The Queen's Confession Part 21

"But if the Queen of France can act, surely you can too."

"I may not be the Queen," she replied, "but I am the stuff of which they are made."

That made me laugh, but she refused to join us; so she was always a member of the audience instead. Monsieur Campan was of great help as prompter and part-producer, the role he had occupied in those days when we had played secretly in the room at Versailles. This was different. This was a real theater. I threw myself into acting with a wild enthusiasm; we did several plays and comic operas. I remember the names of some of them: L'Anglais a Bordeaux, Le Sorcier, Rose et Colas. In Le Sabot Perdu, I had the part of Babet, who is kissed on the stage by her lover; Artois played the lover and this was talked of and written of as something like an orgy.

The people seemed to have forgotten the devotion they had shown me at the time of the Dauphin's birth. Pamphlets were coming out at an alarming rate and I was always the central figure portrayed. I could not understand why they should have chosen me. I believed it was because I was not French. The French had hated Catherine de Medicis, not because of her evil reputation, but because she was not French. They had called her the Italian Woman; now I was the Austrian Woman.

Les Amours de Charlot et 'Toinette, was a popular little book which was supposed to be an account of my relations.h.i.+p with the Comte d'Artois, with whom, ever since I had come to France, my name had been coupled.

One day the King found a booklet called Vie Privee d'Antoinette in his private apartments, which showed that I had enemies inside the palace for one of them must have placed it there.

I refused to read them. They were so absurd, I said. Anyone who knew me would simply laugh at them. I did not realize that my enemies were building up a public image of me and that was the woman so many people believed me to be.

There was one pamphlet which was supposed to have been written by me, for it was in the first person. This seemed sillier than any, for it was ridiculous to imagine that if I were guilty of all the crimes they attributed to me, I should have made a confession and allowed it to be printed and circulated.

"Catherine de Medicis, Cleopatra, Agrippina, Messalina, my crimes surpa.s.s yours, and if the memory of your infamous deeds still causes people to shudder, what emotions could be aroused by an account of the cruel and lascivious Marie Antoinette of Austria ... A barbarous Queen, an adulterous spouse, soiled with crimes and debaucheries ..."

When I saw this, I laughed and tore it up. No one would take it seriously. But this infamous doc.u.ment called Essai Historique sur la Vie de Marie Antoinette was sold, reprinted again and again, and is in circulation at the time I am writing.

Why did I not understand that there were people who were determined to believe these things of me? The only way I could have shown them up as the ridiculous lies they were was by living a quiet and thrifty life.

And what did I do? I retired in disgust to the Pet.i.t Trianon. It was my little world. Even the King could only come there at my invitation. He respected this and gravely waited to be invited. He enjoyed those visits, for to him, grappling with state affairs, it was indeed a boon to escape from ceremonies and tiring interviews with statesmen.

When we were not acting plays, we played childish games. The favorite game was called Descampativos, which had derived from blind man's buff. One of the players was sent out of the room and when he or she had left, the rest of us would cover ourselves completely with sheets. Then the one who was outside would be called in; in turn we would touch him and he would have to guess who we were. The great point about this game was the forfeits which had to be paid and these became wilder and wilder. Everything we did was exaggerated; the simplest pleasure was described as a Roman baccha.n.a.lia. Another game was tire en jambe, in which we all mounted sticks and fought each other. This gave rise to a lot of horseplay and although the King liked to wrestle and play rough games, he had little liking for this.

My garden occupied a great deal of my time. I was constantly planning and replanning. I said I wanted it to look as little like Versailles as possible. I wanted a natural garden. Oddly enough, it seemed more costly to create that than the symmetrical lawns and fountains which Louis XIV had made so popular. I had plants brought from all over the world; hundreds of gardeners were employed to produce a natural landscape. I wanted a brook running through a meadow, but there was no spring from which the water could be obtained. "You cannot obtain water!" I cried. "But that is ridiculous." And water had to be piped and brought from Marley. Some comments were that it was gold not water that filled the charming little stream at the Trianon. Rustic bridges were built over the stream; there was a pond and an island; and all these had to be created as though nature had put them there.

The price of all this was staggering, only I never considered it. I would yawn as I looked at the amounts; I was never quite sure of the number of noughts; but I was constantly thinking of how I could improve my little world and it occurred to me that I should create a village, for no rustic scene was complete without people. There should be cottages, I decided, eight of them; little farms with real people and real animals. I summoned Monsieur Mique, one of the most famous of our architects, and told him what I planned. He was enchanted with the idea. Then I asked the artist Monsieur Hubert Robert to work with Mique. They must build for me eight little farmhouses, with thatched roofs and even dung heaps. They must be charming but natural.

The two artists threw themselves into the project with enthusiasm, sparing no expense. They were constantly suggesting improvements and I enjoyed my conferences with them. The farmhouses must be made to look like real farmhouses. The plaster would have to be chipped in places; the chimneys must look as if smoke had poured through them.

Natural was the order of the day and no artifice or expense should be spared to achieve it.

When the farmhouses were ready, I peopled them with families, selecting them myself. Naturally I had no difficulty in finding peasants who were happy to make their home there. So I had real cows, pigs, and sheep. Real b.u.t.ter was made; my peasants washed their linen and spread it out on the hedges to dry. Everything, I said, must be real.

Thus was created my Hameau. My theater had cost 141,000 livres; I did not stop to calculate the cost of the Hameau at the time; and later I dared not.

But I was happy there. I even dressed simply there, although Rose Bertin a.s.sured me that simplicity was a great deal more difficult to achieve than vulgarity - and naturally more costly.

In a simple muslin gown I wandered along by the brook or sat on a gra.s.sy bank so cleverly built up that none would have guessed it had not always been there. Sometimes I caught fish and these were cooked; for I had had my stream well stocked with fish as it naturally would be in the country. Sometimes I milked cows, but the floor of the cowhouse was always cleaned before I came and the cows brushed and cleaned. The milk would fall into a porcelain vase marked with my monogram. It was all very delightful and charming. The cows had little bells attached to them and my ladies and I would lead them by blue and silver ribbons.

It was enchanting. Sometimes I would pick flowers and take them into the house and arrange them myself. Then I would take a walk past the farmhouses to see how my dear peasants were getting on and making sure that they were behaving naturally.

"At least," I said with satisfaction, "the people in my Hameau are content."

And that seemed a very good thing and made worthwhile the great sums of money which continued to go into making the place, for I was constantly adding to its beauties and discovering new ways of improving.

Letters were arriving from Joseph, but they did not have the same effect as those of my mother. Moreover, that intense devotion which she had felt for me was lacking. Joseph thought me foolish - and he was certainly right in this - and lectured me, but then he lectured everyone.

He was writing to Mercy, of course, and Mercy remained my watchdog, as he had during my mother's lifetime.

Mercy, who was no respecter of persons and never minced his words, showed me what he had written to Joseph. I suppose in the hope that I would profit from it.

"Madame Royale is never apart from her mother and serious business is constantly interrupted by the child's games, and this inconvenience so fits in with the Queen's natural disposition to be inattentive that she scarcely listens to what is said and makes no attempt to understand. I find myself more out of touch with her than ever."

He sighed as I read, for my attention was straying even as he put the paper into my hands and I was wondering whether a pale pink sash would be more becoming for my darling child rather than the blue one she was wearing.

Poor Mercy! The heart had gone out of him since my mother's death. Or was he realizing at last that the task of rescuing me from my follies was hopeless.

Money! It seemed the constant topic of conversation - and such a boring one! There was apparently a deficit in the country's finances which it was imperative to rectify, so said Monsieur Necker, who had been appointed as Comptroller General of Finances. Turgot's policy had failed and he had been followed by Clugny de Nuis, who had not given satisfaction. This man had not been successful, although he had the support of the Parlement (largely because he had tried to undo all the work Turgot had done). He had established a state lottery, which had not worked out as he had planned it should, and his methods were leading to financial disaster. When he died, there was a sigh of relief and my husband turned to Jacques Necker.

Necker was a Swiss, a self-made man who owned the London and Paris bank of Th.e.l.lusson and Necker. He had proved his ability to juggle successfully with finances and was at the same time beloved of the philosophers, having won a prize for a literary work from the Academie Francaise; he had written several attacks on property owners and deplored the contrast between rich and poor. He was a man of great contrasts - perhaps more so than most. He was an idealist, yet he yearned for power. He refused to accept payment for his work; but then he was an extremely rich man and did not need money. He wanted to improve the conditions of the poor; he wanted to bring the country to prosperity, but he wanted all to know that he, Necker, and he alone was responsible for the good which was being done.

He was a Protestant and since the reign of Henri IV no Protestant had been allowed to hold office. It indicates the impression Necker made on the King for this rule to be waived. Louis, who since he had been King had made a great effort to understand public affairs, was certain that the country needed Necker at this time.

Necker was a big man with thick eyebrows below a high forehead above which was a high tuft of hair. His complexion was yellow and his lips tight, as though he were calculating the cost of everything. He looked incongruous in fine velvets; I said to Rose Bertin that he would look better in a Swiss bourgeois costume and that she had better make him one.

"Madame," she replied, "I choose my clients with the utmost care. Since I serve the Queen of France, it is my duty to do so."

Necker, looking round for a means of cutting expenses, examined the royal household. We had too many servants. Madame Royale herself had eighty people in her household. None of us ever moved without being accompanied by a retinue of servants. Four hundred and six people lost their posts on the first day the resolution had been put into action; others followed.

But there seemed no perfect solution, for although we economized in our household, those who were dismissed were without employment.

Necker and his wife felt strongly about the state of our hospitals and the King, always ready to further such good causes, was entirely in accord with them. The conditions at the Hotel-Dieu in Paris were truly shocking. My husband went, incognito, and wandered through the wards and when he came back, he was in tears and very melancholy. But France did not want tears; it needed action. He knew this and planned to pull down the old building and replace it by four new hospitals. But where was the money to be found? He had to abandon that grand scheme and satisfy himself with enlarging the old building and adding three hundred beds.

And while this was happening my bills at the Hameau were steadily mounting.

Why was my folly not brought home to me? Why did everyone wish to indulge me? And was it indulging me? Was it not giving me a helping hand toward my doom. Before our daughter had been born, my husband had indulged me because he was so apologetic for the embarra.s.sing situation in which he had placed me; afterward he could not thank me enough for proving to the world that he could be a father.

But why should I blame others? I was told of these things; but I did not listen. I would weep when I heard of conditions at the hospital. After the birth of Madame Royale I had asked if I could found a lying-in hospital. This I had done. It salved my conscience. I could stop thinking about unpleasant things like dying people lying on the floor of the Hotel-Dieu tormented by vermin while the rats leapt over them and there was no one to attend them or feed them.

Necker was constantly trying to bring in reforms - hospitals, prisons, the state of the poor. He inst.i.tuted a new rule of loans not taxes, which made the people cheer him but did nothing to alleviate the situation.

Necker wanted popularity; he never criticized me. I know now that it was because the King doted on me and wished me to have my diversions; although Necker wanted to do good to France, he wanted most of all to bring power to Necker. Without the King's support he could not do this and therefore he must continue to please the Queen.

The lack of money seemed to affect everyone. There was a great scandal when the Prince de Guemenee became bankrupt. This ruined several traders who had been supplying him for years. His enormous retinue of servants were in despair. The affair reverberated throughout Versailles and Paris; and naturally his wife could not hold her post as governess to the Enfants de France.

In her place I chose my dearest Gabrielle. She was not eager. Perhaps what I loved most about the dear creature was her indifference to power. I think Gabrielle would have been happiest if she could have lived quietly in the country away from courts. She had no desire for jewels, not even fine clothes. Perhaps she knew she was beautiful enough to do without them. She was lazy and liked nothing better than to lie on the lawns at the Trianon - just with myself and perhaps a few of our very intimate friends - and idly chatter. She declared that she was not suited to the post. The Dauphin needed a nurse who was constantly watching over him.

"But I shall watch over him," I declared, "and so will his father and many others. We shall be together more than ever. You must accept, Gabrielle."

Still she hesitated. But when her lover Vaudreuil heard, he insisted that she take the post. I often wondered what happened between them. She declared she was terrified of him ... terrified but fascinated. So Gabrielle became the children's governess. I now know that this friends.h.i.+p between myself and Gabrielle was one of the main causes of complaint against me. How strange! It was so beautiful really - a loving friends.h.i.+p; the desire of two people who had much in common to be together. Where was the harm in it? Yet it was misconstrued. I do not refer to the evil construction which was put on that friends.h.i.+p. There must always be libels about me and my friends. I ignored them; they were so ridiculous. But her family was ambitious. I persuaded Louis to make Gabrielle's husband a Duke, which meant that she had the droit au tabouret; then her family were constantly producing some member who needed a post at Court. Large sums were constantly being paid to that family from the ever diminis.h.i.+ng treasury.

Money!

One lovely June day I was seated in my gilded apartment playing the harpsichord and my thoughts were wandering from the music. I was contemplating that I was growing old. I was nearly twenty-eight! My little daughter would be five years old in December and my little Dauphin two in October.

Ah, I sighed inwardly, I am no longer young; and a sadness took possession of me. I could not imagine myself old. What should I do when I could no longer dance, play, and act? Arrange marriages for my children! Lose my sweet daughter to some monarch of a far-off country. I shuddered. Never let me be old, I prayed.

There was a scratching at the door.

I looked up from the harpsichord and signed to the Princesse de Lamballe to see who wished to enter.

It was an usher to announce a visitor.

I started as I saw him in the doorway. He had aged a good deal, but he was none the less attractive for that.

He is more distinguished than ever, I thought.

Count Axel de Fersen was approaching. I rose. I held out my hand; he took it and kissed it.

I felt suddenly alive, glad of these moments. All my gloomy thoughts of encroaching age had disappeared.

He had come back.

What glorious days followed. He came constantly to my drawing room, and although we were never alone, we could talk together and we did not need words to convey our feelings for each other.

When he talked to me of America, he glowed with enthusiasm. He had been awarded the Cross of Cincinnatus for bravery, but he did not wear it. It was forbidden by His Majesty Gustave of Sweden, but the latter had been impressed by its bestowal for he had made Axel a Colonel in his army. "Now," I said, "you will stay in France for a while."

"I shall have to have a pretext for doing so."

"And you have none?"

"My heart has a reason; but I cannot declare that to the world. There must be two reasons ..."

I understood. His family was pressing him to return to Sweden and settle down. He should marry ... a fortune. He should consider his future. How could that be furthered in France?

He told me of these matters and we smiled at each other in a kind of enchanted hopelessness. Never from the beginning did we believe we could be lovers in truth. How could we? I was a very different woman from the woman portrayed in the pamphlets. I was fastidious; I was essentially romantic. A sordid bedchamber interlude had no charms for me. I believed in love - love that is service, devotion, unselfishness ... idealized love. It seemed to me that Axel gave me that. In his Swedish Army uniform he looked magnificent - apart from all other men. I saw him like that and that was how he would always be to me. I was not looking for transient sensations, the gratification of a momentary desire. I dreamed that I was a simple n.o.blewoman, that we were married, that we lived our idealistic lives in a little house somewhere like the Hameau where the cows were all clean and the b.u.t.ter was made in Sevres bowls and the sheep were decorated with silver bells and ribbons. I wanted nothing sordid to enter my paradise.

Moreover I had my babies. To me they were perfect. And they were Louis' children. I would not have them different in any way, and my little Madame Royale already had a look of her father.

There was no logic in my dreams; there was no practical reasoning. I wanted romance ... and romance is not built on the realities of life.

Nevertheless I wished to keep Axel in France.

I was delighted when Louis showed me a letter he had received from Gustave of Sweden. It ran: "Monsieur my brother and cousin, the Comte de Fersen having served with approbation in Your Majesty's armies in America and having thereby made himself worthy of your benevolence, I do not believe I am being indiscreet in asking for a proprietary regiment for him. His birth, his fortune, the position he occupies about my person ... led me to believe he can be agreeable to Your Majesty, and as he will remain equally attached to my own, his time will be divided between his duties in France and in Sweden ..."

It did not take me long to persuade Louis that this was an excellent idea.

Axel now had the opportunity to be more often at Versailles without arousing comment. He could come in the uniform of a French soldier.

"My father is not pleased," he told me. "He feels I fritter away my time."

"Alas," I replied. "I fear it too."

"I never frittered more happily."

"There is a concert tonight. I shall look for you."

And so it went on.

Fersen Pere was an energetic man. If his son determined to waste his time in France, he must marry. There was a very eligible young woman who would suit him admirably. She had a fortune; her father was a power in France, but what she needed was a husband with birth and t.i.tle. Germaine Necker, daughter of the Comptroller, was the chosen bride.

When Axel told me this, I was dismayed. If he married, our romance would be shattered. It was true that I was married, and that there could never be a chance of my marrying Axel, but who ever heard of a married troubador! How could he be in constant attendance on me if he had a wife and such a wife as Germaine Necker, a democrat and reformer, a woman of strong ideals learned from her parents.

"It must not be," I said.

Fersen agreed, but he was gloomy. The Neckers had already been informed of the proposition and they thought it an excellent one. Mademoiselle Necker would be mortally offended if he failed to propose marriage for her.

"We must find another suitor for her," I declared. "One whom she will like better."

I was horror-stricken. How could any woman like anyone better than Axel!

Germaine Necker was a very determined woman. She would marry whom she pleased, she announced; and oddly, it seemed to me, she did not propose to marry Axel. For some time she had been in love with the Baron de Stael; she made up her mind to marry him and, being the forceful young woman she was, in a very short time Germaine Necker had become Madame de Stael.

Axel showed me a letter he had written to his sister Sophie, of whom he was very fond and with whom he was always outspoken. She would understand his true feelings, he a.s.sured me.

"I will never a.s.sume the bond of matrimony. It is against my nature ... Unable to give myself to the person to whom I wish to belong and who really loves me,I will give myself to n.o.body."

Romance had been preserved.

Even so he could not stay indefinitely in France. Family affairs called him back to Sweden. But I knew that he was mine forever. He would never marry; he had said so.

A few months later he was back in Paris whither he had come with his master, Gustave. I remember well the day the news was brought. Louis was on a hunting expedition and staying at Rambouillet, and when the news was brought that Gustave had arrived, my husband dressed so hastily to receive him that the King of France greeted his guest wearing one gold buckled shoe with a red heel and one with a black heel and a silver buckle. Not that Gustave, who was clearly indifferent to his own appearance, cared about that. But the important fact was that Axel was back in France.

I betrayed my emotions in a hundred ways. I immediately declared that we must give a fete at the Trianon in honor of the King of Sweden and I was determined that never should there have been such a fete.

Those behind me raised eyebrows; they t.i.ttered and whispered behind their hands. In whose honor was this fete being given?

I had never before liked Gustave because the last time he had come to France - I was Dauphine then - he had given a diamond necklace to Madame du Barry's favorite dog. This I had said was silly and vulgar too, for he had done more honor to the King's mistress than to the future King of France.

But now he was Axel's King and I longed to entertain him because then I should be entertaining Axel too.

We gave a performance in the Trianon theater of Marmontel's Le Dormeur Eveille; and after that we went into the English gardens. Lights had been hidden in trees and bushes; and I had ordered that trenches be dug behind the Temple of Love and these trenches were filled with f.a.ggots, which when lighted made the Temple look as though it were supported by the flames.

Gustave commented that he could believe he was in the Elysian Fields. That was the intention I had meant to convey; that was why I had commanded that everyone be dressed in white, so that they could wander about like inhabitants of paradise.

In this setting Axel and I could be closer than we ever had before. We could touch hands; we could even kiss. In a white garment, and in the dusk of that enchanted night we could believe that we were in another world, a world of our own where duty and reality had no place.

When supper was served, we could no longer be together and I walked from table to table seeing that my guests were served with venison which the King had killed in the chase, sturgeon, pheasants, and all the delicacies known to us. This was how I wished it to be, for in spite of all the splendor - and never had there been such a splendid fete even at this Court - I liked to preserve my illusion of living simply at the Trianon.

There were not many more opportunities for talking to Axel and I knew that when Gustave departed, he would have to go with him. A few days later after our Elysian entertainment Axel and I, with Gustave and other members of our Court and the Swedish entourage, watched two men, Palatre de Rozier and a man named Proust, rise high above our heads in an air-inflated balloon. This had been embellished with the arms of France and Sweden and the name of the balloon was the Marie Antoinette. I could scarcely believe my eyes and everyone else was greatly impressed, expecting imminent disaster, but the balloon traveled from Versailles to Chantilly and everyone was talking about the wonders of science.

But I was thinking of Axel and that soon there must be another of those partings - each one harder to bear than the last.

I wanted to give him a memento, something by which he could remember me. So I gave him a little almanac on which I had embroidered the words: Foi, Amour, Esperance, Trois, unis a jamais.

Then he went back to Sweden with his King.