James Armand had indeed found interests. He was often with the servants, listening to their talk; sometimes they took him to the cafés in the Palais Royal. There he listened to the talk. He discovered a new emotion – hatred of Madame Royale and the Dauphin. In the Palais Royal there were gathered others who knew how to hate. They hated the Queen more fiercely than any, and James Armand began to consider that hatred.

Meanwhile Axel’s father was alarmed. He approached his King and asked that his son might be recalled to Sweden; and the result was a summons from King Gustavus.

Axel went to the Queen and begged a private interview, and as soon as she looked into his eyes she saw his distress.

‘What is it?’ she asked fearfully.

‘A summons home.’

‘Oh, no! We must prevent that. You must not go from here.’

She held out her hands impulsively and as impulsively he took them; he kissed them fervently.

She smiled through her tears. ‘There are times,’ she said, ‘when even Swedish reserve may be broken down.’

He said: ‘How shall I endure the days without seeing you?’

Her answer was quiet but as impassioned as his. ‘How shall I endure mine?’

‘Antoinette,’ he said. ‘You know …’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You love me. I know it, and it delights me because I love you also.’

‘This summons, to come now!’

‘You must stay here. A post must be found for you.’

‘This summons comes from my King.’

‘Then there shall be another from a Queen.’

‘You are impulsive,’ he said. ‘Were you not ever so? Oh, if I stayed what would become of us?’

She cried: ‘I do not ask for anything … only that you stay.’

He smiled at her tenderly. ‘To see you thus before me … confirms me in my belief that I must go.’

‘If you stayed

‘We should be lovers in very truth. That is an impossible situation. You … the Queen of France! All eyes watch you. Do you not know that?’

‘I have been innocent.’

‘Innocent you must remain. What if you were … guilty?’

‘I would not care,’ she cried. ‘Why should I care? They have falsely credited me with so many lovers. Why should I not have one in truth?’

‘Your Majesty is distraught.’

‘I will not let you go. Why should I let you go? I love you. Why should I not know this pleasure, as others have? For years I have been frustrated …’

‘There is the King.’

‘Oh, the King. My poor Louis! I am fond of Louis. Who could help but be fond of Louis! In the beginning … You do not know. I will not talk of that. But how could I love Louis as … I now know love?’

‘Antoinette,’ he said, ‘the people must not have a chance to spread new slanders.’

‘They spread them in any case. Let me give them just cause for once.’

‘No. No. Never forget you are Queen of France, Antoinette.’

‘Axel, what sort of a lover are you? You tell me you love me, and forbid me to love you in the next breath.’

It was too much for him. He held her in his arms. But he was so much wiser than she was. He had recently come from the conflict of war. He had learned much about greed and cruelty, malice and envy – particularly envy. He saw the Queen – the woman he loved – as a target for her enemies, a fragile target. He knew that he dared not disobey his King; he knew that for Antoinette’s sake he must not stay another night in France. He took his leave, and that night he left for his own country.


* * *

The Queen was preparing to make the journey to Notre Dame that she might give thanks for the recovery from her confinement. It was a year since Axel had gone away, and a great deal had happened in that year.

He had been right, of course, to go. If he had stayed, neither of them would have been able to stem that passion which was between them. Its fruition must have been as inevitable as its beginnings. Axel was a man whom she could love; he was strong; he was competent; and beneath his calm was an ardent passion; he had everything that she would wish for in a husband, all of which Louis lacked.

And now she had another child, who did much to soothe her. He was a boy, and it was clear from the first that he was as healthy as a young peasant. She thought sadly of the child’s elder brother who grew more wan each day. She feared that he was a victim of the wasting disease which from time to time attacked the Bourbons.

Dear little Louis Joseph! She prayed for him constantly. The rude health of little Louis Charles, while it delighted her, yet saddened her because it must remind her of Louis Joseph.

And now she must ride to the cathedral of Notre Dame; and she was beginning to dread her excursions into Paris. This time the birth of a son would not regain for her her lost popularity. There would be many in the streets to repeat that wicked verse against her and the new child. Whose child this time? they would be asking.

At such times she longed fiercely for Axel. If he had remained and they had become lovers, she would have been glad. She wanted to shout at those who slandered her, ‘Yes, I have a lover. You are right. I have a lover.’

But all she did was to pass among them, her head high, never for once losing her look of haughty disdain which infuriated them more than anything.

What a long year it had seemed since he had gone. And when would he return? Would he ever return?

At first there had been nothing to do but seek to be gay. The days had been so dreary: to sit for her portraits by Madame Elisabeth Vigée le Brun who painted her and her children so charmingly and in so many different poses; to play with her children; to dance a little, to gamble. She had been glad she had her theatre. There was forgetfulness to be found in watching the comedies and tragedies enacted before her eyes. There was great fun too in taking part in them. Often she and Artois would play together, for her younger brother-in-law was not unlike her in temperament. She was glad of his company during that time, although of course the rumours concerning their relationship were revived.

Yet, whoever she had with her, there would be scandal. She was reputed to be not only the lover of men but of women. Madame de Polignac and the Princesse de Lamballe had not escaped the scandal which accompanied the Queen wherever she went.

Calonne had been appointed to the ministry; he was a friend of the Polignacs. His idea for the recovery of the country’s finances was further loans; he believed that all France needed was confidence in her position, and that the spending of money on public services would give this confidence. ‘We are prosperous,’ people would say to one another; and the baker would spend with the candlestick-maker, and the butcher with the tailor. Hence prosperity would return to France. When he decided to build roads and bridges, the people were impressed. But that winter was harder than ever before, and there was a great deal of suffering throughout the land.

Necker wached the new minister’s activities with a sneer. Borrowing was not the way to success. He published a new book: Administrations of the Finances of France. In it he deplored Calonne’s policy, and so Calonne prevailed upon Louis to exile the banker.

Necker left, but the people’s suspicions were then thoroughly aroused. They began to distrust the glib Calonne and, as soon as they did so, they remembered that the man whom they had praised when he was spending borrowed money for public works, was a friend of the Polignacs.

Now they cried: ‘Calonne! He is the Queen’s man!’

When the Grand Duke Paul of Russia visited France he was delighted with the French theatre and expressed a desire to see acted on the French stage a play he had recently read. This was Beaumarchais’ Le Mariage de Figaro, a play which Beaumarchais had already tried to have played, but which had been banned by the King, for Figaro, the pert barber and central character, was the mouthpiece of Beaumarchais’ views on existing society in France, and many of the King’s advisers had been astute enough to see that the playwright was making fun of the nobility; and that if the sober citizens of Paris saw the play and brooded on Figaro’s observations, they would certainly come out of the theatre with less respect than ever before for those whom tradition had taught them to believe were their betters.

‘Keep Figaro off the stage,’ Louis had been advised; and he had accepted that advice.

The Polignac faction, always anxious to show its power with the Queen, and never more than now when they felt they were losing it, had declared in favour of the piece, and they implored Antoinette to use her influence with the King.

Louis read the play through with her, pointing out the allusions to the government and the nobility. Antoinette was disappointed that he would not give his permission, and Artois, who thought of nothing but frivolous pleasure, longed to see the play performed. He fancied himself in the role of Figaro. He declared that the King often changed his mind, and suggested that plans for production should go on.

Louis, however, was determined to be firm in this instance, and stopped the show a few hours before the curtain was to rise.

Then Vaudreuil and his mistress, Gabrielle, determined to do the play privately; and this they did at Vaudreuil’s château at Gennevilliers. The Queen, much as she would have liked to attend, and much as she wanted some such pleasure to turn her mind from her longing for Axel and her fears for her son, decided that since the play was being performed against the wishes of the King she could not do so. Artois came back to Court and with Vaudreuil and Gabrielle began to sing the play’s praises.