‘You find me changed,’ she said. ‘Different from the Dauphine with whom you danced.’

‘I find you changed … yet the same. I find you perfect, although I had thought the Dauphine that. Should I not pass on now? We are being closely watched.’

‘A plague on their watching eyes. They watch me continually. If I dismiss you that would surely be wrong, for everything I do is wrong in the eyes of those determined to condemn me. I merely have to do it to make it so. Therefore I will be wrong in commanding you to stay, for I surely should be if I dismissed you.’

‘Your Majesty is a very happy woman,’ he said wistfully.

‘I am to have a child and I have longed for a child. I have been wildly happy since I knew it was to be so. Now … an old friend, or one whom I think of as an old friend, returns. That makes me happier still. Do not worry about staying beside me. The King is busy with his ministers. They talk endlessly of this war between England and her colonists in America.’

‘French sympathies are with the settlers,’ he said.

‘Of a certainty. French sympathies are always contrary to English sympathies.’

‘Throughout France many are saying, Good luck to those who rise against the English crown.’

‘I know. Joseph, my brother who was here recently, was disturbed by such talk. When people praised those who were rebelling against the English crown he would grow a little angry, I must confess. Only, being Joseph, he never showed it. He used to say: “Mon métier est d’être royaliste,” in his very curt crisp way which seemed to announce: “I, the Emperor, say this; therefore it must be so.” Dear Joseph! He is the best brother in the world, but I cannot help laughing at him.’

Fersen laughed with her because her laughter was so infectious.

He told himself then: It was a mistake to come back to the Court. If she were Dauphine then, she is Queen now. She is even further away.

Antoinette kept him at her side until she left the salon for her apartments.

Josèphe and Thérèse were watching. They decided that the very next day they would visit the aunts at the Château of Bellevue where they were now installed. They would be able to talk of the Queen’s outrageous behaviour with the Comte de Fersen. It was a pity of course that the Comte had not been in Paris a little earlier. Then they might have started the rumour that the Queen’s condition might not have so much to do with the petit opération as most people had been deceived into thinking.

Still, it was always pleasant to gossip at Bellevue, where were gathering now all the disgruntled men and women of Versailles who were determined firmly to establish the growing unpopularity of the Queen.


* * *

Fersen must be a guest at the Petit Trianon; he must dance with the Queen on the lawn at her informal parties. ‘We stand on little ceremony here,’ the Queen told him. ‘This is our escape from Versailles. We must have our escape. The solemnity of the Court is something I could not endure all the time.’

Therefore dancing on the lawn was yet another reminder to them both of dancing at the Opéra ball in Paris.

Fersen had been deeply attracted by Antoinette from the first moment he had seen her. Within a few days after his arrival at Court he was deeply in love with her.

Antoinette was charmed with him; he was so handsome, so attractive, and so much in love. He moved her to a deeper emotion than Lauzun ever had; but her mind was largely occupied by the child she would have, and she was not by nature a promiscuous woman. Her physical desires were moderate; she had been afraid of her relationship with Lauzun because of the state of affairs between herself and Louis at that time; and the continual reproaches of her mother and those about her, on account of her failure to produce a Dauphin, had given her those affectations nerveuses of which Mercy had thought it necessary to write to her mother and which had been mainly instrumental in bringing about the visit of Joseph.

Fersen was wise.

Once before he had disappeared from her life; now he felt that the need to do so was even more urgent.

He spoke to her one day as he sat with her and some of the members of that little entourage of intimates assembled in the garden of Trianon.

‘Your Majesty,’ he said, ‘I shall soon be leaving the Court.’

She was startled and, he was delighted to see, deeply disappointed.

‘Monsieur de Fersen,’ she cried imperiously. ‘You must not leave us. We should miss you too sadly. You must not go back to Sweden. We shall not allow it.’

He lifted those handsome eyes to hers – for she was sitting on her chair which was like a throne, and her courtiers were ranged about her on the grass – and he said slowly: ‘Your Majesty, I am not going to Sweden. I am going to America.’

‘To … to fight!’

‘To fight against the forces of the King of England,’ he said. ‘To help in the fight for freedom.’

‘You shall not!’ she cried; and tears filled her eyes. She was silent for a while; then she went on: ‘But if it is what you wish … then you must do it.’


* * *

She was saddened. Her eyes followed him, and many noticed that they were filled with tears as she did so.

The Princesse de Lamballe begged her not to show her feelings for the young man so openly.

‘People are watching you all the time. Your sisters-in-law lose no opportunity of maligning you.’

‘I know it,’ said Antoinette. ‘And they are more angry with me still now that I am to have my Dauphin. But what do I care!’

‘You must care,’ said the Princesse. ‘They can do so much harm.’

‘I cannot help feeling sad when I see Axel. He will soon be far away, and I like my friends about me. It is so sad to think that soon he may be dying on some battlefield because he has interfered in a cause which is not his own.’

‘He has said that it is the cause of freedom, the cause of righteousness.’

‘I believe he is going away because he is afraid of staying here, because of the slander that is being spoken against us.’

‘Then he is wise to go,’ said the Princesse.

‘I am unlucky to be treated as I am,’ said Antoinette sadly. Then she laughed. ‘But if it is malicious of people to presume I take lovers, it is certainly very odd of me to have so many attributed to me and yet to do without them!’

The Princesse laughed with her; but Antoinette continued sad, contemplating the departure of Fersen.

And even after he had gone she thought a great deal about him until her mind was entirely occupied with her approaching confinement.


* * *

During the evenings she would walk on the terrace of the château with her friends. The summer had been unusually hot and Antoinette had spent the days resting, doing fine needlework while she listened to music and talked of the Dauphin. Therefore it was pleasant in the cool of the evening to walk on the terrace which was illuminated with fairy lights. Music would be playing in the Orangerie; the old custom was that at such times the people of Versailles might have free admittance into the château grounds and even to the terraces.

The Queen, with her ladies, was dressed in white muslin with a big straw hat and veil which were the fashion and were copied by many. Thus, as they sat or strolled on the terrace and the people wandered freely about, many would speak to the Queen without knowing who she was.

One night as she sat there a man came and stood beside her.

‘What a beautiful night!’ he said, and took a chair next to hers.

‘It is very beautiful,’ she replied.

She believed that he did not know who she was, for he was clearly of the tradesman class. She did not wish to humiliate him, so promised herself that she would say a few words then murmur that she must go and immediately leave him.

He was watching her intently.

‘There is not a lady in Versailles as beautiful as you,’ declared the man ardently.

‘It is kind of you to say so,’ she said. ‘Pray excuse me now. I must join my family.’

She rose and looking about her saw her sisters-in-law standing not far off, watching.

‘Let us go now,’ she said to them.

Josèphe, seeing what had happened, came hurrying up.

‘Your Majesty has tired yourself,’ she said audibly; and her gleaming eyes were on the man.

She saw the smile touch his lips, and she knew that from the beginning he had been aware of the Queen’s identity.

Antoinette took Josèphe’s arm and they walked away. Josèphe later was gleeful as she recounted the incident to Provence. It was quite clear that many were beginning to believe in the légèreté of the Queen.


* * *

At last December came, and the whole Court was in a state of great excitement.

Many times during the day the King was making his way to the Queen’s apartments at the southern end of the Grande Galerie.

He was demanding to know how she was. Should she not rest more? Was there anything she desired?

He would question her ladies anxiously. Did the Queen seem a little tired? Did they think she was taking enough exercise? Too much exercise? One of them must send the accoucheur to his apartment. He wished to question both accoucheur and doctors immediately.

‘The Queen is in good spirits, Your Majesty,’ he was told. ‘And all is as it should be.’

But it was difficult for Louis to satisfy himself.

‘I could wish,’ he told the doctors, ‘that we could dispense with the ancient and barbaric customs which prevail at the Court at such times. It is monstrous that the people – not only my own family but any French subject – have the right to enter the lying-in chamber while the Queen gives birth to an enfant de France.’

The doctors agreed with the King; but etiquette – and particularly at such a time – must be preserved. The King knew that it was very necessary in this case, for although he had heard less than any of the rumours concerning Antoinette and himself which were circulating throughout the Court and the country, he could well imagine what would be said if he refused to allow witnesses into the lying-in chamber. In view of the long barren years it would surely be said that the child was not the King’s and Queen’s after all; that there was no royal birth. There had been such rumours before.

‘However,’ he said, ‘I have decided that the screens surrounding the bed shall be fastened with cords so that they cannot be overthrown by the crowds.’

In the early hours of that December morning Antoinette woke and called out to her women that she felt the first of her pains.

The news spread throughout the Palace. All the bells were ringing to summon the relatives of the royal family who were either in Paris or Versailles awaiting the event. Pages and equerries were galloping to Paris and Saint-Cloud to bring their employers to the château.

Antoinette’s ladies-in-waiting, headed by the Princesse de Lamballe and the Duchesse de Guémenée, arranged themselves about her bed.

‘Marie,’ whispered Antoinette, clinging to the hand of the Princesse, ‘as soon as my child is born, let me know if … it is a boy.’

‘It will be a boy,’ the Princesse assured her.

‘It must be a boy,’ said Antoinette, her face contorted with sudden pain.

‘Cling to me,’ said the Princesse. ‘The doctors and the accoucheur will be here very soon.’

‘I do not complain of these pains,’ said Antoinette. ‘I welcome them. It cannot be long now, Marie. Oh, pray that it cannot be long.’

Behind the screen the Princes and Princesses, the royal Dukes and Duchesses, noblemen and women of high rank sat waiting. Behind them the townsfolk crowded in as was their privilege. They stood on chairs that they might see beyond the screens; they jostled each other and shouted.

It was a strange scene – there in that stately room, the ceiling of which was decorated by Boucher and the walls with Gobelins tapestry. The young Queen writhed on her bed, now and then uttering a shriek of agony, and all under the watchful eyes, not only of the members of her family, but any who had been quick enough to force a way into the bedchamber.

Outside the bedchamber in the Salon de la Paix with its beautiful decorations and gilded doors the crowd massed. In the Grande Galerie they pressed against one another and cursed that ill-fortune which had made them too late to get a place in the lying-in chamber itself.