the Hall of Mirrors. Until now, the dauphin and I had not been permitted to approach the king’s apartments. My husband’s brothers, along with their wives, had joined the solemn procession as well, although we were stopped at the threshold of the King’s Chamber, forbidden entry for fear of contagion.

The doors of the king’s chamber were open. Morbidly curious onlookers jostled their neighbors and craned their necks in the expectation of a final glimpse of what was left of Louis Quinze. I was sickened by their callous incivility. The king had been taken from the bed of state and placed on a camp cot. On either side, holding his communicant’s napkin, knelt two of the princes of the blood, Conti and Condé.

The king’s head had swollen to twice its normal size. The black scabs that stippled his decaying flesh offended the flock of
priests who were waiting to witness his confession. Even the physicians seemed surprised by the extent of the mortification. But I had seen it before. Two Josephas had departed this world for a better one, their souls, pure and white in Heaven, even if their blackened bodies rotted further in the Kaisergruft.

His Majesty was nearly mute now; certainly inarticulate. So the Grand Almoner spoke the words of his confession for him. “Gentlemen: The king instructs me to say that he begs God’s pardon for his transgression and for the scandalous example he set for his people. Should the Almighty see fit to restore him to health, he vows that for the remainder of his days on earth he will devote himself to repenting his offenses and to the welfare of his subjects.”

My husband feared that his tears would be thought unmanly. We stood outside the King’s Chamber, each with a lighted candle, keeping vigil while Papa Roi’s last confession was pronounced by the cardinal. I stole a glance at the dauphin’s brothers. Their eyes and cheeks were dry, not because they were stronger, but because I knew they didn’t love the king the way my husband did. Our
grand-père
had not always been kind to the dauphin; I knew he did not think much of my husband; and sometimes I imagined that he would have preferred to see either of Louis Auguste’s brothers assume the throne instead. I had once overheard him say that if the dauphin ever ascended the throne, his brothers would starve. But Papa Roi was—I dared to think it at this moment when he might breathe his last in any instant—wrong. He would make a better king than either Provence or Artois, for Louis Auguste had two endearing qualities that they both lacked: honesty and compassion. Would either of the comtes have sent two hundred thousand francs from their privy purses to distribute to the impoverished people of Paris, as the dauphin did when we returned to his apartments after the king’s confession?

I, too, had made a contribution to the poor by electing to forgo a silly outmoded custom that had been in place since the Middle Ages: the
Droit de Ceinture
, or right of the belt, a tax that was levied on the people at the start of a new reign. It harkened back to an era long since gone, when queens wore golden girdles about their waists. “Belts are no longer fashionable,” I jested. But the truth was that I already had much, while many of our future subjects had so little. There would be no tax for the Queen’s Belt once I became the consort.

At the onset of the king’s illness, a candle had been placed in each of the windows of the royal bedchamber. For thirteen days, overwhelmed by the increasing stench of their father’s decay, Mesdames had maintained their unpleasant vigil, joined on occasion, as if it burdened them to do so, by the princes of the blood. The morning of May the tenth broke like any other perfect spring day in France. Larks sang above the trees that lined the pebbled alleés beyond the château of Versailles and big-bellied white clouds, pregnant with abundance, floated serenely across a cerulean sky.

At ten minutes after three that afternoon, the king’s bedchamber was thrown into shadow, as if the Almighty Himself intended to capture the attention of the devoted onlookers. His Majesty’s breath had been labored and ragged since dawn; his eyes, which had remained closed since the day before, still fluttered almost imperceptibly beneath his lids. And then, King Louis heaved a tremendous sigh, a single exhalation as if to expel the last bit of life remaining to him; and in a fraction of an instant, he was gone. With great solemnity the duc d’Orléans strode over to one of the windows and pinched the candle flame between his thumb and forefinger, quickly snuffing it out.

M
AY
10, 1774