I told Madame Le Brim this and she smilingly replied that she despaired of ever reproducing my complexion.
“It is so fresh, so flawless, that I have no colours to match it.”
Flattery for a Queen! But I certainly did possess this brilliant complexion and it would be false modesty to deny it.
My clothes were discussed at this time very freely throughout Paris as well as Versailles. It was discovered that I had paid 6,000 livres for one dress. Madame Benin was expensive, I knew, but then she was an artist, the finest couturiere in Paris. It was not that she was my sole dressmaker; she was the designer of my gowns and hats; but I had my sewing-women; there were special work-people for riding habits and dressing-gowns; there were makers of hoops and collarettes, flounces and petticoats.
My extravagances were a popular theme so I decided that Madame Vigee Le Brim should paint me in a gaulle, which was a blouse worn by the Creoles. This was as simple as a chemise and made of inexpensive lawn.
The picture was charming and was exhibited. The people flocked to see it, and it soon became apparent that nothing I could do was right.
The Queen was playing at being a chambermaid, was one comment.
“What she wishes to do is to ruin trade for the silk merchants and weavers of Lyons so that she can help the drapers of Flanders. Are they not her brother’s subjects?”
That was bad enough. But the most damaging and most significant comment was scribbled under the picture as it hung in the Salon:
“France, with the face of Austria, reduced to covering herself with a rag.”
The Diamond Necklace
Provided I don’t speak in. my writings of authority, of religion, of politics, of morality, of the officials of influential bodies, of other spectacles, of anyone who has any claim to anything, I can print anything freely, under the inspection of two or three censors.
Calumny! You don’t know what you are disdaining when you disdain that.
I have seen people of the utmost probity laid low by it. Believe me, there is no false report however crude, no abomination, no ridiculous falsehood, which the idlers in a great city cannot, if they take the trouble, make universally believed—and here we have little-tattlers who are past-masters of the art.
The Cardinal has made we of my name like a vile and clumsy forger. It is probable that he did so under pressure and an urgent need for money and believed he would be able to pay the jeweller without anything being discovered.
In May of the year 1785 a great joy came to me when I gave birth to my second son. My confinement was attended with the same ceremony as that which there had been at the birth of my little Dauphin. My husband declared that never again should I be submitted to the danger I had faced at the time of my daughter’s birth.
Louis himself came to my bedside and emotionally declared: We have another little boy! ” And there was my dear Gabrielle holding the child in her arms coming to my bed.
I insisted on holding him. A little boy . a perfect little boy! I wept; the King wept; in fact everyone was weeping, with joy.
My husband commanded that messages be sent to Paris with the news. My little son was baptised in Notre Dame by Cardinal de Rohan, as his brother had been, and he was christened Louis-Charles. Te Deums were sung; the tocsins were sounding; the salute of guns was fired. There was rejoicing in Versailles for four days and nights. I was so happy.
My dreams were coming true. I had two sons and a daughter. I would often bend over the little newcomer as he lay in his beautiful cradle.
You will be happy, my darling,” I told him. Oh, if I could have foreseen the misery into which I had brought this unfortunate child I How much better if he had never been born I
There was one man whose name was on every lip. It was the author Beaumarchais, who had written a play called Le Manage de Figaro in which there was tremendous interest throughout the Court and I believe the country. The author had had difficulty in getting the play performed because the Lieutenant of the Police, the magistrates, the Keeper of the Seals and strangely enough the King did not think it would be good for the country to see it.
I had thought what fun it would be to put it on at my Trianon theatre and Artois agreed with me, seeing himself in the part of the Barber.
He flitted about my apartments, doing the rogue of a Barber to the life. It was small wonder that people had suggested that Artois and I were closer friends than propriety permitted. We were completely in tune on matters such as this. He could not see why we should not do the play any more than I could.
I see it now, of course; I see how that dialogue is full of innuendo, I can see that Figaro is meant to represent the People; and that the Comte Ahnaviva is the old regime, the tottering structure of aristocracy. Almost every line of the dialogue is charged with meaning. This was not a play about a Comte who commits adultery as naturally as eating and breathing; it was not an account of the shrewdness of a wily barber.
It was a picture of France—the uselessness of the aristocracy and the growing awareness of the shrewd people of the state of their country;
it was meant to set them wondering as to how it could be remedied. I think of little snatches of dialogue.
I was born to be a courtier. “
I understand it is a difficult profession. “
“Receive, take, ask. There’s the secret of it in three words.”
With character and intelligence you may one day rise in your office.
”Intelligence to help advancement? Your lordship is laughing at mine. Be commonplace and cringing and one can get anywhere. “
“Are you a prince to be flattered? Hear die truth, you wretch, since you have not the money to recompense a liar.”
Nobility, wealth, rank, office—that makes you very proud! What have you done for these blessings? You have taken the trouble to be born, and nothing else. “
I was too immersed in my own affairs to be fully aware of the crumbling society in which I was living. I saw nothing explosive in these remarks. To me they were merely excessively amusing. But my husband saw the dangers immediately.
“This man turns everything to ridicule—everything which should be respected in a government.”
“Then won’t it be played?” I asked, showing my disappointment.
“No, it will not,” replied my husband, quite sharply for him.
“You may be sure of that.”
I often think of him now, poor Louis. He saw so much that I could not understand. He was clever; he could have been a good king. He had the best will in the world; he was the kindest, the most amiable of men;
he sought nothing for himself. He had his ministers—Maurepas, Turgot who was replaced by Necker in his turn replaced by Calonne-but none of these ministers was great enough to carry us safely over the yawning abyss which was widening rapidly beneath our very feet. Dear Louis, who wanted to please.
But it was so difficult to please everyone. And what did I do? I was the tool of ambitious factions and did nothing to help my husband, who wanted to please me and wanted to please his ministers, and vacillated between the two. That was his crime: not cruelty, not indifference to the suffering of others, not lechery—not all those crimes which had undermined the Monarchy and set the pillars on which it was erected mouldering to dust: it was vacillation, in which he was helped by a giddy thoughtless wife.
This affair of the play was characteristic of Louis’s weakess and my frivolity.