Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow (5 page)

I giggled. “Is that an order, Sire? I am hurt, too,” I began, slowly, “but in a different way. I thought this was to be our world now. And, to that end, I have been wondering … why … after you finally recognized what a detestable man your former tutor
the duc de la Vauguyon is … why one of the first things you do as king is to name two of his friends as your top ministers.” I had hoped that he would recall the duc de Choiseul, who had been an architect of our marriage and a trusted minister of the late king until Madame du Barry forced his removal. This my husband had agreed to, but only in part; Choiseul’s involvement in the new government would be nominal at best.

“Toinette, why do you raise this now?” Louis was at this instant completely awake, and his voice had become guarded, despite his use of the same pet name for me that my favorite sister Charlotte had always employed.

“Why
not
discuss it now? When else can I speak to you utterly alone? When there is no one to overhear us? When I feel I have your complete confidence and trust?

“The comte de Vergennes?” I murmured. “How could you select a Foreign Minister who is not a friend of Austria when your wife is a Hapsburg? And I thought you hated the duc d’Aiguillon as much as I did and yet you allowed your aunt Adélaïde to bully you into sending for his
uncle
, the comte de Maurepas. You have chosen for your Chief Minister a man who is old enough to have been the father of Papa Roi!” As a way of asserting his dominion (and, to my mind, further separating me from the seat of power), the elderly minister had immediately taken over the comtesse du Barry’s suite of rooms, a hidden warren that lay just behind the King’s Apartments. My husband had not uttered a word of remonstrance regarding this act of audacity. “Where is that new beginning we planned? And how can we ever hope to achieve it when you are holding the reins while facing backwards?”

No sooner had these words escaped my lips than I knew I had said far too much. My husband’s silence hung in the great bedchamber like a third presence. He sighed heavily and I was punished for my mistake by twin pools of tears that stung my eyes.

Finally, he spoke. “I had not thought to ask you. I am sorry.
In France the queen is not consulted in matters of State.” Louis’s voice was soft but firm.

I knew this; I had just hoped we would be different. There were so many things I wished to change now that we were king and queen. And wasn’t that, in some measure at least, what being the sovereign was all about—the ability to make the rules? Why carry on with the ones you never liked? Nowhere did it say that kings (or queens) had to martyr themselves to etiquette—or law—even at Versailles. In 1771 Louis XV had even exiled the Parlements, France’s judicial bodies, for refusing to ratify his edicts; and instead overrode them in a
lit de justice
where he reposed like a Roman Caesar on a bed of cushions. Papa Roi had made a number of enemies with this exercise in autocracy, even among the Princes of the Blood, his own cousins. My husband, unlike his
grand-père
in nearly every way, in one of his first acts as king, recalled the Parlements, believing it was better to rule as a friend of the people, with a firm but just hand. I wondered if he had done the right thing. It seemed as though the king of France could never make everyone happy at once, for whatever decision he made was bound to anger the clergy or the nobility or the trade guilds or the merchants or the farmers or the army; yet even as I saw that Louis was already seeking to improve the lives of our subjects, one faction or another vociferously resisted his new programs and sought to prevent him from achieving them. But why must I be excluded from these plans? At Maman’s skirts I had been inculcated with the lesson that it is the Christian duty of a princess, no less a queen, to give charity to those who were born under less fortunate circumstances.

At least my husband had bowed to my wishes and recalled my distant relation, the unctuous prince de Rohan, from his diplomatic post. I had met him only once, when he had greeted me upon my arrival in France, but the single occasion sufficed
to make me dislike him. A particular favorite of Madame du Barry (for they shared a louche manner of living), at her instigation Papa Roi had named him his ambassador to Austria. Maman had been appalled by the appointment, for the prince had nothing good to say about the Hapsburgs, and was particularly insulting to her. In a letter to the old king’s
maîtresse en titre
, the prince de Rohan dared to repeat a joke that Frederick of Prussia had made at Maman’s expense after the partition of Poland was affected. “The Devil,” as my mother called Frederick, had jested that in one hand my mother held a handkerchief and wept for the poor innocent Poles, while in her other she wielded a sword against them.

According to Maman, who minced no words on his account, the prince had arrived in Vienna in January 1772, and proceeded to install himself like an Oriental pasha, setting up a private brothel in his residential mansion. Maman, a devout Catholic, remained further offended by the prince’s cavalier attitude toward the Church despite his aspirations to a sinecure in it. He rode booted and spurred through religious processions, hunted on Sundays, and harbored an unhealthy fascination for mysticism and the occult. He illicitly funded his extravagant mode of living by smuggling silk and then selling it at a tremendous profit, in violation of religious custom. And still, according to Maman, he had amassed enormous debts although he refused to economize, attended as he was by scarlet-liveried servants whose uniforms were trimmed in gold lace.

It was a small victory, but at least I had been able to do something for Austria. Yet my mother expected much more. As my sister Charlotte had so swiftly managed to achieve once she became Queen of Naples, Maman wanted me to master my husband.

Several minutes of painful silence elapsed. I found myself
counting Louis’s ragged wheezing breaths. At length, he reached out and stroked my hand. “I’ll make it up to you, Toinette. This I promise.”

In the darkness, the grim expression on my lips metamorphosed into a hopeful grin. “Does that mean I get to choose the next minister?”

The enormous bedchamber echoed with my husband’s braying laugh, as though I had just told him the silliest joke. “No, of course not—but I assure you, it will be something wonderful. I have just the present in mind; and I do not think you will be disappointed.”

I fell asleep anxiously endeavoring to imagine what he had conceived, for I knew what Maman would think of Louis’s attempts to mollify me. What could be a satisfying substitute for power?

“Look!” I exclaimed to the duchesse de Chartres, as we strolled by the window of a shop in Paris. “That’s the eighth display we’ve seen this morning!” I could not wait to write to my mother. She would be delighted to hear that portraits of Louis and me were displayed prominently in nearly every merchant’s window. The outpouring of love for us in the capital had been so gratifying. At the opera and the theater my appearance was greeted with cheers, as was my husband’s, of course, but he did not accompany me often. Try as I might, I still could not disabuse the king of his conviction that the soprano arias resembled the cries of tormented cats.

A gloved footman, as splendidly liveried as any employed by the nobility, reached for the polished brass handle and beckoned the way into the lush salon. Another servant invited us to make ourselves comfortable on a plump divan upholstered in saffron and gold brocade, while a third offered to bring us a pot of coffee.
“C’est divine, n’est-ce pas?”
sighed the duchesse.

“I cannot believe you have kept le Grand Mogol a secret from me, Louise!” Pastoral landscapes and imposing portraits of prominent aristocrats reposing in heavy gilded frames dominated the cherry damask walls while grand beveled mirrors reflected our images and that of Mademoiselle Rose Bertin’s myriad fantastical creations, which she had artfully arranged throughout the emporium.
Grandes pandores
, like the dolls that had once modeled my trousseau, displayed the latest fashions in gowns, headdresses, and accessories. Redolent of a pasha’s seraglio, the shop was a tasteful mélange of color and texture, demonstrating how the tactile surfaces of silk and velvet, taffeta and batiste that adorned a woman’s body could be enhanced with just the right configuration of spangles, feathers, ruching, lace, or gemstones. I recognized a gauzy white gown with a broad pastel-pink sash on one of the
pandores
. The comtesse du Barry used to receive her
guests in such a simple style, her full bosom and unbound blond curls spilling over its décolleté. I shuddered at the memory of my rival. Apparently, she, too, had shopped here, as did,
évidemment
, all the women of fashion. The duchesse noticed my frown.
“Elle a partie,”
she said with a dismissive wave. “She is gone. It is you who should set the tone now.”

I rose from the sofa and removed a glove. I wanted to touch everything; to own it. It was all so exquisite. I took a turn about the shop, fingering the fabrics, inspecting the lace, examining the gems. And after several moments, I had the distinct sensation that I was being watched. Turning to my companion, I exclaimed, “Good heavens, you don’t think they believe that the Queen of France would steal something?”

“Most certainly not. I merely wondered, as would any proprietress worth her salt, what the Queen of France thinks of my merchandise.” A large-boned woman, not too many years older than I, rose from a chaise longue that had been placed in the shadows. Her cheeks were quite red, owing to a robust complexion rather than the circles of rouge applied by women of means at their daily toilette.

“I find it breathtaking,” I replied. My eyes lingered over the embellishments she had made to a dozen gowns, and as many bonnets and headdresses, capes and capelets—each one adorned uniquely. “
Absolument magnifique
. Not one bead too many or too few. Your sense of proportion … your eye …” I gazed about the room again. By now a trio of shopgirls had emerged, each wearing one of the original, enviably beautiful, creations. “It is perfection,” I breathed.

The duchesse de Chartres stood. “Mademoiselle Rose Bertin, allow me to present you to Her Most Illustrious Majesty, Marie Antoinette.”

The
vendeuse
did not curtsy to me, even after she saw the glimmer
of shock in my eyes at her transgression of etiquette. Instead, “I agree with you,” she said, towering above me. In her two-inch heels she was nearly my husband’s height. “It
is
perfection,” she echoed proudly. “Which is why I have the most exclusive clientele in France.”

“Do you sew everything here in this atelier?” I asked, wondering what lay behind the lush Orientalism of her décor, the opulent palette of jewel tones that soothed the sensibilities of the browser as it undoubtedly blunted the blow to one’s purse.

“Regrettably, the garments themselves are not manufactured here,” Mademoiselle Bertin explained, adding with a touch of asperity, “The tailors and seamstresses of France hold a monopoly from the Crown on the construction of clothing. And as an unmarried woman I am denied entrée into the guild.” Noting my surprise, she added, “Enhancements and adornments are another matter entirely.” In this province an unwed woman could make a mark for herself as a
marchande de modes
, or stylist, retailing her good taste in addition to the separate, and quite costly, trimmings and accoutrements she affixed to the garments and accessories, transforming them into unique, and quite spectacular, ensembles. The
marchande
herself was an advertisement for her wares, proving in her gown of cadet-blue moiré, exquisitely embellished with two slimming lines of ruching that ran from the neckline all the way down the front of the robe to the hem, that a woman with a fuller figure need not fear furbelows.

“
Eh bien
, and what do you think of the duchesse’s hair?” asked Mademoiselle Bertin slyly. I wondered if she noticed that I had been staring at her—the
marchande
, not the duchesse—for I was trying to equate the young woman’s exquisite sense of style with her somewhat coarse appearance, her features far from delicate, her limbs scarcely dainty. I was also struck by her audacity in daring to speak to me as if I were merely anyone, heedless of conventional manners.

I glanced at the duchesse, whose coiffure, towering several inches from her scalp, was a veritable work of art. For several months now, she had favored similar confections, each of which boasted a narrative or commemorative motif. Last October, her elaborately detailed coiffure announced the birth of her first child, a son. At the time, I was delighted, even envious of the duchesse; but my private jealousy was doubly pricked by her husband’s gloating and his clear intimations of superiority over the barren Bourbons. On my first night at Versailles as the fourteen-year-old dauphine, a foreigner amid my new husband’s extended family of Princes of the Blood, my
dame d’honneur
had warned me about the duc de Chartres and his equally ambitious and powerful father, the duc d’Orléans, explaining that the long-standing rivalry between the two branches of the royal family precluded their socializing, except for the most formal of occasions. Yet the duchesse and I, who knew nothing of our husbands’ affairs, enjoyed a perfectly pleasant friendship.