THE RETURN OF COUNT AXEL VON FERSEN, OF SWEDEN.
When the King dutifully approaches my bed to perform his conjugal duties, I surprise him-it has all been orchestrated-by holding out a warm cup of chocolate to him, over the bedcovers.
"Let us sit propped up together," I say and smile at him. I am wearing a blue ribbon in my hair, and I have combed the soft blond curls over my shoulders in the natural manner as the painter Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun wears her hair. I feel like a shepherdess looking at her swain. "Let"s exchange gossip and news for a few minutes." Then I add quite honestly, "I wish to share a confidence."
"The Queen looks exceedingly pretty, and more important, very happy," he says.
He himself is relaxed, for now he knows that he can perform the deed, and his self-confidence is much increased. Unfortunately, he has also become more firm and active in his political decisions, but tonight I will say nothing of Prussia and Austria.
Tonight I speak to him as a member of his family and as one who will, in the dead of winter, bring new life to the family bosom. In my imagination, the little being within-for I feel sure of his nascent existence-will become a valentine for all the world to see, held up lovingly, between us, in the arms of both his parents.
The King sits beside me in the bed, and once he is propped up and comfortably rests his back into the plump pillows, I hand him his cup, a beautiful green one of Sevres porcelain decorated with a wide golden rim and lozenge portraits of deep pink roses. Then I reach for my own cup, as deep and satisfying a green as the forest itself.
"To Compiegne," I say, lifting my cup in a toast.
"To Compiegne, always rich with game," he says and tactfully waits to hear my explanation. I can see the questions rising in his expression, and also his love for me as a friend and not just as she who must produce an heir.
"For I am quite certain," I say, "that the lateness of that monthly visitor whom my mother calls the Generale is a signal of our success."
"You are often early-" he begins.
"But never late," I finish.
Suddenly, with a blur of liquid chocolate, he tosses his cup and saucer into the air-they do not break, for I listen to their m.u.f.fled thud on the carpet-and he embraces me with both arms. He has spilled the hot liquid all down the front of my white nightgown in a long brown stain. I lay the cup and saucer aside, on each side of me, and pull the King closer to my bosom.
AS THE SUMMER progresses, I often entreat the King to oppose Prussia-I even speak in very strong terms to his ministers Maurepas and Vergennes-but the King listens to them and not to me. To his credit, he never says a harsh word to me, and in fact he is quite sympathetic when I tell him of my fears for my mother"s heart. Nonetheless, he will not budge on the issue. I know now that the invasion was something my brother did, behind our mother"s back, and she considers it to have been most unwise. I hate it that it is another woman, the Russian Empress Catherine, who has humbled Austria by threatening to take the side of Prussia. But my mother is more wise than proud-she will not sacrifice her people to vanity-and she has agreed to give up some portions of Bavaria, keeping only Silesia.
Somehow the people know that I have advocated the cause of Austria, and I am unpleasantly referred to as l"Austrichienne, the Austrian, though I know that as my pregnancy progresses, I become more and more French. The appellation darkens my joy, for it hints of treason.
Lewd pamphleteers have the audacity to suggest that it is not the King who fathered the child I carry; they propose a ridiculous list of others. The King and I only laugh at them: we know the truth. What hurts me most is that the King"s younger brother, the Comte d"Artois, is named first on the lists of putative fathers, and Yolande has whispered to me that my husband"s other brother, the Comte de Provence, may well have paid the pamphleteers to do so. With a successful delivery, the Comte de Provence will no longer be next in line for the throne.
But I am introducing a wonderful new style of dresses-I and Rose Bertin.
Sometimes down on her knees, sometimes up high on a little stepladder, she drapes me in light silk fabrics in the colors I love most: pastel blue, a pale yellow soft as sunshine, turquoise that teases the eye between blue and green.
When she measures me around the hips, Rose pretends she cannot reach around me. Instead she marches around me with the tape, remarking like a character in a comic play, "What a distance, what a journey, I now must make!" Behind me, she begins to pant and puff theatrically. Seeing I am amused and pleased, she stamps her feet in place to prolong the charade. At last she comes wheezing around in front, closes the tape, and exclaims, "Four inches, you are already four inches fatter."
I burst into laughter, for never in my life has anyone ever applied even the shadow of the word fat to my person.
"I am remembering Racine"s play," I say, "and how the Jewish priestess wore flowing garments of surprising attractiveness. I have no intention of lacing myself and this child into any sort of corset."
"As I recall, you have never had any love of corsets." Rose"s good round face is wreathed by her smile and twinkling eyes. I love her because she is as jolly and frank as a peasant with me.
"My mother used to scold me about corsets," I say. Soberly, I recall how my mother"s recent correspondence has been full of much more serious matters, and that for all of my efforts I really was not effective in helping her. A cloud of anxiety about her health pa.s.ses through my mind.
"These gauzy garments," Rose says, "might be named for one of the tribes of Israel and called Levites."
By the end of summer, I know that I will be grateful to have clothing loose enough to allow the breezes to enter and fan my body.
ONCE I AM ASLEEP, I sleep and sleep and drink in yet more sleep, as though it were a flagon of nectar, but sometimes I have difficulty falling asleep. My appet.i.te is excellent, and I have never felt happier. I was happy when my marriage was fully consummated, but that was only act one of this masque: I think that only maternity itself can eclipse the joy of pregnancy.
Just once have I felt the slightest discomfort. When I wrote my mother that I vomited a little, she replied she was glad even to hear of my nausea, for it is a common feature of a normal pregnancy. I confessed to my mother that because I had longed and hoped and waited so long, praying that I might have a child, sometimes I feared my present condition, here in the height of summer, might only be a dream. "Yet," I wrote, "the dream does continue...."
NEVER HAVE I FELT more alive or more satisfied with the life I live. The King and I speak together most congenially of our plans for the care and education of our child. Having strolled all the way down the Grand Avenue from the chateau, we sit on a bench outdoors-the fresh air being so good for my health, despite its summer warmth-and admire the basin of Apollo. As Apollo"s horses pull the chariot bearing the sun out of the water, their powerful shoulders and forelegs rise above the surface of the basin. The breeze brings drifts of spray to cool our faces with the fine mist.
"Perhaps I shall nurse the child myself, at least some," I say. I long to feel the little babe"s mouth at my breast.
The King is not aghast. He treats all my ideas about our coming child with utmost tenderness.
"Nor shall he be tightly swaddled," I say. "He shall have the freedom to toddle about, and his nursery shall be on the ground floor, for greater ease of access to the outside world."
The King agrees by taking my hand in his and very gently squeezing my fingers. Rapt with happiness, he now looks the very figure of both King and husband.
An imp makes me say, "I believe you too are putting on weight as the weeks pa.s.s."
The King blushes, and he has no rejoinder. I regret having given him discomfort.
"It is but natural," I add hastily, "as we grow older."
The image of his grandfather, Louis XV, comes to mind, conjured up by yet another imp, and I recall how even when he was old, that king was called the most handsome man in Europe-a t.i.tle my Louis will never possess. For a moment I feel ashamed of my own superficiality.
"You are such a good king," I say. "All the people say so."
Again the King blushes, but this time with pleasure. Again he finds no words with which to reply.
Finally he says, "Rousseau," quite enigmatically.
I smile at him encouragingly.
"You have caught the ideas of Rousseau-from the very air, it would seem. I do not think any of the queens of France, for two hundred years, have considered sparing their children the oppression of protocol and custom. The royal children of France have simply been turned over to others. I was."
"I see virtue in motherhood," I reply. I feel proud that the inclinations of my heart are congruent with the thinking of the revered philosopher Rousseau. "Even when our children are babes, I myself will inhabit the role of mother."
I tell him that I want my darling Yolande at some point in the future to become the governess to the children of France, that I have seen her with her own adorable children, and there is no one whom I can trust so fully with the welfare of my son or daughter. The King agrees so readily that his very acquiescence makes me remember for a moment, in contrast, the grave face of my brother Joseph, when he criticized my Yolande as superficial and manipulative, but we do not always agree with Joseph. It was Joseph"s decision to annex Bavaria that cost many common soldiers their lives and weakened the heart of our mother.
"Perhaps we should return to the chateau," I remark, "and prepare to receive guests."
I am only a little bored. During the good humor of my pregnancy, I have found court more entertaining than usual. As we slowly ascend the slope toward the chateau, I hear the waters of the fountain of Apollo grow more and more dim, like distant rain.
"The populace of Paris was overjoyed," the King says enthusiastically, "when they heard of your pregnancy."
The slope is steep, it is very hot, and contrariness causes me to picture not joy but the hard fierceness of the faces of the women who taunted me after the birth of Artois"s first child. They seemed almost dangerous-but that was years ago.
My mother used to remind me that contrariness showed a failure in obedience, the cardinal virtue in a princess. Suddenly I feel tired, and I stop in our progress up the slope and look back at the figure of Apollo. Heavily gilded, he gleams golden in the August sun.
Though I am tempted to exclaim What a magnificent figure of a man! I restrain myself. Perhaps the King would feel that he was being adversely compared with the G.o.d. Sweat trickles down his brow from under the edge of his wig.
"My mother wrote that she is sure the happiness expressed by the citizens of Paris could not equal the ecstasy throughout Vienna when the news arrived of my pregnancy." My tone is petulant.
AT COURT, THE AUGUST heat is oppressive to many. The women fan rapidly, with the serious intent of stirring up a breeze. The men shift their position from foot to foot; sometimes they hold open their heavily embroidered waistcoats to admit air. But I breathe deeply the perfume of my handkerchief-lavender refreshed with mint-and feel quite comfortable and happy. The lemonade in my goblet refreshes me even more. Heat is like cold: one must give her body to it and then one is relaxed and comfortable.
I know the courtiers would love to toss their powdered wigs, en ma.s.se, into the air to cool their pates. I smile at the comic image and feel even more delighted with the world.
For all their discomfort, their elegant rainbow clothing makes them beautiful to behold, and besides, I stand close to an open window where puffs of cooling air enter from time to time.
Yolande de Polignac stands on one side of me, and the Princesse de Lamballe on the other. Today I have no trouble speaking to them both in tones that are smooth as pearls. Though her dark ringlets are damp against her neck, Yolande accepts the summer heat as a natural state and makes no complaint. The Princesse de Lamballe has a heart (and mind), I think, that moves more slowly than most and never overheats her; the skin on her neck and chest is like porcelain and would feel cool, if touched. They are both as gay as I am, and like the three Graces, we are gradually making all hearts glad.
No, it is the mere fact of my pregnancy that pleases them all. I glance down at my belly with enormous satisfaction, for it is more beautiful than a large bouquet of the most pleasing flowers.
The crowd before us moves this way and that like a giant organism, like a flight of bright birds, or like daisies bent together by a unifying breeze. At the corner of my eye, I note a posture and movement that is so elegant that I think for a moment it must be Count Mercy, but the figure is too tall.
And too young.
And even too handsome.
The man is hauntingly but not immediately familiar, like a figure from the past or from a foreign land, a memory or a traveler too good to be true.
"Ah, it"s an old acquaintance!" I exclaim, catching his pale blue Swedish eye.
I nod, and the crowd parts to allow his approach.
He bows, yes, with all the elegance in the world, plus the grace of youth, and begins to speak, but I speak with him, so we say his name in duet. "Count Axel von Fersen."
We laugh, and I say simply, "It has been too long a time since I saw you," but I know my eyes are dancing. He is the lad, grown into a man, that I saw in the dead of winter when I was eighteen at the Opera Ball in Paris. We are exactly the same age, I recall.
"Four and a half years, Your Majesty," he replies and inclines his head respectfully, but he is not solemn or awed by me-no more than he was at the ball. His bearing is perfectly simple, that of one human being speaking to another whom he respects in the most natural way.
"The new happiness of Your Majesty lights not only her face but the entire room."
I nod to acknowledge his compliment; he has noticed my pregnancy, the most important thing about me.
Naughtily, I confide in a playful hiss, "When I see the bright disk of the full moon, I stick out my tongue at Diana and all the flat, virginal G.o.ddesses who have known nothing of the round fullness of maternity."
He throws back his handsome head and laughs. I think of Triton blowing his horn. Not that his laughter is overly loud, but that it seems to come from another realm. There are rubies in his laughter.
"And where have you been these years?" I inquire.
He takes neither too much time nor too little, he neither overly ornaments his sentences with rhetorical embellishments nor speaks too bluntly. But he tells me in a style that exactly pleases that he went to England intending to marry, but his intended would not leave her native country for a foreign home. "In a phrase, she wouldn"t have me," he replies with sudden informality.
"You seem happy and well."
"I shall seek a military life, attaching myself to serve in foreign countries, as my father did."
"Even in these days, your father"s good service to Louis XV is spoken of with admiration and appreciation," I reply. "And so I a.s.sume you have your father"s blessing."
I hear Yolande say sotto voce, "He looks like the hero of a novel."
Beyond her the d.u.c.h.esse de Chartres replies, "But not a French novel."
"My father is the wisest of friends to me," the Swede continues, ignoring the twitter of my ladies, "and as I journey, many letters pa.s.s between us." So confident is the young count in his independence that he makes not the slightest excuse for his obedience to his father. I see strength in this foreigner"s face, and kindness. One never sees such n.o.bility in a French face, be he fictive or actual.
I lower my voice just a bit and wish that we were speaking privately. "So it is with my mother and myself." To my surprise, a tenderness for my mother that I have not wanted to admit even to myself sweeps over me. Certainly, I have loved her, but some new element in my own feelings is surprisingly available to me.
Fersen replies, "You showed great courage in making a new home far from the land of your birth."
"But I understand well-now-though I did not at fourteen, how your lady might have hesitated to do so, especially since her journey would have been over water."
"I believe Your Majesty herself crossed the Rhine?" A slight smile lurks around the corners of his mouth.
"The Rhine is a mere ditch compared with the Channel," I remark. As soon as the words have crossed the air to his ear, I feel ashamed to have described that imposing river in demeaning terms. I remember how the sound of the rushing waters of the Rhine filled my ears with fear, or was it my own inexperienced blood seeking a place to hide, when I stood naked on that neutral island between two rival countries?
"All the waters of Austria have their beauty." He speaks sympathetically to me, his sentence anything but a corrective. "And Your Majesty is a daughter of the Danube."
"My mother has always said as much." I add diplomatically, "It has been a very long time since I have thus thought of myself," but in my addition is a truth about myself that I"ve not intended to reveal. His eyes are those of a traveler who brings back in their depths something of every place he has seen. "You fetch me my youth with your words."
"You think, then, of words as so many little baskets, bearing tidings of times past and things yet to come." Surely he did not address me thus, as "you"? No, he would have continued to say "Your Majesty," with perfect correctness. Wishing for familial intimacy, my ears have twisted the words of Count Axel von Fersen.
MY NIGHTS ARE a luxury of utter relaxation, for once my pregnancy became an established fact, I suggested that safety required us to refrain from connubial relations, and the King acquiesced with the perfect tenderness that will someday make him a beloved father to our child. This August night, I call for Madame Campan to sit beside my pillow and read to me of fairies and enchantments, of Puck and Oberon, and dances in the moonlight.
She reads until I drift away from the realities of my bed, the woven coverlet and droning voice, to journey toward a moon made of rosy quartz. I arrive in a Venetian gondola shaped like a smile, with a single sail, such as those we are privileged to board here to float on the Grand Ca.n.a.l of Versailles. The rudder of my gondola is steered by no Italian, but by a n.o.bleman of the North. To light the way, through the midnight blue, he holds a candle in one fist. Like a whisper moving forward, we rise up from the waters into the sky, the prow of our green boat parting the haze of clouds.
Full of peace and drowsy rest, I press my cheek into the soft down of a pillow; a frail circlet of stars crowns my brow, and I name myself the Queen of Clouds.
GIVING BIRTH, 19 DECEMBER 1778.
I tell my friends the Swede must be invited to every fete, and he is. As I grow rounder and ever more serene, so does our friendship grow, that of Axel von Fersen and myself. With him, I have no impulse to flirt, as I may have done with other courtiers. Whether he speaks or whether he remains silent, his presence is unfailingly both virile and gracious. He is exactly himself, and for that every man in France should envy him. Every woman adores him, and I mark his courtesy to all with great approval. I write nothing of him to my mother, and I suppose Count Mercy does not mention him either. Since she makes no summary judgment or directive to me concerning this friend, the Empress must be ignorant of his existence.
Mercy tells me everyone is jealous of the favor I show Count von Fersen, but I say they would be jealous of anyone standing in the light of my favor. "Better a foreigner," I reply. "He asks nothing of me. It is only my regard that he receives."
Mercy tells me that all the courtiers believe Fersen "has captured the heart of a Queen," and Mercy cautions me they (meaning the Polignac circle, and now I can admit they are a circle) have plotted that he do so because if it were a Frenchman who became the Queen"s Favorite, he might "win all the favors of appointments and incomes for himself or his relatives."
For their part, Madame de Polignac and her lover Vaudreuil encourage me to give full expression to my appreciation of the handsome count, to give him the pleasures of the flesh. It makes me laugh for people to imagine that anyone could manipulate Axel von Fersen, for his respect for his father has brought him wisdom beyond his age. He and I understand each other completely: our joy is of the spirit.
Look at me: I am enormous!