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

often become utterly absorbed in contemplating her Wardrobe Book. But now it was rather as though she were deciphering a new alphabet.

“Put your books down, Madam. I have at my bedside what I wish to hear you read.”

She had turned over as she spoke and was pointing to a little table, where a bundle of letters lay stuffed into a pocketbook. An impression of strength and certainty emanated from the Queen. And though she lay quite still, I felt a strange sort of weightlessness and a spiraling movement, bearing me upward. All fear of disturbing her privacy had vanished. I went and picked up the letters and handed them to her. She chose unhesitatingly. The letters were arranged in an order that she knew by heart. The Queen smiled at me. It was like being in the presence of a loving, peaceable giantess. I kissed her hand. She smiled at me again, a smile more kindly yet. The air was preternaturally light. I went to sit at a small table where four lighted candles had been set. I began:

“Madam and dearest daughter,

“I spent the whole of yesterday more in France than in Austria and went back in my mind over all the happy time that is now long past. Even to remember it is a consolation. I am very glad that your little girl, whom you describe as such a sweet child, is recovering her health, and glad also for all you have told me about how matters stand between you and the King. We must hope for a good outcome. I confess I did not know with certainty that . . . ” (here I spoke more slowly, being unsure whether I ought to read everything aloud, but she urged me to do so) “. . . you and he did not sleep together; I suspected it. I can find no fault with what you tell me; it strikes me as perfectly valid, but I would have liked you to sleep German style, more on account of a certain intimacy that results from being together.

“I am very pleased that you intend resuming all the public ceremonial at Versailles. I know at firsthand just how boring and meaningless these rituals are, but believe me, if they are not observed, the ill consequences that follow run much deeper than the little vexations of the ceremonial, especially where you are, in a nation so quick to take offense. Like you, I had very much hoped that winter would bring an end to the Emperor’s travels, but he is fully occupied with preparations for journeying to the Netherlands in early March and remaining abroad all summer. These absences increase every year, and my worries and anxieties are increased as well, and at my age I could well do with support and consolation, and I am losing all those whom I love, one after another; I am sorely afflicted . . . ”

The Queen had sat partly upright against the head of the bed, with that same wonderful suppleness and visible lengthening of herself. She repeated the words for her own benefit: “I am losing all those whom I love, one after another . . .Vienna, November 3, 1780.”

These past few weeks, I had so often found her weeping and despondent that I expected to see her tears come. Instead, she remained perfectly in control of herself, even conveying a suggestion of some mysterious inner rapture. She leaned back, propping one shoulder against the blue wall with its motif of swans and seashells. And once again I was overwhelmed by the feeling I had experienced the very first time she had appeared before my wondering eyes: she mingled with the rest of us out of a kindly disposition and from goodness of heart, but in reality, she belonged to a different order of magnitude and moved in a different sphere, that of the statues on the château grounds and the goddesses emerging from the ornamental ponds. Long and white, with one hand pushing back her hair, she floated before my eyes. And her voice, which drew me to her, a voice that asked me to be even closer to her, was repeating, softly but without hesitation:

“I am losing all those whom I love, and I am afflicted. But I shall not let my affliction get the better of me. I shall follow, in this as in all things, the example of my mother the Empress.” And she added, without any transition, as if she were just discovering the finish on her bathing-room walls and the repeating motif that decorated them: “The King is very fond of swans, as I am.”

What she next asked me to read was not another letter from Maria-Theresa of Austria, but the Rule to Be Read Every Month that her mother had given into her care when she left Vienna as a girl. She recited it from memory, keeping time with my reading, and to some of the words she restored Austrian stress. Her voice no longer had the least trace of softness; harsh and aged, the voice was compelling because it was terrifying. I was maddened with fright. I clung to the table and did not finish reading the text. The flames rose very high. And in the shadows where the Queen was, I could no longer distinguish anything. But that deep voice went on without me: “You will take time to meditate as often as you can during the day, especially at Holy Mass. I trust you will hear Mass, and be edified by it, every day and even more than once on holy days and Sundays, if that is the custom at your court. As much as I wish you to occupy your time with prayer and instructive reading, I would not by any means have you follow or seek to introduce practices other than what is customary in France. You must not make particular claims, nor cite as an example how things are done here, nor