his face, his mind elsewhere, imagining the final product perhaps, a lock so magnificent it could defeat the Evil One himself. Not a great lover, Louis.
Of course, he had no practice. Just as, pamphleteers to the contrary, I had no basis of comparison. Antoinette and Louis, as inept in bed as on the throne, though goodness knows we tried. That mattress, those hands. The sound of his breathing, the weight of his torso. Just the two of us, two human bodies reduced to the place where the one had come into the other, nudging, nudging...
But did I feel stirred? Yes, I admit, I did, a little. It was like the way I'd sometimes feel while I was sitting for my portrait, an almost unendurable sense of my
self,
of the surfaces of Antoinette, her eyes trying not to blink, her lips growing more and more pursed and dry, her tongue dying to lick them. And then just when I'd think I couldn't bear to sit there like that one minute longer, I'd suddenly find myself on the outside looking in, a traveler in a carriage passing an apparently deserted house at nightfall. The windows dark, no hint of movement, yet somewhere deep inside, in the deepest darkest corner of the cellar, there would be a little sleeping animal who would prick up its ears.
Michaelmas came and went, then All Saints' Day, closely followed by All Souls'. I turned twenty-four; the peasants went into the woods with their baskets to harvest the acorns to fatten the pigs. The sweet damp smell of decaying oak leaves, brushfires burning, the first flakes of snow. My mother could no longer walk and had to be hauled up and down stairs on a green morocco sofa, operated by winches. "I hope the weather will be abominable," she wrote, "so the King won't get tired from hunting so much, and the Queen won't gamble every night into the small hours..." Christmastide, the Feast of the Innocents. For the New Year my husband gave me a pair of brilliant diamond earrings and a statue of cupid carving his bow from Hercules' club; the little moats around the Trianon, called fox jumps, froze. "I very much enjoy this pleasure," Louis confided to his aunts, meaning our newfound intimacy. "I am sorry to have been deprived of it for so long." In the hallways of Versailles everyone was sneezing and coughing and blowing his nose; in Paris Benjamin Franklin was a great hero, and all the women were wearing a coonskin hat called "The Insurgent" in his honor. "I have a bad toothache and a swollen face," my mother wrote, "even to the eyes, but no fever at all."
We
replaced Minister of Finance Turgot with Jacques Necker, a physiocrat with a prude, Carnival with Lent. Thin soup, boiled eggs, steamed fish, pottage. No dancing, no gambling; I had diarrhea.
Then it was spring; then I was pregnant.
Antoinette pregnant, imagine it! Just like the sows and the mares and the ewes and the nanny goats. The trees were budding, so girlish and fresh in their pale green shifts. I went to bed early and arose early; I went for long walks in the cool of the morning, amazed to see how precisely the world mirrored my condition. All the bulbs swelled and put forth pale green shoots. Hyacinth and narcissusâsuch names! As if some long dead botanist had been determined to keep us mindful of the wages of beauty. My waist grew four and a half
pouces
by Pentecost.
Nor was this pleasure, being devoid of any trace of the pain that makes pleasure possible. I had what I wanted and, for a moment at least, I was content. I ignored the rumors about the baby's patrimony; I knew they were false, which seemed sufficient reason to discount them. A great weakness in a Queen, you might say, such indifference to political nuanceâno matter that it was based on a clear sense of my own moral rectitude. But evidently everyone was less interested in having a truly good Queen than in having a Queen who
appeared
good. So long as I feigned deference to even the silliest details of court etiquette, remembering for instance to send my dentist six
Of course, he had no practice. Just as, pamphleteers to the contrary, I had no basis of comparison. Antoinette and Louis, as inept in bed as on the throne, though goodness knows we tried. That mattress, those hands. The sound of his breathing, the weight of his torso. Just the two of us, two human bodies reduced to the place where the one had come into the other, nudging, nudging...
But did I feel stirred? Yes, I admit, I did, a little. It was like the way I'd sometimes feel while I was sitting for my portrait, an almost unendurable sense of my
self,
of the surfaces of Antoinette, her eyes trying not to blink, her lips growing more and more pursed and dry, her tongue dying to lick them. And then just when I'd think I couldn't bear to sit there like that one minute longer, I'd suddenly find myself on the outside looking in, a traveler in a carriage passing an apparently deserted house at nightfall. The windows dark, no hint of movement, yet somewhere deep inside, in the deepest darkest corner of the cellar, there would be a little sleeping animal who would prick up its ears.
Michaelmas came and went, then All Saints' Day, closely followed by All Souls'. I turned twenty-four; the peasants went into the woods with their baskets to harvest the acorns to fatten the pigs. The sweet damp smell of decaying oak leaves, brushfires burning, the first flakes of snow. My mother could no longer walk and had to be hauled up and down stairs on a green morocco sofa, operated by winches. "I hope the weather will be abominable," she wrote, "so the King won't get tired from hunting so much, and the Queen won't gamble every night into the small hours..." Christmastide, the Feast of the Innocents. For the New Year my husband gave me a pair of brilliant diamond earrings and a statue of cupid carving his bow from Hercules' club; the little moats around the Trianon, called fox jumps, froze. "I very much enjoy this pleasure," Louis confided to his aunts, meaning our newfound intimacy. "I am sorry to have been deprived of it for so long." In the hallways of Versailles everyone was sneezing and coughing and blowing his nose; in Paris Benjamin Franklin was a great hero, and all the women were wearing a coonskin hat called "The Insurgent" in his honor. "I have a bad toothache and a swollen face," my mother wrote, "even to the eyes, but no fever at all."
We
replaced Minister of Finance Turgot with Jacques Necker, a physiocrat with a prude, Carnival with Lent. Thin soup, boiled eggs, steamed fish, pottage. No dancing, no gambling; I had diarrhea.
Then it was spring; then I was pregnant.
Antoinette pregnant, imagine it! Just like the sows and the mares and the ewes and the nanny goats. The trees were budding, so girlish and fresh in their pale green shifts. I went to bed early and arose early; I went for long walks in the cool of the morning, amazed to see how precisely the world mirrored my condition. All the bulbs swelled and put forth pale green shoots. Hyacinth and narcissusâsuch names! As if some long dead botanist had been determined to keep us mindful of the wages of beauty. My waist grew four and a half
pouces
by Pentecost.
Nor was this pleasure, being devoid of any trace of the pain that makes pleasure possible. I had what I wanted and, for a moment at least, I was content. I ignored the rumors about the baby's patrimony; I knew they were false, which seemed sufficient reason to discount them. A great weakness in a Queen, you might say, such indifference to political nuanceâno matter that it was based on a clear sense of my own moral rectitude. But evidently everyone was less interested in having a truly good Queen than in having a Queen who
appeared
good. So long as I feigned deference to even the silliest details of court etiquette, remembering for instance to send my dentist six
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