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

which, as I looked, the Queen appeared, herself covered in droplets of gold. Bent over a writing desk, she was reading letters or papers. She turned her eyes in my direction but did not seem to notice me. She no longer looked anything like the very young girl, almost a child, whom I had left the previous day, nor like the ivory statuette glimpsed on the balcony. Madame Campan was parading her own importance. Puffed up, acting the soul of discretion, she kept shoving me to one side. I was edging my way forward at an angle, curtsying deeply as I went. And she, a big, fat hen in her heavy corpulence, repeatedly obtruded her person between the Queen and me. The woman nudged me away into the Bathing Room and from there into the Bath Compartment. Why does she not just shut me up in the Commode Room? I wondered. Madame Campan handed me several sheets of paper and pointed to a table covered with flacons of perfume. I made as though to touch them with my fingertips.

“You will not handle Her Majesty’s perfumes, I trust,” she hissed angrily. And she added: “Her Majesty is busy reading and sorting personal papers. There is not the least need for you to read to her.”

Giving me no time to protest, she went on to explain:

“The only thing required of you is to take a sheet of paper and write down a few titles, ten, perhaps, that you consider indispensable in the event of a removal from Versailles. Monsieur Campan (her father-in-law, whose name was constantly on her lips) would have gladly assumed this task, but has been called upon to perform a more essential service.”

I immediately envisioned the transfer of the National Assembly to Soissons or Noyon, and a royal departure for Compiègne. I liked the idea. The request, however, struck me as illogical: in every château where the Queen stayed for any length of time, there were several libraries. But I did not argue the point; the only reservations I expressed had to do with where I was to carry out my assignment. I would have preferred to work in the Library.

“The Library, as also the Library Annex and the Daybed Room, will soon be crammed full of baggage. With the best will in the world, you would be in our way, Madame Laborde,” replied the Queen’s First Lady of the Bedchamber, and it was as though she had punched me in the stomach with her elbow.

So I set to work there in the Bath Compartment. I concentrated as best I could for all the whispering going on in the next room, the door of which stood ajar. The whisperers were Madame Campan and her subordinate Madame de Rochereuil, Commode-Bearer to the Queen. They were sorting undergarments. Anything not selected for the move was appropriated by Madame de Rochereuil, who, it was common knowledge, would then sell these items as dearly as she could. She had fingers like talons, long, pointed fingers that seized and held whatever they touched, fingers whose fearful nails made holes in the tips of her gloves. At the name Rochereuil, I could not repress a shudder. Some day, I thought, she will gouge the Queen’s eyes out.

For the time being, not daring to do that, she was conspiring. She was doing her best to draw the First Lady of the Bedchamber over into the enemy camp. Madame Campan resisted, but Madame de Rochereuil did not lack for arguments:

“You and I are scorned and belittled and it has to stop. We have to say ‘No more!’ We are human beings, just as she is. We have our dignity. Why did she demand to have a closestool of lacquer and gilded bronze? Even when she’s doing that, even sitting in that posture, she has to feel superior to the rest of the world. Does that strike you as fair or just, Henriette?”

Henriette was sick with embarrassment. She gestured at the Rochereuil woman to be quiet. She was mortally afraid that the Queen might hear. But Madame de Rochereuil took perverse delight in making fun of her friend’s natural timidity.

“Believe me, I’m in a good position to know what she really is. When kings come closest to nature, that’s the time when a person can best see for herself how fraudulent it is to try and set them apart from the rest of the human race. They were not born to command us. No one was born to command us. There should be no masters but those we choose. We ourselves. Freely. Knowingly.”

“Hush, oh, hush! We’ll discuss it all later, at more leisure.”

“Come on, now, you’re already convinced; you just don’t want to admit it, even to yourself; you’re held back by a bunch of old prejudices. Listen to what your brother Monsieur Genet says . . . ”

“Oh, don’t even mention his name to me; he’s a good-hearted man, but he’s . . . how can I put it . . . ”

“He’s a republican instead of a monarchist. He sees things as they are and he’s made the right choice. Listen to what he says; he’s showing you the way you should go.”

“That scamp?”

“That scamp. You should be proud of him. He’s a decent, intelligent young man. He goes around proclaiming: ‘The very sight of a king is repugnant to me.’ That’s the kind of young people we need.”

Madame Campan was trying to escape from the evil counsels of the Commode-Bearer. I suspected her of not being quite so upright when there were no witnesses and the Queen was not within hearing. She came to see what progress was being made, and I gave her some titles. “I shall see to it that those books are packed,” she said. Shortly afterward—and in my memory this scene is strange because it bears absolutely no relationship to any of the other reading sessions—Madame Campan and I were sent for. The Queen needed us in the Great Gilt Study.