Виктория Холт - The Queen`s Confession

I named her after my mother. She was called Marie Therese Charlotte; but she was known from the beginning throughout the Court as Madame Royale.

Couriers were dispatched. My husband himself wrote at once to Vienna; and throughout Paris there was general rejoicing, with processions and bonfires; the sky was so bright that all through the night it was like day; and the sounds of fireworks and gun salutes filled the palace.

Everything was going as it should, after that first ordeal when I had been unable to breathe in that overpopulated room. The people crowded round the palace to demand how I was and bulletins were issued daily.

I was tremendously happy. I had my baby and the people were so interested in my welfare that they demanded constant news of my health. The King was in ecstasies. He was so delighted to be a father; he kept coming into the nursery to see his daughter and marvel at her.

“What a darling she is!” he kept murmuring under his breath.

“Look at these fingers…. She even has nails, ten of them, and they are perfect . perfect’ I laughed at him but I felt exactly the same. I too wanted to look at her all the time, to marvel at her; my own daughter, my very ownl We were young. We would have many children yet. The next would be a Dauphin. I was certain of it.

Meanwhile the birth of Madame Royale must be celebrated.

A strange incident occurred a few days after the birth of my baby. The Cure of the Madeleine de la Cite called at the palace and asked to see Monsieur Campan. When alone with Monsieur Campan the Cure produced a box which he said had been given to him in the confessional, so he could not reveal the name of the person who had given it to him.

Inside the box was a ring, which, so the confession ran, had been stolen from me that it might be used in sorcery to prevent my having children.

Monsieur Campan brought the ring to me, which I recognised as one I had lost seven years ago.

“WE should try to discover who has done this,” said Monsieur Campan.

“Oh, let it be. I have the ring, and the sorceries were not successful. I do not fear them.”

“Madame, would you not wish to know one who was such an enemy?”

I shook my head.

“I would prefer not to know those who hate me so much.” I could see that Monsieur Campan did not agree with this and thought we should have made some endeavour to discover our enemies, but my dislike of trouble prevailed and I gave orders that the matter should be forgotten.

Perhaps once again I was wrong. Perhaps had I pursued the inquiries

Monsieur Campan thought I should make, I might have discovered some enemies who were living very close to me.

I quickly forgot all about the ring; there were so many other more amusing things to occupy me. The King and I were to go to Paris for my churching. On this day one hundred poor girls were married and I gave them all a dowry. When I arrived at the church they were all assembled there with their hair most unnaturally curled and they were married in Notre Dame. We arrived in the King’s carriage with the trumpeters going on ahead to announce us and twenty-four footmen resplendent in the royal livery and six pages on horseback. The Prcv6t came to the door of the carriage and made a speech to which the King replied.

The procession passed through Paris. On a balcony in the Rue St.

Honore, Rose Bertin had lined up her assistants and stood at the head of them. They all dropped fine curtsies as we passed. From Notre Dame we went to Sainte Genevieve and on to La Place Louis XV; and although many people came out to watch us there were hardly any cheers.

I was bewildered. What did they want? They had had their fireworks, buffets of cold meat and wine; certain prisoners had been liberated;

the “brides had had their dowries. I had given the first of the Enfants de France. What was wrong with them? Why this cold reception?

Why these sullen looks?

When we returned to the chateau I summoned Mercy and told him of our reception.

He nodded gravely. Of course he had heard of it already.

“It is incredible,” I said.

“What do they want?”

He answered: “They have heard much of your extravagances. There have been many scandalous stories. Hardly a day passes when a new song and a rhyme about you is not being circulated. Your Ugerete, your dissipation, are the cause of this. This is a time of war, but you think only of amusing yourself. That is why the people are against you I was hurt and a little frightened. It had been alarming to ride through those crowded silent streets.

“I will be different,” I said firmly.

“I will give up these too conspicuous amusements. I am a mother now..

..” I meant it. I wanted to.

My mother wrote from Vienna, she was delighted that I had come safely through childbirth and that my daughter was healthy.

“But we must have a Dauphin,” she wrote.

I was indeed, as my brother Joseph had said, a featherhead. The incident of the ring should have warned me that I had enemies close to me who felt it important that I should remain infertile. I should have been warned by the sullen looks of the people. There was a war in progress and wars mean increased taxation and hard living for the people; and when they hear stories of a Queen’s extravagance, and actually see evidence of it with their own eyes, they become resentful. No, that is too mild a word. They become murderous with hate. I was blamed for their poverty, I, the silly little Queen, who thought of nothing but dancing and buying fine clothes and jewels. The King bad given hundreds of examples of his care for the poor; he even dressed more soberly than most of the Court gallants. But he was under my spell; he gave way to me as a doting husband will to a pretty wife. My absorption with amusements and indifference to their needs were responsible for the high price of bread; and I was a foreigner.

They began to call me the Austrian Woman. What right had I a foreigner and an Austrian at that to come to France and presume to rule the French ! A spate of lampoons showered over Paris. Every careless little act of mine was turned into an example of extravagance, indifference to the people, and, chiefly, obscenity. I only had to address a word to a man and he was my lover; I only had to smile at a woman and my relations with her were un natural.

I knew all this. I could not help knowing it. But I shrugged it aside, as I had been shrugging aside warnings all my life.

I seemed to have a genius for making enemies and selecting friends who could only add to my troubles. I made excuses for myself by saying that I was just an ordinary woman thrust into an extraordinary role which I had not the ability to play; but perhaps I should say I lacked the concentration to play, because had I been serious, had I listened to the warnings of my true friends the King, my mother. Mercy and Vermond, and in her small way my dear Campan I might have turned my course even at this time. Yes, I am sure there was time then. I was on the down hill path; I had started to trip blithely down but I had not yet begun that headlong rush from which it was impossible to stop myself.

Perhaps if my husband had been different. But I should not blame him.

His education had been neglected; he had never been taught anything of the intricacies of statecraft. I remember often how when he first knew he was King he had cried: “They have taught me nothing!” And his grandfather, Louis XV, seeing that his own end could noi be far off, had remarked, “I can see the working of this state machine, but I do not see what will become of it when I am gone and how Berry will extricate himself.” My poor husband, so kind and yet so ineffectual except in those rare moments when he threw aside his doubts of himself as he could do.

But at this time I saw none of this. Scurrilous verses. Lies. Scandals. There had always been plenty of them. It did not occur to me to wonder who it was who was circulating them. It did not occur to me that it might be my own brothers-in-law, my sisters-in-law, Conde, Conti, Orleans, those Princes whom I had offended.

The wild dance towards destruction had begun, but I was unaware of it.

There was so much to make me happy. There was my darling little daughter. There was Axel de Fersen, haunting me like a shadow, always at my side, or even if he were not close to me I was aware of his glances across the room; there was the King, for ever grateful because I had given proof of his virility, always kind and tender but never so much as now; there was the adored Trianon which was gradually changing its character and losing all sign of the house in which Louis XV had entertained his mistresses. It was my house. I was changing the gardens. I was having the library painted white and had had great fun choosing my apple-green taffeta curtains. The bookshelves were lined with plays, for I intended to give plays at the Trianon. I had such plans. I was building a theatre there and I was already planning whom I should invite to join my little troupe of players. I never thought of the cost of this. I never thought of money at all. I would demand that the work be finished in record time.

“No cost should be spared, Madame?”

“No. Finish it, that’s all.” In a year my embellishments to the Petit Trianon had cost over three hundred and fifty thousand livres. And the country was at war; and the people of Paris were complaining of the price of bread I Perhaps I had indeed started that mad downhill rush.

But I was happy. Two months after the birth of my baby I felt a great urge to go to the Opera ball. It was Shrove Sunday and I told Louis that I longed to dance there. In his uxorious mood be said he would come with me.

“And you will go masked?” I asked.

He said he would and we went together; no one recognised us and we mingled freely among the dancers, though always together. But I could see that he was bored.

“Please, Louis,” I said, ‘let us go to the next ball, which is on Shrove Tuesday. It has been such fun tonight. “

Weakly, as he often did, he agreed; but on the Monday he pleaded an excess of state business. I was so disappointed that he immediately said I should go with one of my ladies, but I should take care not to be recognised. I chose the Princesse d’Henin, an inoffensive woman,” and arranged that we should drive to the house of the Due de Coigny in Paris, where we should change into an ordinary carriage which he would have waiting for us. Everything had been arranged at such short notice that the carriage, which must necessarily have no distinguishing marks on it, was old and unfit for service. It was, the Due told us, the only one he could acquire at short notice without disclosing for whom it was intended. Consequently the thing broke down before we reached the Opera. Our footman said that he would call a fiacre and the Princesse and I had to go into a shop while he did so. This was amusing to me because I had never before ridden in a public vehicle and I could not resist boasting of it to my friends. How foolish I was! It was the ideal basis on which to build a scandalous story. The Queen travelled about Paris in a fiacre. She called at the house of the Due de Coigny! For what purpose? Could there be any doubt? This was known as Faventure du fiacre, and there were various versions of it.