The Queen's Confession Part 22

Madame Vigee-LeBrun was painting my portrait. She was a charming dainty creature and I was attracted to her. I liked to chat with her while she worked. I watched the picture grow on her canvas and one day I said: "If I were not a Queen, one would say that I looked insolent, do you not think so?"

She turned the remark aside as one not expecting an answer. She might have replied that even though I was a Queen, there were many who thought I looked insolent and haughty. The petulant lower lip which had been noticed when my appearance was being so freely discussed by the French envoys at my mother's Court had become more p.r.o.nounced. It was an inheritance from my Hapsburg ancestors. I told Madame Le Brun this and she smilingly replied that she despaired of ever reproducing my complexion.

"It is so fresh, so flawless that I have no colors to match it."

Flattery for a Queen! But I certainly did possess this brilliant complexion and it would be false modesty to deny it.

My clothes were discussed at this time very freely throughout Paris as well as Versailles. It was discovered that I had paid 6000 livres for one dress. Madame Bertin was expensive, I knew, but then she was an artist, the finest couturiere in Paris. It was not that she was my sole dressmaker; she was the designer of my gowns and hats; but I had my sewing women; there were special work people for riding habits and dressing gowns; there were makers of hoops and collarettes, flounces and petticoats.

My extravagances were a popular theme, so I decided that Madame Vigee-LeBrun should paint me in a gaulle, which was a blouse worn by the Creoles. This was as simple as a chemise and made of inexpensive lawn.

Marie Antoinette en chemise, portrait of the queen in a "muslin" dress, by Louise Elisabeth Vigee-LeBrun (1783). This controversial portrait was viewed by her critics to be improper for a queen.

The picture was charming and was exhibited. The people flocked to see it and it soon became apparent that nothing I could do was right.

The Queen was playing at being a chambermaid, was one comment.

What she wishes to do is ruin trade for the silk merchants and weavers of Lyons so that she can help the drapers of Flanders. Are they not her brother's subjects?

That was bad enough. But the most damaging and most significant comment was scribbled under the picture as it hung in the Salon: "France, with the face of Austria, reduced to covering herself with a rag."

CHAPTER 16.

"Provided I don't speak in my writings of authority, religion, of politics, of morality, of the officials of influential bodies, of other spectacles, of anyone who has any claim to anything, I can print anything freely, under the inspection of two or three censors."

"Calumny! You don't know what you are disdaining when you disdain that. I have seen people of the utmost probity laid low by it. Believe me, there is no false report however crude, no abomination, no ridiculous falsehood which the idlers in a great city cannot, if they take the trouble, make universally believed - and here we have t.i.ttle-tattlers who are pastmasters of the art."

-Beaumarchais "The Cardinal has made use of my name like a vile and clumsy forger. It is probable that he did so under pressure and an urgent need for money and believed he would be able to pay the jeweler without anything being discovered."

-Marie Antoinette to the Emperor Joseph The Diamond Necklace IN MAY OF THE YEAR 1785 a great joy came to me when I gave birth to my second son. My confinement was attended with the same ceremony as that which there had been at the birth of my little Dauphin. My husband declared that never again should I be submitted to the danger I had faced at the time of my daughter's birth.

Louis himself came to my bedside and emotionally declared: "We have another little boy!" And there was my dear Gabrielle holding the child in her arms coming to my bed.

I insisted on holding him. A little boy ... a perfect little boy! I wept; the King wept; in fact everyone was weeping with joy.

My husband commanded that messages be sent to Paris with the news. My little son was baptized in Notre Dame by Cardinal de Rohan - as his brother had been - and he was christened Louis-Charles. Te Deums were sung; the tocsins were sounding; the salute of guns was fired.

There was rejoicing in Versailles for four days and nights.

I was so happy. My dreams were coming true. I had two sons and a daughter. I would often bend over the little newcomer as he lay in his beautiful cradle.

"You will be happy, my darling," I told him.

Oh, if I could have foreseen the misery into which I had brought this unfortunate child! How much better if he had never been born!

State Portrait by Vigee-LeBrun (1787) of Marie Antoinette and her three surviving children, Marie Therese, Louis Charles (on her lap), and Louis Joseph, was meant to help her reputation by depicting her as a mother and in simple, yet stately attire.

There was one man whose name was on every lip. It was the author Beaumarchais who had written a play called Le Mariage de Figaro, in which there was tremendous interest throughout the Court and I believe the country. The author had had difficulty in getting the play performed because the lieutenant of the Police, the magistrates, the Keeper of the Seals, and strangely enough the King did not think it would be good for the country to see it.

I had thought what fun it would be to put it on at my Trianon theater and Artois agreed with me, seeing himself in the part of the Barber.

He flitted about my apartments, doing the rogue of a barber to the life. It was small wonder that people had suggested that Artois and I were closer friends than propriety permitted. We were completely in tune on matters such as this. He could not see why we should not do the play any more than I could.

I see it now, of course; I see how that dialogue is full of innuendo. I can see that Figaro is meant to represent the People; and that the Comte Almaviva is the old regime, the tottering structure of aristocracy. Almost every line of the dialogue is charged with meaning. This was not a play about a Comte who commits adultery as naturally as eating and breathing; it is not an account of the shrewdness of a wily barber. It was a picture of France - the uselessness of the aristocracy and the growing awareness of the shrewd people of the state of their country; it was meant to set them wondering as to how it could be remedied.

I think of little s.n.a.t.c.hes of dialogue.

"I was born to be a courtier"

"I understand it is a difficult profession"

"Receive, take, ask. There's the secret of it in three words."

"With character and intelligence you may one day rise in your office."

"Intelligence to help advancement? Your lords.h.i.+p is laughing at mine. Be commonplace and cringing and one can get anywhere"

"Are you a prince to be flattered? Hear the truth, you wretch, since you have not the money to recompense a liar."

"n.o.bility, wealth, rank, office - that makes you very proud! What have you done for these blessings? You have taken the trouble to be born, and nothing else."

I was too immersed in my own affairs to be fully aware of the crumbling society in which I was living. I saw nothing explosive in these remarks. To me they were merely excessively amusing. But my husband saw the dangers immediately.

"This man turns everything to ridicule - everything which should be respected in a government."

"Then won't it be played?" I asked, showing my disappointment.

"No, it will not," replied my husband, quite sharply for him. "You may be sure of that."

I often think of him now, poor Louis. He saw so much that I could not understand. He was clever; he could have been a good King. He had the best will in the world; he was the kindest, the most amiable of men; he sought nothing for himself. He had his ministers - Maurepas, Turgot, who was replaced by Necker, in his turn replaced by Calonne - but none of these ministers was great enough to carry us safely over the yawning abyss which was widening rapidly beneath our very feet. Dear Louis, who wanted to please. But it was so difficult to please everyone. And what did I do? I was the tool of ambitious factions and did nothing to help my husband, who wanted to please me and wanted to please his ministers, and vacillated between the two. That was his crime; not cruelty, not indifference to the suffering of others, not lechery - not all those crimes which had undermined the Monarchy and set the pillars on which it was erected moldering to dust; it was vacillation, in which he was helped by a giddy thoughtless wife.

This affair of the play was characteristic of Louis' weakness and my frivolity.

When Figaro was banned, everyone became greatly interested in it. When Beaumarchais declared that only little men were afraid of little writings, how clever that was! And how well he understood human nature! There was no one who wished to be thought a "little man," and his supporters were springing up everywhere. Gabrielle told me that her family believed the play should be performed. What sort of a society was this where artists were not allowed to speak their minds! The play could not be performed, but what was to prevent people's reading it?

"Have you read Figaro?" It was the constant question asked everywhere. If you had not, if you did not burst into immediate praise, you were a "little man or woman." Clever Beaumarchais had said so.

There was one section of society which placed itself firmly behind Beaumarchais. Catherine the Great and her son the Grand Duke Paul expressed their approval of the play and declared they would introduce it into Russia. But the most important supporter was Artois. I think he longed for us to play it and therefore he was determined to see it performed. He was as lightminded as I and even went so far as to order a rehearsal in the King's own theater - Menues Plaisirs. Here my husband showed himself firm for once. As the audience was beginning to arrive he sent the Duke de Villequier to forbid the performance.

Shortly afterward the Comte de Vaudreuil, that most forceful lover of Gabrielle's, declared that he could see no reason why the play should not be performed privately and gathered together actors and actresses from the Comedie Francaise, and the play was put on in his chateau at Gennevilliers. Artois was there to see it performed. Everyone present declared it a masterpiece and demanded to know what was going to happen to French literature if its most important artists were muzzled.

Beaumarchais made fun of the censors.h.i.+p in the play itself: "Provided I don't speak in my writings of authority, religion, of politics, of morality, of the officials of influential bodies, of other spectacles, of anyone who has any claim to anything, I can print anything freely, under the inspection of two or three censors."

This was, many people were declaring, not to be tolerated. France was the center of culture. Any country which failed to appreciate its artists was committing cultural suicide.

Louis was beginning to waver, and I repeated all the arguments I had heard. If certain offensive pa.s.sages were removed ...

"Perhaps," said the King. They would see.

It was a half victory. I knew that he could soon be persuaded.

I was right. In April 1784 in the theater of the Comedie Francaise, Le Mariage de Figaro was performed and there was a stampede to get tickets. Members of the n.o.bility stayed all day in the theater to make sure of their places and all through the day the crowd collected and when the doors were open they rushed in; they were standing in the aisles; but they listened spellbound to the performance.

Paris went wild with joy over Figaro; he was being quoted all over the country.

A victory for culture! What the n.o.bility did not realize was that it was a step further in the direction of the guillotine.

I believe that I had been right to add my voice to those who persuaded the King. I wished to show my appreciation of Beaumarchais and to honor him, so I suggested that my little company of friends should perform his play Le Barbier de Seville at the Trianon, in which I myself would play Rosine.

At the beginning of August in that year 1785 some months after the birth of my adorable little Louis-Charles I was at the Trianon; and I intended to stay there until the festival of Saint Louis, and while I was there to play in Le Barbier de Seville.

As always, I was happier there than anywhere else. I remember walking round the gardens to look at the flowers and to see what progress my workmen had made - there were always changes being made at the Trianon - and pausing close to the summerhouse to look at my theater with its Ionic columns, supporting a pediment on which a carved cupid held a lyre and a wreath of laurels. I remember the thrill I always experienced when I entered the theater and the joy I took in its white and gold decorations. Above the curtain concealing the stage were two lovely nymphs holding my coat of arms and the ceiling had been exquisitely painted by Lagrenee. It looked very small with the curtain hiding the stage - that stage which was my pride and delight - and which was enormous, large enough for the performance of any play; and if the s.p.a.ce provided for the audience was small, well, it was a family affair, so we did not need the s.p.a.ce of an ordinary theater.

What I enjoyed most of the Trianon - apart from acting - was what were called the Sunday b.a.l.l.s. Anyone could attend if suitably dressed. I had said that mothers with children and nurses with their charges were to be presented to me and I enjoyed talking to these guardians of the little ones about their charming ways and their ailments. I talked to the children and told them about my own. I was happiest then. Sometimes I would take part in a square dance, pa.s.sing from partner to partner, to let the people know that the Trianon was conducted without the formality of Versailles.

I was particularly happy at that time, having no idea that a storm was about to break. Why should I have had? It all began so simply.

The King was giving a present of a diamond epaulet and buckles to his nephew, the Duc d'Angouleme, son of Artois, and had ordered these through Boehmer and Ba.s.sange, the Court jewelers; he asked them to deliver them to me.

After the manner in which Boehmer had behaved about his diamond necklace before my little daughter, I had ordered that he was not to come into my presence but should deal with my valet de chambre.

I was with Madame Campan rehearsing my part in The Barber when the epaulet and buckles were delivered to me. The valet de chambre who brought them told me that Monsieur Boehmer had delivered a letter for me at the same time as he had brought the jewels.

I sighed as I took it. I was really thinking of my part.

"That tiresome man," I said. "I do believe he is a little mad."

One of the women was sealing letters by a lighted wax taper and I went on talking to Madame Campan: "Do you think that I put enough emphasis into that last sentence? Do you think she would have said it in that way? Try it ... show me how you would do it, dear Campan."

Campan did it excellently. What a way she had with words! Not that she looked in the least like Rosine ... my dear serious Campan!

"Excellent!" I said and opened the letter. I ran my eye over it, yawning slightly. Boehmer always made me want to yawn.

Madame, We are filled with happiness and venture to think that the last arrangements proposed to us, which we have carried out with zeal and respect, are a further proof of our submission and devotion to Your Majesty's orders and we have real satisfaction in the thinking that the most beautiful diamonds in existence will belong to the greatest and best of Queens ...

I looked up and gave the letter to Madame Campan. "Read it and tell me what that man means."

She read it and was as mystified as I was.

"Oh, dear!" I sighed, taking the letter from her. "That man was born to torment me. Diamonds! He thinks of nothing else. If he had not sold that wretched necklace of his to the Sultan of Turkey, he would be pestering me about that, I am sure. Now apparently he has some more diamonds which he would like me to buy. Really, Campan, when you next see him, tell him that I do not like diamonds now and that I will never buy any more as long as I live. If I had the money to spare, I would rather add to my property at St. Cloud or buying the land around it. Now do be careful to impress this on him. Tell him what I have told you and make him understand."

"Would Your Majesty wish me to make a point of seeing him?"

"Oh, no, there is no need for that. Just speak to him when the opportunity arises. To talk to him specially might get some other notion going in his crazy head. He will get an obsession with emeralds doubtless if he thinks I no longer care for diamonds. But do make it clear to him ... without making it seem as though I have especially commanded you to do so."

"He visits my father-in-law frequently, Madame. It may well be that I shall meet him some time at his house."

"That's an excellent idea." I smiled at her. "You are so discreet ... so reliable. I am thankful for that, dear Madame Campan."

I was still holding Boehmer's letter and looked down at it with distaste.

Then I held it in the flame of the taper and watched it burn.

"Now," I said, "no more of Monsieur Boehmer and his diamonds."

How mistaken I was!

Madame Campan left Versailles for a few days to stay at her father-in-law's country estate at Crespy. I missed her because no one else - not even Gabrielle and Elisabeth - were as good as Madame Campan at rehearsing with me and I made up my mind that I should call her back very soon. I was obsessed by the play. It was going to be the best we had ever done. Rosine was a perfect part for me. I liked to read Beaumarchais' description of her: "Imagine the prettiest little woman in the world, gentle, tender, lively, fresh, appetizing, nimble of foot, slender-waisted with rounded arms, dewy mouth; and such hands, such feet, such teeth, such eyes ..."

The aunts said: Was that a fitting description of the Queen of France? It sounded to them more like a coquette. It was undignified of the Queen of France to ape commoners on the stage.

I laughed at them. Louis was a little uneasy, but I could always bring him to my way of thinking. He knew how much I wanted The Barber to be played; and that I should have been heartbroken if I had not taken part in it. So he refused to listen to the aunts' criticism and was only delighted to see me so happy over my part. After all, had I not only just given him another son!

Madame Campan had not been gone more than a few days when Monsieur Boehmer presented himself at Trianon and begged for an audience with me, saying that Madame Campan had advised him to see me without delay.

One of my women came to me to tell me this, adding that he seemed very agitated.

I could not understand why he should come if Madame Campan had delivered my message correctly. But of course she had and he, construing it that I was no longer interested in diamonds, had come with emeralds or sapphires or some such stones. He had worried me with his diamonds; I was not going to allow him to repeat the performance with other jewels.

"I will not see Monsieur Boehmer," I said. "I have nothing to say to him. He is mad. Tell him I will not see him."

A few days after that I decided that I must have Campan to help me with my part, so I sent for her. If I had not been so immersed in the production - for I liked to do more than play the most attractive parts and I would supervise the costumes and scenery and plan the decor - I should have noticed that Madame Campan was very uneasy.

When I had run through my part, however, I did say to her: "That idiot Boehmer has been here asking to see me and saying that you advised him to come. I refused to see him, but what does it mean? What could he want? Have you any idea?"

She burst out: "Madame, a very strange thing happened at my father-in-law's house. I wanted to speak to you of it as soon as I was admitted to your presence. Have I your permission to tell you all?"

"Please do so."

"When Monsieur Boehmer came to dine with my father-in-law, I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to pa.s.s on your message to him. Madame, I cannot describe his astonishment. Then he stammered out that he had written a letter to you and had had no reply. I understood it was the one which had come with the King's gift to Monsieur d'Angouleme. I told him I had seen it and it had not seemed very comprehensible. He replied that he supposed it would not be to me but that the Queen would understand. Other guests were arriving and it was my duty to help receive them, so I tried to excuse myself, but Monsieur Boehmer asked me if I would allow him to talk to me later. His manner was so extraordinary that I said we would take a walk in the gardens at a suitable moment and then he could tell me what he wished to."

"The man is quite mad, I am sure of it."

"Madame, it is such an extraordinary story, but he swears it is true."

"Pray go on."

"He said: 'The Queen owes me a large sum of money.'"

"I'm sure that is not true. His account has been settled." "Madame, he went on: 'The Queen has bought my diamond necklace.'"