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Authors: Juliet Grey

Tags: #Fiction, #Historical, #Romance, #General, #Biographical

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BOOK: Confessions of Marie Antoinette
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They demand that I listen to them, demand—no,
command—
that I send away all the courtiers who “ruin kings.” If they refer obliquely to the propaganda disseminated about the duchesse de Polignac and her family, they are three months too late.
Mon cher coeur
Gabrielle was banished after the Bastille was stormed in July.
“Love the inhabitants of your good towns instead of the corrupt courtiers,” cries one of the “honest” market women.

“I loved them at Versailles,” I remind them courteously. Then, fearing this audience will grow more hostile, I hasten to assure them that “I shall love them just the same here in Paris.”

This reply does not satisfy a red-faced
poissarde
whose teeth are as brown as her apron. “Ah,
oui
, but on the fourteenth of July you wanted to besiege the city and have it bombarded!”

Who has been stuffing these women’s heads with lies? I must remain calm and dignified. I imagine how my mother might have handled this confrontation: with reason and a firm hand. “Someone told you this and you believed it, but it was not so. Someone deliberately intended to provoke you.
Et regardez!
Look at all the bloodshed and misery that followed. That is what leads to the misfortune of both the people and of the best of kings.”

“Sind sie nicht ein Spion für Ihre Kaiserliche Majestät?”
The woman speaks to me in my native language, accusing me of being a spy for my brother the Emperor of Austria, daring me to acknowledge my heritage by replying in the same fashion. But I do not rise to take the bait.

“Pardon, madame,”
I say, responding in French. “I left Austria when I was all of fourteen years old. That was nearly twenty years ago, and I have become so French that I have forgotten the language of my ancestors.”

To my immense relief my reply is greeted with cheers and applause and shouts of
“Vive la reine,”
which I acknowledge with a deep curtsy and an expression of profound humility.

Now the market women decide to press their advantage. One of them compliments my bonnet, which is embellished with costly trimmings, and they all but demand them as souvenirs. It is impossible for me to refuse and so I pick it apart and distribute the ribbons and silk flowers, tossing them down from the balcony into the
grasping hands below. The
poissardes
and other
vendeuses
are so delighted with their spoils that they remain in the gardens cheering
“Long Live Queen Marie Antoinette!”

I would be amused, were I not so angry that they wish to emulate the Queen of France by bedecking themselves in her accoutrements, while in the same breath denigrating me for bankrupting the nation by purchasing such fripperies. I share this view later in the day when, as promised, I see the only face beside my children’s that can coax a smile from my lips.

Time has been kinder to him than to me, although we are the same age. I will celebrate my thirty-fourth birthday in three weeks; Axel’s natal day was in early September. Three years of war and an illness in the American colonies prematurely etched fine lines about his eyes and noble brow in the early 1780s, but since then he has not known the depth of sorrows that I have. When you have lost a child, the world ceases to spin. When you have lost two, you must remind yourself that the reason you rise every morning is for the love of the pair who remain alive.

Beneath the fine dusting of powder, Axel’s hair remains a warm shade of brown, whereas mine, I noticed last night, has an uncommon number of silver threads among the apricot. “How can I make your life more bearable?” the count asks me. His eyes, today the blue-gray-green of the sea, convey volumes that can never be committed to paper.

I chuckle, wondering if such a thing is possible. Sighing heavily, I reply, “After the Parisians stormed the Bastille and the National Assembly demanded the king attend
them
in what I can only characterize as a command performance, the representatives of this new legislature hailed Louis as the ‘liberator of his people.’ ” I swipe my hand over my brow. My temples are throbbing. I look Axel directly in the eye and lower my voice to a whisper. “But who will liberate
us
?”

He reaches for my hands to reassure me, but stops when I clear my throat to warn him that we are being observed. “I will,” he says quietly and resolutely. “The king of Sweden is your greatest ally. Gustavus has commissioned me to be his eyes and ears in Paris and at the French court.” He leans forward, so close that I can feel his breath upon my face. It smells of cinnamon and clove. “Tell me,
ma chère
, have you ever written in cipher?”

The following morning, the door to my bedchamber flies open unexpectedly. Madame Campan, who sleeps at the foot of my bed, and I clutch our nightgowns to our chests and expect the worst, but the breathless intruder is Madame Élisabeth. “There was just now a woman in my room,” she pants. “A
poissarde
! I heard a stirring and I awoke to find her rummaging through my jewelry box. She was trying on an emerald bracelet.”

“How did she get in?” asks Campan.

“They climb right over the iron railings. The gall!” Madame Elisabeth’s face is flushed with fear. “I don’t know if she only wanted to pilfer something or if she intended me some harm.”

“We can’t have market women—or any trespasser—entering our rooms at will,” I insist. “Where are the guards?” They are ubiquitous, except when we are in peril.

Madame Élisabeth shrugs helplessly. She is so gentle, so pious, so self-sacrificing; no one is less deserving of any sort of injury. “They seem to believe, or perhaps they have been told, that their business is to prevent us from escaping, not to protect us from invaders.”

During the next few days it becomes apparent that the royal family remains at the mercy of the people. From morn to nearly midnight they bring petitions and demand to be heard and we must present the appearance of the benevolent parents of France, ever willing to countenance the slightest whim of our children, no
matter how rebellious. I would not do the same with my
chou d’amour
and Mousseline, no matter how much I adore them. Although I am a fond and doting mother, if my son or daughter misbehaved there would be consequences.

Determined to demonstrate to the market women of Paris who had once vowed to make cockades out of my entrails that I acknowledge their demands for reform, I request the royal dressmaker Madame Éloffe to construct 150 ribbon cockades in the revolutionaries’
tricolore
stripe of red, white, and blue. At one livre apiece they are larger and far more costly and elaborate than the
poissardes
’ makeshift rosettes. It is such a simple thing, and it is the province of kings to show forgiveness. The
cocardes
are distributed and the women are delighted. But I know too well that their appreciation is as brief as the lifespan of a butterfly. I have not really purchased their loyalty. I have only bought 150 livres’ worth of time.

FIVE

Red Heels and Red Bonnets

N
OVEMBER
1789

We are settling in and making the best of it. Madame Élisabeth has moved to an apartment on the first story of the palace, while I have vacated the first-floor suite adjacent to the king’s. The children of France will occupy those rooms now so they can be close to their father. My new apartment is on the ground floor. Consisting of a boudoir, a dressing room, and a salon, it can hardly be called grand. Its very modesty and coziness somehow make me feel more secure. Louis’s rooms lie directly above mine, although his library is adjacent to my suite. In the mornings, he comes downstairs with the children by a narrow private staircase that connects our apartments and we breakfast as a family. Only one attendant serves us our chocolate and toast, but we have not complained. Fewer servants mean fewer spies.

I have commissioned a number of new gowns from Madame
Éloffe that pay visual homage to the symbols of the Revolution. The
tricolore
cockade rather than the black rosette of the aristocracy is affixed upon my hats and pinned to my sashes. White, for “purity,” is once again the fashion and I will wear a good deal of blue as well, ordering a few tailored redingotes to wear over a striped underskirt. Do the rebels recall how only two years ago my riding coats imported from England were mocked and derided as “mannish,” and I was depicted as a harpy for wearing them? Yet now the same silhouette and even the identical hue are considered de rigueur for the modish revolutionary. It passes all bounds of reason that the garments now viewed as the height of “patriotism” to the new order were anathema when popularized by the queen of France.

Now that the tumult seems to have subsided, my children’s education must recommence. Much has happened since their former
gouvernante
, the duchesse de Polignac, departed so hastily in July. The marquise de Tourzel is utterly devoted to Madame Royale and the dauphin. But there is much I would like to impart to Louise about my son’s character in order to help him become a fine young prince.

After my
lever
one morning I speak to her with as much privacy as we are permitted while Madame Élisabeth makes sure the children do not get up to any mischief. I do not wish them to say anything in the presence of our guards, for I have cautioned them repeatedly that these men are not our friends. As his governess has surely seen by now, the four-year-old dauphin suffers no deficit of confidence. Rather, one of his deficiencies is the inability to apologize or to ask for forgiveness when he knows he has behaved badly. “He will only say ‘I’m sorry’ with tears of vexation in his eyes,” I admit to Madame de Tourzel. “Like any little boy, Louis Charles can be thoughtless, impatient, and impetuous. His chief fault, madame, and above all, the one it is essential to correct, is his tendency
toward indiscretion. Regrettably, he is all too ready to repeat whatever he has heard, be it a bawdy joke, a cruel taunt, or an outright lie. And often enough, without any intention to tell a falsehood, my son will embroider the truth. He has an active imagination.” The marquise de Tourzel listens intently, nodding or smiling on occasion upon the recollection of certain events that match my description of the boy’s less-than-perfect behavior.

“He is still too young to comprehend the exalted position he occupies,” I add. “And yet his sister understands it all too well. Madame Royale knows her worth to the realm as a daughter of France is so little compared to that of the dauphin. I take great pains to show that Marie Thérèse is not loved the less for it, but I am never certain she believes me. Her brother adores her, and whenever anything brings him pleasure, his first instinct is to ask that Madame Royale be permitted the same indulgence.” I reach for the governess’s hand. “I should like this system of encouraging his instinctive benevolence to continue. And at all costs, I hope for as long as possible to shield them from whatever deprivations we adults may suffer here.”

The king and I fight to retain as much of the status quo as we can. The princesse de Lamballe has returned to court, too distressed by our circumstances to consider remaining safely at the Château d’Eu with her father-in-law, the duc de Penthièvre. Upon her arrival at the Tuileries in October she resumed her post as superintendent of my household without missing a breath.

“How could I fail to be by your side,
Majesté
?” she had asked, her eyes brimming, as always, with sympathetic tears.

“It is more of a risk than you know,” I’d told her. “Did you hear what happened to our dear baron de Besenval?” The princesse de Lamballe shook her head. “Imprisoned in the Châtelet—awaiting a trial that I fully expect to be another sham.” I trembled with anger even as I spoke the words.

The princesse’s cheeks grew pink with shock. “What did he do?”

“It’s what the revolutionaries think he did
not
do. In July, he was in charge of commanding the Parisian garrison. He resisted those monsters who rioted at the Bastille, rather than allow them to continue their insurrection.”

BOOK: Confessions of Marie Antoinette
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