A festival day, and not only have people from the four corners of the earth joined to receive the King, but also, in a mixed metaphor of hyperbolic proportion, all the divinities of Parnassus. Clio and Polyhymnia, Hercules and Minerva. Calliope, Thalia, Apollo. Fame and Mercury, Magnificence and Pegasus. Authority, Strength, and Vigilance. Also the twelve months of the year, back in the good old days when they were still named for gods and goddesses. Also a great variety of exotic birds — peacocks, ibises, and so on.
Not to mention actual people, many of them the Sun King's mistresses, since, let's face it, the King of France is expected to be excessively virile, a lion among men.
Up the stairs and down the stairs, delicately lifting their skirts to avoid an unsightly tumble. Beautiful but stupid Mademoiselle de Fontanges in her turquoise — blue riding habit. Mademoiselle de la Valliere and her cunning daughter, Marie, the two of them in matching black velvet gowns. Madame de Maintenon, otherwise known as Your Solidity. Madame de Montespan in all of her many incarnations, young and slender, old and fat, but always with that infuriating parrot jabbering away on her shoulder.
Up and down, up and down.
Let us walk among the tulips! Dance until dawn! Spin the roulette wheel! Slip the King a love philter when he isn't paying attention! Look at me! No, me!
Watch out, though. Sometimes La Voisin's clients get more than they bargain for. Sometimes out pops the Devil, with his sharp little hooves and his appetite for discord.
Nor do you want to get so involved in the spectacle that you fail to notice the python on the ceiling, lying dead at Apollo's feet. "His Majesty," as the Mercure Galant explains, "putting a stop to the secret rebellions His enemies have tried starting, as depicted by the serpent Python who originates from the gross impurities of the earth…"
Presently, the girl takes a walk. So many doors to choose among, so many people. Stupid, witty, amorous, bored, dark-eyed, washed-out, plucked-lipped, hairy. Scratch scratch scratch, with the little fingernail.
"Come in, my dear."
"Hello, grandmother."
Dancing, billiards, reversi, roulette. The path of the pins or the path of the needles. Sorbet, asparagus, cock kidneys, bonbons. Sausage, pigeon eggs, truffles, lemonade.
So the girl eats what's put before her, and all of a sudden there's a dear little tabby cat sitting at her feet, going meow meow how could you do it? Meaning how could she ever have managed to swallow a single bite, the wolf having gotten there first and carved her granny up into dinner.
But did I say girl? What I meant was woman. Queen, actually. When I said girl I meant Queen of France.
Then the wolf says in a serious tone, "Undress and get in bed with me."
I admit, I was credulous. I admit I played too much roulette, cavagnole, lansquenet. The word most often used in describing me was "pleasure," as in "Antoinette lives for pleasure."
Will a lion roar in the forest, when he hath no prey? Will a young lion cry out of his den, if he hath taken nothing?
I think I was casting about among the millions of things I was surrounded with to find just one, JUST ONE LITTLE THING that would somehow stand for the whole. One thing to fix my eyes on, to still my racing heart. A silver snuffbox such as got stolen daily by the hot-fingered riffraff the place was full of? A diamond bracelet? An especially fine apricot?
God knows I was nice enough, kind enough. (I was, too.)
God knows it drove me mad to watch my cross-eyed sister-in-law's belly get bigger and bigger, in preparation for the day not so very far off when she'd spread her legs and out would pop the Due d'Angoulême.
And meanwhile in the Orangerie the potted trees put forth their sweet white blossoms. And meanwhile my husband kept shooting and hammering and forging; I kept piling more and more feathers on my head. Trying to redress some imbalance, I suppose, like the spurned lover who turns to opiates or chocolate or drink.
It was the fashion, then, to complain about everything. It was the fashion to say, "Oh, if only I were in Paris," unless that's where you happened to be, in which case you'd say, "Oh, if only I were at Versailles." Whereas meanwhile I lived for pleasure.
For example, my "lovers." Count Esterhazy, with his sly Magyar eyes, who shot bread pellets at me when I was laid low with measles. The Prince de Ligne, who told me my soul was as beautiful and white as my face. Women, too. I was to have had unnatural relations with women, wild orgies at night under the stars while my husband slept the deep sleep of the innocent. My wedding ring disappeared, and it was whispered that it had been stolen by a witch from the Massif Central. To keep me barren, it was whispered — as if supernatural forces were actually required for such a thing.
"Where shall I put my petticoat?" the girl asks the wolf. "Where shall I put my stockings?"
"Throw them on the fire, dear. You won't need them anymore."
Though who knows how these things happen? Maybe there was witchcraft at work, only not on my womb. Maybe witchcraft was behind the previous summer's crop failures, which led to the following winter's grain shortage, which led to the flour wars of May. The same year my cross-eyed sister-in-law prepared to give birth, and a fortune was being poured into Rheims Cathedral to refurbish it for my husband's coronation. Seamstresses busy stitching gold fleurs-de-lis on everything in sight. Cobblers busy making the violet boots with high red heels in which my husband would totter toward the altar. Bird catchers busy catching the hundreds of birds that would be let loose to beat their poor wings against the vaulted arches, as the Archbishop of Rheims tipped the Holy Ampulla full of coronation oil over my husband's head. "May the King possess the strength of a rhinoceros. May he drive the nations of our enemies before him like a rushing wind."
Because, really, who knows why it never rained during the summer of 1774? Why the soil turned to dust and when the rain finally came, the worm got into the bud? Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it? You might just as well say a witch put a spell on the sky.
I admit, I was oblivious. I liked to go to the races with my charming brother-in-law, playfully dispute the merits of Glowworm, King Pepin. Who knows why one horse triumphed, another came up lame? I liked to watch the little silver ball in the roulette wheel leap from number to number like a flea.
And on that May morning when a crowd of peasants poured through the gates at the Place d'Armes, filling the Forward Court with their furious voices and pale upturned faces, with their rumbling stomachs and loaves of moldy bread, who knows why I didn't see among them the invisible hand of the future, wielding a bloody knife?
It wasn't because I was too stupid. It wasn't even because I was unwilling to face facts. No, it was because I was completely uninterested in food — always had been, always would be — and off somewhere else, sequestered as usual, no doubt taking a walk. Alone for a change, alone and thinking things over. The happy days of my childhood and the gardens of Schönbrunn, the way the sweet woodruff grew thickly around the base of each shade tree in a collar of lace. May wine, Carlotta told me, this is what's used to flavor May wine, and she picked a flower and made me taste it, but it was so bitter I had to spit it out. There was still snow on the mountains; our mother galloped past us on her favorite stallion, seated astride like a man. Calling out in her wild imperious way, Guten Morgen, meine Schatzerl! the sound of hoofbeats continuing to thud behind her long after she was gone. How warm the air, yet with a smell like melted snow. Carlotta put her arms around me and laughed. Inside my body, my soul stirred. Changeless, changeless, as if that could compensate for all the rest.