Then one day there was a certain brooding serenity visible in the Queen’s face. She was absentminded when people spoke to her. She had given up dancing through the night; and she no longer seemed interested in cards.
All noticed it, except the King. He was therefore surprised when one morning the Queen stormed unceremoniously into his apartments.
She frowned and stamped her foot.
‘I have come, Sire,’ she cried, ‘to complain. One of your subjects has been impertinent enough to kick me in the belly.’
Louis stared at her in momentary alarm; then great floods of joy swept over him.
The tears sprang to his eyes and he held out his arms.
They kissed, embraced, and kissed again, their tears mingling.
‘It is the happiest moment of my life,’ said Antoinette. ‘There can only be one happier. That will be when I hold our Dauphin in my arms.’
Louis was silent, but that was because words did not come easily to him. His joy was no less than hers.
Chapter VII
MADAME ROYALE AND THE DAUPHIN
That was a happy summer and autumn for the Queen. She spent a great deal of time at her Petit Trianon; now she could watch the children playing on the grass with quiet pleasure, for soon there would be a royal child to play on that grass, to come running to her, to pull at her skirts and demand bonbons. A Dauphin! She was sure the child would be a Dauphin.
There were so many pleasant matters with which to occupy her mind, and she discussed them continually with Gabrielle and the Princesse de Lamballe.
‘He shall not be swaddled, my little Dauphin,’ she declared. ‘That is not good. It is old-fashioned and we shall employ no old-fashioned methods for Monsieur le Dauphin. He shall have everything that is modern. They say that children nowadays should be carried in a light cradle or in one’s arms, and that little by little they should be put in the open air and sunshine. And when they have grown accustomed to it they may be in it all the time – little legs and arms free that they may kick at will. That is the way to make them strong. I shall have a little railing built on the terrace, and there the Dauphin will have his own little kingdom. There he shall stand on his dear little legs and walk and grow strong.’
They listened to her; they discussed the garments he should wear; they planned the whole of his days. There was nothing which delighted the Queen more.
‘There is only one thing that plagues me,’ she said. ‘Monsieur le Dauphin, you are so long in coming.’
She could not feel very interested in anything else. When Artois made his customary bow to the stately statue of Louis Quatorze in the Orangerie at Versailles and cried: ‘Bonjour, Grandpapa,’ she no longer thought it as funny as she had hitherto. When the Prince de Ligne suggested he should hide behind the statue and, immediately after Artois uttered his greeting, reply to it in hollow tones to give the irreverent Artois a shock, she was only vaguely interested.
It was so difficult to think of anything but the Dauphin.
Little James Armand noticed the change in her. He would stand at her side, leaning fondly against her, his anxious eyes looking up into the beautiful face; for while she caressed his hair he sensed an absentmindedness in those delicate fingers, and a great fear came to him that even while she touched him, even while she smiled, her thoughts were far away.
‘Come back,’ he would say in panic. ‘Come back.’
Then she smiled. ‘What do you mean, my dear? Come back? I am here, am I not?’
‘You are going far away,’ he said.
‘You are an odd little boy, Monsieur James,’ she told him.
She noticed that his hand clutched her sleeve as it had that day when she had gone into his grandmother’s cottage; and she told him about the baby she was to have.
‘I have so longed for a baby. And now I am to have one.’
‘You have your Monsieur James,’ he reminded her. ‘Is he not enough?’
She laughed. ‘I am so greedy. And I love my Monsieur James so much that I could do with twenty like him.’
That made the boy laugh. But later she would find him standing in a corner, listening to the talk about the expected baby, a faint frown between his eyes.
She would call to him and make much of him, give him sweetmeats, those which he liked best. But he was disturbed, for he wanted more than sweetmeats.
It was during this period that Comte Hans Axel de Fersen came to the Court.
He was brought to her in the salon at the Palace of Versailles while she was with the King and surrounded by members of the Court.
As he knelt before her he saw the sudden recognition dawn in her eyes.
She spoke without thinking: ‘Ah, this is an old acquaintance. Welcome to the Court, Comte de Fersen.’
He murmured: ‘Your Majesty is gracious.’
The King scarcely noticed him. His mind was occupied with state matters. His enemies, the English, were at this time engaged in war with their colonists in America, and this war could prove of the utmost importance to France.
‘It pleases me to see you here,’ the Queen told the Comte. She was remembering that night at the Opéra ball and how bold this man had been; how he had snatched off her mask and known her for the Dauphine, as she had been then.
She had thought about him a great deal at the time; then other matters had claimed her attention. She was not surprised, studying him now, that he should have impressed her so deeply.
He was tall and very slender and the Swedish uniform became him well. His complexion was very pale but so clear as to seem almost transparent; his eyes, which were inclined to darkness, were very large, his nose straight and perfectly shaped, his mouth beautifully modelled, and his expression was both manly and tender.
Antoinette could readily understand how he had stirred her emotions at their romantic meeting.
She made him sit beside her and tell her all that had befallen him since their last meeting, of life in Sweden, of his father, the Senator, whom he greatly reverenced and admired.
He said suddenly: ‘There is one occasion in my life which I shall never forget: that night when I danced at the Opéra ball with Your Majesty.’
‘Did it shock you very much to discover who I was?’
‘It was the greatest shock of my life.’
‘You exaggerate, Comte,’ she told him.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I do not.’
She knew that she should not have kept him beside her talking, but she could not resist the temptation to do so.
‘I was a Dauphine then,’ she said. ‘Now I am a Queen I have greater liberty to do what I please.’
‘Queens,’ he said, ‘have less liberty to please themselves than Dauphines, Your Majesty.’
She laughed lightly. ‘I believe you have been listening to tales of me.’
‘I have treasured every word I ever heard spoken of you.’
‘Evil tales?’ she asked.
‘Nothing could be evil in my eyes if it concerned you. The fact that it did so would banish evil from it.’
‘That is a charming thing to say.’ She lifted her fan with the quizzing glass set in it, and looked at him. She was somewhat short-sighted and she wanted to see clearly every line of his face.
‘You find me changed,’ she said. ‘Different from the Dauphine with whom you danced.’
‘I find you changed … yet the same. I find you perfect, although I had thought the Dauphine that. Should I not pass on now? We are being closely watched.’
‘A plague on their watching eyes. They watch me continually. If I dismiss you that would surely be wrong, for everything I do is wrong in the eyes of those determined to condemn me. I merely have to do it to make it so. Therefore I will be wrong in commanding you to stay, for I surely should be if I dismissed you.’