The Queen`s Confession (17 page)

I returned to Versailles as in a dream. I could still hear the applause and the compliments.

The King came to hear how I had fared, and I was afraid that if I told him how I had been received he would feel sad, J1 because I understood something of the meaning of that almost frenzied greeting. Those people who had shouted for me and for my husband would not shout for the King. They were waiting for him to die because they hated him;

Louis the once Well-Beloved was now Louis the Hated. How sad for him, but he did not seem to mind.

He took my hands and. kissed them.

“I hear you were a triumph,” he said.

“Your Majesty is pleased?”

“I should have disowned them if they had not had the good taste to adore you.”

Oh, these French! How well they hid their cold cynicism beneath their flowery words!

In a mood of triumph I sat down and wrote to my mother:

“Dearest mother, it is impossible to describe the delight and affection

which the people showed us…. How lucky 122 we are to win the friendship of the people so easily. But I know this friendship is very precious. I am deeply conscious of this and it is something I shall never forget.”

I enjoyed writing that letter to my mother. Now she would know that I was not failing as she sometimes seemed to suggest. Mercy might disapprove of much that I did, but the people of Paris had taken one look at me and given no uncertain sign of their approval.

How happy I was as I lay in bed that nightl My husband lay beside me, fast asleep. The ceremonies had tired him while they had exhilarated me.

The days of boredom were at an end. Paris had shown me a new way of life and I could hardly wait to begin it.

“3

Sa figure et son car convenaient parfaitement a un heros de roman, mais non pas (fun roman franfais.

DUE DE LBVIS ON AXEL DE FERSEN

Madame la Dauphine talked to me for a long time without my recognising her. At last when she made herself known, everyone crowded about her and she withdrew to her box. At three o’clock I left the ball.

PROM THE JOURNAL OF AXEL DE FERSEN

The Attractive Stranger

A few months after my entry into Paris, Artois was married. His bride was the sister of Marie Josephe. Their father, Victor Amedee, the King of Sardinia, had naturally wanted the Dauphin for one of his daughters, so the sisters resented me.

The new bride, Marie Therese, was even uglier than her sister. Her only remarkable feature was her nose, and that was because of its length; her mouth was enormous, her eyes small, and she squinted slightly. She was very small, and quite lacking in grace. The King showed clearly that he found her repulsive; as for Artois, he did not express disappointment, but behaved as though the matter were of little importance. Marie Therese seemed to want to hide herself and he was pleased to indulge her in this. He had a mistress already—a very beautiful woman, much older than himself, named Rosalie Duthe, a lady who had served the Due de Chartres in the same capacity as she now served Artois.

Everyone was amused by Artois’s attitude and no one was very sorry for the poor little bride. All their sympathy was for Artois because he was unlucky enough to have such a wife.

The comment in Versailles was characteristic: “Having got 124

indigestion through gateau de Sememe the Prince had gone to take Duth6 in Paris.”

I was one of the few people who were sorry for Marie Therese and I did all I could to be her friend, but she was very disagreeable and curt with me.

However, I was enjoying myself as I had not done since I had come to France, so I did not need the friendship of my sisters-in-law. The Princessc de Lamballe had become my close friend and we chattered together as I used to with Caroline. In fact for the first time I believed I had replaced my sister.

When the snow came I could really imagine I was back in Vienna, and one day I found an old sledge in the stables at Versailles and as the Princesse was with me I told her what fun we used to have in Vienna and how Joseph had had the snow brought down from the mountains when there was none below just because he loved to ride in a sledge.

“And why should we not?” I cried.

“I see no reason why not. Here is the sledge and there is the snow.”

So I ordered the grooms to prepare the sledge and have the horses harnessed to it and the Princesse and I rode out.

We went to Paris—always Paris; and what fun it was being drawn along the road and finally reaching the Bois de Boulogne. It was bitterly cold but we were wrapped up in furs and it was glorious to feel our faces glowing.

This is just like Viennal’ I cried.

“And you remind me of my dearest sister Caroline.”

But it was not really like Vienna, where there were many sledges and this was the only way in which one could travel. Ours was the only sledge in the Bois, and we were not travelling, we were playing a game. The people came out to watch us and they seemed very different from those who had welcomed me into their city in the summer. These had pinched blue faces; they stood and shivered, and the contrast between them in their inadequate rags and us in our furs was painful.

I was aware of this but I tried not to see it because it spoiled the fun.

Mercy came to my apartments looking stem. 125 Your new pastime does not please the people of Paris,” j he told me.

But why not? “

“It is not a pleasure which is indulged in here.”

Oh,” I grumbled.

“Etiquette again.”

But it was more than etiquette; and I was not sorry to give it up.

That was an end to our sledge rides.

The tension in the family circle which had increased since the arrival of Artois’s wife was steadily rising. The two sisters were joined in their dislike of me, and my brothers-inlaw by their ambition. Of the two brothers, Provence was by far the more ambitious. Marie Josephe had shown no signs of becoming pregnant, and it was being said that be suffered the same disability as the Dauphin.

Mercy had warned me of my elder brother-in-law’s ‘little polite trickeries,” but as he was continually warning me I paid little heed.

Now even I, bent as I was on ignoring unpleasantness and finding new amusement, could not be unaware of the growing tension between the brothers.

“Provence is ambitious and strives in every way to be the dominant member of the household,” Mercy said.

“I am writing to the Empress to tell her this. I have rarely seen one so young so ambitious.”

This ambition was working up to a hatred against my husband. The six of us were often together. Etiquette demanded that we should be.

Once, we were in Province’s apartments and my husband was standing by the fireplace and on the mantelpiece was a beautiful china vase, for Provence collected fine china things. My husband had always been fascinated by this particular piece, and I used to watch him and laughingly ask him if he was rin’nfcmg of giving up bricks and locks for china.

He gravely answered that it might be an interesting study.

As Louis’s hands were not made to handle delicate objects Provence was very concerned for the safety of his vase.

I watched him watching Louis and laughingly called attention to his

anxiety. Provence was not amused; he stood, his 126 hands behind his back to hide the fact that he was clenching them in fury.

Then . it happened. The vase crashed to the floor and was broken into several pieces. Only then did I realise Provence’s hatred for the Dauphin. He sprang at him. Louis, taken by surprise, went crashing to the floor. He was heavy and I called out in alarm as he fell, but Provence was on him;

he had his hands at my husband’s throat. Then Louis had broken free, and they were rolling on the floor, behaving as though they would kill each other. The sisters stood apart watching; but I could not remain aloof, I ran to them and pulling at my husband’s coat shouted to them to stop.

When he saw that I was in danger, my husband cried:

“Be careful) Antoinette will be hurt I’ My hands were bleeding from a scratch I had received in the scrimmage, and the sight of that blood sobered them both.

“You are hurt,” said my husband lumbering to his feet.

“It is nothing, but I beg of you do not be so foolish again.”

They were both rather sheepish, ashamed to have given way to their tempera over such a matter. My husband apologised for his clumsiness and Provence for his display of temper. But the sisters whispered together and they implied that I had only been eager to draw attention to myself by pretending to be so concerned and rushing in and getting scratched.

How difficult it was to be friendly with these girls! But I was friendly by nature and I could not believe that they really disliked me so I tried to think of a way of making them happy. After all, I reasoned with the Princesse de Lamballe, it was small wonder they were so disagreeable. How should we feel if we looked as they did? Poor ugly little creatures.

It did not make life easier because the King so obviously showed his preference for me. When my sisters-in-law knew that he visited me for breakfast and actually made the coffee they were furious I Marie Josephe did not show it, for she was sly, but her young sister could not disguise her feelings. The aunts were always trying to srir trouble between us but I refused to listen, although I’m sure my sisters-in-law did.

The King knew that I loved the theatre, and he had said that on every Tuesday and Friday comedies should be performed. I was delighted and I was always there to applaud the actors. But what I longed to do was play on a stage and I conceived the idea that we should do a play among ourselves.

“It would be forbidden if it were discovered,” said Provence.

“Then,” I retorted, ‘it must not be discovered. “

It was an excellent idea, because when we were learning our lines and planning the scenery my sisters-in-law forgot to hate me. And I was so happy to be acting that I forgot everything else.

I discovered some one-act plays, and sometimes we were ambitious enough to try Moliere. I shall always remember playing Cathos from Les Pricwuses Ridicules. How I would prance across the stage, throwing myself into the part. I loved everyone when I was on a stage. This brought out the best in my brother-in-law Provence, who could learn his lines with the utmost ease and had a real gift for playing comedy.

I would throw my arms about his neck and cry: “But you are marvelous!

You play the pan to the life. ” He would be pleased—so different from the grim young man who bore a grudge against fate which had not made him a Dauphin. Artois of course loved to act, and even my sisters-in-law enjoyed playing. They had such quaint French accents that we were often in fits of laughter in which even they joined.

Sometimes we allowed the young Princesses dothilde and Elisabeth to play. I pleaded that they should be allowed to because I remembered how I had been kept out because I was too young. They loved it of course; and I grew very fond of little Elisabeth—and Clothilde too, until her governess turned her against me. She was a good-natured girl— a trifle lazy, but then she was so fat. The King, with his penchant for nicknames, had already dubbed her Fat Lady. She did not mind. She was wonderfully good-tempered and would take the most unrewarding parts with a smile.

This was all the more fun because we had to set out our own stage,

which we made with screens; and the approach of anyone not in the secret meant that these had to be bundled into a cupboard hastily and we would all have to try to look as if our costumes were what we would naturally wear and arrange ourselves as though we were merely chatting idly.

My husband was in the secret, of course, but he would lake no part in the playacting, so he was the audience.

A very necessary part,” I pointed out, ‘because a play needs an audience.”

So he would sit there smiling and applauding and more often than not falling asleep. But I did notice that when I was to the fore he was almost always awake.

So enthusiastic did we become over our amateur theatricals that I called in Monsieur Campan, who was my secretary and librarian, and whose services and discretion I valued, and asked him to help us find the exact costumes we would need for our parts. He was very good at this, and so was his son, who joined us.

The fun continued and everyone noticed how intimate the six of us had become; we even took our meals together.

Amateur theatricals was merely one way of passing the time. I was constantly arranging that we should go into the city, and it was usually to the Opera ball. I insisted that we all went, although my sisters-in-law were not good dancers and were far from eager. The Parisians never cheered them as they did me. They seemed to have forgotten my one lapse into what was considered bad taste—riding through the Bois de Boulogne in my sledge—and had taken me to their hearts once more. It did not occur to me that the people could love their Dauphine one day and hate her the next. I knew nothing of the people, and although I made many many journeys to the city I, knew little of Paris-the real city.

I learned a little of it later and wished I had been more perceptive, for the Paris of that day was to change heartbreakingly in little more than a decade, and nothing surely could ever be quite the same again.

What a city of contrasts it was—although at that rime I was quite

blind to this! The elegant Dauphine Square—and 129 those winding streets uch as the Rue de la Juiverie, Rue aux Feves and the Rue des Marmousets in which thieves and prostitutes of the lowest kind lived side by side with the famous Paris dyers whose tubs were set out on the cobbles. Sometimes I would see the red, blue and green streams running out of these narrow alleys as we passed. I was told they were from the dyers and was content to leave it at that, never bothering to learn more of their fascinating trade.

It was a bustling city and a gay one. That was what was most apparent—its gaiety. Sometimes in the early morning rattling back to Versailles after a ball we would see peasants arriving from the other side of the barriers with their produce which they would market in Les Halles. We would see the bakers of Gonesse bringing their bread into Paris. In the dark years ahead these bakers were not allowed to take back any which was unsold for so precious was bread that the authorities kept a tight hold on every loaf that was brought into the capital. Bread! It was a word which was to ring in my ears like the knell of a funeral bell. But at this time they were merely the bakers of Gonesse who came into Paris twice a week and who stopped to stare openmouthed at our carriages as they carried us back to Versailles.