Виктория Холт - Flaunting, Extravagant Queen

‘Well, Louis, my brother,’ he said, ‘this has been a delightful time for me. It is pleasant to see my sister in her home and to know that she has such a good fellow for a husband.’

‘I thank you, Joseph,’ began Louis.

But Joseph held up a hand. ‘You know, speaking as brother to brother, you would be more of a conversationalist if you practised talking more. You are inclined to let others do all the talking, Louis. You should make one of these ministers of yours listen while you talk. Don’t let the people shout you down.’

‘I … began Louis.

‘It’s quite simple,’ pursued Joseph. ‘Shut them up … just shut them up. There is one matter which greatly disturbs me, Louis. Now we must be very frank together. Well, after all, are we not brothers? I will make no secret of the fact; it is on account of this matter that you now see me here in France. The Queen is too frivolous, and it is clear that she is plunging into so much gaiety because she lacks more important pastimes. The Queen should be thinking of her children, Louis, not her gambling debts.’

‘If it were only possible,’ murmured the King. ‘It is the great grief of her life … and mine.’

‘Now, Louis, let us consider this disability of yours. Tell me all about it. Speak frankly. I am your elder brother, you know. Feel no embarrassment. There is too much at stake for embarrassment. There are operations – simple operations, you know – and our doctors have skill, greater skill than ever before. A little circumcision and then … all would be well, if what I have heard ails you is the truth.’

The Emperor took his embarrassed brother-in-law by the shoulders and shook him affectionately.

‘Now, Louis, have I your word that you will submit to an examination? But of course I have. You cannot so fail in your duty as to fail me … and your Queen and your country. We will give orders immediately, and the operation shall be performed.’ Joseph gave the King of France one of his hearty bourgeois slaps on the back. ‘Then I doubt not that all will be well in France.’

And such was the persuasive power of the Emperor that, before he left Paris, the operation had been performed.

It was not long after, that Antoinette was writing to her mother:

‘I have attained the happiness which is of the utmost importance to my whole life. More than a week ago my marriage was thoroughly consummated. Yesterday the attempt was repeated. I was in mind to send a special messenger to my beloved mother, but I was afraid this might attract too much attention and gossip. I don’t think that I am with child yet, but at any rate I have hopes of becoming so from day to day.’

* * *

The Court was seething with excitement.

‘Have you heard … ?’

‘It was that petite opération …’

‘Is it really so?’

‘Indeed yes. Have you not noticed the dark circles under the Queen’s eyes?’

It was indeed so. The King could not resist talking about it. He was so delighted.

Adelaide was at his side; the other two aunts not far off.

‘Dear Louis, but there is a change in you. You are a deeply contented man.’

‘I am indeed a contented man, dear aunt.’

‘It was … perhaps the petite opération?’

All the aunts came a little nearer. Three pairs of eyes studied him intently; they were like gimlets trying to probe his head, uncover the thoughts behind his eyes.

‘Yes, aunt, yes. It gives me great pleasure.’

‘It gives him great pleasure,’ said Adelaide to her sisters when they were alone. ‘Depend upon it, it will not be long before the marriage is fertile.’

Provence and Josèphe shared a great fear. Could it possibly be true? And if it were, there would be an end to hope, an end to ambition.

‘Watch the Queen,’ said Provence. ‘Watch her as we never watched her before.’

The Spanish Ambassador, the Sardinian Ambassador, the English Ambassador, were writing long letters to their governments.

The whole Court was waiting.

Provence breathed a little more easily. It was becoming clear that the new pleasure, discovered by Louis, did not appeal quite so much as hunting or making locks. A good sign. A very good sign.

Maria Theresa wrote frantic letters to her daughter. ‘Make sure that you retire early, at the time the King retires. Do not stay in your single bed at Petit Trianon.’

Then one day there was a certain brooding serenity visible in the Queen’s face. She was absentminded when people spoke to her. She had given up dancing through the night; and she no longer seemed interested in cards.

All noticed it, except the King. He was therefore surprised when one morning the Queen stormed unceremoniously into his apartments.

She frowned and stamped her foot.

‘I have come, Sire,’ she cried, ‘to complain. One of your subjects has been impertinent enough to kick me in the belly.’

Louis stared at her in momentary alarm; then great floods of joy swept over him.

The tears sprang to his eyes and he held out his arms.

They kissed, embraced, and kissed again, their tears mingling.

‘It is the happiest moment of my life,’ said Antoinette. ‘There can only be one happier. That will be when I hold our Dauphin in my arms.’

Louis was silent, but that was because words did not come easily to him. His joy was no less than hers.

That was a happy summer and autumn for the Queen. She spent a great deal of time at her Petit Trianon; now she could watch the children playing on the grass with quiet pleasure, for soon there would be a royal child to play on that grass, to come running to her, to pull at her skirts and demand bonbons. A Dauphin! She was sure the child would be a Dauphin.

There were so many pleasant matters with which to occupy her mind, and she discussed them continually with Gabrielle and the Princesse de Lamballe.

‘He shall not be swaddled, my little Dauphin,’ she declared. ‘That is not good. It is old-fashioned and we shall employ no old-fashioned methods for Monsieur le Dauphin. He shall have everything that is modern. They say that children nowadays should be carried in a light cradle or in one’s arms, and that little by little they should be put in the open air and sunshine. And when they have grown accustomed to it they may be in it all the time – little legs and arms free that they may kick at will. That is the way to make them strong. I shall have a little railing built on the terrace, and there the Dauphin will have his own little kingdom. There he shall stand on his dear little legs and walk and grow strong.’

They listened to her; they discussed the garments he should wear; they planned the whole of his days. There was nothing which delighted the Queen more.

‘There is only one thing that plagues me,’ she said. ‘Monsieur le Dauphin, you are so long in coming.’

She could not feel very interested in anything else. When Artois made his customary bow to the stately statue of Louis Quatorze in the Orangerie at Versailles and cried: ‘Bonjour, Grandpapa,’ she no longer thought it as funny as she had hitherto. When the Prince de Ligne suggested he should hide behind the statue and, immediately after Artois uttered his greeting, reply to it in hollow tones to give the irreverent Artois a shock, she was only vaguely interested.

It was so difficult to think of anything but the Dauphin.

Little James Armand noticed the change in her. He would stand at her side, leaning fondly against her, his anxious eyes looking up into the beautiful face; for while she caressed his hair he sensed an absentmindedness in those delicate fingers, and a great fear came to him that even while she touched him, even while she smiled, her thoughts were far away.

‘Come back,’ he would say in panic. ‘Come back.’

Then she smiled. ‘What do you mean, my dear? Come back? I am here, am I not?’

‘You are going far away,’ he said.

‘You are an odd little boy, Monsieur James,’ she told him.

She noticed that his hand clutched her sleeve as it had that day when she had gone into his grandmother’s cottage; and she told him about the baby she was to have.

‘I have so longed for a baby. And now I am to have one.’

‘You have your Monsieur James,’ he reminded her. ‘Is he not enough?’

She laughed. ‘I am so greedy. And I love my Monsieur James so much that I could do with twenty like him.’

That made the boy laugh. But later she would find him standing in a corner, listening to the talk about the expected baby, a faint frown between his eyes.

She would call to him and make much of him, give him sweetmeats, those which he liked best. But he was disturbed, for he wanted more than sweetmeats.

It was during this period that Comte Hans Axel de Fersen came to the Court.

He was brought to her in the salon at the Palace of Versailles while she was with the King and surrounded by members of the Court.

As he knelt before her he saw the sudden recognition dawn in her eyes.

She spoke without thinking: ‘Ah, this is an old acquaintance. Welcome to the Court, Comte de Fersen.’

He murmured: ‘Your Majesty is gracious.’

The King scarcely noticed him. His mind was occupied with state matters. His enemies, the English, were at this time engaged in war with their colonists in America, and this war could prove of the utmost importance to France.

‘It pleases me to see you here,’ the Queen told the Comte. She was remembering that night at the Opéra ball and how bold this man had been; how he had snatched off her mask and known her for the Dauphine, as she had been then.