Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow (38 page)

“Do you realize,
ma chère
,” the prince de Rohan had said to her one afternoon, after a particularly athletic tryst, “Do you realize that my fate as well as your own is entirely in your hands?”

Giggling, for something else entirely was in her hands at the time, she cooed, “How can you seriously believe that, when you
are one of the most powerful men in France?” It had been a tall order for her to pretend a passion for a man nearly fifty, his pale flesh flaccid with overindulgence.

“Your friendship with the queen,” the prince de Rohan said breathlessly, responding to her caresses. “You and I have no secrets from each other … and it is my greatest goal to become the king’s Chief Minister. But for the queen, it might have happened years ago; she is convinced for some reason that I have wronged her. If I could only ingratiate myself with her, the appointment would nearly be a surety.”

He was angling for Jeanne’s offer to intercede, and she did not disappoint him. But like all confidence schemes, her game would take time, months if not longer; and so she continued to bait her hook, informing him at every tryst, banquet, and dinner party that Her Majesty had been so displeased with him that it would take her some time to come around. It was a delicate situation that would require finesse, the comtesse insisted. She counseled patience. In the meantime, Jeanne encouraged the prince to write directly to the queen, explaining his past conduct and pleading his cause before her, offering to deliver the letter herself into Her Majesty’s hands.

Several days later, Jeanne handed him the queen’s reply, which stated:

The prince de Rohan had been so overjoyed that he nearly wept in Jeanne’s arms. “You are indeed my savior—my guardian angel,” he told her, moistening her hands and lips with kisses. That afternoon,
he would have given her the moon on a golden cord if the comtesse desired it.

It was difficult for her not to ask for too much too soon. But she did not wish to remain beholden to him for her income. Jeanne was canny enough to acknowledge that men soon tired of their mistresses and abandoned them for the charms of fairer faces. Not only must she keep her noble paramour in her thrall; it was imperative to develop other ways of picking his pocket.

At tonight’s supper she would feed the cardinal another crumb.

“You are far too handsome to be a footman, Rétaux,” she teased, playfully pinching the only lover who truly satisfied her, her husband’s childhood friend, the tall, blond Rétaux de Villette. “But with one glance at those blue eyes of yours, even a ninny will see that you are far too intelligent for your station. You will have to do something about it.”

“I shall endeavor to look ignorant, madame,” said Rétaux, stooping his shoulders and affecting a vacant expression as he tried to slip a hand beneath her stays.

“Can you keep it up all night?” Jeanne asked him. Acknowledging the double entendre, the conspirators shared a laugh. “Have you finished the letters?”

“The ink is drying on the last of them,” he said, toying with her breast. “But we will need to have more sheets made up—which means
I
will need money; the gold embossing is dear.”

Jeanne kissed Rétaux full on the mouth. “I shall tap the keg again tonight,” she assured him. “Just make sure the correspondence looks authentic.”

The comte and comtesse and their illustrious guest supped on filet of sole and, having plied the cardinal with a postprandial goblet of fine brandy, Jeanne confided to the Grand Almoner that the queen had been willing to entertain the prospect of forgiving
him, but that he would have to prove himself trustworthy. To that end, she showed him a sheaf of letters, all in Her Majesty’s hand, on the queen’s own notepaper rimmed in gold and embossed with the fleur-de-lis of France. “You will see, here, her latest note to me in which she asks me to request on her behalf that you aid a friend of hers who is in deep financial distress.” She handed the letter to the cardinal, and true enough, Marie Antoinette wished him to deliver sixty thousand livres to the comtesse de Lamotte-Valois, who would discreetly distribute it to Her Majesty’s unfortunate friend.

It was signed by the queen herself. Or appeared to be. Neither the cardinal nor Rétaux de Villette had ever seen her signature.

Noticing the prince’s widened eyes, Jeanne took the ruse a step further. A woman who lives by her wits and her wiles learns that people will see what they wish to. “Her Majesty has assured me that once she is informed of your assistance in this most delicate matter, she will acknowledge it. Station yourself in the Oeil de Boeuf at the hour when she passes through the Hall of Mirrors with her entourage on her way to High Mass. The queen has instructed me to tell you that she will be looking for you. If you are there, she will nod to you as a sign of her approbation and approval.”

Her scheme worked like the movements of a Swiss clock, so well, in truth, that several weeks later the comtesse de Lamotte-Valois touched the cardinal for an additional fifty thousand livres on the same pretext. By then she had fully convinced the cleric of her intimacy with the queen, staging more than one opportunity for him to witness her departure from Her Majesty’s apartments, often escorted by a mysterious man—none other than the clever Rétaux de Villette in disguise. The prince de Rohan had no idea that Marie Antoinette was at le Petit Trianon at the time. And if he began to wonder how the comtesse had acquired her new wardrobe, a complement of jewels, a handsome equipage, and a panoply of sumptuous furnishings, she would reply with the sincerest countenance that she owed her recent acquisitions to the generosity of
Sa Très Puissante Majesté
.

To our sorrow, the dauphin was not developing into a strong child. By now he should have been a plump and sturdy-legged toddler, but Louis Joseph was small and frail, and as the years progressed it was clear that his spine was curved. The king and I nurtured constant fears for the boy’s health, but I took a measure of comfort in the knowledge that my sister Marianne, the abbess, suffered from a similar deformity; several years older than I, she still enjoyed good health. And because I was born with one shoulder higher than the other, every time I looked at my beautiful curly-haired dauphin I despaired of having passed him my bad blood.

So on June 7, when I sent Louis an urgent summons to curtail his hunting party and return to Versailles immediately, he feared the worst had befallen our heir. Relief was palpably etched in his broad face when he arrived at the palace, breathless and perspiring, to greet his sovereign brother, King Gustavus III of Sweden, who had arrived with his entourage during his Grand Tour, traveling
incognito as the Count de Haga. Louis had so little time to change into his formal clothes that his flustered valet dressed him in one shoe with a red heel and a gold buckle and the other with a black heel and silver buckle.

I was overjoyed to see Axel again, although our reunion took place in the presence of dozens of courtiers. He had brought me a gift—a magnificent Swedish elkhound with blue eyes and a thick gray and white coat. The dog, whom I named Odin, after the king of the Norse gods, was not a surprise; the count and I had corresponded about it during his travels. But Gustavus had been so demanding and so jealous of Axel’s time that he had to feign illness just so he would have the time to write me a letter.

“I encountered some difficulty with the breeder,” Axel confided when we were able to steal a private moment. “I informed him that the dog was for a woman named Joséphine, but when it took such a long time to acquire him, I was compelled to state that in truth, he was a gift for the Queen of France.” I knew, however, that Joséphine was Axel’s secret name for me, and that every time he wrote, he would chronicle a letter to “Joséphine” in his journal.

Odin, a large hunting hound—quite the contrast to my bevy of lap dogs—would now assume pride of place in my affections, as my precious pug Mops, the companion of my girlhood, having grown blind and incontinent, had gone to his final reward a few years earlier.

On the twenty-first of June we fêted our foreign guests with a supper party at le Petit Trianon. First I treated them to a command performance of Piccini’s opera
Le Dormeur Éveillé
in my intimate little theater, after which the meal was served, course by course, in the park’s romantic pavilions, affording our guests the opportunity to fully admire the grounds. Everyone had been asked to wear only white, creating a spectral fantasy as we roamed
the estate, each of us resembling a fallen star. My gardens had been transformed into a wonderland; fairy lights were suspended from the trees; torches and pots of colored fire illuminated the grottoes and the lake. Garlanded wherries ferried our invitees across the shimmering water to the colonnaded Temple d’Amour, where they could indulge themselves in strawberries and champagne.

“We are in France only until the twentieth of July,” Axel told me. He was wearing the scent I had commissioned for him. “But I promise to see you as often as I may.” His eyes glittered in the torchlight. “Even to look at you; to hear your melodic voice as you accompany yourself on the clavichord or harp; to know that you are singing Dido for me”—he touched his hand to his breast—“brings me unalloyed joy.” He nodded his head in the direction of his sovereign. “But Gustavus is overfond of diversions, and, like a doting nursemaid, it is my duty to see that he stays out of trouble.”

I touched my fan to my lips. “Devoted and always so correct; no one could wish for a more stalwart or trustworthy companion than you, Count von Fersen. I can’t say I do not envy the King of Sweden.”

He took my hand and bowed, touching his mouth to my fingers. Raising his eyes to meet mine, he murmured, “I will come to you as often as I can.”

Throughout the month of July, except for my evening walks on the parterres in the sultry summer air, where I was always accompanied by my ladies, I contrived to be found alone as much as possible. In Axel’s presence I was dancing on the edge of a precipice, with the music growing faster the closer my body was to his. And yet I could not step back, although every day I asked myself why it was so impossible. Was it pure desire that drew me to Count von Fersen? Was Louis’s clumsiness in the boudoir and his indifference to physical passion to blame? Did
Axel’s
noble mien and loyal character transform
me
into a disloyal wife?

J
ULY

Rétaux de Villette spent the first days of July scouring the shadowed promenades of the Palais Royal for a certain trollop who, according to Jeanne, bore a striking resemblance to the queen. Mademoiselle Nicole Leguay, in her early twenties, could not believe her good fortune when she was told she would be dining in the home of a real comtesse.

Gawking at the velvet drapery and thick carpets, the bronze and onyx sculptures resting on tabletops of exquisitely veined marble in the town home on the rue Neuve Saint-Gilles, the prostitute had never seen such opulence. She was greeted by the comtesse de Lamotte-Valois herself, dripping with rubies that complemented her gown of rose moiré.

After plying her visitor with brandy, Jeanne brusquely informed her, “I am an intimate of the queen and I have chosen you to render a great service to the kingdom.”

“Moi?”
Mademoiselle Leguay’s hand flew to her breast.

“Toi.”
The comtesse smiled benevolently. “But first I think you should have an aristocratic title.” She paused for a moment, thinking. “From now on, you will be a baronne. Baronne Nicole d’Oliva.” The newly minted Mademoiselle d’Oliva’s services would be required the following night. “What will be expected of me?” she anxiously asked her new benefactress. “Will this grand seigneur expect me to embrace him? And if so, am I to permit him to do so?”