Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow (34 page)

The tiny dauphin then passed into the hands of the wet nurse, a country woman we had nicknamed “Madame Poitrine,” who swore like a sailor, but was the most robust and wholesome woman we could find.

The gilded doors of the bedchamber were opened to the blare of trumpets, announcing the birth of a dauphin. The palace cannon fired a 101-gun salute, the announcement to all within earshot that the queen had borne a son. Versailles was in a gala mood. Men and women laughed and wept, and even the courtiers who so often disparaged me came to offer their felicitations. As the princesse de Guéméné, borne aloft in an armchair, paraded our
son through the gilded halls, everyone wanted to touch him, or at least the princesse, or even the chair, as though it might bring them luck.

At the christening that afternoon the dauphin was baptized Louis Joseph Xavier François, but the event was marred by the presence of the two most detestable men at Versailles: Monsieur, who stood as proxy for the infant’s godfather, Emperor Joseph II of Austria; and the unctuous prince de Rohan, the Cardinal and Royal Almoner, who had the honor of officiating. I said not a single word to him, glaring at his moonfaced countenance across the baptismal font. Everything about him made my skin pebble with disgust, from the ostentatious lace cuffs beneath his red moiré cassock to the expensive perfume that hovered about him like an aromatic cloud, which always reminded me of the stories about his concubines and his illicit trade in ladies’ stockings during his tenure as France’s ambassador to Austria. Now that Maman was gone forever his disrespect for her rankled all the more. I did not have much traffic with the cardinal-prince; nonetheless, I had pointedly refused to address him or even so much as favor him with a civil look since his arrival at Versailles.

The following day, a parade of representatives from each of the trade guilds paid us an official visit, bearing a gift from their respective crafts, as if our newbon son was the savior of France. The butchers delivered an enormous ox; the pastry makers, a tremendous meringue; the locksmiths, a cunning lock that displayed an image of a dauphin once it was opened; even the grave diggers came to pay homage, with the present of a coffin—a gift I found particularly macabre, though no one else so much as flinched. And fifty market women from Les Halles, dressed in black and dripping with diamonds, were presented to me.

As soon as I could, I sent the news to Joseph; the forty-year-old emperor was reduced to tears of joy, replying, “My heart is bursting
with happiness for my sister, who is the woman I love best in the world.”

But perhaps everyone at Versailles was not quite as elated. A satire titled
Les Amours de Charlot et Antoinette
that was making the rounds through the backstairs found its way onto Louis’s desk. The plot revolved around the efforts of Antoinette and Charlot (a thinly veiled caricature of Artois) to reach orgasm as they consummated their passion, owing to the continued interruption of a page boy, summoned each time “Antoinette” pressed the bell beside her as she thrashed about in ecstasy. And a scurrilous pamphlet depicting Louis crowned with the horns of a cuckold announced “The queen has finally given birth to a son—but who the devil produced him?” There wasn’t a scintilla of truth, of course, to any of it; and my
beau-frère
was hardly my closest confidant, nor had he been one of my favorite companions for years. But I believed that the true intent of the
libelles
was not merely to cast aspersions on my marital fidelity and the paternity of my children, but to injure the king as well, by choosing the one man whose betrayal would wound him the most—his charming and handsome brother.

Louis shared my anguish and tried to comfort me, apologizing for being thus far unable to destroy the poisonous plants at their roots. “I can impound the presses that print the slanderous rumors, confiscate the pamphlets, and burn the caricatures, but cannot seem to stem the tide of pestilential
libelles
,” he lamented.

Confined until I was churched, I had much time to ruminate upon the past several years. Although I had never committed any sins against the courtiers of Versailles or the people of France, my character had for years been painted in an unflattering light and with the birth of the dauphin I was moved to recast it. My elaborate poufs would become a thing of the past—although there was another, more pragmatic, reason for this as well.

“Your hair is so thin and fine now, it is coming out in my hand.” During this last pregnancy Monsieur Léonard began complaining that he was having difficulty styling my tresses because they had become so badly damaged. Years of frizzling and teasing had taken their toll and the coiffeur determined that masking the problem with false hair and wigs was no longer the best remedy. “Would Your Majesty permit me to cut it short?”

I had not considered such a drastic solution, but Léonard convinced me. “And if I know you,
Majesté
, you will look upon the new style not as a mark of shame, but as a fashionable new beginning to celebrate the birth of a son of France.”

And he was right:
“Coiffure à l’enfant,”
as we dubbed it, along with a spate of fashionable new textile colors (such as the ochre-brown “caca Dauphin”), soon became the rage, with the most elegant women in Paris having their long locks cropped into the short, feathery style.

This new mode was not, however, the way our court painter, Madame Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, was determined to immortalize me with her brushes and oils. In 1782 she decided to depict me in one of my white muslin
chemises à la Reine
.

The portraitist scheduled several appointments, and finally dared to admit (for she was anything but modest about her talents) that I was the most difficult person she had ever endeavored to limn. “Your complexion is entirely without shadows; it has a delicateness and translucence that defies interpretation with an artist’s meager tools. I apply paint to canvas and believe I have captured it, only to discover that I have still missed something. Not only that, Your Majesty’s countenance can shift in an instant. When you see your children, your face is lit from within and one can see the playful girl inside you. And in the next moment, when a minister or dignitary wishes to speak with you, you assume the most striking dignity and poise I have ever seen.”

“But if I were not the queen they would say I looked insolent,
non
?” I half jested. I remembered that some of the servants at the Hofburg had whispered as much about me when I was a girl, owing to the shape of my protruding lower lip. If only
that
had changed with childbirth, I mused, instead of my body. My shape had thickened after bearing two children and by now the size of my bosom, which I once feared would never grow, was considerable. In the span of a few of years I had watched myself transform from sylph to matron.

One morning as I made my toilette during my
lever
, I found myself startled by the reflection in my mirror. Although Maman had been gone for nearly two years, it was her face that gazed back at me.

1783

It had cost France some 772 million livres to aid the American revolutionaries and help the fledging nation become and remain independent, an unfathomable amount—far greater than anything we had spent on a foreign conflict, including the Seven Years’ War, which had effectively bankrupted the treasury of my husband’s predecessor, Louis XV. But now our mercenaries were coming home and there was one face and figure I looked forward to greeting more than any other.

Much had happened even in the past year. After the prince de Guéméné was compelled to declare bankruptcy owing to a financial scandal, the princesse resigned her position as governess to the children of France. The prince retired to his estate in Navarre, while his wife decamped to Brittany, surrounded by her two dozen lapdogs. It was frightfully embarrassing for all of us, for the nobility, as well as the monarchy, lived almost entirely
on credit. The comte d’Artois was indebted for twenty-one million francs, and yet he continued to buy horses and carriages and clothes (and to support at least one
maîtresse
, Diane de Polignac).

I replaced the princesse with my beloved
amie
Gabrielle, the duchesse de Polignac—tearfully convincing the king on bended knee not to name his conniving maiden aunt Adélaïde instead—but the appointment of the duchesse created a scandal of its own. Gabrielle and I had enjoyed a brief falling-out—her avarice, not merely for herself, but for her friends and relations, had touched a nerve; moreover, I distrusted her lover, the comte de Vaudreuil. But a few months’ absence began to heal my wounded sensibilities and I realized that I greatly missed her sweet melodic voice, and her vivacious presence in my rooms. And so I invited her to return to court. But her plum assignment as royal governess and the attendant perquisite of a capacious thirteen-room suite at Versailles engendered a spate of malicious gossip.

However, there was no one more deserving of the position, for the duchesse had been one of my dearest companions for years, had witnessed the births of the royal infants, had watched them grow, and loved them with all her heart.

I found myself at the center of another maelstrom as well. In May, after being accepted to the prestigious Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Madame Vigée-Lebrun had placed on display her portrait of me
en gaulle
, wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat trimmed with a blue ribbon and a pair of fluffy egret plumes. But neither of us could ever have imagined the outcry it generated; men and women from every stratum of society criticized the canvas—not for the artist’s talents, but for the mode in which I was depicted. To all the world it appeared as though the queen of France had demolished the dignity of her rank by appearing publicly in her chemise. Kinder critics thought I was dressed like a child, for the lightweight frocks were a customary
fashion for little girls. And there was a universal hue and cry over the pink rose I held in my hands as roses were symbolic of Hapsburg Austria, although it had been a hallmark of portraiture for centuries to portray the subject with a prop that signified their origin or profession. To the French, however, the rose was not an allusion to my family and place of birth, but a sinister coded image, conveying my ongoing allegiance to my homeland over that of my adopted France—for if this was not the case, why did I not hold a lily?

It was Trianon where I found myself more and more, devoting my time to my children and my music, escaping the poisonous air of the palace, both literally and figuratively. The dauphin was, alas, a sickly little tot, smaller than many children of his age, and his lungs were not developing properly. Fetid gossip aside, the air at Versailles was unhealthful for his delicate condition and I would soon have to find a more salubrious location where he might grow stronger and thrive.

Motherhood suited me as I had always known that it would. And I had finally given France her heir. In that respect I had much to be content about. And when I heard the news in June that Axel von Fersen’s regiment had landed safely in Brest, the American War of Independence finally at an end, my heart soared with delight and anticipation. I began to count the days until his arrival at Versailles, paying especial attention to my daily toilette, and choosing my wardrobe with particular care, never sure when he might return to court.

One day in early July, he found me in the orangerie at le Petit Trianon. I was picking fruit for a summer punch, when I heard a warm baritone voice declare, “I am sorry to have kept you waiting,
Majesté
.”

I spun around, nearly dropping the osier basket. Our eyes met
for the first time in three and a half years. He saw a young matron in a beribboned straw bonnet and yards of featherlight muslin. I saw … a much changed man; a bit older of course, and a bit thinner, perhaps from want of good food; but much of the youthful vitality had waned from his eyes, replaced with the world-weary expression of one who has suffered and seen much. The hollows of his cheeks had become more pronounced; his color, once high, had grown somewhat sallow. And yet, his face and figure could still bestir my heart as no one else’s ever had.