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

of a woman who has just been struck with a fist. Gabrielle is about to say something more. The Queen enjoins her to silence, then stands up to flee from the spot. Gabrielle rushes after her and begins to moan, but stops at once when the Queen puts an arm round her waist and leans her head on her shoulder. The Queen has recovered all her beauty. And Gabrielle implores her:

“Do not let me abandon you.”

“But it is too late,” the Queen says gently. “That is precisely what you have done. You have abandoned me.”

Unlike Madame Campan, I was not accustomed to feeling transparent and afflicted with non-existence in a room where the Queen was. For that reason I was deeply troubled by the scene I am describing, but increasingly unable to do anything whatsoever except listen. I found the situation intolerable, and I was on the alert for a chance to steal away so I could stop hearing, stop seeing. The Duchess de Polignac had withdrawn. Her curtsy had seemed to me somewhat less graceful than when she arrived, but perhaps it was my imagination . . .

The Queen was sobbing, the way children weep, caught in the brutality of unappeasable grief. She was entirely at the mercy of her unhappiness. Madame Campan came to bring smelling salts and to look after her. I had absolutely no idea what I should do. To make myself look busy, I began pushing a trunk toward a storeroom, deliberately making slow work of it. I progressed at a snail’s pace, never taking my eyes off Madame Campan, who was endeavoring to soothe and console the Queen. But the Queen, in a sudden outburst, leapt to her feet, seized the jade vase, and hurled it at a mirror. The room was studded with shards of glass. Madame Campan and I had no choice but to sweep them up, taking great care not to cut ourselves. “Saints preserve us, what a day!” she complained. “Sweeping has never been part of my assigned tasks, so far as I know.”

I was a witness to the scene involving Gabrielle de Polignac and the Queen, and were it not for the presence of Madame Campan, I would have thought I had dreamed it . . . as with another scene, several months—years?—earlier. This one took place in the ground-floor music room at the Petit Trianon, and on this occasion, too, there was a second witness, Baron de Besenval. Both of us stood mute, not daring to move. Gabrielle de Polignac was lying on top of the Queen. She held the Queen’s outspread arms pinned to the floor. The Queen was struggling beneath her friend’s body, trying to dislodge her from her victorious position.

“Say it,” a puffing, breathless Gabrielle was demanding, “Say it. Say: you win, you are the stronger.”

“I will not. I will never say anything so untrue. You are a cruel person. You use shameless tactics . . . ”

And she went off in a fit of laughter that rendered her entirely defenseless. But when Gabrielle, in turn convulsed with laughter, relaxed her grip, the Queen freed one of her hands and suddenly reversed their positions.

Baron de Besenval watched them, without laughing. It may have been the awareness of this silent, attentive, male presence that brought their game to an end.

Suddenly sobered, the Queen got up and said:

“That still leaves you as the stronger person, I must admit.”

“I want no part of your pity,” said Gabrielle in languishing tones. “I beg to be spared Your Majesty’s magnanimity.”

“Magnanimity,” the Queen repeated carefully, as though she were discovering a new word.

They were both being serious and left the music room without paying any attention to us. Baron de Besenval was clearly dying to follow them. He took a few steps in their direction, but thought better of it. Then he turned to me and insolently, arrogantly, enquired: “Well, my fine Reader, what do you make of that?” I could tell that he would gladly have wreaked vengeance on me for the scornful treatment meted out to him by the two friends. I quietly slipped away.

“You are the stronger”—how true, alas, those words were turning out to be! It was not so much Gabrielle de Polignac’s strength that was now in evidence (this time, too, she was merely the messenger delegated by her husband and Diane), as the Queen’s unbelievable weakness in dealing with her: Gabrielle’s wishes were no sooner formulated than the Queen could think of nothing but how best to satisfy them . . . To whom could I turn next? I wondered, and found no answer. I was exhausted and dejected. Honorine, completely taken up by her duties in Madame de La Tour du Pin’s household, was nowhere to be seen. Jacob-Nicolas Moreau was presumably at work in his study. Dismally, I abandoned myself to the flow of events. Though schedules might be all awry, some forms of etiquette were still being haphazardly observed. Not that any good would come of it, I thought.

MASS IN THE ROYAL CHAPEL

(three o’clock in the afternoon).

There was Mass, then lunch. Before that, the King had gone to the Queen’s apartments. She was having her face made up.

At the time of the King’s visit (so I was told by Madame Vacher, an attendant whom the Queen held in specially high esteem), nothing very remarkable occurred. The King announced the temperature reading that he had gone up late in the morning to ascertain. He was all covered with dust. A spiderweb hung down in front of his waistcoat. The explanation was that on leaving the Apollo Salon he had walked up to the attic. The Queen made no attempt to hide her exasperation at seeing him in such a state. She could not abide the mania he had for walking about in the château garrets. She detested what she called his “prisoner’s stroll.” The King, on the other hand, set great store by it, as he did by