“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 Canal of Versailles. The rudder of my gondola is steered by no Italian, but by a nobleman 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!
IN HIS PRESENCE, my heart is light. With the most perfect serenity, I watch the fall season progress. The dark comes earlier every day. The leaves of the trees at Versailles are half dropped, and I see the black skeletal branches emerge from the thinning foliage. The sunsets grow rich with a heavy red and roiling gold.
Sometimes the little being inside me kicks his tiny foot, and I tickle the place where he is making room and yet more room for his growth. The King glows with his happiness for me, and once in the presence of the count, I placed the King’s hand against my side to feel the movement. Without the slightest embarrassment the good King exclaimed, “Ah, Fersen, what a thing it is to be an almost-father!” Nor was Fersen the slightest discomforted. We are all three most natural with one another. Royalty aside, we are simply three friends. They both love me, and we are in perfect balance.
Fersen once remarked to us that in the nature of geometry, the triangle is the most stable of forms. We three were admiring a pediment of that shape; his comment was no sly remark on ourselves. At least he had no awareness of it being so. But just as he knows the private, unworded recesses of my mind, so can I discern the shadow of his thoughts, of which he is unaware.
Once I saw Elisabeth, the King’s sister, looking at Fersen as though she too was about to join the ranks of ladies who come close to swooning at his glance. Her eyes quite glazed over when she saw him in his Swedish military uniform, looking like an actor in a play, a spectacle of glorious manhood, but authentic and comfortable.
“Elisabeth,” I said gently, for she could not help herself.
Her lips parted and she looked as though she were awakening from a daze. “His boots are so beautiful,” she murmured. Then her truthful eyes fully met mine. “I am so glad your Highness has such a noble friend,” she said. “We could follow him to the end of the world.”
“It is good there are such men,” I replied. “The King likes and trusts him entirely.”
Meager words! The real essence of this moment is that in its private folds I saw the sincerity of my sister-by-marriage. She does not want what is mine. Always, there has been a bond between us, from the day I arrived for my wedding, and she—a perfect, natural child for all her royalty—flitted about me. She was the little messenger for the Dauphin’s pink rose. And now she fills her role to perfection: she is my true friend. Almost, she wants nothing for herself. In her proximity to the King and myself, it is her will and ardent desire to enhance—in every way—our position. I know no way to repay her generosity.
I FEEL THE LABOR pains begin soon after the clock strikes twelve. There is no need for haste or alarm. Soon enough I will be surrounded by dozens, perhaps hundreds of people, but this moment is mine. Who is this little person who knocks at the door of the world? And what a strange portal is the female human body. So it is beginning: pain where there was no pain. A tightening and a squeezing, and the pain passes. While I wait, I know that I am smiling.
I think of my mother, and the joy that will be hers. To her, I and my arrival had been no mystery. There were so many brothers and sisters before me. Yet another, she probably thought. And what shall we do with her?
But for me it is the beginning. I am doing what I was born to do, but more gloriously than even my mother had dared to hope. I shall bear the next king of France, God willing. This new being is made of the royal blood of hundreds and hundreds of years. Old Louis XV must be smiling in his tomb. How pleased he was to join my six-hundred-year-old house of Hapsburg to the Bourbon line.
But the coming child—my body compresses him again, I pray he feels no pain—is but a child. He knows nothing of these proud thoughts. But I think he senses his world is changing. Birth and Death—I think it must be like this when we die: that we but exchange one world and its close limits for a more expansive kingdom. Here in the dark inhabiting my bedroom, I think
of the light of eternity. My mother would have me pray at this moment for France and the happiness of Europe, as well as our own, and I am glad to do so. The beads of my rosary slide with their angles and smoothnesses through the tips of my fingers; that they are connected one to another connects me to the intangible beyond.
The clock strikes one, for half-past midnight. How forlorn that gong sounds.
Yet I love this darkness, that I am alone. I want to remember this black peace. I can see the curtains at the windows. I suppose soon I will get up and pace about. The King will come, and I will feel his love for me and I for him that together we have made the reality of this little life. I wish Maria Carolina were with me. One after another, her children have come easily. She would tell me what to expect, and how best to help the progression. When I close my eyes now, I can feel her lips kissing my forehead. Such love. The pain attacks again. If she could, Charlotte would labor for me. How often she took my hand, when we were little together, to lead me forward to some new play. To the menagerie! To see Clara, the rhinoceros, plated like a knight of old, but dusty.
Here comes another pain.
The clock bongs. I give myself another half hour of solitude. Then I’ll ring the bell, and its silver sound will announce the impending event. Probably never in my life will I be again so alone as I am in this moment. I am not afraid. Blessed solitude. Sweet secret! Is it possible that what is now within will be soon without, and separate from myself? But my arms will comfort him and hold him close against my flesh, this outer wall of the room of his unborn life. Remember, I’ll say, only hours ago you were inside. My hands smooth and soothe my big belly as it goes rigid again with pain.
I test time by counting to sixty, and yes, those moments are gone, and another minute is here to be counted out. Such is life! Such is life: the passing of moments, none more or less real than another, for all their difference in import. The moment it takes to move my eyes from left to right is as real as a moment of love or fear. I read my way across the room, starting from the tall door frame on the left, spelling out draperies and cabinets, chairs and paintings till I arrive at the other wall and view the high door on the right. So we spend our moments, which have their own will and will spend themselves whether we are aware of their passing or not. Suppose we could give away time, like a sparkling bracelet. The lapis bracelet I received when I arrived for my wedding comes to me, a broad band, with diamonds, and the clasp I have liked to wear next to my pulse. My cipher MA, with the letters intertwined, two mountains, with three peaks among them. Hold on tight, Marie Antoinette—it is the voice I heard at home when we rode our sleds through the snow, the voice of the Empress, giving good advice. I wish it would snow this December night, for the world needs to be new and pure as white linen, as white as swansdown for my baby.
I am glad it is December, the month of Christ’s birth, when Mary herself had her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes. Hail Mary, Full of Grace, Blessed art thou among women. And blessed am I. Mary, Mother of God, Mary, my special patron saint, and that of all my sisters and of our mother before us, may the fruit of my womb be blessed, for the sake of the people, for France, which I shall love better than ever I have before.
One. The clock chimes once again for half past one in the morning, 19 December 1778, and I ring the call bell for those who will attend me. Only a few moments pass, and here they come. First is the Princesse de Lamballe, as superintendent of the household, her pale face a lozenge of love, who dispatches the news to all the royal family at Versailles and beyond, by pages, to Saint-Cloud, and on to Paris with the news. Men scurry out, then ride away from the palace into the cold, full of my news. I hold out my hand to be assisted from this stately bed, leaving the print of my warmth behind me. Before I return to this bed, I will have given birth. I arise to begin my pacing, which will hasten the process and prevent my blood from pooling.
IT IS EIGHT in the morning, and the pains come too close together, and my body is too weary for any more walking. I look at the little white bed that has been prepared for the actual delivery of my child. Were it my tomb, I would lie in it now, for respite. Daylight appears in a vertical slit where the draperies meet.
It is the face of my husband and King that most comforts me now. They called Louis XIV the sun king, but it is my husband’s big round face, beaming at me, that most resembles the sun. His gentle, hooded eyes sparkle encouragement to me. All the others, I ignore. The room is stifling with the press of people—there must be two hundred crowded about me—many faces I know, all those of the court who must have the honor of being present, but beyond them crowd the curious people who have walked out from Paris, and others who happened to be in the palace. I see the little seamstress among them, but her name is gone from my weary mind. I think “Rose,” but that is the name of her mistress, not her own name—Rose Bertin who has made me beautiful in softly draping garments during my pregnancy, with soft feathers for my hair. Mon Dieu! The pain! And two strangers are perched on top of high cabinets to get a fine view of me lying here, trying to open my body. Mon Dieu! The pain! They are like the gargoyles leaning out on Notre Dame. Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! I count eleven bongs of the clock, mon Dieu! If it strikes noon, and I have not delivered, I will die. I am resigned to it.
And yet I think of the Empress, my mother, who delivered fifteen times, as though it were no more difficult than a hard sneeze. The throng is breathing up all the air and leaving none for me.
I wave my hands toward the windows, sealed against the winter cold, but no one understands I am stifling for lack of breath, that I beg the windows be reeled open. Use force, use force! I command, but they think I refer to the babe within me, and awful hands enter me, searching. I will not scream. Never let them make you cry out, the Empress told me. Never for any pain or injury that is personal to yourself. One shrieks for the state, only for the kingdom.
One! The clock is at half past eleven. It is Yolande de Polignac who tells us all: Now, now the baby crowns. And with all my heart I love her for her tidings. I open my eyes, just a slit, to see her face once more before I die. Her countenance is calm and happy. She sees nothing awry. Her gaze meets mine. “Very soon,” she says in a low voice like the purr of a cat. I believe her.
I push, then relax; the child is born. The room falls silent. I fear he is dead: that is the meaning of their silence. There is no applause, no exclamations of joy. The heat of the room engulfs me. I sink into the fires of hell.
HOLD ON TIGHT. Yes, the sled sped along, down and faster. Faster. The frosty wind hits my face, streams into my nostrils. Bits of ice sting my cheeks as I rush down, and faster, colder, down.
But I am not in Austria. They have opened the windows. The air in the room is fresh, and it is French. It pours over me like a spray of snow.
The King presents our child to me and tells me we have a daughter, healthy, robust. “Keep her warm,” he says to me.
Ah, they greeted her with silence because she was not a dauphin.
“Little Marie Thérèse,” I say to her, holding out my arms to this bundle, my child. Never have I heard such gentleness in my own voice. “All France wished you to be a boy, but never mind.” I look at her small head, a tiny version of myself, fair of skin with sweet light hair. “To me, no child could be more dear.” I touch her petal-soft cheek with the back of my finger. “Now you are mine.” Having come out of me into the world, someone to touch and see and smell, I know she is more mine than when she was closeted within. “The court, the people would have owned a boy, but you,” I tell her again, “dearest little girl, you are mine.” She is asleep and swaddled; I check the wrapping cloths, and they are not too tight. I hold her close to myself. My breath touches her face. “I will take care of you, and we shall share our lives and comfort each other.”
I tell them I am quite revived: they must close the windows tightly, lest the winter air chill my daughter.
“She is so newly born,” the King says wonderingly, and I look at him. His cou
ntenance expresses all that I knew it would. He continues, “I could not be more pleased with her, or with you.”
My husband’s kindness causes me to weep. I know the courtiers think I am disappointed to have birthed a daughter, but that is not it at all. My travail is finished, and a new chapter of my life begins. I have had a child. I can have another.
“My little daughter will suckle at my own breast,” I tell my husband.
He nods, and I know that he will support me in all that I ask.
FAREWELL TO COUNT VON FERSEN
Three months old, my daughter is only in the next chamber; should she whimper, and should she continue to whimper, then I will leave all these lords and ladies, to give my little tyrant the breast she most prefers.
People remark on how lovely I looked last night at the Opera Ball. Of course the King was too busy to attend, but I walked with Count von Fersen, and if I did not look radiant it would indeed be a great shame, for I felt myself to be nothing but aglow. Always attentive to my moods and thoughts, always approving of me, and always himself, he and I both felt a perfect happiness, for we are kindred spirits. As I walk about and speak to friends today, in my mind I stroll again with him, my dearest secret friend. In the glamour of candlelight, reflected prismatically, with all the jewels appropriate to attendance at the opera glinting around us like fairy lights, we did glow from within.
And yet this daylight scene is lovely too, with flowers—tulips and narcissus, pussy willow, and forsythia bending in a yellow arc—blossoms and fronds beautifully arranged in vases wherever one looks. Flowers look best in daylight, and I love the lighter dresses of daytime that complement the flower petals quite as much as the princely robes of night. The day speaks of the freedom of nature, the night of the glory of jewels and regalia.