Confessions of Marie Antoinette (55 page)

A blue butterfly.

And on its fragile wings are borne the joyful memories of numberless carefree days: Louis’s image floats before me—the husband I came to appreciate far too late, a man I fell in love with after twenty-two years of matrimony had come and gone, a benevolent autocrat born to a role he never wished for and overtaken by circumstances far greater than anything he could have imagined. I will always remember him as he was on the day we met—the shy,
stocky, myopic boy whose diffidence and ungainliness eclipsed the kindness and intelligence that for so many years I was too blind, or heedless, to see. The first thing I will do when I meet him in Heaven will be to apologize for not having appreciated him for so long. I see him now as he was that day in the forest at Compiègne, too timid to speak to me, and then before the altar in the chapel at Versailles, perspiring profusely in his suit of blinding white satin, then in the Cathedral at Rheims baring his breast to receive the anointment of sacred oil from a vial as old as the French monarchy itself. I can picture him holding Mousseline right after she was born as though she were the most precious thing in the world to him and quoting his favorite poet to let me know how delighted he was that I bore him a daughter, even though a son would have ensured the succession of the realm.

The princesse de Lamballe merits my apologies as well. She died because an angry mob detested
me
. It was me they wished to punish by dismembering her. Her face swims before me, softening into a rare smile during a sleigh ride at Versailles. And then the gruesome image of her severed head dances before me, and I blink away the image, eager to quickly replace it with a happier memory.

I see my favorite brother Joseph, tall and elegant, and always teasing me. He emits a silent chuckle, no doubt mocking one of my outrageous coiffures, or the two-inch circles of rouge that were de rigueur for the highest-ranking ladies at the Bourbon court.

Mops, my beloved pug, bounds into view, playing with a length of blue satin ribbon. There must be dogs in Heaven! And then my little daughter Sophie appears. She gazes at me with unconditional love. Her face dissolves like a wisp of smoke as my older son’s visage floats before my eyes—Louis Joseph with his fine brown curls and pure blue eyes, so frail, so trusting, too good for this world. With remarkable clarity I recall watching him roll his first hoop and play
at bilbo catch, so delighted the first time he managed to land the ball inside the cup, our visits to the royal
ménagerie
, and our picnics of strawberries and cream on the verdant
tapis
at Trianon.

These memories elicit reminiscences of stolen moments of passion with Axel as well as innocent games of croquet and blind-man’s buff with my beloved Trianon
cercle
.

At this, Maman’s disapproving expression shimmers into view and I see her kissing me good-bye, charging me to make the French think she had sent them an angel.
I will be one soon enough, Maman. But they are sending me back to you
.

I see Papa, his cheeks pink from the frosty winter air, hoisting me—bundled to the ears in white velvet and marten—onto his shoulders and tossing me gently over them into a snowdrift as I laugh until I am overcome with hiccoughs. How I recall our last embrace! As he was about to depart for my brother Leopold’s wedding, overcome by a premonition of his own demise, he sent a messenger back to the Hofburg to fetch me so that he could embrace me one last time.

So many farewells at the Hofburg! My beloved sister Johanna, about to become a bride and the Queen of Naples, taken instead into death’s icy embrace. I see her as she was on her last day of life, in a tightly boned gown of violet brocade, her gaze wise, gentle, and obedient, a follower, unlike my sister Charlotte who became Queen of the Two Sicilies in her stead. As girls, wherever one of us led the other would cheerfully go, but Charlotte cannot do that today.

I recall one sunlit afternoon when I had persuaded our governess the Countess von Brandeiss to hold our lessons out of doors, high above the Hapsburgs’ summer palace of Schönbrunn. I had become distracted by the flight of a magnificent butterfly with wings of iridescent blue, and leapt up from the grass in my stocking feet to give chase.

The drummers’ rhythmic tattoo crescendoes. The
bourreau
pulls the string and the fatal razor descends with a
whish
through its channels.

My ears fill with sound, at first like rushing water, and then as hollow as silence.

Yet I can still see the butterfly. I am laughing but no sound escapes my lips as I chase it into the clear blue sky.

Pour mon mari
, Scott, for making everything possible.
Bisous!

Acknowledgments

I owe bouquets of fleurs-de-lis to my brilliant editor Kate Miciak for her belief in me and her enthusiasm for my work, and to the phenomenal Caitlin Alexander, who began Marie Antoinette’s journey with me and shared my vision from the start; to the rest of my team at Ballantine, past and present: Randall Klein, Crystal Velasquez, Gina Wachtel, Ashley Gratz-Collier, and Lindsey Kennedy; to my agent extraordinaire Irene Goodman for whom I never have enough superlatives: her devotion to my career in macrocosm and to the Marie Antoinette trilogy in microcosm has never flagged; to Anne-marie von Eynern for help with German phrasing; to the historical fiction blogging community for being so supportive of the genre in general and my MA novels in particular; to my old pal Buzzy Porter; to Lucy and Andi for checking my French;
et finalement, à mon mari
Scott, for loving me so much and making my life a better place in which to create.

Bibliography

Although it is not customary to provide a bibliography for a work of fiction, my research for the Marie Antoinette trilogy has been so extensive that I wished to share my sources with my readers. I am indebted to the following fine scholars and historians.

Abbott, John S. C.
History of Maria Antoinette
. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1849.

Administration of Schönbrunn Palace.
Schönbrunn
. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Staatsdruckerei, 1971.

Asquith, Annunziata.
Marie Antoinette
. New York: Taplinger Publishing Company, 1976.

Bernier, Olivier.
Secrets of Marie Antoinette: A Collection of Letters
. New York: Fromm International Publishing Corporation, 1986.

Boyer, Marie-France, and François Halard.
The Private Realm of Marie Antoinette
. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1996.

Cadbury, Deborah.
The Lost King of France: How DNA Solved the Mystery of the Murdered Son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002.

Castelot, André (trans. Denise Folliot).
Queen of France: A Biography of Marie Antoinette
. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957.

Cronin, Vincent.
Louis & Antoinette
. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1974.

De Feydeau, Elisabeth.
A Scented Palace: The Secret History of Marie Antoinette’s Perfumer
. London & New York: I. B. Tauris, 2006.

Erickson, Carolly.
To the Scaffold: The Life of Marie Antoinette
. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1991.

Fraser, Antonia.
Marie Antoinette: The Journey
. New York: Anchor Books, 2002.

Haslip, Joan.
Marie Antoinette
. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987.

Hearsey, John.
Marie Antoinette
. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1973.

Hibbert, Christopher and the Editors of the Newsweek Book Division.
Versailles
. New York: Newsweek Book Division, 1972.

Lady Younghusband.
Marie Antoinette: Her Youth
. London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1912.

LeNotre, G. (pseudonym). (trans. Mrs. Rodolph Stawell). First-person narrative of Louis François Turgy, included in
The Last Days of Marie Antoinette
, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1907.

Lever, Evelyne. (trans. Catherine Temerson).
Marie Antoinette: The Last Queen of France
. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000.

Loomis, Stanley.
The Fatal Friendship: Marie Antoinette, Count Fersen, and the Flight to Varennes
. New York: Avon Books, 1972.

Mossiker, Frances.
The Queen’s Necklace: Marie Antoinette and the Scandal that Shocked and Mystified France
. London: Orion Books, Ltd., 2004. Originally published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz, Ltd. in 1961.

Pick, Robert.
Empress Maria Theresa
. New York: Harper & Row, 1966.

Saint Amand, Imbert.
Marie Antoinette at the Tuileries, 1789–1791
. Biblio-Life, LLC: public domain, originally published before 1923.

Thomas, Chantal. (trans. Julie Rose).
The Wicked Queen: The Origins of the Myth of Marie Antoinette
. New York: Zone Books, 2001.

Weber, Caroline.
What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution
. New York: Picador, 2006.

Webster, Nesta H.
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette During the Revolution
. New York: Gordon Press, 1976.

Zweig, Stefan. (trans. Cedar and Eden Paul).
Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman
. New York: Grove Press, 2002. Originally published in the United States by Viking Press in 1933.

B
Y
J
ULIET
G
REY

Becoming Marie Antoinette
Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow
Confessions of Marie Antoinette

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

J
ULIET
G
REY
has extensively researched European royal history and is a particular devotee of Marie Antoinette. She is also a classically trained professional actress with numerous portrayals of virgins, vixens, and villainesses to her credit. She and her husband divide their time between New York City and Washington, D.C.

www.becomingmarie.com

About Marie Antoinette

Although Marie Antoinette’s trial was in one respect the prosecution of a decade of sexual debauchery depicted in the countless
libelles
, despite having wasted hours of time during the trial on such fictitious allegations as a Sapphic relationship with the comtesse Jeanne de Lamotte-Valois and an incestuous one with her son, none of the more salacious charges against her were presented to the jury in the prosecutor’s summation. The one charge that stuck was that of treason and conspiracy, and in fact, the Revolutionary Tribunal was right.

Marie Antoinette
did
correspond with foreign powers—and frequently—as well as those who communicated on her behalf, in an effort to enlist their aid to liberate the royal family from the clutches of the Revolution and to topple the fledgling French Republic. The only problem with the prosecution’s case is that they lacked a shred of proof to back up this allegation. The documentary evidence of Marie Antoinette’s desperate efforts to free her family and reverse the revolutionary tide only came to light much later. Lacking the physical evidence with which to convict her,
by law
the jury should not have found her guilty. But of course this
verdict was a foregone conclusion long before the trial began. Even before there was a decision to hold a formal trial at all, men like Hébert were literally calling for her head and would not be denied.

After her death, Marie Antoinette’s head and body were taken to the Cimitière de Madeleine for burial, but the gravediggers were so insensitive and disrespectful that, according to historian Antonia Fraser, they tossed her head between the legs of her corpse while they took their lunch break, affording a young wax worker, Marie Grosholtz (who in 1796 married a man named Tussaud), the opportunity to make a death mask of the doomed queen. However, Fraser is the only biographer I have read who makes this claim.

It was too costly to individually bury the numerous victims of the Reign of Terror, which ravaged France from September 1793 to July 1794, so the nation allowed the bodies to accumulate. Imagine the unhealthful conditions as a result of this decree. Not until sixty corpses were amassed could a collective burial take place. The corpses and coffins of all victims of the Revolution were smothered in quicklime to advance decomposition. After her death, Marie Antoinette’s clothes were distributed to the female inmates of the infamous Salpêtrière prison. Rosalie Lamorlière gathered her few remaining possessions, including the little hand mirror with the red lacquered back, placing them into the cardboard box she had given the queen during her incarceration in the Conciergerie. Marie Antoinette’s letter to Élisabeth never reached the princess. It made its way into the hands of the Revolutionary Tribunal and was eventually found under Robespierre’s mattress. It remained in the Republic’s archives for twenty-one years.