Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow (28 page)

A few days earlier,
estafettes
, mounted couriers, had been dispatched to the Parisian town homes and country estates of any nobles who were not currently residing at Versailles to inform them of the impending arrival of a child of France, for more than a century of court etiquette granted the highest-ranking members of the aristocracy the right to be present in the queen’s bedchamber during the birth.

As an army of maids and footmen bustled about, arranging the rose and cream upholstered tabourets for the duchesses in front of the gilded railing about my bed and setting up rows of chairs for the other nobles as though a play was about to begin, the physician took my pulse and felt my brow to ascertain whether I had a fever. Monsieur Vermond requested me to mind the golden clock on the mantel and mark the amount of time elapsing between the contractions.

This was a simple enough request to comply with, and soon the pains began, mild seizures at first, perhaps a half hour or so apart. But the contractions continued throughout the night as they came closer and closer together and the chamber grew more crowded. There they were—Mesdames Adélaïde, Victoire, and Sophie, Louis’s maiden aunts; Monsieur and Madame, and the comte and comtesse d’Artois; the duc and duchesse de Chartres and the duc d’Orléans; the other Princes of the Blood, Louis XV’s cousins the prince de Condé and the prince de Conti; Marie Thérèse de Lamballe (one of the only faces I would have desired to see) along with Gabrielle de Polignac. The highest nobles made themselves comfortable on armchairs close to my bed. But where was Louis? My bed curtains remained parted, so they could see me, rivulets of perspiration and tears coursing down my face, as I stifled every urge to cry out, despite the terrifying, and sometimes horrifically intense, waves of pain. I could just imagine the admonishment I might have received from my former
dame
d’honneur
, the comtesse de Noailles: “It is not comme il faut for the queen to scream like an animal during childbirth.”

My hands and feet felt cold, and yet the room was suffocatingly hot from the crush of witnesses. “
S’il vous plaît, ouvrez les fenêtres
—please, someone open the windows,” I begged.

“
Je regrette
, but that is impossible,
Majesté
. The wintry night air could bring on a chill and we cannot put your health and that of the
enfant
at risk.”

The windows remained closed. And the pains of labor continued through the night. Dawn broke across the frosty parterres. My stomach lurched from the commingled aromas of fifty unique blends of perfume. My head ached from their myriad conversations; I overheard complaints that I was taking too long to deliver my child. The clock chimed the hour of nine. And then the contractions began to grow further apart. The room grew briefly silent as the
accoucheur
examined me, my modesty shielded only by a tented sheet, and told me that the second stage of my labor had come to an end. Soon the contractions should resume and it would be time to push the infant into the world.

By the time the clock struck ten, I felt the baby’s head moving inside me. Monsieur Vermond urged me to begin to push. Those who had been compelled to stand at the back of the room for want of chairs, pressed forward. Some of the assembly climbed atop the seats of their chairs and clambered onto the furniture, hoping for a better view. But by then my body was spent; after so many hours enduring the pains of labor with not so much as a sound, I felt as though I could not continue.

I sat against the bolsters with my knees raised. Push, the
accoucheur
urged me. Suddenly, I broke wind, mortified to have done such an undignified thing in the presence of France’s highest nobility. Push! I tried with all my might. He gave me lemon water to sip, and applied cool compresses to my brow, but the bedchamber
only grew warmer and more stifling. The clock chimed eleven and a few minutes later Monsieur Vermond announced to the notable assembly that the baby’s head was crowning. The crowd moved closer, pressing against the railings around the bed. The
accoucheur
directed me to push harder than ever, but the embroidered roses on the bed hangings began to blur and the crystal chandelier above my head seemed to be falling on me. There were too many people. I wanted to make them all go away. I became nauseous and wished to vomit.

But I had been sent to the Bourbon court at the age of fourteen with the single goal of producing an heir. Finally, at the age of twenty-three, it was happening. Pushing with my last bit of strength as the infant emerged I saw the king’s face, his pale eyes wide with concern, his hand clutching a handkerchief to his mouth. The room was so oppressive and the noisy, excited crush of people so close that I couldn’t breathe. I heard someone gasp, then a cry went up from the crowd, followed by the unmistakable mewl of an infant. I extended my arm toward Louis, but I never reached him. Instead, I seemed to be receding as everything went dark.

“Air, warm water!” cried Monsieur Vermond. “The blood is going to the queen’s head. She must be bled immediately.” Several women began to weep.

Louis pressed through the crowd of witnesses. By God, nothing was going to happen to Antoinette. She would not, could not die. Finally, after briskly elbowing Monsieur in the ribs, he reached one of the tall windows of the bedchamber. It had been sealed from top to sash with lengths of gummed paper to prevent the cool air from seeping into the room. Breathlessly, he began to tear at the paper; but finding that he was unable to reach the top of the window, he unseated the duchesse de Chartres, the
most obliging of her ilk, from her tabouret, and climbed upon the stool, hoping against hope that it would support his considerable weight. Having stripped off all the paper, he stepped down from the tabouret and with all his might threw open the window, then repeated his efforts with the remaining casements in the room while the nobles looked on amazed and somewhat shocked at the quick thinking, not to mention the strength, of the sovereign they had considered so lethargic.

Louis read the look in their eyes. They hadn’t believed in him. Had they not seen him with the masons carting paving stones about the grounds of the château? In any case, what man wouldn’t tear the world apart to keep his wife alive?

And his child? What of his child? Daughter—or dauphin? No one had mentioned a word in the flurry to save the queen. The
premier chirugien
was making incisions in the soles of her feet, bleeding her into a white porcelain basin. Louis watched the surgeon at work; briefly glancing at the ceiling, he mumbled a barely coherent orison, praying that the man’s hands were clean.

Finally, after what seemed like an agonizing amount of time, Antoinette opened her eyes. The king emitted a hoarse cry of relief and started to go to her, but the
accoucheur
prevented him from approaching the bed.

“She needs air, Sire,” he said insistently. “Or she might have a relapse.” Did Monsieur Vermond, sweating with palpable relief, not realize that she never would have awakened, had not the king of France himself opened the windows? Antoinette’s eyes had closed again. Her face drained of color but for the palest spots of natural pink upon her cheeks, she had drifted into an exhausted slumber.

“My … son?” he inquired, then, looking at the infant already gently wrapped within the wet nurse’s sturdy arms, for he knew the queen would not tolerate any swaddling.

Monsieur Vermond turned to face the chattering press of aristocrats. He waved his arms and called for silence and they realized the moment had come. Had the queen of France given the Bourbons an heir?

“
Mesdames et messieurs, silence, je vous prie
. Her Majesty, Marie Antoinette has borne a daughter of France.”

The bedchamber grew still. And then, the nobles’ universal dissatisfaction manifested itself in a collective groan. Awakened by the sound, the queen opened her eyes to the sight of their displeasure.

The
accoucheur
was swiftly at her bedside, taking the newborn from the wet nurse to show to her mother. “It is a girl,
Majesté
,” he said soberly, unable to conceal his own disappointment now that he would receive only ten thousand livres for his services. The queen gasped. No one quite knew how to interpret the sound.

“We must name her,” I heard Louis say to me. My ears filled with noise. And disillusioned murmurs. Tart comments from the nobility, even in the presence of my childbed. “Marie Thérèse Charlotte,” I murmured without a moment’s hesitation. After Maman and my beloved favorite sister. Surely the king would not challenge the selection, for I had not borne a dauphin; only a daughter. Useless to the Bourbons. So what would it matter that she was given my family names? She would be formally styled as Madame Royale, regardless. But even as I honored my mother by bestowing her name upon my long-awaited firstborn child, I knew in my heart that the intended compliment would nonetheless be received in Vienna as a disappointment. The Franco-Austrian alliance would not be permanently strengthened by a child named after the Hapsburg empress. Better I had borne a boy. All the churchbells and cannons and celebratory bonfires could not change that.

“You were not wanted, but you will be none the less dear to me,” I cooed to my infant daughter, once I was able to cradle her in my arms. “You will belong solely to me and you will always be under my care to share in my joys and lighten my sorrows.”

Relieved that I had survived the ordeal after losing consciousness for three-quarters of an hour, Louis was much more philosophical. He had bet me that our firstborn would be a son and managed to mask his disappointment in losing the wager with a loving and romantic compliment. Taking my hand in his and quoting Metastasio, his favorite poet, he assured me, “I have lost. My august daughter/Condemns me to pay. But should she vastly resemble you,/The whole world has won.” I kissed his knuckles, bathing them with my tears.

As I was still recovering from the difficult childbirth I was unable to attend my daughter’s immediate baptism. But I heard what took place, an insult that was deeply, and publicly, wounding to both Louis and me. Although Monsieur, as our daughter’s godfather, was the host, he nonetheless protested that the “name and quality” of the infant’s parents had not been formally given; then feigned innocence at the courtiers’ shocked looks, insisting that he was only observing the correct protocol for establishing the princesse’s lineage.

Seven weeks later, when I journeyed beyond the confines of my apartments for the first time, traveling to the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris to be churched, and receiving the customary blessing of thanksgiving for having survived the ordeal of childbirth, I was dismayed by the frosty welcome from all but the one hundred couples whose weddings, new raiment, and dowries the king and I chose to endow as part of our thanksgiving.

My subjects’ cheers were faint and halfhearted. Had they already forgotten the free bread and sausages we had distributed among the populace after our daughter’s birth? The wine that flowed from the public drinking fountains as copiously as water?
The free entry into the Comédie-Française, where the king’s box was reserved for coachmen and mine for the
poissardes
?

Yet I would not let the worshippers see my tears and held my head proudly—disdainfully, my detractors might have said, mocking my naturally protruding lower lip. “What have I done to these good people?” I later inquired of the comte de Mercy, when we were sitting together in one of my private salons. “And Madame Royale, what has
she
done to deserve their harsh looks, and their disapproval? She is an innocent.”

The Austrian ambassador looked as though he were debating with himself whether to be diplomatic or to take advantage of our long-standing acquaintance to be as direct as Maman would have been.

“Look about you,” he began. “At this salon. When you became queen you were unhappy with the décor, and so you went to great expense to have the walls covered in blue and white Lyon silk in a design of your own devising.”

“Butterflies and flowers,” I murmured, nodding in agreement, recalling an incident from my childhood. It had occurred on the very day I learned I was to wed Louis.

“But what happened?” Mercy inquired, knowing the answer full well.

“After a few months’ time I grew displeased with the renovation,” I admitted, a bit shamefaced. “The color did not look as I had expected it would in candlelight.”

“And what did you do?”

I hated it when Mercy and the abbé Vermond would catechize me. They were so fond of this method, of drawing me out and leading me to provide the answers myself. At the age of twenty-three I would have thought this nonsense was over. But I humored the old fox all the same. “I had the blue silk ripped off the walls and replaced with the white
gros de Tours
.” I gestured
toward the brocaded wall covering embroidered with floral bouquets, ribbons, and peacock feathers.

Mercy sighed. “That is an example of the extravagant expense, the wastefulness that your subjects ascribe to your behavior. They see you as a heedless spendthrift during a time of economic woe for most of the kingdom.”

“But that’s not true,” I insisted. “The blue silk now hangs on the walls at Fontainebleau!”

Mercy perched forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “How much have you spent on your wardrobe?”

“But the queen must set the tone,” I argued. It was as true at my ascension as it remained now.

“That may be, and I do not disagree, but it is also roundly perceived that Mademoiselle Bertin, your ‘Minister of Petticoats,’ as they call her, is your confederate in this profligacy and that you are behaving like a
maîtresse en titre
and not like a queen, concerned more for your own personal beauty than for the welfare of your people. For if the latter were true, you would not be well into debt for purchases of clothing and jewels and fripperies, having to go to the king for additional funds, when your subjects have more need of it than you do.”

Nothing could have been more hurtful than comparing me to a du Barry or a Pompadour. I blinked back tears.