"Let me guide you to a more comfortable settee," Count Mercy says, "where you may speak of flowers and the friendship that I see blossoming between you."
The aunts dare not follow and intrude. Mercy has known my needs, and he stands close by now, an elegant sentinel, at his ease and in complete command as the guardian of our tete-a-tete.
The fair princess is twenty-one to my fifteen, but purity has kept her suitable for my confidence. She compares Count Mercy to her dear father-in-law in his thoughtfulness, and I tell her how I admired the family group of the Duc de Penthievre as depicted in the painting The Cup of Chocolate in Madame Adelaide"s apartment, and how I had wished that I might have entered that frame and become a part of that happy family picture.
I speak of how that first day, when I saw the little dog in the picture and thought of Mops, that I feared I might weep, and immediately, again, tears well up in her own eyes, in sympathy with my former longing.
"And do you love little dogs too?" I ask, smiling cheerfully.
"And kittens," she says, in a rapturous burst. A few tears brim over the edges of her eyes and course down her cheeks, but she bravely fights them off.
"And hippopotami," I exclaim.
She is caught off guard and says, "I do not know hippopotami. What are they?"
It turns out she has not heard of rhinoceroses or giraffes either, and I am glad, because for once I am not the most ignorant person in a conversation. With some fear (I am almost trembling), I ask her if she likes to read.
"Sometimes," she says, and she looks troubled, as though she fears her answer may not be adequate.
"I am the same," I say.
"There is one book that always touches me," she says, "and makes me feel that there are other sensitive people in the world."
When I ask her its t.i.tle, she says her favorite book-she has read it many times-is a novel t.i.tled Julie, ou la Nouvelle Heloise. She has forgotten its author"s name.
"Jean-Jacques Rousseau," I say, "but I have not yet read the book."
"It is about nature, and friendship, and love," she says.
For a moment, I simply regard her. She is as elaborately and beautifully dressed as I am, at great expense. What is it I want to share with her? My mind scrambles to find some emblem of myself. I think of the little topiary trees in the garden here at Versailles and that night when I hid inside the folds of the curtain and looked out at them, so still in the moonlight. But not that! It is their opposite that I want.
"The forest is always murmuring," I say. "The great trees talk to one another with the rustling of their leaves."
"They put their heads together," she replies uncertainly, then smiles, "and share secrets, like sisters."
Already she loves me! I mind my husband"s neglect a little less now.
All about us the drinking and dancing and eating of a party, late in the season of Carnival, goes on. At one point, I see Artois, beyond the princess"s pink silk shoulder, looking at me as though he has been neglected. Recalling how many times he has rescued me by inviting me to dance, I rise to dance with him, after promising the princess I shall return.
When I seat myself beside my new friend again, we are presented with small private tables bearing plates of food, which my aunts have had a.s.sembled for us. None of my favorite things are on the plate, and I send it away. The princess also refuses food.
She whispers, "How can one eat when the heart is engaged?"
I tell her that we must walk the gardens together the next day or be carried in our litters, if the ground is damp.
"We shall compare our favorite fountains," she says.
"Let me guess," I say.
"I don"t know if I could bear it, if you guessed wrong," she says.
"I will not guess wrong," I reply as confidently as though I were speaking to Maria Carolina, my Charlotte. "Your favorite fountain is Flora among the heaps of flowers."
"It is true," she says and sighs profoundly.
"Remind me, please," I say, "of your given names."
She begins, "Marie Therese-"
"My mother"s name-" I interrupt.
"Is?"
"The Empress of Austria-" I hint.
"Oh. What is her name?"
I can scarcely believe the princess does not know the name of my mother, who has arranged my marriage and the Austrian Alliance, but I say all the more gently, "Maria Theresa...like your name."
"It is an omen," she says, "for I am older than you."
"And so you can easily guess which fountain I love best-after Flora."
"Tell me."
I see she has not studied mythology at all, and then I realize that perhaps the story of how Flora was taken from Ceres, her mother, to the Underworld by Hades, would be too heartrending for the princess. She has had a governess like my own darling Countess Brandeis, who guarded my sensibilities from shock, who ensured that I would have time to play, and who taught me very little.
"It is the fountain of Ceres, who was Flora"s mother. Ceres made the wheat, and all the cereals and flowers ripen. The violets too," I add, "for which gift, I shall always honor your sweet and generous nature, from this night forward."
"I promise I will keep you in my heart," she says, and I feel that I have heard the truth. "Always," the princess adds. "To the death." She seems frightened.
To such sincere words I can frame no reply, but I reach out with my hand and squeeze hers.
"Now we must join the others and dance," I say, "or gossip will begin."
Blithely she rises, with airy lightness, but she turns back to smile at me, her face all softness, surrounded by soft, fair hair. As I dance-with everyone-sometimes I steal a glance at her, and I see that there is a touching melancholy about her face that makes her even more beautiful. I want to take care of her, but there is no need for that, since the good Duc de Penthievre is devoted to her.
AS THE DAUPHIN and I walk through the state apartments back to our chambers, he softly touches my waist from time to time, and as we pa.s.s through the Mars state room, he dismisses our attendants. I glance up to see again the wolves who draw the chariot of Mars. My husband seems to want more intimacy, but I have been disappointed so many times by his slight overtures of interest that I do not let my mind evaluate what these gentle touches may mean tonight.
Instead, I think of the graceful charm of the Princesse de Lamballe, her small waist, her willingness to share confidences with me. I shall ask her about her husband, who, I already know, died of syphilis at age twenty-nine, consequent on his savage and insatiable appet.i.te, and I shall tell her something of my own disappointments, of which, like everyone else at court, she must surely be already aware. Though they all know the problem lies with the Dauphin, they blame me anyway. They laugh at him.
The princess knows the fact of my situation; she cannot know the feelings within me, for they are shared only in careful and courteous language in letters to my mother. The disappointments of the princess and myself with the men to whom we have been bonded may concern quite different sorts of behaviors, on the husbands" parts, but the hurt hearts in the Princess and myself are surely kin.
Almost, tonight, I do not care whether my husband lies in bed with me, or what he does or does not do as we wait for sleep.
As we pa.s.s through the Venus drawing room, again I look up. When I see the gentle doves pulling the chariot of the G.o.ddess, I think of the soft face and hair of the princess whose name begins Marie Therese. Seated on the divan, she and I cooed together like doves.
When I look down, I see protruding from the hem of one of the curtains, the toe of an old and worn boot, one that I believe I noticed on the night of my wedding. Nothing happened in our bed that night, and I take the scuffed leather as an omen that nothing will happen tonight. If I do not guard myself against expectations, I will go mad. I must beat down my hope-I and only I can regulate my feelings. All sorts of people have access to the palace; one of them has left her boot behind. That is the only meaning of the scuffed toe protruding from under the curtain.
Tomorrow morning my husband will write Rien in his journal, if he bothers to keep a diary of married life. Certainly, our marriage is less exciting than hunting, though perhaps more important to the fate of Europe.
The curtain moves. My husband notices the movement; when he sees the boot, he pulls the brocade aside.
A female figure, about my own size, stands in a tattered skirt. She wears a cape, such as I have seen in drawings of the peasant Jeanne d"Arc, and its hood is up. Her face is turned from us, as though she has been gazing out the window at the moonlit garden.
For an instant I remember my nightmare of Mother Eve biting gla.s.s fruit, and I gasp.
"Don"t be afraid," my husband says, but he is speaking to her and not to me.
Nor need he! I am not one to be afraid, no, not the daughter of the Empress of Austria.
The girl looks him full in the face. Her features denote only one emotion: wonder. Her delicate countenance is unlined, smooth; it shows no sign of hardship, though her body is too thin. There is a transparency to her skin. She raises one frail hand and presses her long thin fingers against her cheek. It is a gesture that seems to ask Am I real? Her face somewhat resembles mine.
She has but one short glance for me.
I realize the quickest of glances is all that is needed for me: she has seen me before. Recognition is in that single glance. Perhaps she sees me every day, so many people come and go through the palace, but her clothes are too poor for me not to have noticed such a figure. Her loose dress is the color of old moss draped in folds. She looks as poor as the fish market women. Perhaps she is one of their daughters. But no, her features are too soft to have issued from such stridency.
Too late, we realize that she is moving. She simply steps around us and walks toward the Mars room. Her heavy boots make soft, quick thuds as she hurries away, first into the Diana salon.
Because the doors of all the state rooms are in alignment, I expect to see her pa.s.s through the Diana room and into the Mars room, and perhaps she does, but my eyes slowly slide closed, then open, and she is gone. Perhaps she has used one of the hidden doors cut into the wallpaper, the secret doors that lead to the Land of Intrigue.
"We"ve lost her, haven"t we?" the Dauphin asks. "Shall I look for her?"
"Perhaps we have other destinations this evening."
My voice is as quiet and neutral as her gray-green dress.
"Did you hear the story of the demented Comtesse de Guemene this evening?" My husband"s question guides our minds around some corner, and we seem back in the familiar world. "Lately, they say, she believes she converses with the dead."
"I would talk with my dear papa, if I could."
"And I with my older brother, the Dauphin who died as a child." My husband turns his head to look at me. Curiosity about my mood subsequent to this strange encounter is evident in his facial expression, though not in his words. "The comtesse communicates with the other world"-he cracks a thin smile-"through her dogs and their incessant yapping."
I laugh out loud.
"Come with me," my husband says and leads me to his bed.
WITH A STACK OF SOFT PILLOWS at our backs, we begin our nocturnal conversation. Every confidence we share is like a tongue of ribbon reaching out and connecting us. He tells me of the boy who died, the firstborn of his parents, who would have more rightly been the next king than he himself. He tells me the boy was brilliant and much beloved. For his brother"s sake, Louis Auguste"s own education was accelerated, as he was taken away from his governess in order to keep his brilliant brother company at his lessons. To whet their interest in history, the great philosopher-historian David Hume of Scotland was invited to visit. The older brother was frail, and their pious father, wanting his firstborn son never to be lonely, employed the second-born to serve that purpose.
The Dauphin speaks for a long time about his childhood, his brother"s death, his parents" heartbreak at that loss and their disappointment in him.
"After the Dauphin"s death, I was kept isolated with tutors, as princes usually are, and I developed no skills in conversing freely with other young scholars nor in quickly taking the measure of another person."
"What measure," I ask, "did you take of the young woman we saw tonight?" I rejoice in the informal coziness of our conversation. "We have spoken nothing of her."
His legs stir under the covers.
"Was she real?" he asks in a speculative tone. "If so, perhaps she was from the Gypsies. My brother Provence says they are encamped in tents outside the gates."
"Can two people share the same delusion?" I ask.
"Yes," he says. "A hundred can share the same delusion. A thousand, or tens of thousands."
He abandons the topic of our apparition. We talk until we fall asleep, though I only ask him questions to help him in his discourse. His face fills with brightness as he confides more and more of his childhood experiences with me. Perhaps another night, he will inquire further into my private history. Because sleep comes more slowly to me, I review the party hosted by the Comtesse de Noailles. By including the Princesse de Lamballe, Madame Etiquette has given me the gift of a special sister. With the Princesse de Lamballe, first one and then the other of us would tell one tidbit or another. The fabric of our conversation interlaced as naturally as warp and woof.
However, I did express my regret to my husband before he slept that the young Prince de Rohan has now become a cardinal, to the delight of both the Comtesse de Guemene and the Comtesse de Noailles, who are his relatives. "He behaved most impudently to me in Strasbourg," I confided.
When morning comes, I wake before my husband. He sleeps with only a sheet pulled across his naked body. At the place between his legs stands a little tent of sheeting, held high by a single st.u.r.dy prod.
IN THE GARDEN: A DRAGON.
Weeks pa.s.s before I am able to spend more time in the company of my new friend. Her father-in-law has as many estates almost as does the King, and his household, like ours, travels frequently, at great expense, from one to another. She went southwest to Rambouillet, while the court traveled east to Meudon, which is said to possess the best air of all the estates. But finally, on a fine spring day, her family and mine meet again at Versailles.
Accompanied by our attendants, the Dauphin"s charming little sister Elisabeth, the Princesse de Lamballe, and I are walking beside the dragon fountain, which for some reason has been turned off, though its large pool is filled with water. Exceedingly fond of her tall dogs, Elisabeth walks surrounded by her greyhounds, and she insists on wearing her winter cap of gray rabbit fur, though now it is well into spring.
"If it were not for the Dauphin"s aversion to cats," I confide to the princess, "I would surround myself with them."
"I like it when they sit in my lap and purr," she replies. "But sometimes their toenails snag a thread and ruin the silk."
I wonder to myself if the Dauphin"s dislike of cats is not rebellion, in a very small way, against the tastes of the King, who adores cats-particularly a pure white Persian, who is so spoiled and smug that my secret nickname for her is du Barry.
Glancing at my dear new friend, I wonder what the Princesse de Lamballe thinks of the du Barry and the King"s immorality, but because my friend"s husband was also a profligate, I do not raise the subject, which might be a painful one for her. How did she avoid the contagion he carried in his body? It took his life. With her pretty face and beautiful clothes, she seems the picture of health and content. Like myself, she enjoys the company of pets, but I do not think she likes to romp with the children of other people as much as I do.
One of the greyhounds trots so that his head travels just below my hand in case I should want to stroke his smooth, sleek head. He glances up at me-sympathetically, I believe. If I were with my sister Charlotte, I would be silly: I would cradle the dog"s gray head in my hands, kiss him on his long nose, and say, "Now, turn into the perfect prince."
These animals are a relief-quiet and elegant in comparison to the spaniels of my aunts. Perfectly gentle, they are so strong that they seem to spring on their legs while they circle round and round their little mistress, Elisabeth.
The dragon is surrounded by large, gilded putti mounted on swans swimming in the waters of the basin. The fearless children aim their little bows and arrows at the monster. Reared erect, with spread claws, the dragon is fierce and scaly, his nipples pointed like weapons, his head thrown back and raised upward toward the sky. The children and the swans are far larger than life-size-perhaps they could slay the dragon, for all their innocence. Mythically large, they dwarf the adults standing at the edge of the basin.
Suddenly from out of the thrown-back head and open mouth of the gilded dragon, with a tremendous noise and gush, a mighty plume of water arises. The silent greyhounds erupt in barking. They crouch and growl while the water plume grows up and up to a truly towering height. All the greyhounds are barking, and some of them leap into the pool to join the swan-mounted putti in their attack. All the while we admire the dogs" fierce courage, we laugh at them for their foolishness. As they thrash in the water and crouch and spring and bark, Elisabeth shouts at them, "It"s not real, it"s not real!" but they believe the evidence of their own senses. The water spouting heavenward from the dragon statue means he is alive.
I laugh so hard that I begin to feel deep sobs starting in my chest, till with an awful gurgle in my throat, tears spurt from my eyes.
Quickly, the princess directs Elisabeth and her dogs and attendants to return to the chateau. Kind little heart, Elisabeth first kisses me on the cheek and whispers to me, her auntie, not to be afraid of the dragon. "He can"t move." I try to seal shut my wailing mouth, and I give her a quick, rea.s.suring nod, but as soon as she begins to climb back up the incline to the chateau, with the wet greyhounds frolicking around her, I sob again. Not one gray guardian dog has remained behind, but here is my friend, the princess, leading me to a stone bench.
She asks the source of my unhappiness, and when I cannot answer, she weeps with me a little. Still I cannot answer.
"Look how high the water spout has climbed," she says. "It seems to tickle the clouds."
But my eyes are shut in a hard firm line while I sob. The Princesse de Lamballe embraces me and tries to soothe me. Her cool fingertips and palm stroke the back of my neck, under my hair. Finally, I gasp out in a broken cadence, "I want to become a mother!"