The Queen`s Confession (37 page)

“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 … lead 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 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.” T 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 title. 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, that there could never be a chance of my marrying Axel, but who ever heard of a married troubadour! How could he be in constant attendance on me if he had a

wife, and such a wife as Germaine Necker, a democrat 275 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 to 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 any one better than Axell 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 assured me.

I will never assume 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 nobody. ” 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 for ever. 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. 276 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 honour of the King of Sweden, and I was determined that never should there have been such a fete.

Those about me raised eyebrows; they tittered and whispered behind their hands. In whose honour was this fete being given?

I had never before liked Gustave, because the last time he had come to Prance I was Dauphine then he had given a diamond necklace to Madame du Barry’s favourite dog. This I had said was silly and vulgar, too, for he had done more honour 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 theatre of Mar-mont el 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 faggots 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 Etysian 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 in habitants 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 white garments, 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 splendour and never had there been such a splendid fete 277

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 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 travelled from Versailles to Chanrilly 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:

“Poi, Amour, Esperance, Trois, unis a jamais.”

Then he went back to Sweden with his King.

Madame Vigee Le Brun was painting my portrait. “She was a charming dainty creature and I was attracted to her. I liked to chat with her while she worked. I watched the picture grow on her canvas, and one day I said: ” If I were not a Queen, one would say that I looked insolent, do you not think so? “

She turned the remark aside as one not expecting an answer. She might have replied that even though I was a Queen there were many who thought I looked insolent and haughty. The petulant lower lip which had been noticed when my appearance was being so freely discussed by the French envoys at my mother’s Court had become more pronounced. It was an inheritance from my Hapsburg ancestors.

I told Madame Le Brim this and she smilingly replied that she despaired of ever reproducing my complexion.

“It is so fresh, so flawless, that I have no colours to match it.”

Flattery for a Queen! But I certainly did possess this brilliant complexion and it would be false modesty to deny it.

My clothes were discussed at this time very freely throughout Paris as well as Versailles. It was discovered that I had paid 6,000 livres for one dress. Madame Benin was expensive, I knew, but then she was an artist, the finest couturiere in Paris. It was not that she was my sole dressmaker; she was the designer of my gowns and hats; but I had my sewing-women; there were special work-people for riding habits and dressing-gowns; there were makers of hoops and collarettes, flounces and petticoats.

My extravagances were a popular theme so I decided that Madame Vigee Le Brim should paint me in a gaulle, which was a blouse worn by the Creoles. This was as simple as a chemise and made of inexpensive lawn.

The picture was charming and was exhibited. The people flocked to see it, and it soon became apparent that nothing I could do was right.

The Queen was playing at being a chambermaid, was one comment.

“What she wishes to do is to ruin trade for the silk merchants and weavers of Lyons so that she can help the drapers of Flanders. Are they not her brother’s subjects?”

That was bad enough. But the most damaging and most significant comment was scribbled under the picture as it hung in the Salon:

“France, with the face of Austria, reduced to covering herself with a rag.”

Provided I don’t speak in. my writings of authority, of religion, of politics, of morality, of the officials of influential bodies, of other spectacles, of anyone who has any claim to anything, I can print anything freely, under the inspection of two or three censors.

Calumny! You don’t know what you are disdaining when you disdain that.

I have seen people of the utmost probity laid low by it. Believe me, there is no false report however crude, no abomination, no ridiculous falsehood, which the idlers in a great city cannot, if they take the trouble, make universally believed—and here we have little-tattlers who are past-masters of the art.

BEAUMARCHAIS

The Cardinal has made we of my name like a vile and clumsy forger. It is probable that he did so under pressure and an urgent need for money and believed he would be able to pay the jeweller without anything being discovered.

MARIE ANTOINETTE TO THE EMPEROR JOSEPH

The Diamond Necklace

In May of the year 1785 a great joy came to me when I gave birth to my second son. My confinement was attended with the same ceremony as that which there had been at the birth of my little Dauphin. My husband declared that never again should I be submitted to the danger I had faced at the time of my daughter’s birth.

Louis himself came to my bedside and emotionally declared: We have another little boy! ” And there was my dear Gabrielle holding the child in her arms coming to my bed.

I insisted on holding him. A little boy . a perfect little 280 boy! I wept; the King wept; in fact everyone was weeping, with joy.

My husband commanded that messages be sent to Paris with the news. My little son was baptised in Notre Dame by Cardinal de Rohan, as his brother had been, and he was christened Louis-Charles. Te Deums were sung; the tocsins were sounding; the salute of guns was fired. There was rejoicing in Versailles for four days and nights. I was so happy.

My dreams were coming true. I had two sons and a daughter. I would often bend over the little newcomer as he lay in his beautiful cradle.

You will be happy, my darling,” I told him. Oh, if I could have foreseen the misery into which I had brought this unfortunate child I How much better if he had never been born I

There was one man whose name was on every lip. It was the author Beaumarchais, who had written a play called Le Manage de Figaro in which there was tremendous interest throughout the Court and I believe the country. The author had had difficulty in getting the play performed because the Lieutenant of the Police, the magistrates, the Keeper of the Seals and strangely enough the King did not think it would be good for the country to see it.

I had thought what fun it would be to put it on at my Trianon theatre and Artois agreed with me, seeing himself in the part of the Barber.

He flitted about my apartments, doing the rogue of a Barber to the life. It was small wonder that people had suggested that Artois and I were closer friends than propriety permitted. We were completely in tune on matters such as this. He could not see why we should not do the play any more than I could.

I see it now, of course; I see how that dialogue is full of innuendo, I can see that Figaro is meant to represent the People; and that the Comte Ahnaviva is the old regime, the tottering structure of aristocracy. Almost every line of the dialogue is charged with

meaning. This was not a play about a Comte who commits adultery as naturally as eating and 281 breathing; it was not an account of the shrewdness of a wily barber.

It was a picture of France—the uselessness of the aristocracy and the growing awareness of the shrewd people of the state of their country;

it was meant to set them wondering as to how it could be remedied. I think of little snatches of dialogue.

I was born to be a courtier. “

I understand it is a difficult profession. “

“Receive, take, ask. There’s the secret of it in three words.”

With character and intelligence you may one day rise in your office.

”

Intelligence to help advancement? Your lordship is laughing at mine. Be commonplace and cringing and one can get anywhere. “

“Are you a prince to be flattered? Hear die truth, you wretch, since you have not the money to recompense a liar.”

Nobility, wealth, rank, office—that makes you very proud! What have you done for these blessings? You have taken the trouble to be born, and nothing else. “

I was too immersed in my own affairs to be fully aware of the crumbling society in which I was living. I saw nothing explosive in these remarks. To me they were merely excessively amusing. But my husband saw the dangers immediately.

“This man turns everything to ridicule—everything which should be respected in a government.”

“Then won’t it be played?” I asked, showing my disappointment.

“No, it will not,” replied my husband, quite sharply for him.

“You may be sure of that.”

I often think of him now, poor Louis. He saw so much that I could not understand. He was clever; he could have been a good king. He had the best will in the world; he was the kindest, the most amiable of men;