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

“I want to leave,” the Queen said again. “For royalty, for us, it is a matter of life or death. The King must not stay one day more in a country he no longer controls.”

But then, oddly, instead of urging us to be quick, she stood up, as though ensnared by the sparkle of her jewels, and came over to look at them. Finally, unable to resist, she began sliding a ring over her finger, then another ring; she put several strings of precious stones round her neck, one atop the other; she covered her forearms with heavy bracelets. Transfixed, she stared at the mirror of her dressing table to see its reflected vision of her, all aglitter. Madame Campan and I dared not stir, but eventually it fell to the First Lady of the Bedchamber (who always firmly believed she was right and, on this occasion, actually was) to break the spell. With infinite respect and ever so gently, Madame Campan reminded Her Majesty that if she wished to set off on her journey the next day there was a need for haste. The Queen tore herself away from her dream:

“Wish is an inadequate term to express what I feel. We must leave Versailles. Not to do so is equivalent to signing our own defeat, which is already a fact, our defeat and possibly worse . . . I want to go away from here. I want to leave this château. I have done everything to try and make it mine. I have not succeeded. All I feel about the château is the cold, the damp, the uninhabitable spaces . . . The neglect and disrepair. When I think that the King almost perished in his bed, crushed by a section of ceiling . . . I have really tried everything . . . I divided it into smaller and smaller rooms. I have had drapes installed, tapestries, mirrors. I increased the number of stairways so people could visit their friends’ apartments more easily and find comfort in being with them. From the very outset, Versailles rejected me. Versailles was already occupied, by the Great King, who never left. No matter what room I went into, he was there, as a young man, or an old man, or a dancer, or a lover, or a warrior, always in majesty. The château is under his surveillance. It will never be my home. Nor is it the King’s home. Any more than it was home to Louis XV.”

A woman came to remove the accumulated jewels that had made the Queen into a barbarian princess. Distraught, she did not move away but stood facing her mirror. She wanted to know:

“Where are my travel clothes? Are they ready? What about the little sailor suit for my son, the straw hat for my daughter? And what about teapots, coffeepots, chocolate pots? Hot-water bottles, chafing dishes, drawing materials, my paint boxes, my paintbrushes, my knitting needles, a spinning wheel? What do I know of evenings in Metz?”

Now she made a strange motion. She raised a protective arm and swayed on her feet, as if blinded by her own face. Then she said, slowly, groping for the right words:

“Louis XIV tolerates the King and me, because we are entrusted with the preservation of his Mausoleum, but he is dissatisfied with our services. I take refuge at the Petit Trianon and in the rustic cabins of my ‘Hamlet.’ The King, too, has his places of refuge. He shuts himself up in his dining room and sits in front of the portrait showing him in hunting costume, by Oudry. Or rather in front of the portrait of Louis XV in hunting costume, which the King had another artist alter to look like him. But in a dining room, people you have no wish to see are always apt to appear. Then the King goes and hides in his Most Private Office. There the paintings are not of royal hunters but of nymphs. No matter; the King, hidden away in his Most Private Office, has no eyes for the nymphs, instead, he counts. And in his diary he makes note of everything he has counted, the number of curtsys and bows for the visits of condolence upon the death of my mother the Empress, the number of baths he has taken in the course of the month, the number of horses he has ridden since the age of eight, the number of animals killed in hunts, the number killed per day, per month, the total for the first six months, the yearly total, stag hunts, boar hunts, hundreds and thousands of animals killed . . . And the inkblot on our wedding day, did he count that, I wonder? I made only a single blot but it could not be erased. That inkblot was more ignominious than tripping over a rug . . . I have gone over the scene in my mind a thousand times: I am bending over to sign, using the given name that is still foreign to me. Because I do not see well, I almost have to hold my face against the paper. Ma-rie-An . . . toi . . . I am pressing down hard, too hard. The pen scrapes. I have ink spattered all over me, even on my cheek.”

A moment earlier, the Queen had shone like a heathen idol. Now she wore a single garment: a plain gray dress. She was rubbing her cheek to try and erase the inkblot. A big lock of hair had fallen across her forehead. How beautiful she was, rambling on like that!

Madame Campan was becoming frustrated over a piece of jewelry that refused to be pried apart. I looked at that big heaving bosom. I could hear her rapid breathing. It was a minuscule room. I was too hot. And her dress, crushed against mine, made me think of a faded flower clinging