Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow (41 page)

The jewelers conferred, addressing their concerns in hushed tones. When French failed, they switched to German. Finally they turned to the cardinal and announced, endeavoring to temper their elation, “Congratulations, Your Eminence. We would be happy to accept your proposal!”

Five days later, they delivered the necklace to the Palais Cardinal’s gilded salon, shimmering with mirrors and hung with priceless Gobelin tapestries. “I am not in the habit of transacting with my jeweler in this manner,” the prince de Rohan informed them. Unlocking an exquisite fruitwood
secrétaire
embellished with vermeil and urging the jewelers to safeguard what he was about to provide, he handed them a letter endorsing the contractual details, signed Marie Antoinette de France. Financially anxious, the cardinal had drawn up this document to indemnify himself, asking the comtesse de Lamotte-Valois to bring it to the queen for her approval. Within a day, she had acquired Marie Antoinette’s
sanction, and the cardinal became all the more impressed by his lover’s intimacy with the queen.

He paid Jeanne a visit on February 1, with the large red leather box containing the priceless “slave’s collar” tucked inside an unassuming satchel. Assuring the prince that he had done a great service to France for which both she and Her Majesty would be eternally grateful, the comtesse plied him with compliments and an excellent Bordeaux, then relinquished her charms to him, the better to send him away buoyed with ebullience.

Soon, he believed, he would see the queen wearing the spectacular necklace about her throat and bask in the glow of her reflected gratitude.

M
ARCH

During my third thus far successful pregnancy, in order to allay my ennui, I commenced rehearsals of Pierre Beaumarchais’s comedy
Le Barbier de Séville
in my theater at le Petit Trianon. My detractors, who of course had never seen it, derided the charming pavilion for its preponderance of gilt and marble, but in truth the jewel box décor was nothing more than a trompe l’oeil contrived with white and gold paint and papier-mâché.

My company,
la troupe des seigneurs
, comprised entirely of members of the nobility, was coached by Joseph Dazincourt, a leading actor with the Comédie-Française, and I engaged Louis Michu from the Comédie-Italienne to be our singing master. I had chosen to play the soubrette, Rosine, but as I entered my thirtieth year, I wondered whether I didn’t look too old for the role.

The king had been none too pleased about my selection, insisting that Monsieur Beaumarchais was dangerous and subversive, insulting and mocking to persons of rank and title, citing
the playwright’s
Mariage de Figaro
as an example. But I found
Le Barbier de Séville
a delight and a welcome diversion from the exigencies of my condition, and whenever I was increasing, Louis was exceptionally doting and indulgent.

At 7:30 in the morning on Easter Sunday, the twenty-seventh of March, I was delivered of another son, Louis Charles. France called him the duc de Normandie, but to me, my chubby infant, as fat and rosy as his older brother the dauphin was pale and fragile, would forever be
mon “chou d’amour,”
an affectionate nickname that, as I wrote to my English
amie
, the Duchess of Devonshire, defied a proper translation: “ ‘Love cabbage’ is the best I can furnish you,
ma chère duchesse
, but it hardly conveys a sense of charm in your native tongue. He is vigorous and healthy, and as sturdy as a typical peasant youngster. So I suppose I must admit that in this he favors his papa. I do hope that on your next excursion to Paris you will honor us with another visit so that you may meet him.” Though he certainly looked nothing like Axel, there were anonymous rumblings from someone who knew of our
affaire de coeur
, questioning the little duc’s paternity—the first time in all these years that the count’s name and mine had ever been linked. I was entirely certain the duc de Normandie was the king’s son, and Louis never for a moment doubted it. Nor did he address the rumors about Axel, which surely reached his ears. I would not dignify the gossip by discussing it with the king, nor did he speak of it to me. It did not lie within his nature to confront a thing directly. Moreover, like his
grand-père
, he avoided any unpleasantness like the pox.

My beloved sister Maria Carolina, the queen of Naples, was our little duc’s godmother, although in her absence Gabrielle de Polignac, as royal governess, took her place at the baptismal font. My dear friend became so overcome with emotion as she held the infant prince that her husband had to stand by her elbow in case
she swooned. It was all
I
could do not to grow queasy when the odious Grand Almoner kept gazing at me across the font with an ingratiating smirk pasted to his face.

Something changed inside me with the advent of my second son’s birth. I had lost my desire to while away the evening hours at the Opéra and masquerades. Dancing no longer held the allure that it had in my youth, and I had even less of a taste for gaming.

“The
gaulles
are for young women,” I told Rose Bertin in late May during one of her twice-weekly visits to Versailles. “The last time the royal dressmaker Madame Éloffe measured me, she could only cinch my waist to twenty-three inches in my stays,” and my bosom, so much longed for during my girlhood had increased to forty-four inches. “I feel foolish now, looking like
ma petite
Mousseline. It is,” I sighed with some resignation, “time for more structure than that afforded by the
chemises à la Reine
.” My untrammeled gaiety was a thing of the distant past, or so it seemed. Motherhood had changed me immeasurably, and my chief desire was to spend as much time as possible playing with my precious sons and daughter.

Mademoiselle Bertin, as ever, was excited about the prospect of creating a different image for me, returning to Versailles bearing armloads of velvets in sumptuous jewel tones—garnet, ruby, amethyst, emerald, and sapphire. The
marchande de modes
was herself gowned in indigo taffeta with minimal embellishments, the taste for overdone furbelows being now on the wane. She was surprised, however, to find me in tears.

“We must present a picture of maturity and restraint,” I told Rose, although my voice was breaking. “The scandalmongers are again having their day at my expense, and my husband’s censors seem powerless to halt the flood of their defamatory propaganda. If it is at all possible, I wish to limit the amount of fodder for these vultures. Perhaps it is naïve of me to think so, but if I can show
them who I really am—a dignified and devoted mother—their pens will cease to scratch so vehemently.”

“Regardez-la,”
I said, handing the
marchande
a pamphlet. “His Majesty found this tucked into his napkin at supper on Tuesday. It could only have come from within the palace.”

Mademoiselle Bertin shook her head in disgust. “My heart goes out to you as well as to the duchesse,” she muttered, referring to madame de Polignac.

The repulsive engraving depicted me in a lascivious embrace with Gabrielle; one of her hands dandled my breast and the other foraged beneath my raised skirts. “She has been traduced nearly as much as I have for her extravagance,” I said bitterly. “And yet, were one to tot up the sums, even taking into account my generosity toward her, my dear friend has spent less in the decade or so since she came to court than Madame de Pompadour did in a single year. Do people truly believe she is my lover? Do they think she is
my
Pompadour? Is that what they mean by this filth?” I sighed heavily. “
Maîtresses en titre
have been tarred by the caricaturists for decades. But what has happened to the respect for the Crown? I warrant I am the first queen of France to be the target of such vulgarity.”

As she wordlessly clucked in disgust at the
libelles
, Rose draped the deep blue velvet yardage across my chest. “This brings out your eyes even more,
Majesté
. You absolutely must have a gown made up. It is because you are not a native Frenchwoman that they disparage you so,” she said, changing the subject. “
C’est vrai
, la Pompadour also came in for much criticism at the time, but she was one of our own. The French have never taken outsiders to their bosom.”

“But my union with the king was not of my choosing,” I replied. “Or of Louis’s. Everyone knows that.”

“Hatred and Reason are natural enemies,” said Rose, fussing
with the sapphire velvet. “I would wear diamonds with this. You will resemble the goddess of the moon in the night sky, twinkling with stars.”

As she removed the fabric and began to play with the bolt of ruby red, “No more diamonds,” I replied. “I have enough already and despite what people have said, although some years ago I purchased a set of bracelets, and I am fond of my
girandole
ear bobs, the brilliants have never been my favorite gem.” I glanced at the little duc de Normandie, blissfully asleep in his cradle. “You would think that by breastfeeding him, I would shrink a bit, but
hélas
, that hasn’t happened,” I chuckled, recalling both the scandal it created when I insisted on feeding Madame Royale myself and Count von Fersen’s present appreciation of my pulchritude. He had recently returned from his Grand Tour with the king of Sweden, gratified to be back in France once more. I had not seen him since the previous summer when we fêted Gustavus at Trianon. Axel and I had resumed our liaison, but even now, I was too often burdened with other cares to give myself over to delights of the flesh, and bedeviled with the pangs of a guilty conscience every time my thoughts of him turned amorous. Ours remained a Grand Passion, but what we shared most often now were confidences and dreams, hopes and fears.

Axel listened to me without judgments; he carried all my secrets. How, I marveled, did he always manage to remain above the fray, immune to the petty intrigues and squabbles of the other courtiers? I might have said it was because he was a foreigner at our court, but my Trianon
cercle
alone was filled with them. I preferred to see Count von Fersen as the constant oasis of calm at the eye of a perpetual maelstrom; and in a world of girls and boys, so often the only adult, wise beyond his years.

Where once my coterie, and then Axel, had brought me the most fulfillment, my children had become everything to me, and
there were no lengths to which I would not go to see them happy and healthy. When something was wrong with one of them, I suffered just as greatly. That spring Louis had purchased the château of Saint-Cloud in my name after we agreed that the dauphin required the fresh air of a more healthful climate. The king’s charming hunting lodge La Muette was too small for our burgeoning family and the entourage necessary to accompany us. Returning to the subject of diamonds, I told Mademoiselle Bertin, “Besides, if I
had
the funds for any new extravagances, I would renovate Saint-Cloud.”

J
ULY