The Queen`s Confession (5 page)

In the ballroom the Marquis de Durfort had ordered th beautiful pictures be hung, symbolic of the occasion, and \softline particularly remember one of myself on the road to France Spread out before me was a carpet of flowers which weig being thrown by a nymph representing love.

There were fireworks and music; and the splendour on that evening did in fact exceed ours, in spite of those three thousand five hundred

candles. 33 On the nineteenth I was married by proxy. This was all part of a game to me, for Ferdinand played the part of bride groom, and because my brother was standing proxy for the Dauphin of France it seemed exactly like one of those plays I used to watch my brothers and sisters perform, only now I was old enough to join in. Ferdinand and I knelt together at the altar and I kept saying to myself “Volo et ita promitto’ so that I should get it right when the moment came to say it aloud.

After the ceremony guns were fired at the Spitalplatz, and then . the banquet.

I was to leave my home two days later, and suddenly I began to realise what this was going to mean. It struck me that I might never see my mother again. She called me to her room and again gave me many instructions. I listened fearfully; I was beginning to feel apprehensive.

She told me to be seated at a desk and take up my pen. I was to write a letter to my grandfather, for the King of France would now be that.

I must remember it. I must seek to please him. I must obey him and never offend him. And now I must write to him. I was glad I was not expected to compose the letter. That would, indeed, have been beyond my powers; it was bad enough to have to write to my mother’s dictation. She watched me. I can imagine her fears. There I sat, my head on one side, frowning in concentration, biting my tongue, the tip of which protruded slightly, making the utmost effort, but only managing to produce a childish scrawl with crooked lines. I remember asking the King of France to be indulgent to me and begging him to ask the indulgence of the Dauphin on my behalf.

I paused to think of the Dauphin, the other important player in this . farce, comedy or tragedy? How could I know which it was to be?

Later I came to think of it as all three. What of the Dauphin? No one spoke much of him. Sometimes my attendants referred to him as though he were a handsome hero . as all princes should be. Of course he would be handsome. We should dance together and we should have babies.

How I longed for babies! Little goldenhaired children who would adore

me. When I became a mother I should cease to be a child. Then I thought of Caroline—those poor pathetic letters of hers.

“He is very ugly … but one grows accustomed to that….” My mother had talked to me of everything that I might encounter at the Court of France . except my bridegroom.

My mother then put her arm about me and held me to her while she wrote to the King of France. I looked at her quick pen, admiring the skill with which it travelled over the paper. She was begging the King of France to care for her ‘very dear child. “

“I pray you be indulgent towards any thoughtless act of my dear child’s. She has a good heart, but she is impulsive and a little wild….” I felt the tears coming to my eyes because I was sorry for her. That seemed strange, but she was so worried because she knew me so well and she could guess at the sort of world into which I was being thrust.

The Marquis de Durfort had brought with him to Austria two carriages which the King of France had had made for the sole purpose of taking me to France. We had heard of these carriages in advance. They had been made by Francien, the leading camagemaker in Paris, and the King of France had ordered that no expense should be spared in the making.

Prancien had lived up to his reputation arid they were quite magnificent, lined with satin and decorated with paintings in delicate colours, with gold crowns on the outside to proclaim them royal carriages. I was to discover that they were not only the most beautiful I had ever travelled in but the most comfortable.

The Marquis came with a hundred and seventeen bodyguards, all in coloured uniforms; and it was boasted that the cost of this merry little cavalcade was about three hundred and fifty thousand ducats.

On the twenty-first of April my journey to France began. During the last few years I have often thought of my mother when she said goodbye to me. She knew it was the last time she would hold me in her arms, the last time she would kiss me. No doubt words came into her mind.

Remember this. Don’t do that. Surely she had said it all to me 35 in her icy bedroom; but knowing me, she would realise that I had forgotten half of it by now. In any case I should have heard little of what she said to me. Now I knew she was praying silently to God and the Saints, asking them to guard me. She saw me as a helpless child wandering in the jungle.

“My dearest child,” she whispered; and suddenly I did not want to leave her. This was my home. I wanted to stay in it-even if it did mean lessons and painful hairstyles and lectures in a cold bedroom. I should not be fifteen until November and suddenly I felt very young and inexperienced. I wanted to plead to be allowed to stay at home for a little longer, but Monsieur de Durfort’s magnificent carriages were waiting; Kaunitz was looking impatient and relieved that all the bargaining was over. Only my mother was sad and I wondered if I could be alone with her and beg to be allowed to stay. But of course I could not. Much as she loved me she would never allow my whims to interfere with state affairs. 7 was a state affair. The thought made me want to laugh—and it pleased me too. I really was a very important person.

“Goodbye, my dearest child. I shall write to you regularly. It will be as though I am with you.”

“Yes, Mamma.”

“We shall be apart but I shall never cease to think of you until I die. Love me always. It is the only thing that can console me.”

And then I was getting into the carriage with Joseph, who was to accompany me for the first day. I had had little to do with Joseph, who was so much older and had become so important now that he was Emperor and co-ruler with my mother. He was kind, but because of my mood I found his pomposity irritating, and all the time he gave me advice to which I did not want to listen. I wanted to think about my little dogs, which the servants had assured me they would care for.

When we passed the Schonbrunn Palace I looked at the yellow walls and the green shutters and remembered how Caroline, Ferdinand, Max and I used to watch the older ones perform their plays, operas and ballets.

I remembered how the servants used to bring refreshments to us in the gardens—lemonade, which my mother thought was good for us, and little Viennese cakes covered with cream.

Before I left, my mother had given me a packet of papers which she said I was to read regularly. I had glanced at them and saw that they contained rules and regulations which she had already given me during our talks. I would read them later, I promised myself. I wanted now to think about the old times—the pleasantness of the days before Caroline and Maria Amalia had been so unhappy. I glanced at Joseph, who had had his own tragedies, and thought he seemed to have recovered as he sat there so serenely against the gorgeous satin upholstery.

“Always remember you are a German…. I wanted to yawn. Joseph in his laboured way was trying to impress upon me the importance of my marriage. Did I realise that my retinue consisted of one hundred and thirty-two persons? Yes, Joseph, I had heard it all before.

“Ladies-in-waiting, your servants, your hairdressers, dressmakers, secretaries, surgeons, pages, furriers, chaplains, cooks and so on.

Your grand postmaster the Prince of Paar has thirty-four subordinates.

”

“Yes, Joseph, it is a great number.”

“It is not to be supposed that we should allow the French to think that we cannot send you off in a style to match their own. Did you know that we are using three hundred and seventy-six horses and that these horses have to be changed four or five times a day?”

“No, Joseph. But now you have told me.”

“You should know these things. Twenty thousand horses have been placed along the road from Vienna to Strasbourg to convey you and your retinue there.”

“It is a great number.”

I wished that he had talked to me more of his marriage and had warned me what to expect of mine. I was bored by these figures, and all the time I was fighting my desire to cry.

At Moick, which we reached after eight hours’ driving, we stayed at the Benedictine convent, where the scholars per formed an opera for us. It was a bore. I felt very sleepy, and as I kept thinking of the previous night, which I had spent in my mother’s bedroom in the Hofburg, I felt I wanted to cry for the comfort she could give me. For oddly enough, in spite of the lectures, she had comforted me; with out knowing it I had felt that while she was there, omnipotent and omniscient, I was safe because all her care was for me.

Joseph left me the next day and I was not sorry. He was a good brother who loved me but his conversation made me so tired and I always found it difficult to concentrate at the best of times.

What a long journey! The Princess of Paar shared my carriage and tried to comfort me by talking of the wonders of Versailles and what a brilliant future lay before me. To Enns, to Lambach, on to Nymphenburg. At Giinsburg we rested for two days with my father’s sister. Princess Charlotte I had vague memories of her at Schonbrunn for she had at one time been a member of our household. My father had been very fond of her and they used to take long walks together, but my mother resented her presence. Perhaps she resented anyone of whom my father was fond; and eventually Charlotte retired to Remiremont, where she became the Abbess. She talked lovingly of my father and I went with her to distribute food to the poor, which was a change from all the banquets and balls.

We crossed the Black Forest and came to the Abbey of Schiittern, where I was visited by the Comte de Noailles who was to be my guardian. He was old and very proud of the duty which had been entrusted to him by his friend the Due de Choiseul. I thought he was a vain old fellow and I was not sure whether I liked him. He did not stay long with me for there arose a difficulty about the ceremony which lay before me. It was again a matter of whose names should come first on a document.

Prince Starhemburg, who was going to hand me formally over to the French, was in a great passion about this; and so was the Comte de Noailles.

I felt very sad that night because I knew it was going to 38 be my last on German soil. I suddenly found myself crying bitterly in the arms of the Princess of Paar and saying over and over again: “I shall never see my mother again.”

That day a letter had reached me from her. She must have sat down and written it as soon as I left; and I knew that she had written it in tears. Snatches of it come back to me now:

My dear child, you are now where Providence has placed you. Even if one were to think no more of the greatness of your position, you are the happiest of your brothers and sisters. You will find a tender father who will be at the same time your friend. Have every confidence in him. Love him and be submissive to him. I do not speak of the Dauphin. You know my delicacy on that subject. A wife is subject to her husband in all things and you should have no other aim than to please him and do his will. The only real happiness in this world comes through a happy marriage. I can say this from experience. And all depends on the woman, who should be willing, gentle and able to amuse. “

I read and re-read that letter. That night it was my greatest comfort.

The next day I would pass into my new country;

I would say goodbye to so many of the people who had accompanied me so far. There was so much I had to learn, so much which would be expected of me—and all I could do was cry for my mother.

“I shall never see her again,” I murmured into my pillow.

The Golden Age will be born from such a union, and under the happy rule of Mane Antoinette and Louis-Auguste our nephews will see the continuation of the happiness we enjoy under Louis the Well-Beloved.

PRINCE DE ROHAN AT STRASBOURG

The Bewildered Bride

On the no-man’s land of a sandbank in the middle of the Rhine a building had been erected, and in this was to take place the ceremony of the Remise. The Princess of Paar had impressed on me that this was the most important ceremony so far, for during it I should cease to be Austrian. I was to walk into that building on one side as an Austrian Archduchess and emerge on the other as a French Dauphine.

It was not a very impressive building, for it had been hastily constructed; it would be used for this purpose only and that would be an end of it. Once on the island I was led into a kind of antechamber where my women stripped me of all my clothes, and I felt so wretched standing there naked before them all that I had to think of my mother at her most stern to prevent myself breaking into sobs. I put my hand up to the chain necklace which I had worn for so many years, as though I were trying to hide it. But I could not save it. The poor thing was Austrian and therefore had to come off.

I was shivering as they dressed me in my French clothes, but I could not help noticing that they were finer than anything I had had in Austria and this lifted my spirits. Clothes meant a great deal to me and I never lost my excitement for a new material, a new fashion or a diamond. When I was dressed I was taken to the Prince Starhemburg who was waiting for me; he held my hand firmly and led me into the hall

which formed the centre of this building. It seemed 40 large after the little antechamber, and in the centre was a table which was covered with a crimson velvet cloth. Prince Starhemburg referred to this room as the Salon de Remise, and he pointed out that the table symbolised the frontier between my old country and my new.

The walls of the room were hung with tapestries, which were beautiful, though the scenes depicted on them were horrible, for they represented the story of Jason and Medea. I found my eyes straying to them during the short ceremony, and when I should have been listening to what was being said I was thinking of Jason’s murdered children and the Furies’ flaming chariot. Years later I heard that before the ceremony the poet Goethe, then a young law student at Strasbourg University, had come to look at the hall and had expressed his horror it the tapestries, adding that he could not believe anyone :ould have put them where a young bride was to enter her us band country. They were pictures, he said, of ‘the most orrible marriage that could be imagined. ” People would see iat as an omen, too.