Becoming Marie Antoinette (47 page)

“That’s enough,” the dauphin said quietly. He plodded past me toward the door at the far end of the room.

“Where are you going? I have not finished talking to you!”

“I am going to my own rooms. And you are not talking; you are scolding,” he said simply.

I followed him into the next room. And the next, and the next. “And finally—when that awful
coucher
is over and everyone has left, you come to my bed looking as though you are about to face the executioner—not your wife!”

Louis Auguste bent over as if the weight of the world rested upon him. He placed his large hand on a marble tabletop to steady himself. His overburdened shoulders began to heave with sobs.

Mon Dieu
, I thought,
what have I done
? I tiptoed behind my husband and very gently placed my hands on his broad back, then rested my cheek against his grimy hunting coat, smearing my rouge. “Oh, dear God, what has become of me? I am so sorry,
mon cher
, so sorry.” My hot tears stained the brown velvet. “I became my mother and the comtesse de Noailles all rolled into one. Please forgive me. I did not mean to hurt you so.… I am so sorry
and … and I love you.” Those three little words slipped out of my mouth, astonishing the both of us. But I would not call them back, for no one was as surprised as I was to realize that I had meant them. A secret smile crept across my face and a silent tear rolled into the crescent of my mouth.

We remained that way for several moments. The room was quiet, but for the sounds of our weeping. Finally, the dauphin turned around to face me and we slipped our arms around each other. He pressed me to his chest and shyly stroked my hair. “I am sorry, too,” he whispered. I felt his warm breath on the crown of my head. “I didn’t realize … I go on as I always did before we were wed.”

“Did it ever occur to you how lonely I am?” I asked him, my voice small and strained. I scrubbed away a few wayward tears with my fist.

“No,” he replied quietly, truthfully. “We are surrounded by people nearly all day, so I never thought about being lonely. And when I am at my forge I revel in the solitude. In his own pasture the black sheep doesn’t know he’s the odd one out,” he added with a chuckle.

I had not thought of it that way. Yet he had found a way to embrace his isolation, while I, more naturally sociable, was fighting it like a demon.

“But I am sorry I did not think about how it must be for you,” my husband said gently. “I will try to be more sensible of it in the future. I promise.” He pulled away and regarded me at arm’s length. “Do you forgive me?”

My nose crinkled as I fought off more tears. “With all my heart,” I whispered, and drew him toward me again.

The dauphin kept his word, although I was disappointed that his newfound consideration for me did not lead to the consummation
of our marriage. But his strong, if mostly silent, presence bolstered my courage to capitulate to the pressure exerted by Mercy, Maman, and Papa Roi, and publicly acknowledge Madame du Barry with a few innocuous words. At breakfast one morning I told my aunts that I had chosen the day on which I would finally speak to the du Barry. This time they did not speak a word either for or against it. I suppose they reasoned that if they resumed their denigration of the royal favorite—aware that I had already resolved to countenance the creature—they might risk losing my goodwill as well as my society.

On Thursday, the eleventh of July, I spent the entire day in an anxious mood. Butterflies fluttered in my belly and I frequently requested a chamber pot. I could not eat a single thing at the midday
grand couvert
, and just stared at my supper, moving the food around my plate with my silver fork.

In my apartments candlelight flickered everywhere, casting an amber glow on the players and their bejeweled fingers, wrists, and throats. Being a midsummer evening, the air was still to the point of stifling; my drawing room was so crowded and the atmosphere so thick with tension that I was certain everyone was aware of, and eagerly anticipating, my
rencontre
with the du Barry. After Madame de Noailles informed the king of my intentions to publicly acknowledge his paramour this evening, Papa Roi must have shared the information with the comtesse du Barry, who I suspect had alerted her
dévots
. I doubted there was a soul within the château who had remained unaware of the import of this evening’s game of cavagnole.

Knowing that I would be the center of attention, I had undergone an extensive toilette. My hair had been dressed quite
à la mode
by Sieur Larsenneur, in a teased halo about my barely powdered head; the rest of my red-gold ringlets were fashioned into thick sausage curls that grazed my shoulders. My gown was the
color of moonlight, with a triple cascade of lace at the elbows, drawing attention to the gracefulness of my arms.

There was scarcely any space in which to mill about the room; in their wide panniers, many of the noblewomen were compelled to navigate the salon sideways, or, when they clustered together to gossip behind their fans, were crushed against one another like blooms in a bouquet. I spied Madame du Barry conversing with a knot of comtesses and duchesses, but I took care to be circuitous in my movement as I made my way about the room, welcoming my guests with a pleasant comment to each of them. It helped to imagine the women as stepping stones in a muddy stream.

The comte de Mercy gave me a surreptitious smile as I began to approach the royal mistress.

“Good evening, comtesse de Passy.” I tilted my head in greeting to an elderly woman whose rouge circles had been irregularly (and thus comically) applied. “You are looking lovely this evening.
Très élégante.
” Without her ear trumpet I doubt she heard a word I’d uttered.

One step closer to my rival.

“I hope you are well, madame,” I said softly, smiling at the duchesse de Chartres, who was with child. If only she knew how I envied her condition!

Another step. My heart was racing. I hoped that what felt like the rapid rise and fall of my chest remained undetected. I became aware that all eyes were upon me and grew warm from the intensity of their gazes.

“Madame, I do hope you will permit me to peruse your library now that you have arranged all of your volumes,” I told my sister-in-law, the comtesse de Provence, deliberately raising my voice so that my comment would be overheard, particularly by those who continued to depict me as empty-headed.

“But you don’t like to read,” she whispered.

“I do now,” I replied, between my teeth.

The last step. No one stood between the king’s mistress and me. She was wearing a treasury’s worth of diamonds. Even the heels of her shoes, covered in diamanté pavé, glinted in the firelight. I raised my chin and fixed a smile upon my face. Lifted my foot and took a half step toward her. The room had grown completely silent. The players turned to face me as if they were one body, their hands suspended in the air holding their cards or cavagnole markers, frozen in a single moment of time.

Suddenly Madame Adélaïde swooped down like a hawk and tightly clasped my arm. I had not even noticed her in the salon before that moment. “It is time to leave!” she announced. “Come along, we will await the king in my sister Victoire’s room!” Before I realized what was happening, she had me sailing out of the salon and down the passageway toward my aunts’ suite, with Mesdames Sophie and Victoire falling in behind. She had caught me off-guard and then knocked me off-balance just as she noticed me wavering in the mission that had been so long in coming to fruition. I had been weak; and in that moment of indecision I had permitted myself to be humiliated not merely by Madame Adélaïde in my own drawing room but in the presence of the Barryistes, who lived to see me made the fool.

The silence we had left behind was deafening, and not until we had fully retreated from the salon did the room erupt into a roar. I could hear the comtesse du Barry’s voice rising above the din as she gave the Austrian ambassador a severe tongue-lashing. From the sound of things, her fury, humiliation, and indignation were as colossal as my own.

“Well, monsieur de Mercy, you don’t seem to have achieved much. Apparently
I
must come to
your
aid!”

The debacle of July 11 had left a bitter taste in everyone’s mouths, but most especially in mine. I saw Madame Adélaïde through new eyes, as an
intrigante
who had used me for her own sport and amusement, no better, perhaps, than the du Barry herself. It became more difficult for me to spend so many hours in the company of my aunts because the eldest of the three, and the one who was undoubtedly a strong influence on her sisters, no longer had my trust. Our conversation over coffee and needlework was now strained; my words were guarded, and Madame Adélaïde surely knew why, although Mesdames Victoire and Sophie were perhaps unaware, if they noticed at all, that I was not as effusive and ebullient as I once had been in their society.

I recalled the conversation with abbé Vermond from several months’ past in which he had indiscreetly revealed that some at court had been against my marriage to the dauphin. At the time I had assumed it was the progressively minded Orléans branch of the family that had spoken against the alliance. But perhaps
Mesdames
had been the detractors. Had they posed as my confidantes and mentors purely to win the trust of a girl so naïve and eager to please that she would never comprehend their intent to undermine her until it was too late to repair the damage? The contemplation of such duplicity left me seething. My
poitrine
erupted into a rash that left my usually milky complexion damasked with splotches.

Desperately in need of cheering, I regaled my former governess, the Countess von Brandeiss, with all the distasteful details of the ongoing contretemps. We had been corresponding every month or two ever since I had left Austria. She would write to me with news of home, and share the sort of anecdotes that Maman would never dream of imparting. The countess, always a warm and open soul, provided the friendly and sympathetic ear I so deeply craved—and sorely lacked.

I also wrote to Charlotte in Naples, asking if she had any suggestions on the management of Maman, who had been barraging me with letters ever since my failure to address the comtesse. Our mother had never been a princess at a foreign court, never had to play a game by another’s rules. And even though I would know that if I spoke to the creature, it was really in the service of Austria; from the perspective of the courtiers at Versailles, it would appear that the Barryistes had worn me into submission. And I could not allow people to believe that a woman who had once prowled the streets of Paris was more influential at court than I; it would thoroughly diminish the respect that it was imperative I command as dauphine.

Charlotte comprehended the delicate nature of my predicament—and precisely because she understood just how fragile it was, refused to offer me any advice on how to handle it. “It will be viewed as meddling,” she wrote. “The queen of the Two Sicilies cannot be perceived as involving herself with the
petits scandales
of the French court, especially when rumors have tentacles, like the
polpi
that they eat here, slimy legs that grip and suck and reach as far as Austria, Russia, Prussia, and Poland. Were Naples perceived to weigh in as well on the
‘crise du Barry,’
it might create an incident of international proportions.”

So I was left to battle Maman and the comte de Mercy on my own. The months dragged on as letters flew between Vienna and Versailles, and the stalemate continued.

But finally they wore me down and I raised the white flag of surrender. The year 1771 had come and gone, if only by a few hours; and as 1772 dawned, it seemed to represent a fresh start. It was a New Year’s Day custom at Versailles for the royal family to accept the congratulations of the courtiers. We stood for hours in the resplendent Hall of Mirrors while they filed past us in strict order of precedence, offering their reverences and felicitations on the New Year. It was a silvery day, although the crush of people obscured the tall mullioned windows, hiding the frosty vista from view. Along the parterres, the sculpted evergreens flanking the dry fountains resembled lonely sentinels. Snow lightly dusted the branches of the trees that lined the long allées leading away from the château.

I was clad in a gown of striped satin, pale blue on silver, with dyed ostrich plumes in my hair and a triple strand of pearls at my throat, the better to emphasize my long neck. On one side of me, in a suit of deep gray velvet, stood the dauphin, his dark hair abundantly powdered; and on my left was the king, in cloth of silver. I hoped that no one would see me shift my weight from side to side, because my feet were beginning to ache. As the ladies of the court filed past us with studied grace and maddening
longueur
, and I continued to offer innocuous remarks in reply to their congratulations, I knew what I had to do: put the whole unpleasant business—
finalement
—to rest!