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

had charmed the Queen. The favorite possessed a natural beauty, as well as a freshness of complexion that took on surprising luster in such a setting as Versailles, where makeup and sophisticated lighting prevailed. Compared with her, the other women at Court were like automatons, gesturing stiffly, walking mechanically, speaking sharply and imperiously. Her voice, in contrast, was soft, and her bearing did not impose. Everyone noticed her, precisely because she made no effort to be noticed. Her light-colored eyes did not linger on any one person. There was about Gabrielle a characteristic elusive quality, and the paleness of those eyes—made paler still in the contrast with her dark hair—enhanced this “indefinable” effect.

Her curtsy was so weightless and quick that it was more like the opening measure of a dance. She was about to begin another, but the Queen stood up and took her in her arms. At that moment, everything in the Queen’s demeanor made her seem tremulous, as though she might crumble at a touch. The brief lifting of the clouds, the moment of serenity produced by my reading, had passed.

“Oh, but I wanted us to leave! Never have I wanted anything so much, with all my might, and I did not get what I wanted. There is no precedent for the mortification I have suffered.”

She was on the verge of giving way to anger once again, but the presence of her friend so softened her mood that affection and sadness came to the fore instead.

“If the King had agreed, you and I would have been saved. And on our return, I can assure you, the libelous rumors would have ceased and with them the madness that is overtaking the people of France. The French do not know. They do not understand what is happening to them. They hear others howling, and before they have had a chance to consider, the cry is already inside them, issuing from them. A single cry for the whole country. But a cry of what, exactly?”

Gabrielle de Polignac had no answer, and she made no effort to find one. She glanced briefly at a mirror, saw their two faces together, or perhaps just her own, and lightly touched a rose pinned in her hair. She moved her head to be sure that the flower was firmly in place. It was a very slight movement. It was enough, from the Queen’s point of view, to break the chain of cares besetting her and dissipate the threat of the outside world. The luggage did not matter now; at most, it was the lingering trace of a passing whim.

The Queen seated her friend at her side on a chair the same height as her own, an armchair previously used only by the King when he visited that room. She leaned over toward Gabrielle.

“Oh my dear heart . . . I was so worried . . . I feared they might prevent you from coming to see me, that perhaps you were imprisoned or ill. Terrible imaginings came to my troubled mind. But you are here, and radiant! . . . How beautiful you are in that green dress, that pale green dress—sea green? lime green?”

“I cannot say, Majesty. I have no aptitude for recognizing shades of color.”

Her dancing eyes, the mock primness of her mouth, and the suggestion of a dimple in her left cheek, made it quite clear that she did not care two pins about shades of color, and in fact, to be more accurate, that she did not care two pins about anything. But she continued in the same vein, playfully secure in the knowledge that the Queen rarely pursued a single topic of conversation for any length of time, so that there was little danger of the joke being carried too far. Moreover, though she did not share the Queen’s passion for fabrics, Gabrielle did enjoy discussing fashions. As for the Queen, she threw herself wholeheartedly into these frivolous exchanges.

“Is my dress almond green, bamboo-shoot green, jade green, or young-crocodile green?”

“You are quite mistaken, my girl”—the Queen laughed—“it is as far from young-crocodile green as it is from spinach green or acid green . . . ”

“Or envy green, which is a hideous green.”

“Vile.”

“A color not to be trusted.”

“And a sentiment, my gentle dove, that has never come anywhere near your heart. That is why having you at my side is so precious.” (She leaned even closer and stroked Gabrielle’s cheek, the one with the suggestion of a dimple.)

“Truly,” the Queen went on, “it seems to me that envy is the emotion most frequently encountered. Each person spends all his time coveting the position above the one he holds, and all his actions are driven by that single sentiment. People strive unceasingly to appease their envious desire, but the coveted place is no sooner attained than they become aware of the place above it. Naturally, this casts a shadow over their joy, and so once again they have to sally forth and mount a fresh attack. What a torment it must be, this perpetual need to strive, and the instant spoiling of any satisfaction! But the ambition of courtiers was familiar to me; what I had never given any thought to was the ambition of the people.”

“A whole new avenue of thought, indeed . . . ,” Gabrielle replied, in a tone of total unconcern.

“Our subjects claim the right to choose who shall lead them. What a strange notion! And they think they will love the leader they have chosen . . . but how can one love a master one has not known as a child? King Louis XV once described for me a scene from his childhood. It was during the Regency of Philippe d’Orléans, and he was living in the Tuileries Palace. Whenever he went to play on a balcony above the gardens, word would immediately spread, and the Parisians would come flocking. There they would stay for hours, craning their necks in the hope that they might