If I do not hear that you accept this advice I shall be forced to ask the King’s help in this matter so that I may save you from greater misfortune. I know too well what consequences will ensue, and you will lose caste not only with the people of France, but abroad also which will distress me deeply, for I love you so tenderly. “
I wanted to please her and tried to for a while, but soon I was slipping back into the old ways. When Mercy reproached me I answered:
“I do not think my mother can understand the difficulties of life here.”
I think he, who was closer at hand, did, as did the Abbe Vermond.
Perhaps this made them a little less severe in condemning my follies.
The Trianon was a delight. I was laying out the gardens afresh with the help of the Prince de Ligne, who had made for himself one of the loveliest gardens in France at Bel Oeil. There was a fashion for everything English at this time. Frenchmen tried to dress like Englishmen in long coats cut close and thick stockings, with stock hats not at Court of course, where they were most elaborately attired, but we noticed this in the streets of Paris. Signs were hung outside shops:
“English spoken here’; lemonade-sellers now sold punch, and everyone was drinking Ie the. Artois had introduced horse-racing to France and I often went with him to the races. It was another excuse for gambling. So of course I must have an English garden at the Trianon. I was planning a little temple in the gardens which was to surround an exquisite statue of Eros by Bouchardon. I decided on Corinthian pillars about the statue and I would call it the Temple of Love. It became clear to me that the Prince de Ligne was in love with me; and I was sad about this because I enjoyed his company so much and I dared not allow that friendship to develop.
My feeling for him must have been noticed, for my mother wrote and said that she thought it wrong that he should spend so much time in Versailles, so I told him to join his regiment for a while and then come back. I was surprised bow sorry I was that he must go away.
But it was clear to me that I had to be careful.
Mercy came to me-and spoke to me Severely. I had made many new friends; I was constantly in their company. They seemed to him to be people of questionable morals. Was I being wise?
I looked at him slyly, because I knew that he had a mistress, an opera singer, Mademoiselle Rosalie Levasseur; he had lived with her for years, and although theirs was a very respectable relationship, as far as it could be in the circumstances, it was one without benefit of clergy.
I did not mention this. I contented myself with a lighthearted rejoinder that one must enjoy oneself while one was young.
“When I grow older I shall be more serious; then my frivolity will disappear.”
I was surprised that old Kaunitz understood my position far better than my mother or my brother. He wrote to Mercy:
“We are young yet, and I fear we shall be so for a very long time.”
This time was difficult for my husband too. The kingly bearing he displayed at the time of the guerre des farines seemed to have disappeared; be asserted himseu in odd ways. He liked to fight with his attendants, and often I would go to his apartments and see him wrestling on the floor. He always got the better of his opponents, for he was much stronger than they were; this must have given him the feeling of superiority he needed to feel.
He was the absolute antithesis of everything that I was. He did not complain of my extravagance, but he was so thrifty that he was almost mean; there was no subtlety about him. Sometimes he would fix one of his friends by his expression and walk towards him so that the poor man had to retreat until he was standing against a wall. Then Louis would find he had nothing to say and would laugh loudly and walk away.
His appetite was voracious. I have seen him eat for break fast a chicken and four cutlets, several slices of ham and six eggs all washed down with half a bottle of champagne. He worked at the forge which he had had installed on the top story and there he would hammer away and make boxes of iron, and keys. Locks were his passion. He had a work man up there named Gamain who treated him as though he were a fellow-worker and even jeered at his efforts, all of which Louis took in the utmost good humour, declaring that in the forge Gamain was a better man than he was.
At his coucher he was as impatient of etiquette as I was and would take his cordon bleu and throw it at the nearest man. Stripped to the waist he would scratch himself before the courtiers and when the noblest present tried to help him into his nightgown he would run round the room leaping over the furniture, forcing them to chase him which they did until they were out of breath. Then he would take pity on them and allow them to put on his nightgown. The nightgown on, and his breeches loosed, he would engage them in conversation, walking about the room with his breeches about his ankles so that he was obliged to shuffle.
It was the Due de Lauzan who made me realise how dangerously Louis and I had drifted apart. At a party at the house of the Princesse de Guemenee, Lauzan appeared in a very splendid uniform and on his helmet was the most magnificent heron’s plume. I thought it very beautiful and impulsively said so. The very next day a messenger came from the Princesse de Guemenee with the feather and a note from the Princesse which said that the Due de Lauzan had begged her to implore me to accept it.
I was embarrassed, but I knew that to return the feather would be to wound him deeply, and impulsively decided that I would wear the feather once and then lay it aside.
Monsieur Leonard used it for my head-dress, and when Lauzan saw it his eyes gleamed with pleasure.
The next day he presented himself at my apartment and begged an interview. Madame Campan was in attendance and I granted the interview as I should have done to anyone. He wished, he said, to speak to me privately if I would so honour him.
I glanced at Madame Campan; she knew the signal. She would go into the anteroom and leave the door open, because she knew that I was never alone with men.
When she had disappeared he threw himself on to his knees and began kissing my hands.
“I was overcome with joy,” he cried, ‘when I saw you wearing the aigrette. It was your answer the answer I longed for. You have made me the happiest man in the world. “
“Stop,” I said.
“Are you mad. Monsieur de Lauzan?”
He stumbled to his feet, the colour draining from his face. He said:
“Your Majesty was gracious enough to show me by our token …”
“You are dismissed,” I told him.
“But you …”
“Will you go. Monsieur de Lauzan? Immediately! … Madame Campan come here please!”
She was there as I knew she would be.
There was only one thing Lauzan could do. He bowed and retired.
I said to Madame Campan: “That man shall never again come within my doors.”
I was shaking with apprehension. I was both angry and alarmed. I knew that I was to blame in a way. I had behaved coquettishly; and I had been so foolish as to wear the plume. Why could not these people understand that I merely wanted to be amused I Lauzan never forgave me. His feelings for me were indeed strong and if he could not be my lover he could at least become my enemy. He was that—in the years when I so needed friends.
There were times when I longed to escape from the Court; and there was the Petit Trianon waiting to welcome me; but sometimes I felt as though I wanted to get far away;
I wanted to ride out in my calash and be alone—which was strange for me. Not that I was alone. There was ceremony even when I went riding informally in this way;
I must have my coachman and postilions.
We rode through villages and I looked out at the children at play—beautiful creatures whom I should have been so happy to call mine; as we rode along, suddenly one of these littles ones ran out of a cottage and almost under the horses’ hoofs. I cried out, the coachman pulled up sharply; the little boy lay sprawled in the road.
Is he hurt? ” I cried, leaning out.
The child began to scream wildly as one of the postilions picked him up.
He kicked furiously, and the postilion grinned.
“I cannot think much ails him. Your Majesty. But he’s frightened.”
“Bring him to me.”
He was brought. His clothes were ragged but not unclean;
