The Queen's Lover by Francine Du Plessix Gray

greatly. Ambassador Creutz also introduced the Swedish princes to all the foremost salons, and Gustavus would maintain a lifetime correspondence with France’s most accomplished blue-stockings—Madame Lespinasse, Madame d’Epinay, and Madame Necker along with Madame du Deffand.
    It strikes me that many pivotal events in the life of Gustavus, who was so stagestruck, would be in some way related to the theater. In February 1771, the crown prince was at the Paris Opera, watching a performance of Lampe’s
Pyramus and Thisbe,
when a messenger appeared bearing the news that his father had died. Gustavus had much loved his gentle, indulgent parent. He hastened back to the Swedish embassy, where he remained in seclusion for the following four days, suffering great sorrow. Having been promised three hundred thousand livres by Louis XV to bolster his country’s faltering finances, he went home to prepare for the business of being a king.
    Soon after his coronation, it was announced that His Majesty Gustavus III had chosen Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday afternoons as those times when his subjects could come to present their petitions and discuss their griefs with him personally. On the appointed hours the palace was thronged by crowds of every rank and age, and of both genders. The monarch listened with exemplary patience to the complaints of his humblest subjects. He bestowed favors as graciously as if he were receiving them. To some he offered money, to others he gave advice; every visitor was greeted with a friendly smile or a sympathetic word. The citizens were dazzled by their new monarch. To have seen the king and shaken his hand was looked on as the height of felicity, and he was lauded to the skies. My father, at the time, was still the head of the Hat faction, and he was immediately summoned by the king to open negotiations with the Caps. In June 1771 it was my privilege to see Gustavus, in full regalia and with the silver scepter of his ancestors in hand, formally open his first Riksdag, or parliament. His speech stirred deep emotions in those who heard it, all the more because everyone in attendance understood it: Gustavus felt close to his humbler subjects, and addressed the Riksdag in Swedish instead of French. It was the first time in more than a century that a Swedish king—and what an orator this one was—addressed a Riksdag from the throne in his native language.
    After a moving allusion to his father’s death, Gustavus proceeded to say: “Born and bred among you, I have learned to love my country from my earliest youth, and consider it the highest privilege to be born a Swede…to be the first citizen of a free people…. To rule over a happy people is my dearest desire, to govern a free people the highest aim of my ambition…. I have found that neither the pomp nor the magnificence of monarchy, neither the most prosperous economy, can ensure content or prosperity when a nation is not united. It rests with you, therefore, to become the happiest country in the world. Let this Riksdag remain forever memorable in our annals for the annulment of all party animosities, of all self-interested motives. I shall do all I can to reunite our diverging opinions, to reconcile your estranged affections, so that the nation may forever look back with gratitude on a parliament upon whose deliberations I now invoke the blessing of the Most High.”
    This encomium, delivered with the dramatic skill of a consummate actor, produced an extraordinary effect. If my own rigid, judgmental father was astonished and delighted by it, one can well imagine its impact on the entire assembly. It was unanimously decided, by all four estates, that the royal address should be printed in Swedish, German, and Finnish, and that a framed copy of it should be preserved on a wall of every parish in the realm. A translation of Gustavus’s speech even appeared in the
Gazette de France
and was admired by many Parisians. Gustavus’s reputation grew