Farewell, My Queen by Black Moishe (children's ebooks online txt) 📗

his own, he had placed himself in her hands, and he carried out to the letter her every instruction. Besides boldness and strength of purpose, Diane had an instinctive flair for calculation, so that she would detect instantly anything that might work to her advantage. Thanks to this gift, she had sensed immediately, at the very first signs of the Queen’s friendly feeling toward Gabrielle, the Duke’s wife, that here was the key to unlimited power. Diane and her brother reigned supreme at Versailles, but to do so they used bait and their bait was Gabrielle. So it came about that the entire Polignac clan, with Diane at its helm manipulating and making decisions, depended on a tenuous, sentimental, emotional bond: the Queen’s friendship with her favorite. From one day to the next, the conspicuous preferment granted to this family might end. The Queen need only, just once, remain impervious to Gabrielle’s smile, her graceful gestures, her apparent total unawareness of the fact that she was at the Court of Versailles. Gabrielle had a way of walking through the Grand Apartments as though they were a private garden. So calmly that it took your breath away. To watch her, you could easily believe that she had no idea how fortunate she was: she had been singled out by the Queen, had become her friend, and, remarkably, had remained her friend, despite the schemes that other people were forever devising to cause a rift between them. Ladies of fashion were brought into Marie-Antoinette’s apartments to capture her attention: she was blind to their presence . . .

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More than once, Diane had spoiled a drive the Queen was taking with her friend. Gabrielle, gifted with the faculty of not hearing and accustomed to her sister-in-law’s intellectual enthusiasms, was unconcerned. But the Queen was in agony. She did not succeed in turning a deaf ear, perhaps because she could not imagine a conversation centered on anything other than herself, or else from a habit going back to a time when she was not too sure of her French, and hence listened with extreme attention for fear of missing a word. During Diane’s monologues on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Queen would turn her head away and have recourse to her fan. Diane, eyes alight, sitting erect on her short stocky body, would expound a theory. By the time they arrived at the château of Saint-Cloud, the Queen was so depressed she no longer cared to alight. Her carriage would make the return trip along the broad Belvédère avenue. She preferred to go back to Versailles, with never a glance for the fountains, the rose gardens, and the tangled growth of jasmine. Gabrielle, leaning back so her head rested against a cushion, would sit there smiling. Diane took advantage of her silence to pursue her own disquisition. The Queen would stifle a moan. To her, abstract ideas were physically painful. Intelligence, too openly displayed, horrified her. She appreciated intellect only if it was softly blended into a temperament . . .

Leaning against a mantelpiece, the Countess was taking snuff. Her harsh-voiced delivery was punctuated with powerful sniffs. Standing very close to her, I had my eyes riveted on the voracious mouth below the down that shaded her upper lip. Diane, in her usual manner, was holding forth. Waves of tobacco shreds were accumulating on her chest. In the presence of the imperious Countess, people were acting like children caught misbehaving. Diane watched their groveling antics in some amusement. As for me, I was hypnotized by her thick painted lips, her chest with its growing rubbish pile, her stubby hands. I was falling asleep on my feet . . . I did not start listening again until Monsieur de Feutry, another refugee from the Study Leading to the Terraces, repeated his story of the pamphlet incident. As with the earlier telling, his audience was frantic to know whether their names were on the list. A list . . . not something that could be chanted like a nursery rhyme. By now it was surely posted on the walls of Paris.

Diane occupied a prominent position in the list. Not at the top, since that spot rightfully belonged to the Queen, but not far down. She had begun by joking about it, but, after a particularly resonant sniff, she underwent an abrupt change of manner. Such sudden shifts were customary with her, but this one, because of its timing and on account of the unmistakable accents of conviction and sincerity with which Diane was suddenly expressing herself, has remained graven in my memory.

Abandoning mockery, Diane began to castigate all this pointless chatter. She saw us, herself included, as wasting in general considerations the little time we had left to mobilize our forces and offer our services to the royal family. She spoke with great effect about fidelity and about our urgent need to save the King and Queen, putting our duty above our interest. She went on and on. Standing very close to her, enveloped in her tobacco smell, stupefied to hear such noble utterances issuing from that mouth, I hung my head. Fidelity, Sacrifice, Saving the King and Queen . . . Getting ready to die for them, we who were their subjects, their vassals . . . Her voice became increasingly sonorous, irresistible; it drilled into our conscience . . . By this time, Diane was thundering: “Everything proves, everything bears witness to the existence of systematic, organized insubordination and contempt for law. The rights of the throne have been challenged . . . Already we have heard proposals for an end to feudal rights as though this meant abolishing a system of oppression . . . But even were His Majesty to encounter no obstacle to the execution of his will, could that fount of justice and benevolence bring itself to sacrifice and humiliate the good, ancient, respectable Nobility that has shed so much blood for king and country? . . . When they speak