The Queen`s Confession

The Attractive Stranger

A few months after my entry into Paris, Artois was married. His bride was the sister of Marie Josephe. Their father, Victor Amedee, the King of Sardinia, had naturally wanted the Dauphin for one of his daughters, so the sisters resented me.

The new bride, Marie Therese, was even uglier than her sister. Her only remarkable feature was her nose, and that was because of its length; her mouth was enormous, her eyes small, and she squinted slightly. She was very small, and quite lacking in grace. The King showed clearly that he found her repulsive; as for Artois, he did not express disappointment, but behaved as though the matter were of little importance. Marie Therese seemed to want to hide herself and he was pleased to indulge her in this. He had a mistress already—a very beautiful woman, much older than himself, named Rosalie Duthe, a lady who had served the Due de Chartres in the same capacity as she now served Artois.

Everyone was amused by Artois’s attitude and no one was very sorry for the poor little bride. All their sympathy was for Artois because he was unlucky enough to have such a wife.

The comment in Versailles was characteristic: “Having got indigestion through gateau de Sememe the Prince had gone to take Duthe in Paris.”

I was one of the few people who were sorry for Marie Therese and I did all I could to be her friend, but she was very disagreeable and curt with me.

However, I was enjoying myself as I had not done since I had come to France, so I did not need the friendship of my sisters-in-law. The Princesse de Lamballe had become my close friend and we chattered together as I used to with Caroline. In fact for the first time I believed I had replaced my sister.

When the snow came I could really imagine I was back in Vienna, and one day I found an old sledge in the stables at Versailles and as the Princesse was with me I told her what fun we used to have in Vienna and how Joseph had had the snow brought down from the mountains when there was none below just because he loved to ride in a sledge.

“And why should we not?” I cried.

“I see no reason why not. Here is the sledge and there is the snow.”

So I ordered the grooms to prepare the sledge and have the horses harnessed to it and the Princesse and I rode out.

We went to Paris—always Paris; and what fun it was being drawn along the road and finally reaching the Bois de Boulogne. It was bitterly cold but we were wrapped up in furs and it was glorious to feel our faces glowing.

This is just like Vienna!’ I cried.

“And you remind me of my dearest sister Caroline.”

But it was not really like Vienna, where there were many sledges and this was the only way in which one could travel. Ours was the only sledge in the Bois, and we were not travelling, we were playing a game. The people came out to watch us and they seemed very different from those who had welcomed me into their city in the summer. These had pinched blue faces; they stood and shivered, and the contrast between them in their inadequate rags and us in our furs was painful.

I was aware of this but I tried not to see it because it spoiled the fun.

Mercy came to my apartments looking stem. Your new pastime does not please the people of Paris,” j he told me.

But why not? “

“It is not a pleasure which is indulged in here.”

Oh,” I grumbled.

“Etiquette again.”

But it was more than etiquette; and I was not sorry to give it up.

That was an end to our sledge rides.

The tension in the family circle which had increased since the arrival of Artois’s wife was steadily rising. The two sisters were joined in their dislike of me, and my brothers-in-law by their ambition. Of the two brothers, Provence was by far the more ambitious. Marie Josephe had shown no signs of becoming pregnant, and it was being said that be suffered the same disability as the Dauphin.

Mercy had warned me of my elder brother-in-law’s ‘little polite trickeries,” but as he was continually warning me I paid little heed.

Now even I, bent as I was on ignoring unpleasantness and finding new amusement, could not be unaware of the growing tension between the brothers.

“Provence is ambitious and strives in every way to be the dominant member of the household,” Mercy said.

“I am writing to the Empress to tell her this. I have rarely seen one so young so ambitious.”

This ambition was working up to a hatred against my husband. The six of us were often together. Etiquette demanded that we should be.

Once, we were in Province’s apartments and my husband was standing by the fireplace and on the mantelpiece was a beautiful china vase, for Provence collected fine china things. My husband had always been fascinated by this particular piece, and I used to watch him and laughingly ask him if he was rin’nfcmg of giving up bricks and locks for china.

He gravely answered that it might be an interesting study.

As Louis’s hands were not made to handle delicate objects Provence was very concerned for the safety of his vase.

I watched him watching Louis and laughingly called attention to his anxiety. Provence was not amused; he stood, his hands behind his back to hide the fact that he was clenching them in fury.

Then . it happened. The vase crashed to the floor and was broken into several pieces. Only then did I realise Provence’s hatred for the Dauphin. He sprang at him. Louis, taken by surprise, went crashing to the floor. He was heavy and I called out in alarm as he fell, but Provence was on him;

he had his hands at my husband’s throat. Then Louis had broken free, and they were rolling on the floor, behaving as though they would kill each other. The sisters stood apart watching; but I could not remain aloof, I ran to them and pulling at my husband’s coat shouted to them to stop.

When he saw that I was in danger, my husband cried:

“Be careful) Antoinette will be hurt I’ My hands were bleeding from a scratch I had received in the scrimmage, and the sight of that blood sobered them both.

“You are hurt,” said my husband lumbering to his feet.

“It is nothing, but I beg of you do not be so foolish again.”

They were both rather sheepish, ashamed to have given way to their tempera over such a matter. My husband apologised for his clumsiness and Provence for his display of temper. But the sisters whispered together and they implied that I had only been eager to draw attention to myself by pretending to be so concerned and rushing in and getting scratched.

How difficult it was to be friendly with these girls! But I was friendly by nature and I could not believe that they really disliked me so I tried to think of a way of making them happy. After all, I reasoned with the Princesse de Lamballe, it was small wonder they were so disagreeable. How should we feel if we looked as they did? Poor ugly little creatures.

It did not make life easier because the King so obviously showed his preference for me. When my sisters-in-law knew that he visited me for breakfast and actually made the coffee they were furious I Marie Josephe did not show it, for she was sly, but her young sister could not disguise her feelings. The aunts were always trying to stir trouble between us but I refused to listen, although I’m sure my sisters-in-law did.

The King knew that I loved the theatre, and he had said that on every Tuesday and Friday comedies should be performed. I was delighted and I was always there to applaud the actors. But what I longed to do was play on a stage and I conceived the idea that we should do a play among ourselves.

“It would be forbidden if it were discovered,” said Provence.

“Then,” I retorted, ‘it must not be discovered. “

It was an excellent idea, because when we were learning our lines and planning the scenery my sisters-in-law forgot to hate me. And I was so happy to be acting that I forgot everything else.

I discovered some one-act plays, and sometimes we were ambitious enough to try Moliere. I shall always remember playing Cathos from Les Pricwuses Ridicules. How I would prance across the stage, throwing myself into the part. I loved everyone when I was on a stage. This brought out the best in my brother-in-law Provence, who could learn his lines with the utmost ease and had a real gift for playing comedy.

I would throw my arms about his neck and cry: “But you are marvelous!

You play the pan to the life. ” He would be pleased—so different from the grim young man who bore a grudge against fate which had not made him a Dauphin. Artois of course loved to act, and even my sisters-in-law enjoyed playing. They had such quaint French accents that we were often in fits of laughter in which even they joined.

Sometimes we allowed the young Princesses dothilde and Elisabeth to play. I pleaded that they should be allowed to because I remembered how I had been kept out because I was too young. They loved it of course; and I grew very fond of little Elisabeth—and Clothilde too, until her governess turned her against me. She was a good-natured girl— a trifle lazy, but then she was so fat. The King, with his penchant for nicknames, had already dubbed her Fat Lady. She did not mind. She was wonderfully good-tempered and would take the most unrewarding parts with a smile.

This was all the more fun because we had to set out our own stage,

which we made with screens; and the approach of anyone not in the secret meant that these had to be bundled into a cupboard hastily and we would all have to try to look as if our costumes were what we would naturally wear and arrange ourselves as though we were merely chatting idly.

My husband was in the secret, of course, but he would lake no part in the playacting, so he was the audience.

A very necessary part,” I pointed out, ‘because a play needs an audience.”

So he would sit there smiling and applauding and more often than not falling asleep. But I did notice that when I was to the fore he was almost always awake.

So enthusiastic did we become over our amateur theatricals that I called in Monsieur Campan, who was my secretary and librarian, and whose services and discretion I valued, and asked him to help us find the exact costumes we would need for our parts. He was very good at this, and so was his son, who joined us.

The fun continued and everyone noticed how intimate the six of us had become; we even took our meals together.

Amateur theatricals was merely one way of passing the time. I was constantly arranging that we should go into the city, and it was usually to the Opera ball. I insisted that we all went, although my sisters-in-law were not good dancers and were far from eager. The Parisians never cheered them as they did me. They seemed to have forgotten my one lapse into what was considered bad taste—riding through the Bois de Boulogne in my sledge—and had taken me to their hearts once more. It did not occur to me that the people could love their Dauphine one day and hate her the next. I knew nothing of the people, and although I made many many journeys to the city I, knew little of Paris-the real city.

I learned a little of it later and wished I had been more perceptive, for the Paris of that day was to change heartbreakingly in little more than a decade, and nothing surely could ever be quite the same again.

What a city of contrasts it was—although at that rime I was quite

blind to this! The elegant Dauphine Square—and those winding streets such as the Rue de la Juiverie, Rue aux Feves and the Rue des Marmousets in which thieves and prostitutes of the lowest kind lived side by side with the famous Paris dyers whose tubs were set out on the cobbles. Sometimes I would see the red, blue and green streams running out of these narrow alleys as we passed. I was told they were from the dyers and was content to leave it at that, never bothering to learn more of their fascinating trade.

It was a bustling city and a gay one. That was what was most apparent—its gaiety. Sometimes in the early morning rattling back to Versailles after a ball we would see peasants arriving from the other side of the barriers with their produce which they would market in Les Halles. We would see the bakers of Gonesse bringing their bread into Paris. In the dark years ahead these bakers were not allowed to take back any which was unsold for so precious was bread that the authorities kept a tight hold on every loaf that was brought into the capital. Bread! It was a word which was to ring in my ears like the knell of a funeral bell. But at this time they were merely the bakers of Gonesse who came into Paris twice a week and who stopped to stare openmouthed at our carriages as they carried us back to Versailles.

I knew nothing then of this workaday city into which six thousand country men and women came each morning with their wares. To me Paris was the Opera House, the home of those people who loved me so dearly, the capital city of the country of which I should one day be Queen.

If only I had been taught to know Paris! Madame Campan often deplored this. She said that Vermond had kept me criminally in the dark. I could have learned so much if I had seen Paris at work, Paris as it really was for the Parisians. I should have seen the clerks walking to their work, the traders in Les Halles, the barbers covered in the flour with which they powdered their wigs, the gowned and bewigged lawyers on the way to the Chatelet. I should have been aware of the great contrasts. I should have compared the difference between ourselves in our fine clothes and the poor beggars, the marcheuses, those sad creatures who were scarcely human with the scars of debauchery and hardship on their faces, still alive but only just, too worn out to continue their old profession, and who were so called because they were fit only to run errands for the poorest prostitutes. So much poverty on one side, so much splendour on the other ! The Paris through which I drove so blithely on my way to and fro was the fertile breeding-ground of revolution.

And at the heart was the Palais Royale. Like a small rich town in its own right, the square was as a cloister, and after dark all sorts of men and women gathered here. Here were discussed art, the scandals of the Court—my marriage must have been a favourite topic—and, as time progressed, the inequalities, the desire for liberty, equality and the brotherhood of men.

I would feel the excitement envelop me as we left Versailles and drove along the road to Paris. There would be the carriages, the people on horseback, often with an elaborately-dressed footman to run ahead of them to show how rich and important they were. And for those who were not so rich there was the carrabas, the rather cumbersome vehicle drawn by eight horses which ploughed its way back and forth between Paris and Versailles, or the smaller vehicles which had been given the names of pots de chambre and which offered more comfort but left the occupants exposed to all weathers.

I was always thrilled to enter the city. It seemed particularly exciting after dark when the street lamps which swung out from the wall on great brackets were alight. As our carriage dashed along, showers of mud would be sent up, for Paris was noted for its mud. It was different from any other mud in France, I was told. It had a definite sulphurous smell, and if it was allowed to stay on a garment it would burn a hole in it. It was no doubt produced by the refuse which flowed through the streets. Paris was sometimes called Lutetia—the Town of Mud.

Carnival time came with the new year. This was the time of masked balls and comedies, operas and ballets. I could have spent each night at one of these. Because my love of dancing was known, there were more masked balls than ever. We always went incognito. That was the greatest fun. Some times I would wear a domino and at others a simple taffeta gown or even gauze or muslin. My great delight was to disguise my identity, but I never went to these balls without either my husband or brothers-in-law in attendance. That would not only have been forbidden but highly dangerous; even I realised this.

The day was the 30th of January a day I shall never forget; I set out with Provence and Artois, my sisters-in-law and several ladies and gentlemen. My husband did not wish to come. I did not try to persuade him, because I knew he disliked coming.

I wore a black silk domino as so many dancers did and a black velvet mask hiding my features, and as soon as I was in the ballroom I was dancing. Artois partnered me; I preferred that; he was an exquisite dancer and I believe enjoyed dancing with me as much as I did with him. It was exciting, but I had danced many times with Artois. I was aware of being watched as I danced, though there was nothing unusual about that. I danced in my own way and several members of my entourage told me that however disguised I was they would know me by the way I moved.

The brilliantly lighted ballroom, the music, the rustle of the silk, the smell of pomade and powder were thrilling and most of all the anonymity.

I noticed a young man watching me as I danced, and although I averted my gaze I went on thinking of him. He was unmasked and handsome in a foreign way. Perhaps that was why I noticed him, because he looked so different. He was tall and slender with very fair hair, and what made him so unusual were his dark eyes. His complexion was fair; and he was pale. His was a face of contrasts; at one moment it seemed as beautiful as a woman’s, and then one caught sight of dark heavy brows which gave great strength to his face.

Then an impulse came to me I wanted to speak to him, to hear his voice. Well, why not? This was a masked ball. Why should he know who I was?

It was carnival time, when manners were free. Why should not a masked domino exchange a few words with another dancer at a carnival ball I We stopped dancing and joined our party. I saw then that the strange man was only a few paces away, and instinct told me that he was as curious about me as I was about him, for he had taken his stand close to us.

I said: “I wish to amuse myself … for a moment.” And I went up to the stranger and stood before him smiling.

I said: “It is an amusing ball… this.”

As I spoke I put up my hand to make sure my mask was secure and I immediately half wished I hadn’t. I was wearing costly diamonds. Would he know how costly? Then I was glad, for my hands were beautiful and I was very proud of them.

“I find it very amusing,” he answered, and I noticed immediately the foreign accent. Had he noticed mine?

“You are not French.”

“Swedish, Madame,” he answered.

“Or should I say. Mademoiselle.”

I laughed. If he knew who he was addressing what would his reaction be?

“You may say Madame,” I answered.

Provence had come closer. I could see that the stranger was aware of him. I tried to see Provence through a stranger’s eyes. He had an air of the great nobleman. Even when he came to a masked ball he could not forget that he was almost a Dauphin.

I wanted to know more of the stranger but I was very conscious of Provence standing there.

“May I say,” he said, ‘that Madame is charming? “

“You may say it if you mean it,” I replied.

“Then I repeat: Madame is charming.”

“What do you do here?”

“I am acquiring culture, Madame.”

At the Opera Ball? “

“One can never be sure where it will be found I laughed. I did not know why except that I was happy.

“So you are doing the grand tour?”

“I am doing the grand tour, Madame.”

“Tell me where you have been before coming to France.”

To Switzerland, Italy.

And then you will return to Sweden. I wonder which country you will like best. Shall you visit Austria? I wonder how you will like Vienna.

I once lived in Vienna. ” A recklessness seemed to come over me. I went on breathlessly:

What is your name? “

He said: “It is Axel de Fersen.”

Monsieur . Prince . Comte . “

“Comte,” he answered.

“Comte Axel de Fersen,” I repeated.

“My mother’s people came from France.”

That is why there is a look of the French about you,” I said.

“You took your fairness from your father, your darkness from your mother.

I saw it at once. “

“Madame is observant.” He took a step closer and I thought he would ask me to dance. I wondered what I should do if he did because I dared not dance with a stranger. Provence was ready to intervene at any moment. Artois was watchful. If the stranger made any move which might be considered lesemajeste, and which he might easily do after the encouragement I had given him, Provence would intervene. I saw trouble ahead, and strangely enough instead of exhilarating me it alarmed me.

“Madame asks many questions,” said the Comte de Fersen, ‘and I have answered them. Should I not be permitted to ask a few in fair return?”

Provence was frowning. I acted with my usual lack of thought. I lifted a hand and removed my mask.

There were gasps of astonishment all about.

“Madame la Dauphine!’ I laughed aloud to hide my elation while I kept my eyes on the Comte de Fersen. How did it feel, I wondered, to indulge in a flirtation with an unknown woman and discover that you had been speaking to the future Queen of France?

He did not hesitate. He behaved with an admirable calm and the utmost dignity. He bowed low and I saw his blond hair touched his embroidered collar. It was the colour of sunshine—beautiful hair. He must think mine was beautiful too.

The people were closing in on me. They were staring at me. Many might have guessed that I was there, but in the masks which covered our faces from forehead to chin no one could be sure. But I had betrayed myself on an impulse and I was creating a scene in that crowded ballroom.

Provence was beside me; with regal dignity he held out his arm. I slipped mine through it. Artois and my party were already signing for the crowd to part and make way for us.

We went straight to our carriages.

Neither Provence, Artois nor their wives mentioned my action, but I knew when I interrupted their speculative glances that they were considering its significance.

I should have considered it too. It did not occur to me then that these worldly young men had construed my conduct as meaning that I was tired of a marriage which was no marriage. I was a young and healthy woman; I was sexually unfulfilled: a dangerous position for a Dauphine whose offspring would be the Enfants de France. Provence was making up his mind to be watchful. What if I took a lover? What if I produced a child and passed it off as my husband’s? It was possible that a bastard could rob him of a crown. Artois’s speculations ran along different lines. Was I thinking of taking a lover? If so, he had always found me very attractive.

And their wives, who were beginning to know their husbands well, would be following their thoughts.

And I . I was going over every one of those minutes when I had talked to the stranger. I was hearing his voice echoing in my ears. I was thinking of his blond hair against the dark of his coat.

I did not think I should ever see the stranger again, but I thought: I shall remember him for a long time. And he will never forget me as long as he lives.

That seemed enough.