Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette
When I go to sleep, they are singing under my windows. With such loyal good fellows, surely we shall prevail. I drift to sleep on a cloud of hope. An afternoon well spent!
BEFORE DAWN HAS COME, the King is speaking softly to me, but I am loath to give up my dreams.
After some moments, I hear what he is saying:
I am hearing that there has been an attack on the Bastille. How strange to hear the disembodied voice of my husband speaking new realities in the darkness.
“I was awakened at two in the morning by the Duc de Liancourt who gave me the news. When I said, ‘But this is revolt,’ he answered, ‘No, it is a revolution.’ I think I must prepare to go to Paris.”
I dress as quickly as I can and then see the King off to speak to the National Assembly. When he walks across the Marble Courtyard, he is accompanied only by his two brothers, and I experience the greatest anxiety for his safety. Quickly as the three pass below me, I memorize their dear and familiar faces, for I may never see them again: corpulent Provence of the square, well-cornered jaw; slender Artois, who wanted to race me when I first came here, with his narrow, sensitive face and luminous eyes like his grandfather’s; Louis Auguste, my husband, with a body and head like two boulders—solid in his affection, his eyelids always half lowered. He turns back and glances up over his shoulder, as though he too would memorize me.
I hurry to the chapel, which is empty, and hasten down the aisle, where I walked as a bride. I kneel at the golden altar and look at the long recumbent form of Christ crucified, how he died for us. With bowed head and closed eyes, I spend the hour on my knees, praying for my husband’s safety and that of my children. Long ago, my mother told me that I would find comfort in Jesus, when I turned to Him.
The King has said that the Bastille is destroyed, but it is an enormous fortress, and I do not see how that really could be possible.
FINALLY, I HEAR his footsteps on the marble floor. He has come to find me. I rise from the altar and fly to him, his arms open for me.
He tells me that he appealed to the group for their support. “For the first time,” he says sadly, “I addressed them as the National Assembly. I said, ‘Help me to ensure the salvation of the state. I expect as much from the National Assembly.’”
“But what has happened in Paris?”
We begin our walk to his apartments.
I ring for the King’s breakfast to be brought to him, and as he eats, he tells me what he has heard, that the populace went to the Invalides looking for arms. “The people of Paris are filled with inflammable gas, like a balloon lighter than air.” They were met, of course, by troops under Besenval. Besenval, my old friend, who entertained me at Trianon when I had the measles and my breasts were painful with unsucked milk, dared not order the charge because many of the troops were joining the populace, who helped themselves to forty thousand guns and cannons. Then they lacked only gunpowder, which they believed to be stored in the ancient fortress and prison, the Bastille.
The Bastille was attacked at the expense of one hundred lives. While the liberators found only seven prisoners incarcerated in the whole of the vast structure, the mob went wild with glee.
They took the gunpowder they found. They cut off the head of the governor of the Bastille, the Marquis de Launay, with a knife, as they did to the heads of several others who tried to stand against the mob. Their heads were mounted on pikes and paraded through the streets amid a terrible celebration in the name of liberty.
The Bastille was dismantled till not one stone lay atop another.
As the King tells me the horrifying story, I feel all the light in the room grow dim. In a terrifying grip, ice encases my heart. What can I do to save us? I remember the pleasant afternoon—only yesterday, July 14—with the young troops. Finally, the King says, “Perhaps you should gather your jewels and pack your trunks.”
“Where shall we go?”
“We will convene our advisors and generals and discuss the decision.”
AS THE DAY PASSES, I sometimes listen to the debate, but again and again I envision the head of the Marquis de Launay being pulled backward and his throat exposed to the edge of a knife. Perhaps they will kill us if we stay—our own heads brutally taken from our bodies. Would our absence from Versailles not signal our defeat? While I supervise the packing, I wonder if it is wise to leave. Surely at least the King and Queen should remain. And I could not bear to be parted from my children.
But I do not want my friends to endanger themselves. Yolande is almost as hated as I am, because of her love for me. I consult with the King about our friends, and we decide they should be asked to leave. None of them wish to desert us. Finally the King makes it his command to Artois to leave.
I ask if we might flee to Metz, still in France but comfortingly close to the Netherlands controlled by Austria, the territory governed by my sister Marie Christine and her husband. The faithful Maréchal de Broglie hesitates; it has cost him much of his pride to have to admit that his troops could not be trusted to try to recapture Paris. Finally, he looks up; his eyes are red, and he seems to have aged another ten years, his face is so wrinkled. “Yes,” he replies, “we could get to Metz. But what will we do once we have arrived?”
I take Yolande aside and regard her with all the force of my affection. “I am terrified of what may come.” While her gaze mirrors my own, she reaches out to touch my shoulder, but I continue: “Now is the time for you to escape the wrath of those who hate me.”
The King, who is almost as fond of Yolande as I am, tells her that if she does not agree to leave, he will order her to do so, as he has with his younger brother.
Finally the King calls for a vote of the ministers present as to what we should do. The vote goes for the royal family to remain at Versailles.
By midnight, I am too exhausted to remain upright. I sit at my secrétaire, close to my bed, and write a few lines of farewell to my dearest friend. The word Adieu is a terrible word to write, and almost, the point of my pen trips over itself. But finally, fearing that I may never see her again, I pen the word and thus commit her to the care of God: Adieu. And I make her a gift of five hundred louis.
I shall not be able to help her anymore, my Yolande, fresh and sweet as a berry.
Then I stand up and straighten my back. I will face my fate here in France, though I will not consign my friends to the unspeakable possibilities. I envision the head of Launay upon a pike.
They say a bounty has been set on my head, and on that of Artois and the Polignacs. At least they will be safe in Switzerland. I will keep my place beside the King.
When the coaches roll away in the morning, toward Belgium, I note that all my friends wear disguises so that they will not be recognized by the grandeur of their clothes. Yolande is dressed to resemble a serving girl. It seems a strange thing to do. How can I play my role—that is to say—how can one maintain her identity, without the proper costume?
17 July
I beg the King not to go into Paris.
He merely says that it is required: he himself must tell the people of Paris that Necker will be restored to his position as minister of finance. He must display his loyalty to their cause, that of the Third Estate.
“If you are to die in Paris,” I say, “let me accompany you.”
He gently denies my request and reminds me that I must guard the children.
Again, I go to the chapel; I pray all morning, and then I request a chair so that I may sit comfortably with my head tilted back and contemplate the image of God the Father who flies across the ceiling with his white beard, his bare foot penetrating a cloud.
Sometimes I think of my friends on the road and wonder how they are, in their disguises, traveling and traveling inside their coaches. And what of my husband this day, in Paris?
In the middle of the afternoon, I return to kneel before the altar. I know that the King has his own courage; he has never been a coward. Still, I pray that his heart will be strengthened.
At
one point, I hear the voice of my son. He is running, and his dear valet Hüe is chasing him. Both of them are completely merry, and the cheeks of Louis Charles are pink from the summer heat. I think of the golden frieze of playing children that encircles the King’s anteroom, the Oeil-de-Boeuf. Some of the games of the gilded cherubs are peaceful; but some of the boys are playing at war. Suddenly I desire to see the room again and that largely peaceable kingdom of childhood that it depicts. I want to see the seesaw. The children are displayed against a garden lattice of gold, and it reminds me of the playrooms at Schönbrunn, with their tropical and colorful pictures of vegetation and birds. To my surprise, I find that I am thinking in the German language.
It is in his antechamber, where we waited together those long hours when Louis XV was dying, that the King finds me. I have not heard his horses arrive. Since my friends left the court, there is a stillness at Versailles. I do not run to him but glide as silently to him as a ghost.
“So you have returned. It is you.”
The King gives a startled laugh. “Ah, that will be for you to judge—whether it is yet I.”
“You have something colorful in your hand.” I can see the colors blue and white, and then red.
“It is the tricolor cockade. Mayor Bailly, whom I installed, says it is the emblem of the French nation. I think that we would consider it the emblem of the revolution that has now taken place.”
I CANNOT BELIEVE that the King is correct in thinking that a revolution has occurred. I had not thought it possible that the people would want to revolt against a good king—kind, moral, rational—such as my husband. The insane George III of England and the American colonies were quite another matter. The physical barrier of the ocean between the two countries made it much more logical that they should exist as separate states.
Yet in the last century, even within the boundaries of England, the church was challenged and the countryside erupted in bloody revolution. We had thought ourselves much more civilized, in this more advanced century, than the seventeenth-century English.
When I write to inquire of Count Mercy, fled now to the country and protected by guards, he confirms my husband’s words. Written in his own elegant handwriting, Count Mercy’s reply to me reads, “Most certainly there has been such a diminution of the power of the crown that one must acknowledge a revolution has occurred, however unbelievable that may appear.”
WHEN THE RUSSIAN MINISTER in Paris comes out to visit us, I hear him remark in a very respectful fashion that “the Revolution in France has been carried out, and the royal authority annihilated. I mean of course in the form to which we are accustomed.”
“And so the worst is over?” I inquire. I feel both resigned and hopeful.
“I could not go so far as to assure Your Majesties of that idea,” he replies.
Then the King asks, “You would not go so far, if you were I, to advise our friends or the Comte d’Artois to return?”
“No, Your Majesty, I would not,” he replies, taking a pinch of snuff.
“The palace seems haunted now,” I remark. “Haunted with quietness. I have always adored the company of my friends, but now their faces and presence seem more to be valued than words can express.”
The King regards me very sympathetically. “It is necessary to appoint a new governess for the children, since our dear Duchesse de Polignac has arrived in Switzerland.”
I delight in thinking of my dear friend’s safety.
“Yes. The new governess shall be the Marquise de Tourzel. I have already given the matter much thought. She is the mother of five and a paragon of virtue. She will bring her daughter Pauline, who is eighteen, with her.”
THE LAST MONTH of the summer of 1789 continues to pass in a very quiet fashion. Since I no longer have my adult friends, I give myself more fully than ever to the Dauphin and Madame Royale, and to their education. I shall not neglect my daughter’s education the way my own education was neglected, nor do I want the Dauphin to receive more than his share of Madame Tourzel’s instructional attention at the expense of Marie Thérèse. Already my daughter likes to read better than I do. Sometimes she reads aloud to me as I do my needlework.
The Dauphin adores his sister, and he is full of mischief. He has a lively imagination and makes up his own stories—even about us!—while his older sister must be transported by the words of others to any world that is not directly before her eyes.
There are aspects about the characters of both my children that trouble me. Like her father, Marie Thérèse is not so warm or winning as I could wish for her. Certainly, at age nine, she has become less selfish as she has grown older, but she still has a haughtiness about her at times. But I know she would not be indifferent to my death. She loves her family; I am one of her possessions, and she would not want to lose me.
The Dauphin’s sensibility is entirely suitable for his age, but he needs to learn to distinguish between fact and fiction. He lacks tact and discretion, though that too is partly a matter of being still less than five years old. Indeed, the world I knew at his age has almost evaporated from my memory, it was so insubstantial. His nerves are not so steady as I would like. He prefers cats to dogs, especially if they are sizable or if they bark loudly. The dogs themselves seem somewhat nervous these days, however.
Ah, I remember my mother saying how she preferred calm, wise dogs to nervous, yippy ones, no matter how cute. I remember using some of the big dogs of Schönbrunn almost like cushions.
Summer has yielded to fall, but it is still warm enough to enjoy being outdoors in the gardens of my Petit Trianon. Count von Fersen writes me that he will return just as September turns into October.
5 October
Ah, he comes to me in the château and he comes to me here at the Petit Trianon, he the most innately noble, the most handsome, the most kind and good and loving—ah, yes, above all, loving—man in the world.
He has made this most terrible year into one of bliss. I call those moments “islands of timelessness,” for when he is with me, we are out of time and space and into a realm that surely partakes of eternity. In his company, there is no world but the loving nonmaterial tissue of love itself; perhaps it is like being unborn when the world is perfect and all needs are satisfied, yet I feel no sense of enclosure or confinement.
Today I return to the very best of nests: to the moss-lined grotto. I can see my Petit Trianon from here and imagine the simple elegance of its interior. Perhaps my own house is inside me as much as I dwell in it. But here within the rocks, where a waterfall falls more naturally than any fountain, where the moss is the best of mattresses, where the space defined is so perfectly artificial that it is the very essence of nature—here, today, I will dream of the bliss of the days that have come before.
It is almost the noon hour, and even the time of day pleases me: the morning is swooping toward its apex, when it kisses the sun both hello and farewell, and begins its descent. It is the crest of the wave, the peak of time, and for me the time to daydream, to remember and savor. To be so loved—surely nothing in the material world can compare to the idea of knowing the beloved and being just as fully understood by the beloved. Who can want more?
Not I, not I, not I. I am so content, my being dissolves into a boundarylessness. I am nothing and everything, I am every place and no place. What other word than bliss can describe the conjunction of like minds?
Égalité is one of their words, but they know only its bitter meaning, only the lack of it, and never its perfect realization, which is only to be experienced privately away from the appraising world. Liberté? The heart is always at liberty—the sudden spark of feeling, the quick jet of passion, the mellow glow of satiated love. In all these states, the heart has its independence and will not be governed. The great secret is that all the conventions of society can be satisfied, and still the heart is at liberty. The heart knows what it knows, and it knows when it is met in a rapture of recognition.
And what else do they demand? Fraternité
. No. Amour. Surely everyone knows that. I sink my fingernails into the cool moss and feel silly. Never mind fraternité—it is so ignorant of sororité! Sisterhood is all-helping, all-vanquishing of domination. Fraternity? They might as well go hunting. As they do go.
Only this I do not understand of Fersen—why he wishes to be a soldier. Why he has been willing to risk his life and our happiness in order to impose the masculine will on whatever it sees. But he does not impose his will on me, any more than I on him. We come and go as we please. And when he is absent, the moment of my awareness of him is just the same as when he is present. We are the perfect friends.
This transcendence of separation is what I learned from our letters to each other. The marks on the page that bring his mind into the habitat of my mind represent his mood and his being in a truthful way, one that is always affirmed when he himself appears. Is there anything so luxurious as long conversations? They are the true hallmark of friendship. Almost, through the words of my own thoughts, I can imagine him into being now—just as he recently was. I can envision him standing in a shaft of light that enters this grotto through a crevice in the rocks.
Now I look out—for this slit was made exactly for this purpose—to see while not being seen.
And I see someone approaching. A messenger from the outside world.
WHEN I ARRIVE at the château, I learn a messenger has been sent on a fast horse to find the King, who is hunting. Here are the Comte and Comtesse de Provence, and Madame Elisabeth, and the emissary of the minister of the household, all speaking at once: the people of Paris are marching on Versailles.
Why?
They fear a bread famine now, because the old harvest is used up and the new one not yet ready. They fear a counterrevolution led by the King, using the new troops that have come to Versailles, and they wish to put us in Paris where they can supervise us.