Moreover I had my babies. To me they were perfect. And jAey were Louis’s children. I would not have them different in any way, and my little Madame Royale already had a look of her father.
There was no logic in my dreams; there was no practical reasoning. I wanted romance and romance is not built on the realities of life.
Nevertheless I wished to keep Axel in France. I was delighted when Louis showed me a letter he had received from Gustave of Sweden. It ran:
“Monsieur my brother and cousin, the Comte de Fersen having served with approbation in Your Majesty’s armies in America and having thereby made himself worthy of your benevolence, I do not believe I am being indiscreet in asking for a proprietary regiment for him. His birth, his fortune, the position he occupies about my person … lead me to believe he can be agreeable to Your Majesty, and as he will remain equally attached to my own, his time will be divided between his duties in France and in Sweden….”
It did not take long to persuade Louis that this was an excellent idea.
Axel now had the opportunity to be more often at Versailles without arousing comment. He could come in the uniform of a French soldier.
“My father is not pleased,” he told me.
“He feels I fritter away my time.”
“Alas,” I replied, “I fear it too.” I never frittered more happily. ”
“There is a concert tonight. I shall look for you.” And so it went on.
Fersen pere was an energetic man. If his son determined to waste his time in France he must marry. There was a very eligible young woman who would suit him admirably. She had a fortune, her father was a power in France, but what she needed was a husband with birth and title. Germaine Necker, daughter of the Comptroller, was the chosen bride.
When Axel told me this I was dismayed. If he married, our romance would be shattered. It was true that I was married, that there could never be a chance of my marrying Axel, but who ever heard of a married troubadour! How could he be in constant attendance on me if he had a wife, and such a wife as Germaine Necker, a democrat and reformer, a woman of strong ideals learned from her parents?
“It must not be,” I said.
Fersen agreed, but he was gloomy. The Neckers had already been informed of the proposition and they thought it an excellent one.
Mademoiselle Necker would be mortally offended if he failed to propose marriage to her.
We must find another suitor for her,” I declared.
“One whom she will like better.”
I was horror-stricken. How could any woman like any one better than Axell Germaine Necker was a very determined woman. She would marry whom she pleased, she announced; and oddly, it seemed to me, she did not propose to marry Axel. For some time she had been in love with the Baron de Stael;
she made up her mind to marry him, and being the forceful young woman she was, in a very short time Germaine Necker had become Madame de Stael.
Axel showed me a letter he had written to his sister Sophie, of whom he was very fond and with whom he was always outspoken. She would understand his true feelings, he assured me.
I will never assume the bond of matrimony. It is against my nature. Unable to give myself to the person to whom I wish to belong and who really loves me, I will give myself to nobody. ” Romance had been preserved.
Even so, he could not stay indefinitely in France. Family affairs called him back to Sweden. But I knew that he was mine for ever. He would never marry; he had said so.
A few months later he was back in Paris, whither he had come with his master Gustave. I remember well the day the news was brought. Louis was on a hunting expedition and staying at Rambouillet, and when the news was brought that Gustave had arrived, my husband dressed so hastily to receive him that the King of France greeted his guest wearing one gold-buckled shoe with a red heel and one with a black heel
and a silver buckle. Not that Gustave, who was clearly indifferent to his own appearance, cared about that. But the important fact was that Axel was back in France.
I betrayed my emotions in a hundred ways. I immediately declared that we must give a fete at the Trianon in honour of the King of Sweden, and I was determined that never should there have been such a fete.
Those about me raised eyebrows; they tittered and whispered behind their hands. In whose honour was this fete being given?
I had never before liked Gustave, because the last time he had come to Prance I was Dauphine then he had given a diamond necklace to Madame du Barry’s favourite dog. This I had said was silly and vulgar, too, for he had done more honour to the King’s mistress than to the future King of France.
But now he was Axel’s King, and I longed to entertain him because then I should be entertaining Axel too.
We gave a performance in the Trianon theatre of Marmont el Le Dormeur Eveille; and after that we went into the English gardens.
Lights had been hidden in trees and bushes; and I had ordered that trenches be dug behind the Temple of Love, and these trenches were filled with faggots which when lighted made the Temple look as though it were supported by the flames.
Gustave commented that he could believe he was in the Etysian Fields.
That was the intention I had meant to convey; that was why I had commanded that everyone be dressed in white, so that they could wander about like in habitants of Paradise.
In this setting Axel and I could be closer than we ever had before. We could touch hands; we could even kiss. In white garments, and in the dusk of that enchanted night, we could believe that we were in another world, a world of our own where duty and reality had no place.
When supper was served we could no longer be together, and I walked from table to table seeing that my guests were served with venison which the King had killed in the chase, sturgeon, pheasants and all the delicacies known to us. This was how I wished it to be, for in spite of all the splendour and never had there been such a splendid fete even at this Court—I liked to preserve my illusion of living simply at the Trianon.
There were not many more opportunities for talking to Axel, and I knew that when Gustave departed he would have to go with him. A few days after our Elysian entertainment Axel and I, with Gustave and other members of our Court and the Swedish entourage, watched two men, Palatre de Rozier and a man named Proust, rise high above our heads in an air-inflated balloon. This had been embellished with the arms of France and Sweden, and the name of the balloon was the Marie Antoinette. I could scarcely believe my eyes, and everyone else was greatly impressed, expecting imminent disaster, but the balloon travelled from Versailles to Chanrilly and everyone was talking about the wonders of science.
But I was thinking of Axel, and that soon there must be another of those partings—each one harder to bear than the last.
I wanted to give him a memento, something by which he could remember me. So I gave him a little almanac on which I had embroidered the words:
“Poi, Amour, Esperance, Trois, unis a jamais.”
Then he went back to Sweden with his King.
Madame Vigee Le Brun was painting my portrait. “She was a charming dainty creature and I was attracted to her. I liked to chat with her while she worked. I watched the picture grow on her canvas, and one day I said: ” If I were not a Queen, one would say that I looked insolent, do you not think so? “
She turned the remark aside as one not expecting an answer. She might have replied that even though I was a Queen there were many who thought I looked insolent and haughty. The petulant lower lip which had been noticed when my appearance was being so freely discussed by the French envoys at my mother’s Court had become more pronounced. It was an inheritance from my Hapsburg ancestors.