Виктория Холт - The Queen`s Confession

I tried repeatedly to urge the King to Sight. I kept my jewels packed ready. I was certain that we should attempt to escape as our friends had done. I had heard no news of Gabrielle and Artois and I presumed they had reached safety, for if they had been murdered I should have known.

There were four people of whom I was growing fonder because I realised

that their friendship to me was real; and it is at such times that one understands and values such devotion. My dear simple Lamballe; my pious Elisabeth; my children’s devoted governess, Madame de Tourzel; and my practical and serious Madame Campan. I was constantly in their company. They risked death, even as I did, but I could not persuade them to leave me.

I think what helped me most was the practical manner in which Madame de Tourzel and Madame Campan went about their duties as though there had been no change in our fortunes.

I liked to talk to the former about the children and between us we could bring an atmosphere that was almost peaceful info the room.

I talked to the governess of my little anxieties about the Dauphin.

“I have seen him start at a sudden noise—the bark of a dog, for instance.”

“He is very sensitive, Madame.”

“He is a little violent when angry … and quick to anger.”

“Like all healthy children. But he is good-natured, Madame. And generous.”

“Bless him. When I gave him a present he asked for one for his sister.

He has a very generous heart. But I am a little worried about his habit of exaggerating. “

“The sign of a fertile imagination, Madame.”

“I don’t really think he has any notion of his position as Dauphin.

But perhaps that is as well. Our children learn all too quickly. “

We were silent. She must have been wondering as I was, how quickly he would learn what was happening about us.

A page was at the door.

A visitor to see me. My heart leaped and fluttered uncomfortably. How could I know who was without? How could I know when those people with the faces of bloodthirsty maniacs would be bursting upon me?

I did not ask the name of the visitor. I rose, composing myself.

He was at the door, and when I saw him the reversal of feeling was so overwhelming that I thought I should faint. He came into the room and took my hands; he kissed them. What did Madame de Tourzel think as she stood there? She bowed and, turning, left us together.

He was looking at me in silence as though he were reminding himself of every detail of my face.

I heard myself say foolishly: You . you have come.

He did not answer. Why should he? Was it not obvious that he had come?

Then I remembered the horrible cries of the mob, what they had done to friends of the Queen.

“It is not the time to come,” I said.

“There is great danger here.

Everyone is leaving. “

“That is why I have come,” answered Axel.

The Petit Trianon had been my refuge in the past. It now became my escape from the horrors of reality. In past years in that little paradise I had shut myself away, refusing to take heed of the lessons my mother thrust at me, never listening to the warnings of Mercy and Vermond. Now I would go there and try and forget the rumbling of disaster. I would try to recapture that dream world which I had endeavoured to make years ago and in which I still believed that I could have been happy had I achieved it. It was not that I asked a great deal. I told myself that I did not really care for the extravagance, the fine clothes, the diamonds. Had not Rose Benin been at my elbow to urge me to extravagant follies, had not the Court jewellers been so insistent, I should never have thought of buying their goods. No, what I longed for was a happy home with children to care for above all, children and a husband whom I could love. I loved Louis, in my way; perhaps I should say I had a great affection for him. But just as he was not fitted for the re1e of King, he was not fitted for that of husband.

The kindest, most self-effacing man in the world, his weaknesses were so obvious to me; even when he granted my wishes, I might have respected him more if he had not. He was a man of whom one could be fond but could not entirely respect. He lacked that strength which every woman asks of a man. His people asked it too, and he failed co give it to them as he failed to give it to me.

Am I excusing myself for those fevered weeks at the Trianon those waiting weeks between that fateful fourteenth of July and the tragic October day which more than any other was a turning-point in our lives?

Perhaps I am, but even now, remembering soberly with my life behind me and death so close, looking over my shoulder, I believe I should have acted in exactly the same way.

I loved the Trianon more than any place in the world; and the world was crashing about my shoulders I was soon to lose the Trianon . my children . my life. So I snatched at that brief idyll. I must fulfill my life. I felt the urgency, the passionate need, as I never had before.

Axel had left Versailles previously because he had feared the consequences if he stayed at Court; he told me how he had longed to stay, but that he knew his name was even then being coupled with mine and he knew what harm could befall me if he stayed.

And now? It was different now. The entire picture had changed. I needed him now.

I needed every friend I could find; and he assured me that never in my life would I find a friend such as he was.

“You risk your life staying here,” I told him.

“My life is at your service,” he answered.

“To be risked and lost if need be.”

I wept in his arms and said I could not allow it.

He answered that I could not prevent it. I could command him to go but he would not listen. He had come to stay close to me, closer even than danger.

He had mingled with the people; he had read what was circulated about me; he had hard threats against me which he did not repeat to me but which had decided him that he must remain at my side.

And while I urged him to go, I longed for him to stay, and our passion was too strong to be resisted.

The Trianon was the perfect setting for lovers, and there we could meet unobserved.

I do not think I could ever have deceived my husband. I was not the kind of woman who could have pretended to love him and to have a secret lover. Louis knew of my relationship with Axel de Fersen; he understood full well that my feelings for the Swedish Count were such as I had felt for no one else. There had been scandals about other men, Luzan, Coigny, Anois . and many others, but they had been meaningless. Axel de Fersen was different. He had known that long ago.

There had been a time when papers had been written about myself and Axel and these had been shown to the King. I remembered how distressed I had been at the time.

He had guessed then my feelings for Axel, but I had shown him clearly that I would never take him as my lover while I had been bearing my husband’s children, the Enfants de France. I was well aware of that duty.

Louis understood. In his kindly way he made me see that he understood, that he appreciated my actions, while he knew that I had been unable to prevent my feelings. Axel went away and I had more children. Louis could never make up to me for all the humiliation of those first years of marriage.

Now there was no physical relationship between us. That had stopped after the birth of Sophie Beatrix. We had believed then that we had our four children—two boys and two girls. How were we to know that we were to lose two of them and that perhaps it would have been better if we had never given the children to France? Neither of us was a slave of sexual passion. But my love for Axel was different from everything that had ever gone before. Our physical union was an outward manifestation of a spiritual bond. It would never have happened but for the fevered atmosphere about us, the sense of living from day to day, from hour to hour because we could not know what the next would bring.

And Louis wished it to be so. That kind man, that tender man, wanted me to live as fully as I could during those terrible days.

So I existed between the love of these two men, with my children never far from my side. Perhaps I was wrong; perhaps I was foolish; but I had often been so and it seemed to me then the only way I could live through these fearful days.

August came—overpoweringly hot. And I seemed to be leading two lives—one in the empty palace of Versailles, alive only with echoes of the past and forebodings of the terrifying future, and another at the Trianon, my happy home, an escape to another world, where my rosy-cheeked respectable tenants lived on in their Hameau, so different from those terrifying people who carried sticks and cudgels and cried out for bread and blood.