The Queen's Lover (15 page)
She was of course referring to me, and we had indeed shared a day of blissful reunion that Christmas week. “At last on the 24th I spent the whole day with Her,” I wrote my sister. “Imagine my joy.”
Sophie and her lover, Evert Taube, were the only persons in the world to whom I had confided my love for Marie Antoinette. I had restrained from similarly informing Gustavus. My king, notwithstanding his great qualities, was such a chatterbox that although I always praised the queen in my letters to him I referred to her with formality and circumspection.
A
POLITICAL HIGHLIGHT
of the year was the monarchs’ decision to consult the all-powerful Mirabeau, who was eager to convince the king to accept a constitution, and had been writing the sovereigns copious notes about the political situation. Louis XVI had originally refused to meet with this libertine radical, whom he considered to be one of those responsible for the Revolution. However, the queen, being far more
cunning than her husband, consented to a secret conference with Mirabeau even though she had always found him repellent and referred to him as “a rascal” whose “whole existence is deceit, cunning, and lies.” She met the tall, courtly, heavily pockmarked nobleman at night, in her apartments, and the meeting lasted for nearly an hour. Mirabeau did most of the talking, imploring Marie Antoinette to not heed the partisans of the counterrevolution, who were exiled in Belgium and other countries and led by Artois. She listened to Mirabeau with immense attention, and he was enormously impressed with her courage, wisdom, and sagacity. As he was taking leave of her, the queen held out her hand to him with that graciousness unique to her; “The monarchy is saved!” he whispered as he knelt down to kiss it. “The king has only one man with him—his wife,” Mirabeau wrote to a friend after their meeting.
That summer of 1790, the royal family was allowed to move to Saint-Cloud, where the queen’s spirits improved considerably. She invited actors and musicians to the château, and she sang again, accompanying herself on the clavichord. I had taken quarters at Auteuil, not far from Saint-Cloud, and joined her in her apartments on most evenings. Were we throwing caution to the winds again? Tongues wagged, but she did not seem to care. I was almost arrested one night, when I was leaving the park of Saint-Cloud at three in the morning. The Comte de Saint-Priest warned the queen that my nocturnal visits could prove to be dangerous. “Tell that to him,” she replied impatiently. “As for myself, I don’t care.” Never had my feelings for the queen been more tender. “She is the most perfect creature I know,” I wrote to Sophie. “…She is extremely unhappy and very courageous. She is an angel. I try to console her as best I can, I owe it to her, she is so wonderful to me. My only sorrow lies in not being able to fully console her for all her misfortunes, and not making her as happy as she deserves to be.”
As for my relations with the king, they can best be described as a watchful amity. How aware was he of my true relations with the queen?
I know that he totally trusted, and was most grateful for, my loyalty and devotion to his cause. And even though I deplored his political judgments, I respected, and was deeply moved by, his integrity and the goodness of his heart. The queen, meanwhile, had used all her feminine wiles to convince the king that her relationship with me was totally innocent. While intimating that I was the only friend whom they could blindly trust, she was forthright to her husband about all the public gossip concerning our affair, and offered to stop seeing me, which Louis refused. Although he never gave any overt sign that he either suspected a liaison or was troubled by it, I imagine that in truth the unfathomable king was aware of his wife’s love for me. Louis’s friends were so few that he may well have realized he could not afford to lose the support of a man known for his zeal and his devotion to the royal cause. Or might it be possible that the king concealed his jealousy for many years, and made use of my talents with the intention of sidelining me at a later moment?
I
SHOULD RIGHT NOW
admit that I was not exclusively absorbed, at this period of my life, by my love for the queen and my deep concern for the fate of the royal family. In the fall of 1789—the first months of the monarchs’ seclusion at the Tuileries—intimacy with my beloved Toinette had become harder to come by. And I’d become the prey of an aggressive beauty called Eleanore Sullivan, a voluptuous Italian-born brunette with milky skin and large onyx eyes who had spent her early years as a dancer and trapezist with an ambulating actors’ troupe. She had already passed through the arms—and beds—of many prominent men. First came the Duke of Württemberg, to whom she bore a daughter. Next in line was Emperor Joseph II, Marie Antoinette’s brother, though that liaison was made brief by Empress Maria Theresa’s irate demand that Eleanore leave the country. Upon moving to Paris, Eleanore had married an Irish diplomat, Mr. Sullivan, who took her to India,
where he was seeking to increase his fortune. It was in India that she met Quentin Craufurd, a very rich Scotsman who had made his money in the British colony of Manila through his dealings with the East India Company (he was referred to as “the nabob of Manila”). Craufurd swiftly captured Eleanore from the inconsequential Sullivan in the early 1780s and brought her back to Paris, where they settled in a large house on the rue de Clichy. It was graced with Craufurd’s sumptuous paintings and furniture, which soon came to be looked on as one of Paris’s most reputed art collections. His intelligence, wealth, and notoriously fine eye for art endeared him to many of Paris’s preeminent aristocrats. The Duc de Lauzun, the Vicomte de Noailles, and Talleyrand, to whom he often loaned money, were among his friends. His two-volume history of Indian civilization, translated into French by the Comte de Montesquiou, had been exceedingly well received. A British comrade of his, the Marquess of Hutley, had introduced him to Marie Antoinette, who took a great shine to him and always referred to him as
“ce bon
Craufurd.” In sum, Craufurd was one of Paris’s most distinguished expatriates.
I met Craufurd in 1789 at the Club de Valois, a gentlemen’s association I belonged to at which we played many a game of backgammon. He invited me to his home to meet Eleanore, and I very soon became her lover, a pleasure that remained unknown to Craufurd for some years to come because of his very frequent trips to London. Being devoted to the queen, my sister worried a great deal about my relationship to Eleanore. “I’m warning you, dear Axel, for the love of Her to whom it would cause a fatal blow if she heard the news. Everyone is watching you and talking about you. Think of unhappy Her. Spare her the most fatal pain of all.” Such kind cautions, for the time being, remained unheeded. Both of my new friends—Craufurd and Eleanore, the latter of whom had loving memories of her tryst with Joseph II, were ardent supporters of Marie Antoinette. Ah Eleanore of the engulfing mouth and round, invasive arms…. Much more about you later on. I merely wished to record
another aspect of my life during the years in which I continued to write my father about France’s worsening crisis.
Paris, February 1, 1790
What a frightful situation this kingdom is in! It is complete anarchy. All bonds are dissolved; there is no obedience to laws, no respect for religion, which does not exist except in name. The people have learned to use its strength, and is doing it with ferocity. The nobles, clergy, and parliament, who set the first examples of disobedience and resistance, are the first victims; they are ruined and their châteaus burned. The upper bourgeoisie, who were also seduced, now repent, but it is too late. Workmen, manufacturers, and artisans are all ruined and dissatisfied, for purses are closed…. Numerous persons incited by hatreds, jealousies, and private revenge have conducted themselves badly toward the king and have forgotten their obligations to him…. They are inciting the
canaille
with the great words “liberty,” “despotism,” and “aristocracy.”
The National Assembly continues its folly. The provinces are in greater ferment than ever, and the king is a prisoner in Paris. His position—and above all that of the queen, who suffers from their captivity much more keenly than he does—is dreadful. The queen has shown and still shows a courage, character, and conduct that have won her many adherents.
T
HE QUEEN HAD TO
suffer another great grief in that wretched year of 1790—the death of her beloved brother Joseph II. The emperor’s health had been failing in recent months, but he had continued to do everything possible to help his younger sister. “I’m so cruelly tormented about her fate,” he had written after the march on Versailles of October 5, 1789; “the dangers the Queen faced and still faces make me shudder.” A few months later he had prevented an armed incursion into Provence
by the Comte d’Artois and a force of émigré army officers, which would have been a calamity for the royal family. During his final days he had written his sister that one of his most bitter regrets about dying was to leave her in such a cruel position, and not be able to prove the deep love he had always felt for her. He passed away on February 20, 1790, a week after he had sent her that last letter. The queen sequestered herself in her apartments for several days, weeping. Joseph was succeeded by his younger brother Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, whom Marie Antoinette had not seen since she was ten years old; and though he instantly offered her his support, he would prove to be untrustworthy, and would only live for another two years.
I continued to write my father about the events in France.
Paris, April 2, 1790
Little change…. Poverty and discontent are increasing; they are beginning to affect the people, especially Parisians, who now find themselves without resources owing to the diminution and annihilation of fortunes occasioned by the Assembly’s decrees. There are persons who have lost 40,000 to 50,000 francs a year, and others their whole revenue, because of the abolition of feudal rights. Most of the workmen and artisans are reduced to beggary. The best workmen are leaving the Kingdom, and the streets are full of paupers. One and all they blame the Assembly…. The royal treasury is exhausted; there is neither credit nor confidence; money has disappeared, everyone hoards it. That, my dear father, is the present state of things. God knows how it will end. Necker’s state is worse than ever; his health is quite destroyed, and I don’t believe he will live long. He’ll be regretted by very few.
Paris, June 28, 1790
You will read about the state of the army in the newspapers; there is no longer any order or discipline. Soldiers form committees, they
dismiss, break, judge, and sometimes execute their officers. Every day we hear of new horrors, and there is no longer any pleasure in serving. My regiment [the Royal Swedish] has behaved marvelously well up to now, even though everything has been done to seduce it. There has not been the slightest insubordination, and I hope this may continue.
Although the queen’s spirits had revived upon moving to Saint-Cloud, she was bound to find the first Feast of the Federation, which commemorated the fall of the Bastille, to be a depressing event. I described the episode to my father.
Paris, July 16, 1790
The famous Feast of the Federation, which had inspired such fears and driven so many persons out of Paris, has just been celebrated. The ceremony, which might have been very august, very fine, and very imposing, was made ridiculous by its disorder and indecency. It was held at the Champ de Mars; you will see a description of it in the papers. But what the papers will not tell you is that no one was in his right place; the soldiers, who ought to have guarded the area, obeyed no one; they ran about hither and thither, dancing and singing. Before the arrival of the king and his troops, they took a priest and two monks from the altar, and, putting grenadiers’ caps on their heads and muskets on their shoulders, they marched them around the amphitheater, singing and dancing like savages do before they eat Christians. People also sang and danced during the Mass, and no one knelt at the moment of the elevation of the Host, which led many persons who were present to declare that the Mass was not said at all.
In order to remain near the queen, I spent the rest of the summer at Auteuil, near Saint-Cloud, in the house lent to me by my friend Valentin Esterhazy. I saw my Toinette nearly every day, and was most
unhappy at the end of October when I had to return to Paris (“that vile cesspit,” as I described it to Sophie). But there was a great deal to do; above all I had to urge the king to reassert his authority. For the Assembly had decreed the abolition of the nobility, and nationalized all Crown property; church lands were being sequestered and sold off to speculators; the deficit was still speedily rising, which led the now discredited Jacques Necker to resign. The ministers whom Louis appointed in his place proved to be equally unable to help the nation, and there were violent protests throughout the country. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which wrenched the French church away from Rome, dictating that bishops and other clerics would be directly elected by French citizens and owe their ultimate allegiance to the state rather than the king, had just been decreed, and was sure to be vetoed by Louis XVI. Yet another danger was being caused by the king’s brothers: Comtes d’Artois and de Provence, exiled in Koblenz, were raising an émigré army with the ultimate intention of invading France from the Austrian border and restoring the ancien régime by force, which might well have led to the execution of the royal family.
Paris, November 5, 1790
Disorders increase daily [I wrote my father]…. Poverty is felt everywhere; coin has disappeared;
“assignats,”
the paper money that has replaced it, have little or no credit; in many of the provinces the people will not take them at all. The merchants sell nothing; manufactures are at a standstill; provisions grow dearer. Paris is full of thieves; one hears of nothing but robberies committed, and since there is little law and order they remain unpunished. This state of things can not last, and the growing discontent will slowly lead to some kind of change; when the dissatisfaction will have greatly risen, the new order of things will be as quickly overthrown as the old order was; such is the volatility of the French.
