A French Independence Day
The cheering crowd still haunts my dreams. All her life she held her head so high; after all, she was of royal birth. Now it had bowed, to the blood-crazed mass of onlookers who once cheered her arrival. The guillotine had taken my queen, but not my devotion. The Place de la Revolution was stained blue from the blood of the nobles. A large man named Samson had lowered the blade. He held her blonde hair by its roots and displayed her severed head to the jeering horde. The natural order had been subverted by this deviant act. I was once told that nature is divine and all that is divine is meant to be. Then I must ask: Is all contained in nature meant to be? One should accept what is. I therefore accept all that I am, and the times in which I live.
Rosalie is my name. Chambermaid to Her Majesty Queen Marie Antoinette, the last queen of the French; mine was a humble title, in the shadow of such grandeur, yet I always felt incredible pride. The times are so different now. We now have a republic. Yet I continue to fulfill my unique purpose; I serve. I had found a new lord worthy of my devotion and had served him in a way that had spared me from the Terror. I could not help but fulfill my purpose. It is nature that decides this, not you or I. It is the divine right to rule, and the divine obligation to serve.
I was there when she first arrived, the young dauphiness from Austria. She met the entourage of King Louis XV on a sandbank between Germany and France. A pavilion was erected there to transfer Marie Antoinette from the House of Habsburg to the Court of Louis XV. In the Austrian antechamber, in the presence of her Austrian followers, she was instructed to strip off all her clothing. This was to symbolize her farewell to all that is Austrian. She was strikingly beautiful, with piercing blue eyes and smooth, ivory skin, an exquisite shape, and enchanting smile, even with tears. She wept openly as she was dressed in the finest of French attire.
I rode with her in her carriage to Paris, seated in the corner and out of the way. I was charged with lifting her coat, keeping it free of the wheels and the sand; knowing that I was but her servant, she did not speak directly to me, but only to Count Starhemberg, the best man for the dauphin and leader of the Bourbon delegation. He tried to speak to her as was the norm between nobles, foreign affairs, economic concerns, and other matters of state. She would have none of it, answering with a simple yes or no. Until he brought up the pageantry of the reception held in her honor, of that she expressed great interest.
We traveled to the forest of Compiegne. There the royal family of France was assembled to receive its newest member. The king stepped from his carriage to welcome the bride of his grandson. King Louis XV approached Marie, she curtsied, and he kissed her on both cheeks as the bridegroom looked on in clumsy embarrassment. As we soon found out, this was to be the state of affairs for the royal couple for quite a long time.
The wedding in Versailles contained all the grandeur one would expect for the future king and queen of France—a great feast, music, dancing, and fireworks in the evening, after which the archbishop of Rheims blessed and sprinkled holy water on the nuptial bed. I helped the dauphine into her sleeping attire, a thin chiffon gown trimmed in the finest French lace. I took down her hair and brushed it to her backside. As she walked over to the four-poster bed the dauphin entered the room. He barely looked at her as the curtains were drawn down around the bed and the two were left to their privacy.
II
For several years the country waited for an heir to be born. Not only was Marie Antoinette not with child but also the dauphin was mocked across Europe. He had become the subject of many jokes, and the lack of respect was now affecting matters of state. "Matrimonium non consummatum" said the Archbishop.
This set Marie off on her own affairs. She had already acquired a decadent taste befitting a woman of her distinction. Now she took it to new heights. Shortly after the death of King Louis XV, the newly crowned queen of France took for herself the summer palace of Trianon, something of a dollhouse; this eight-room miniature castle was well out of sight of Versailles but close enough to be convenient. It was there that the queen had her fun.
It was excitement she craved, as well as debauchery, depravity, and all that is wanton and self-indulgent. And I was responsible for seeing to it that she was entertained. Even her husband, King Louis XVI, was not to arrive at Trianon uninvited or unannounced. It was her private sanctuary, a place where all things centered on her, her needs, wants, and desires. She deserved it, did she not? After all, she was the queen. It was her divine right. And I was the chosen vessel in which she would receive such decadent pleasures; for this, I too was blessed.
The first was gambling. She loved games of chance. Individuals of wealth from Paris, Reims, and Lyon were invited. Although these types of card games were illegal, the queen certainly felt, as did most others on the invitation list, that the laws were for the common people, not for the nobles, and certainly not royalty. She played cards late into the evening. She was skilled, winning almost as much as she lost.
She enjoyed drink, too. Not just wine, but spirits as well. She often drank as much as the men. That's when she was most entertained. Playing cards with gentlemen and drinking glass after glass of sparkling wine from Champagne mixed with liquor from Cognac. Her face would flush crimson and she would begin to perspire. I would fan her at the table, since it was unsightly for a woman of her position to be seen perspiring. As her laughter grew more boisterous and frequent she pushed the fan away and it dropped onto the floor.
"Enough, my dear!" said Antoinette.
"Yes, my Queen," I said while holding my head down.
"Help me off with this, girl," she said as she attempted to remove her silken dress and corset.
"But Your Majesty!" I said in shock.
She glared at me. I immediately began to unfasten her dress.
"I don't think our guests will be shocked or dismayed," she said. "In fact, this is probably the first time the marquis has been in a room with a woman longer than an hour and not seduced her to vulnerable bareness," she said, as laughter filled the room.
The marquis was a tall man, dark in complexion, broad shouldered, with a short beard not due to fashion but to negligence. His hair was pulled straight back into a tail that reached to the space between his shoulder blades. He was without the white powdered wig that was the fashion for men. He was a man of extremes—a playwright, novelist, gambler, officer in the King's Cavalry, as well as a drunkard and a Libertine.
My queen now sat down at the table again, clothed only in her undergarments—a low-cut linen blouse, pantaloons, and a garter belt holding stockings of dark silk from Lyon.
"Much better, do you not agree, marquis?" She said demurely.
"Yes, my Queen. Indeed, your comfort is a pleasure to behold," said the Marquis, as he tipped his glass and toasted the queen. The other guests followed suit, men and woman alike. I refilled all the glasses again.
They played another game of cards. The betting continued to escalate. The lantern illuminating the table bounced light off the queen's cleavage. The marquis began to get restless as he watched her ever so closely. Not to be outdone, the queen took notice of him and stopped the game again.
