To the scaffold (24 page)

The departure was a false alarm. The expedition Fersen intended to join was jx)stponed, allowing him to return to Versailles once again. He was appointed colonel in the regiment of the Royal Deux Fonts, and this, plus the Queen's obvious partiality to him.

made all the other young men at court jealous of Fersen. Finally in the spring of 1780 he embarked for America, as aide-de-camp to General Rochambeau, who commanded the expeditionary corps of the French army in aid of the American colonists.

The rigors of the American campaign toughened Fersen, while his knowledge of English made him invaluable to the French soldiery. He was delegated to negotiate with General Washington (whom he found "very cold" despite his "gende and honest face," and his "air of a hero"), and at the end of the war Washington made him a member of the Order of Cincinnatus.

In June of 1783 Fersen returned to France, older, thinner, and covered with glory. The French and the Swedes showered him with military honors and promotions, he was idolized and admired. He renewed his visits to Versailles, and once more became a member of Antoinette's inner circle. And something more. Over the course of that summer an intimacy began between them that, then or later, almost certainly became physical.*

The idyll lasted only a few months, but they were crucial. Fersen, who had been in the market for a wife and had had in mind two candidates to fill the position, suddenly decided not to marry after all. "I have made up my mind," he wrote to his sister Sophie. "I cannot belong to the one person to whom I should wish to belong, the one who really loves me, and so I wish to belong to no one."2

He could not belong to Antoinette, but he could secure a post for himself that would ensure that he would be at Versailles from time to time on a regular basis. He obtained command of the Royal Swedish regiment in the French army. From now on he could expect an itinerant life, combined with periods of time spent at the Swedish court and at Versailles. The Swedish King Gus-tavus took him along on his travels, but wherever he was, Fersen wrote to Antoinette.

Theirs was certainly not a conventional romance. Their times together were always brief, they had to be exceedingly discreet. Fersen had other liaisons while he was apart from "the one who really loved him," as most men and many women of his class did, yet they were lustful adventures, not love. He never married. Antoinette remained special to him. To her, his love was a revelation and a source of joy even in his absence. Present or absent, he remained in the background of her life, never out of her thoughts for long.

Th^r^se was six years old and the dauphin three when Antoinette gave birth to her third child and second son, Louis-Charles, Due de Normandie, in March of 1785. The pregnancy had not been an easy one, but the labor was swift and the birth without complications. Another son was very welcome, he assured the continuity of the dynasty should some accident remove his older brother. In Paris the customary formalities were observed to celebrate the birth, the bonfires and illuminations, the public feasts and fountains running with wine. But when the Queen came to the capital six weeks later, she was very coldly received. Parisians, who in recent years had been plagued by shortages of fuel and the rising cost of bread, and who were currently suffering because of a prolonged drought, were in no mood to cheer the "Austrian bitch" in her elaborate gilded carriage. The cannon boomed from the Invalides, the guardsmen stood smartly at attention, but the people did not cluster to acclaim the Queen.

More and more they were blaming her for the food shortages, the fiscal crisis, the renewed aggression of Austria which threatened to embroil France in war. Emperor Joseph was proving to be ambitious and bellicose, and Antoinette was widely believed to be his tool at Versailles. And the stories of her extravagance were causing more and more resentment. While the current Controller-General, Calonne, was struggling merely to pay the interest on the huge outstanding loans made to the government, millions were being spent on the personal household expenses of the Queen, and on her sycophantic favorites. Every bookshop in the Palais Royal sold pamphlets recounting in salacious detail how the Queen squandered money on her lovers, male and female, how she craved more and more luxury, how her wardrobes bulged with sapphire-studded gowns and her closets held chests full of priceless diamonds.

Everyone had heard of her private retreat at Trianon, and of the little hamlet she was having her architect construct there. It seemed a perverse extravagance, for the Queen to create a village for her own amusement while in many parts of France real peasants in real villages were in dire want. In her make-believe village stood eight small thatch-roofed cottages, their plaster walls cleverly painted with cracks to make them look weathered, their gardens full of vegetables and fruit trees. Nearby were bams, a poultry yard, and a mill. A farmer named Valy was brought in to live in the farmhouse and look after the livestock. Cows were pas-

tured in a small field, and milked into porcelain tubs in an exquisite little dairy. The Queen had her own cows, named Brunette and Blanchette, and white goats and white lambs, rabbits and cooing pigeons and clucking hens. There was a note of pathos at the miniature hamlet, amid the abundant charm; it represented an almost childlike vision of a simpler, happier world. But the Queen's critics saw nothing of this. To them the village was one more in a long list of frivolous purchases. They called it "Little Vienna," and made fun of Antoinette indulging in her rustic pleasures.

They were infuriated to learn, shortly before the birth of the Due de Normandie, that yet another palace had been acquired for the Queen: St.-Cloud, a very large and commodious mansion set in a garden of cascades and fountains. St.-Cloud was situated on rising ground across the river from the Bois de Boulogne. It had belonged to the Due d*Orl6ans, who sold it to the King, who made it over to Antoinette as her own property, to use as she saw fit. The money to buy St.-Cloud came in part from the sale of other royal lands, but the people, who had no way of knowing this, assumed that more millions of livres had been added to the deficit in order to gratify the Queen. They began calling her Madame Deficit, and denounced her more vehemently than ever. In the Paris Parlement, Antoinette's detractors shouted that it was "impolitic and immoral" for a valuable royal palace to belong to a foreigner, and a foreigner noted for making expensive improvements to her dwellings. (Antoinette did order alterations to the facades of St.-Cloud and remodeled the private apartments, and the alterations were not complete until 1788.)

In truth Antoinette wanted St.-Cloud for her children, in particular for the dauphin whom she felt was too confined at La Muette. The nursery was expanding. The new baby made three royal children and she intended to have more. Th6r^se she liked to keep near her at Versailles—Mercy complained that it was awkward to accomplish necessary business in Antoinette's presence because her daughter was always underfoot, distracting the mother and disrupting conversation—but the boys needed their own establishments. St.-Cloud would be perfect, its park and grounds spacious enough for them to roam freely in and its location, nearer Paris than Versailles, would be convenient. There was enough room to acconmiodate Louis's sister Elisabeth as well.

who in 1785 was twenty-one and was becoming a much loved friend and companion to Antoinette. In addition, Versailles, already dilapidated under Louis XV, was decaying rapidly. Necessary repairs would take upwards of a decade, the King was advised, particularly if payment for the costly work had to be spread out over a period of years. St.-Cloud might thus become a necessity. Still, the Queen's newest acquisition was much resented.

Even more resented was the family she had singled out for conspicuous advancement: the Polignacs.

Yolande de Polastron, Comtesse de Polignac was a soft-eyed, mild and delicately beautiful woman with an attractive serenity that had a calming effect on the restless and occasionally frenetic Antoinette. She was much admired for her exquisite manners, her skin "with the whiteness of a narcissus," her lovely brown eyes, good teeth and charming smile, even her "little pink fingertips."' She may have had something of the attraction of an older sister to Antoinette, for she was six years the Queen's senior. Married to Comte Jules de Polignac, a soldier of good family but only modest means, Yolande might have tried to advance herself through intrigue as so many did at Versailles. Instead she seemed content with what she had. When Antoinette first saw her at a palace ball, and admired her "angelic face" and good figure, she told the Queen candidly that she rarely came to Versailles as her husband's income was not sufficient to support the expense of court life. She dressed simply, talked softly and sweetly, and in general was in refreshing contrast to the grasping people around her. Antoinette was much taken with her, and by 1777 they were fast friends.

Yolande's detractors were quick to claim that her apparent lack of ambition and her artless charm were merely a clever ruse, that they hid a ruthless and acquisitive nature. Some claimed to see behind her mild expression the evidence of "her shameful villainy." But Madame Campan, who despised guile, saw none in Yolande. She was of "retiring character," the bedchamber woman thought. Presumption and affectation were foreign to her, she "beamed with grace." Sometimes, Madame Campan wrote in her memoirs, Yolande spent several hours with her while waiting for Antoinette, "and talked frankly and ingenuously of all the honors and dangers that she saw in the kindness shown to her.""*

As usual, Antoinette's kindness took the form of lavish gener-

osity. Count Jules de Polignac was given the post of first equerry to the Queen, solving all financial difficulties and making him a wealthy man. Yolande and Jules were given spacious and well located quarters in the palace—a great rarity and a coveted privilege. In time Yolande took the place of the scandal-tainted Madame de Gu^menee as governess of the royal children. And all the couple's relatives prospered as well.

Antoinette and Yolande became inseparable when the former was in her early twenties and the latter approaching thirty. Throughout her twenties the Queen remained devoted to Yolande, "a friend of whom I am infinitely fond," as she put it. "When I am alone with her I am no longer a Queen, I am myself!" The spiteful gossipmongers invented lies about the two women, saying that they were lesbians and even that Yolande acted as a procuress for Antoinette, providing her with young women. There was an extraordinary closeness, at least on the Queen's side, but it had nothing to do with sex. Antoinette's heart belonged to Fersen, and Yolande had for years been the mistress of the difficult, occasionally violent Comte de Vaudreuil, a literary dilettante and inveterate intriguer.^ "The Queen can no longer do without this young woman's company and tells her all her thoughts," Mercy commented, and his description was probably the most accurate one.

Yolande may not have been scheming to advance herself, but many of those around her certainly were, and for them her friendship with the Queen was a golden opportunity. They constantly "wrenched from the Queen favors which caused complaints among the public," Mercy wrote. Members of the Polignac circle were given a disproportionate share of the pensions, offices and appointments handed out at court; those excluded fi-om the favored group, including men of older lineage and longer service (and even, on occasion, greater merit), were angry and resentful. The number of the Queen's enemies grew larger. Antoinette was persuaded to reward people merely because Yolande or her husband liked them or were related to them. Often she rewarded those, such as the Due de Vaudreuil, whom she herself disliked.

The list of Polignac appointees was a long one. Diane de Polignac, Yolande's sister-in-law, was lady of honor to the Countess of Artois. (Ugly, vindictive, with a razor-sharp wit and a fierce intelligence, Diane was called "the Red Moon" because of her ruddy

complexion.) Francois-Camille, Marquis de Polignac (uncle of Yolande's husband Jules) became first equerry to the Comte d'Ar-tois and drew a sizable pension besides his large salary and valuable perquisites of office. Louis-Heraclius Victor, Vicomte de Polignac, was ap{X)inted to a governorship and given a large {tension. His daughter became lady-in-waiting to King Louis's sister Elisabeth. Auguste-Apollinaire de Polignac, a Cluniac monk, received a pension and another Polignac cleric, Camille-Louis, was paid a double salary as Bishop of Meaux and Abbot of St.-Epure. Lesser branches of the family were given gifts and annuities worth tens of thousands of livres.^ Jules de Polignac's friend (and Antoinette's reputed lover) the Due de Coigny became wealthy as first equerry to the King and the Due de Vaudreuil was made chief falconer.

Yolande's husband was the most conspicuous beneficiary of the Queen's largesse. He was in charge of her stables, and in 1780 was created a hereditary duke. Large cash gifts followed in subsequent years. Not satisfied with this wealth, he flagrantly abused his office to pillage the royal treasury, charging the Queen's accounts for the purchase of a hundred and fifty additional horses, for many more stable servants and increased purchases of supplies and fodder. Each extra expense made money for Jules, for in each instance the actual amount he paid out was far less than the amount for which he billed his royal mistress.^ With the profits of his swindle he acquired several valuable houses, spent lavishly on their furnishings and lived in princely fashion.

To be sure, the Polignacs and their satellites were not the only courtiers to prosper under the Queen's special patronage, merely the greediest and most conspicuous. The Princesse de Lamballe, before Yolande de Polignac eclipsed her, enjoyed nearly a million livres in fees, salaries and grants, and saw to it that her brother was also extravagandy rewarded. But the Polignacs, as a group, obtained 2.5 million livres in cash and nearly half a million in pensions and salaries—truly a prodigious sum given the fact that the entire household budget of the court in 1776 was some thirty-six million livres. When the Polignac wealth is compared to the two livres a day earned by the average Parisian laborer it seems even larger, and even more superfluous. The enemies of the monarchy were outraged. While the honest workmen of Paris sweated for their bread, they complained, the gilded idlers of the court