The Queen's Confession Part 1

The Queen's Confession.

VICTORIA HOLT.

FOR.

Naomi Burton.

Guide, Counselor, and Friend.

Louis XVI meant to write his own memoirs; the manner in which his private papers were arranged pointed out this design. The Queen, also, had the same intention; she long preserved a large correspondence, and a great number of minute reports, made in the spirit and upon the event of the moment.

-Madame Campan's Memoirs.

CHAPTER 1.

"The only real happiness in this world comes from a happy marriage. I can say this from experience. And all depends on the woman, on her being gentle, amusing, quick to please ..."

-From a letter to Marie Antoinette from Maria Theresa.

The French Marriage.

IT WAS SAID THAT I WAS BORN "with the vision of a throne and a French executioner" over my cradle; but this was long after and it is a habit to remember prophetic signs and symbols when time has shown the course of events. In fact, my birth caused my mother little inconvenience, for it happened just as the Seven Years' War was about to break out and she was more concerned with this threat than with her baby daughter. Almost as soon as I was born, she was carrying on with state affairs and, I am sure, scarcely gave me a thought. She was accustomed to bearing children; I was her fifteenth child.

She had wanted a boy, of course, although she had four, because rulers always want boys; and she had seven daughters left to her, three having died before I was born, either at birth or in infancy. I liked to hear how she had made a bet with the old Duke of Tarouka as to what my s.e.x would be.

She had wagered that the child would be a girl. So Tarouka had to pay up.

While she was awaiting my birth my mother decided that my sponsors should be the King and Queen of Portugal. In later years this was considered to be another evil omen, for on the day I was born, a terrific earthquake shattered Lisbon, wrecking the town and killing forty thousand people. Afterward, long afterward, it was said that all children born on that day were unlucky.

But few Princesses can have had a happier childhood than mine. During those long sunny days when my sister Caroline and I used to play together in the gardens of the Schonbrunn Palace, neither of us gave a thought to the future; it never seemed to occur to me that life could not go on in this way forever. We were Archd.u.c.h.esses, our mother was the Empress of Austria, and it was the nature of custom and tradition that our childhoods should inevitably be cut short and that we, being girls, would be sent away from home to be wives to strangers. It was different for our brothers - Ferdinand, who came between Caroline and me, and Max, who was a year younger than I and the baby of the family. They were safe. They would marry and bring their brides to Austria. But we never discussed this during these summers at Schonbrunn and winters at the Hofburg in Vienna. We were two happy carefree children - our only anxieties being which of the b.i.t.c.hes would have her litter first and what the little darlings would be like. We loved dogs, both of us.

There were lessons, but we knew how to manage our Aja, as we called her. To everyone else she was Countess von Brandeiss - outwardly stern and fond of ceremony, but she doted on us and we could always get what we wanted. I remember sitting in the schoolroom looking out on the gardens and thinking how lovely it was out there while I was trying to copy Aja's writing. There were blots on the page and I could never keep the lines straight. She came to me and, clicking her tongue, said I would never learn and she would be sent away because of it Then I put my arms about her neck and said I loved her - which was true - and that I should never allow her to be sent away - which was absurd, because if my mother said she was to go away, she would go without delay. But she softened and drew me to her; then she made me sit beside her while she drew for me in fine pencil so that all I had to do to produce an excellent drawing was go over her pencil lines in ink. After that it became a habit; and she would even write out my exercises in pencil and I would go over them with my pen, so that in the end it seemed as though I had written a very fair essay.

I was called Maria Antonia - Antonia in the family; it was not until later, when it was decided that I should go to France, that my name was changed to Marie Antoinette and I had to learn to forget I was Austrian and become French.

Our mother was the center of our lives, although we did not see her very often; but she was always there, a presence, someone whose word and wish were law. We were all terrified of her.

How well I remember the cold of the Hofburg in winter, where all the windows had to be kept wide open because our mother believed that fresh air was good for everyone. The bitterly cold wind would whistle through the palace. I have never known anything so cold as those Viennese winters and I used to pity her attendants, particularly the poor little hairdresser who had to get up at five in the morning to dress my mother's hair and stand in that cold room near the open window. She was so proud when my mother had selected her to do her hair on account of her special talents, but I asked her - for I was always friendly with the attendants - if she did not sometimes wish she had not been so good, then she would not have been chosen.

"Oh, Madame Antonia," she replied, "it's glorious slavery."

That was how everyone felt about my mother. We all had to obey her, but it seemed right and natural that we should, and we should never have thought of doing anything else. We all knew that she was the supreme ruler because she was the daughter of our grandfather Charles VI, who had had no son, and although our father was known as the Emperor, he was second to her.

Dear Father! How I loved him! He was lighthearted and careless, and I imagine I took after him. Perhaps that was why I was his favorite. Mother had no favorites and we were such a large family that I scarcely knew some of my elder brothers and sisters. There had been sixteen of us, but five I never knew because they died before I was able to be aware of them. Mother was proud of us and used to bring foreign visitors to see us.

"My family is not small," she would say and her manner showed how pleased she was to have so many children.

Once a week the doctors used to examine us to see that we were in good health and their reports were sent to our mother, who studied them carefully. When we were summoned to her presence, we were all subdued and unlike ourselves; she would question us and we had to have the right answers. It was easy for me, being the youngest but one; but some of the elder ones were terrified - even Joseph, my eldest brother, who was fourteen years older than I and seemed so important because he would one day be Emperor. Everyone saluted him wherever he went and in fact, when he was not in my mother's presence, he was treated as though he were already the Emperor. Once when he wanted to ride his sleigh out of season, his servants brought snow down from the mountains so that he could do so. He was very obstinate and inclined to be haughty and Ferdinand told me that our mother had reproved him because of his "wild desire to have his own way."

I believe our father was in awe of her too. He took little part in affairs of state, but we saw a great deal of him. He was not always happy and once said rather sadly, and a little resentfully: "The Empress and the children are the Court. Here I am simply an individual."

Long afterward when I was lonely and in my prison, I thought of those early days and I understood my family much better than I had when I was surrounded by them. It was like standing back and looking at a painting. Everything fell into focus and what I had been scarcely aware of at the time became very clear to me.

I saw my mother - a good woman, eager to do the best for her children and her country, loving my father dearly, but determined not to give up one bit of her power to him. I saw her, not as the martinet whom I had feared too much to love, but as the wise, shrewd mother, who was constantly concerned for me. How she must have suffered when I went to my new country! I was like a child walking a tightrope, not realizing the danger I was in; but she, though miles away, was deeply aware.

Then my father. How could any man be expected to live contentedly under the domination of such a woman! I know now that the whisperings I heard meant that he was not faithful to her and that this was something which wounded her deeply. Yet, although she would have done a great deal for him, she would not give him what he wanted - a little of her power.

As for myself, I was featherbrained. I know I had the excuse of youth, but I was naturally like this. I was full of high spirits, very healthy, and loved being out of doors, playing ... always playing. I could not sit still for five minutes at a time. I could never concentrate for a moment; my mind would fly off at a tangent; I just wanted to laugh and chatter and play all the time. Looking back I can see what great dramas were going on in our household - and there was I playing with my dogs, whispering my little-girl secrets with Caroline and not being aware of them.

I must have been seven when my brother Joseph married, for he was twenty-one. He did not want to get married and said: "I am more afraid of marriage than of battle."

That surprised me, for I had not thought marriage was something to fear. But, like everything else I heard, it went in at one ear and out of the other; I never concerned myself about anything or wondered very much. I was absorbed by what ribbons Aja would put out for me and whether I could change mine for Caroline's if I did not like the color.

Now I can visualize the drama clearly. His bride was quite the loveliest creature we had ever seen. We were all so fair and she was dark. Our mother loved Isabella, and Caroline confided to me that she was sure our mother wished we were all like her. Perhaps she did, for Isabella was not only beautiful, she was very clever - which none of us was. But she had one other characteristic which we lacked. She was melancholy. I might have been frivolous; I might have known little about books; but there was one thing I did know and that was how to enjoy life; and this was something which, for all her learning, was beyond Isabella's powers. The only time I ever saw her laugh was with our sister Maria Christina, who was a year younger than Joseph.

Isabella would go into the gardens when Maria Christina was there; they would walk together arm in arm, and then Isabella looked as nearly happy as she ever could. I was glad that she liked one of us, but it was a pity it was not Joseph, for he had fallen deeply in love with her.

There was a great deal of excitement when she was going to have a baby; but when the child was born, it was a weakling, and it did not live long. She had two children and they both died.

Caroline and I were too busy with our own affairs to think much about Joseph and his. I must have noticed that he looked very sad always and it certainly made some impression on me even then because it comes back so clearly all these years later. What a dark tragedy that was! And there was I living under the same roof with it.

Isabella was constantly talking about death and how she longed for it. That seemed strange to me. Death was something which happened to old people - or little babies whom one did not really know. It had little to do with us.

Caroline and I, hiding ourselves behind a clipped hedge in the gardens, once heard Isabella and Maria Christina talking together.

"What right have I in this world?" Isabella was saying. "I am no good. If it were not sinful, I would kill myself. I should already have done so."

Maria Christina laughed at her. Maria Christina was not the kindest of our sisters and on the rare occasions when she did notice us, she would say something spiteful, so we avoided her.

"You suffer from a desire to seem heroic," she retorted. "It's utter selfishness."

Then she walked away and left Isabella looking after her, stricken.

I thought about that scene for five whole minutes, which was a long time for me.

And Isabella did die - just as she had said she wanted to. She was in Vienna for only two years altogether. Poor Joseph was heartbroken. He was constantly writing letters to Isabella's father in Parma and they were all about Isabella, how wonderful she had been, how there was no one like her.

"I have lost everything," he told my brother Leopold. "My beloved wife ... my love ... has gone. How can I survive this terrible separation?"

One day I saw Joseph with Maria Christina. Her eyes were flas.h.i.+ng with hatred and she was saying: "It's true. I will show you her letters. They will tell you all you want to know. You will see that I ... not you ... was the one she loved."

It falls into place now. Poor Joseph! Poor Isabella! I understand why Isabella was so sad and wished for death, ashamed of her love and yet unable to suppress it; and Maria Christina, who would always want her revenge, had betrayed her to poor Joseph.

Immersed as I was then with my own affairs, I saw this tragedy as through a misted gla.s.s, but because my own suffering has now made of me a different person from the careless creature I was in my youth, I understand so much and I have sympathy to give to others who suffer. I brood on their sufferings - perhaps because I cannot bear to contemplate my own.

Joseph was very unhappy for a long time, but because he was the eldest and more important than any of us, he must have a wife. He was so angry when a new wife was selected for him by our mother and Prince Wenzel Anton Kaunitz that when she arrived in Vienna, he scarcely spoke to her. She was very different from Isabella, being small and fat, with brown uneven teeth and red spots on her face. Joseph told Leopold, in whom he used to confide more than in anyone else at our mother's Court, that he was wretched and he was not going to pretend to be anything else, for it was not in his nature to pretend. Her name was Josepha and she must have been unhappy too, for he had a barrier built across the balcony onto which their separate rooms opened so that he would never meet her if she stepped from her room at the same time as he stepped from his.

Maria Christina said: "If I were Joseph's wife, I'd go and hang myself on a tree in the Schonbrunn gardens."

When I was ten years old, I was aware of tragedy which was real even to me because it concerned me deeply.

Leopold was going to be married. There was nothing very exciting to Caroline and me about this, because with so many brothers and sisters there were other weddings; and it was only one which was held in Vienna which would have interested us; but Leopold was being married in Innsbruck. Father was going to the wedding, but Mother could not leave Vienna, as her state duties kept her there.

I was in the schoolroom tracing a picture when one of my father's pages came to say that my father wanted to say good-bye to me at once. I was surprised because I had said good-bye to him half an hour earlier and I had seen him ride off with his attendants.

Aja was in a fl.u.s.ter. "Something has happened," she said. "Go at once."

So I went with the servants. My father was on his horse looking back at the Palace and when he saw me coming, his eyes lit up and he seemed very pleased. He did not dismount, but I was lifted up and he held me against him so tightly that it was painful. I felt he was trying to say something and did not know how to, that he hated to let me go. I thought he was going to take me to Innsbruck with him, but that could not be, for my mother would have arranged that if it were so.

His hold loosened and he looked at me tenderly. I threw my arms about his neck and cried: "Dear, dear Papa." There were tears in his eyes and he gripped me with his right arm while he touched my hair with his left. He had always liked to touch my hair, which was thick and light in color - auburn, some called it, though my brothers Ferdinand and Max called me "Carrots." His servants were watching and abruptly he signed to one of them to take me from him.

He turned to the friends who were beside him and said in a voice shaken with emotion: "Gentlemen, G.o.d knows how much I desired to kiss that child."

That was all. Father smiled good-bye and I went back to the schoolroom, puzzled for a few minutes and then characteristically forgot the incident.

That was the last I saw of him. In Innsbruck, he felt rather ill and his friends begged him to be bled, but he had arranged to go to the opera with Leopold that afternoon and he knew that if he were bled, he would have to rest and cancel the opera, which would worry Leopold, who, like all his children, loved him dearly. It was better, he said, to go to the opera and be quietly bled afterward without disturbing his son.

So he went to the opera and was taken ill there. He had a stroke and died in Leopold's arms.

It was naturally said afterward that he, being near death, had had a terrible premonition of my future and that was why he had sent for me in that unusual manner.

We were all desolate because we had lost our father. I was sad for several weeks and then it began to seem as though I had never known him. But my mother was heartbroken. She embraced my father's dead body when it was brought home and she was only removed from it by force. Then she shut herself into her apartments and gave herself up to grief, which was so violent that the doctors were forced to open one of her veins in order to give her relief from her terrible emotion. She cut off her hair - of which she had been so proud - and she wore a widow's somber costume, which made her look more severe than ever. In the years which followed I never saw her differently dressed.

After my father's death my mother seemed to become more aware of me. Before, I had been just one of the children; now I would often find her attention focused on me during those occasions when we all had to wait on her. This was alarming, but I soon discovered that if I smiled, I could soften her, just as I could dear old Aja, though not so easily and not always; and of course I tried to cover up my shortcomings by using this gift of mine for making people indulgent toward me.

It was soon after Father's death that I began to hear talk of "The French Marriage." Couriers were constantly going back and forth with letters between Kaunitz and my mother and my mother's Amba.s.sador in France.

Kaunitz was the most important man in Austria. A dandy, he was nevertheless one of the shrewdest politicians in Europe and my mother thought very highly of him and trusted him more than she trusted anyone else. Before he became her chief adviser, he had been her Amba.s.sador at Versailles, where he had become a great friend of Madame de Pompadour, which had meant that he was well received by the King of France, and it was while he was in Paris that he had conceived the idea of an alliance between Austria and France, which would be through a marriage between the Houses of Hapsburg and Bourbon. Living in France had given him the manners of a Frenchman and, as he also dressed like one, in Austria he was considered rather eccentric. But he was very much a German in some ways - calm, disciplined, and precise. Ferdinand told us that he used egg yolks for his complexion, smearing them over his face to keep his skin fresh; and to preserve his teeth he used to clean them with a sponge and a sc.r.a.per after every meal - at the table. He was so determined that his wig should be powdered all over that he ordered his valets to form two rows between which he walked while they used their bellows. He was enveloped in a cloud of powder, but this insured that his wig was evenly powdered.

We used to laugh at him. I did not realize then that while we were laughing together about his odd habits, he was deciding my future, and but for him I should not be where I am at this moment.

Caroline discovered that there was a possibility that either she or I might marry the King of France, which set us giggling at the incongruity of this, for he was an old man nearly sixty and we thought it would be funny to have a husband who was older than our mother. But when the Dauphin of France - the son of that King who might have been a husband to one of us - died and his son became Dauphin, there was great excitement because the new Dauphin was only a boy, about a year older than I was.

Sometimes Caroline and I talked about "The French Marriage" and then we would forget about it for weeks; but all the time we were growing farther and farther away from childhood. Ferdinand tried seriously to discuss it with us - how good it would be for Austria if there was an alliance between Hapsburg and Bourbon.

The widow of the recently dead Dauphin, who had great influence with the King, was against it and wanted a Princess from her own House to marry her son; but she died suddenly of consumption, which she had probably caught when nursing her husband, and my mother was very pleased.

My brother Joseph's poor unhappy wife died of the smallpox and my sister Maria Josepha, who was four years older than I, caught it and died. She was on the point of going to Naples to marry the King and our mother decided that an alliance with Naples was necessary, so Caroline should be the bride instead.

This was the biggest tragedy of all so far. I had loved my father and had been sad, in my way, when he had died, but Caroline had been my constant companion and I could not imagine what it would be like without her. Caroline, who felt everything more deeply than I, was heartbroken.

I was twelve; Caroline was fifteen; and as Caroline had been selected for Naples, my mother at this time decided to train me to be ready to go to France. She announced that I should no longer be called Antonia. I should be Antoinette - or Marie Antoinette. That in itself made me seem like a different person. I was now brought into my mother's salon and made to answer the questions important men put to me; I had to have the right answers and was primed beforehand, but it was so easy for me to forget.

The comfortable life was over. I was watched; I was talked about; and I fancied that my mother and her ministers were trying to represent me as a very different person from the one I was - rather the person they wanted me to be, or the French would like me to be. I was always hearing stories about my goodness, my charm and cleverness, which astonished me.

When I was younger, Mozart the musician had come to the Court; he was only a child then, but brilliant, and my mother was encouraging him. When he came into the great salon to play to the company, he was so overawed that he slipped and fell and everyone laughed. But I ran out to see if he was hurt and to tell him that it did not matter; after that we became friends and he played for me specially. He said once that he would like to marry me and, as I thought that would be pleasant, I agreed to his proposal. This was remembered and told about me. It was supposed to be one of the "charming" stories.

On one occasion my mother told me that the French Amba.s.sador would probably talk to me when I visited her salon and if he were to ask me which nation I should most like to rule I must say "the French"; and if he were to ask why, I was to reply: "Because they had Henri Quatre the Good and Louis Quatorze the Great." I learned it off by heart and was afraid I should get it wrong because I was not very sure who these people were; but I managed it and that was another story which was told about me. I was supposed to learn about the French; I was to practise speaking French; everything was changing.

As for Caroline, she was always weeping and was no longer the pleasant companion she had been. She was very frightened of marriage and knew she was going to hate the King of Naples.

Our mother came to the schoolroom and talked to her very severely.

"You are no longer a child," she said, "and I have heard that you have been very bad tempered."

I wanted to explain that Caroline was only bad-tempered because she was frightened; but it was impossible to explain to my mother.

Then she looked at me and went on: "I am going to separate you from Antoinette. You spend your time in stupid chattering and there is to be no more of this useless gossip. It will stop at once. I warn you that you will be watched and you, Caroline, as the elder, will be held responsible."

Then my mother dismissed me and kept Caroline there to lecture her further on how she should behave.

I went away with a heavy heart. I should miss Caroline so much. Strangely enough, I did not think of my own fate. France was too far off to be real and I had perfected my natural inclination to forget what it was not pleasant to remember.

Caroline left at last - pale-faced, silent, and not in the least like my gay little sister. Joseph accompanied her and I believe he was quite sorry for her; there was something good about Joseph, although he was so haughty and pompous.

There was trouble with another of my sisters but this seemed more remote, for Maria Amalia was nine years older than I was. Caroline and I had known for a long time that she was in love with a young man of the Court, Prince Zweibrucken, and hoped that she would be able to marry him, which was perhaps foolish of her, for she should have known that we had to marry heads of States for the good of Austria. But Maria Amalia was like me in that she was apt to believe what she wanted to, so she went on believing that she would be allowed to marry Prince Zweibrucken.

Caroline's fears were fully realized. She was very unhappy in Naples and wrote home that her husband was very ugly, but because she remembered what my mother had told her, she tried to be brave, and added that she was growing quite accustomed to him. She wrote to Countess von Lerchenfeld, who helped Aja as governess: "One suffers martyrdom, and it is all the greater because one must pretend to be happy. How I pity Antoinette, who has to face this. I would rather die than suffer it again. But for my religion I should have killed myself rather than live as I did for eight days. It was like h.e.l.l and I wished to die. When my little sister has to face this, I shall weep for her."

The Countess had not wanted to show me this, but I begged and pleaded and she gave way as she always did; and when I read it, I wished I hadn't. Was it really so bad? My sister-in-law Isabella had talked about killing herself. I, who loved life so much, could not understand this att.i.tude; yet it seemed strange that those two who had had so much more experience of life than I should have both talked like that.

I thought about Caroline's letter for some hours and then it slipped to the back of my mind and I forgot it - perhaps because my mother was now turning her attention more and more on me.

She came to the schoolroom to investigate my progress and was horrified when she realized how little I knew. My handwriting was untidy and laborious. As for speaking French, I was hopeless, although I could chatter in Italian; but I could not write even German really grammatically.

My mother was not angry with me; she was merely pained. She drew me to her, held me in the crook of her arm and explained to me about the great honor which might be done to me. It would be the most wonderful thing in the world if this plan which Prince von Kaunitz here in Vienna and the Duc de Choiseul in France were trying to work out could come to fruition. It was the first time I had heard the Duc de Choiseul's name mentioned and I asked my mother who he was. She told me that he was a brilliant statesman, adviser to the King of France and, most important of all, A Friend to Austria. So much depended on him and we must do nothing to offend him. What he would say if he knew what a little ignoramus I was, she could not imagine. The whole plan would probably founder.

She looked at me so severely that I was momentarily downcast. It seemed such a great responsibility; then I felt my mouth turning up at the corners because I could not believe I was all that important. And as I laughed I saw that my mother was trying not to smile, so I put my arms about her neck and said I was sure Monsieur de Choiseul would not mind very much that I was not clever.

She held me tightly against her and then, putting me from her, looked severe again. She told me about the mighty Sun King who had built Versailles, which, she said, was the greatest palace in the world, and the French Court was the most cultured and elegant, and that I was the luckiest girl in the world to have a chance of going there. I listened for a while to her accounts of the wonderful gardens and the beautiful salons, which were far more splendid than anything we had in Vienna, but soon, although I was nodding and smiling, I was not really listening.

I suddenly realized that she was saying my governesses were not suitable and I must have other teachers. She wanted me, in a few months' time, to be talking in French, thinking in French, so that it would be as though I were French.