Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow (24 page)

The court was abuzz with excitement, and when many of the courtiers felt robbed of one of their favorite topics of gossip and derision, I became doubly delighted. Monsieur and Madame sourly congratulated us. I was almost positive that they still had never consummated their nuptials, despite Monsieur’s frequent boasts of prowess; certainly they had nothing to show for it. “You are catching up, perhaps,” simpered the comtesse d’Artois, already twice a mother, and with her belly swelling again. I knew Joseph had written home to Vienna that he found her useless for anything except making babies. But even my prolifically fecund
belle-soeur
could not dampen my euphoria. On August 30, I wrote to Maman with the good news:

But,
hélas
, not ten days after I had become “fully a woman,” as my sister Charlotte would have said, my husband’s passion for our newfound marital intimacy waned almost entirely, the way a young child loses interest in a once-favorite toy. I was crushed and when I sorrowfully confronted Louis to ask what had happened to cause so great a change, he could only blush and shrug. He returned to his old ways—long days at the hunt or the forge, conferring with his ministers without including me, and overindulging at meals, surfeiting himself on sweets and sauces.

So I quickly resumed my former routine as well, dancing and gaming until the wee hours, almost afraid to retire for the night, my great bed of state the scene of so much distress that I avoided it for as many hours as possible.

On September 10, I wrote to my mother again, shading the truth about the king’s nocturnal visits because I did not want her to know that by the time I finally turned in, he had been aslumber in his own suite for hours. At one point I believed our humiliation to be at an end, and the need for his company obviated, referring to my monthly courses with the sobriquet we Hapsburg women had employed during my childhood. I was unfortunately disappointed—not by my husband, but by my own body:

• • •

• • •

Nothing could have upset me more greatly during the ensuing months than the pressure from my mother to convince Louis and his ministers to support Joseph’s unethical seizure of Bavaria. The German duchy’s old Elector died at the end of December 1777; rather than support the installation of his heir as the new Elector Palatine in return for a third of the Bavarian territory, my brother Joseph behaved as heinously as Frederick of Prussia had done many years earlier when he took Silesia from Austria. He simply marched his troops into Bavaria and seized the entire duchy.

During those crucial weeks when I should have been capitalizing, as Maman might have put it, on our genuine intimacy in the bedchamber, wooing my husband with patience and caresses, I was being thoroughly schooled by the comte de Mercy in the political ramifications of Joseph’s actions so that I could assert Austria’s position whenever Louis and I were able to steal a few private moments. It was no secret that Joseph’s goals were to expand and strengthen the empire. Mercy believed that my brother’s intentions vis-à-vis the centrally located Bavaria were to
use it as a bargaining chip, if necessary, with Frederick of Prussia, offering “the Devil” the Austrian Netherlands in exchange.

Unfortunately, things steamed to a head, and my husband and I engaged in a rather heated discussion over the crisis in my study one morning in mid February. I had dismissed my attendants so that we could converse in complete seclusion. Surrounded in this feminine sphere by vases of hothouse blooms in every shade of pink and the repeating pattern of hand-painted floral images on my wallpaper, as we partook of coffee and sweet rolls and I tempted him with sugared almonds, I reminded Louis most pointedly of the importance of the Franco-Austrian alliance. Proud now of my knowledge of our shared history, I called to his attention the Treaty of 1756 which laid the foundation for our eventual union. “France and Austria promised to aid one another in a time of conflict, a day that may well dawn before very long. Have you ever tried a spoonful of
Schlag
—whipped cream—in your coffee? Once you have done so you will never wish to drink it any other way. And instead you are committing—squandering, even—your military might and resources to aid some rabble across the Atlantic Sea who are intent on overthrowing their sovereign king!”

Just days earlier, on February 6, 1778, France had formally recognized the United States of America, the entity formed by the rebellious British colonists against overwhelming odds, and concluded a military alliance with them. A passionate, but untrained, army of farmers, lawyers, laborers, tradesmen, and apprentices could never have managed as well against the red-coated soldiers of England’s George III without France’s help.

“Squandering? Is that how you see it?” Louis demanded.

“Well—
oui
,” I admitted hotly. “Do you think those savages halfway across the world will ever offer to aid you in return, should the time come? You have seen how much they respect
a king! Meanwhile, you turn a blind eye to a neighbor at your border—to your family. If the bellicose Frederick marches into Austria tomorrow and carves off a slice of Hapsburg terrain in retaliation for my brother’s incursion, who is to say that he will not desire a taste of France the following week?”

The volatile King of Prussia had reacted swiftly to Joseph’s invasion of Bavaria; and Maman, who had not encouraged my brother’s gambit, now found herself frantically needing to defend it, not only morally, but perhaps literally as well.

“This could lead to war with Prussia,” I said despairingly. I offered the king a croissant, making sure he could detect the delicate fragrance I wore on my wrist: Fargeon’s orange flower water, an especial favorite of his. “Frederick is already amassing an army at our—I mean the Hapsburg—borders. France
must
send soldiers to stand with Austria.” How could Louis remain cold to my entreaties?

He had blinked, however, at my slip of the tongue, wounded by the uncomfortable realization that there was some truth to my detractors’ vociferous claims that the Queen of France was an agent of Austria. Although I had forsworn my native country and my birthright upon leaving Vienna, what else had my marriage been for, except to solidify the amity between our kingdoms? Still, after all I had done ever since to prove that I was thoroughly French, it would never be enough for those who despised me now and had always done so.

“England is an age-old enemy. To aid
their
enemy is to further weaken them, and it is far more likely that France would suffer an invasion from Great Britain than it would from Frederick of Prussia. On the other hand, as far as it concerns Bavaria, it is your family’s ambition that is causing all the trouble,” Louis replied, his voice as frosty as I had ever heard it, his posture rigid and formal, as though he were armoring himself against me. His gaze
never wavered, nor did his tone falter, as it so often did when he was confronting his ministers or speaking to his troops. If only he could be so regal, so confident, in their presence. “They started with Poland back in 1771 when they forced France to support the partitioning of the commonwealth so that Austria would end up with some territory out of the bargain. Now they are doing it again with Bavaria. Austria’s immoral expansion is nothing more than a policy of armed robbery.” He searched for a handkerchief in a hidden pocket of his amber-colored waistcoat and blew his nose loudly. “I am very sorry for you.”

His words stung. I had pushed him away when I most needed to draw him to me. All the perfume and almonds in the world had availed nothing. Nearly eight years had passed since our wedding—which in sober truth was an international treaty signed in the sight of God—and finally, the Franco-Austrian alliance had been consummated, quite literally, in my bedchamber. Yet now my husband sought to turn his back, as he had on me for so many nights, on the other raison d’être for our union.

At length, mindful of his duty to his country, Louis resumed his conjugal visits and we made love on each occasion. Yet I could not savor the experience when my thoughts were preoccupied with stratagems for securing his promise to aid Austria over the Bavarian crisis.

And still he persisted in entertaining the Americans—in every way. On March 20, the gold-tipped iron gates of Versailles were thrown open in welcome to the diplomatic envoys from the new republic: Silas Deane, the son of a blacksmith; and the elderly, avuncular, and exceedingly flirtatious inventor Benjamin Franklin (who, I would hazard, was the first man without sword or wig to enter Versailles). From these unlikely origins the patriots had risen to the role of statesmen, an utter impossibility here in France, which made the men all the more of a curiosity to the aristocrats who evidently could not get enough of the odd Mr. Franklin. In their honor, we hosted an extravagant supper. Our guests looked quite incongruous seated amid the most glamorous
members of France’s nobility at a long table in the Hall of Mirrors laden with crystal, Sèvres, and silver. The men, including Louis’s cousins the ducs de Chartres and Orléans, and the other Princes of the Blood, were dressed in suits of satin and velvet: snug breeches and long, tight-fitting coats heavily embroidered with gold and silver threads. My husband had deputized me to convince the comte d’Artois and his racy coterie to forgo their current fashion for the evening. The youngbloods of France had adopted an English manner of dress that owed its origins to the racetrack: open jackets with a split seam along the back called frock coats, or
“le frac.”
Louis and the older and more conservative minds at court found them indecent; they exposed too much of the chest and torso because they required shorter vests to be worn with them, and they also left the upper portion of the breeches visible. Secretly, I encouraged my brother-in-law to sport the new modes at le Petit Trianon, but tonight, our aim was to be as French as possible. Louis insisted that aping the British fashions, which had become all the rage in Paris, would have been spectacularly rude to our distinguished guests; the blood of these patriots, as they called themselves, was still being shed as their War of Independence from England’s sovereignty raged on, with no end in sight. Some of the same French gallants who favored British tailoring—the duc de Lauzun, for example—were champing like racehorses, hoping for a commission to head a mercenary regiment, or at least to serve in an American one, eager to return home spangled with glory. The notion still rankled that my delightful
cercle
of gentlemen might desert me for a cause that sounded utterly antithetical to France’s belief in the divine right of kings.

When the elderly American envoy was presented to me at the top of the evening, he had made a sweeping bow and kissed my hand, raising his eyes to mine with an insouciant smile. There was something in Mr. Franklin’s manner that put me in mind of
the descriptions I had heard of that charming reprobate, Monsieur Voltaire, who was still languishing in his self-imposed exile in Switzerland rather than bend his knee, and his philosophies, to life under a Bourbon regime. I had the sensation that some of this American’s eccentricities were merely for effect, calculated to amuse an audience that prided itself on its sophistication and elegance. His true mission in France was to convince Louis and his ministers to give him as much assistance as possible—not only monetarily, but militarily—supplying men and munitions both at sea and on the field of battle, from Canada to the Carolinas. Perhaps his plan was to convince us that the more we gave, the more “French” his countrymen would become, thanks to our largesse.