Farewell, My Queen

It was not all the same to me. Nothing that had to do with her was all the same to me. I did not dare to tell her so. Blushing and embarrassed, I went to the bookshelves and fetched down the volume she wished for. She had rejected the passages I had prepared: my feelings were hurt. At the same time, it flattered me to be joined with her in reading from a play, to be giving her the cue to her lines. It was one way of gaining access to that temple of intimacy, that most secret of secret places: her theater at the Petit Trianon. I tried to visualize the blue of the velvet chairs, the fragility of the blue and gold papier-mâché ornaments. I imagined it as a dollhouse proportioned to the Queen’s taste for whatever was very tiny, suited to the passion she had for scaled-down objects, miniatures, anything small. Small, petit, her pronunciation of this word was a delight; she made the first consonant too hard, then let the remainder of the word melt away in a sigh as though her mouth were kissing the ambient air. Petit, little, everything to do with Marianne is little (for instance, the Queen loved hearing me read aloud: “I omit entirely the period of my early childhood years, when my instruction consisted of learning to make innumerable little items of feminine apparel . . . ”), but she had rejected La Vie de Marianne. There we were in Félicie. The Queen was the fairy. I was playing Félicie, the young girl.
I began:
“FÉLICIE. One cannot but agree that the weather today is fine.
“HORTENSE (THE FAIRY). And as a result we have been walking for a long while.
“FÉLICIE. And as a result, though my pleasure in being with you is always very great, I have never been more aware of it than today.
“HORTENSE. I do believe that you love me, Félicie.”
And I responded with all my soul, trying to restrain my fervor when I realized that unlike me, the Queen was reading tonelessly. She was delivering her lines without putting the least expression into them. She was reciting passages with her eyes shut, wearing a look of concentration as though she were reciting irregular verbs. She had completely forgotten that I was there. Totally absorbed in the effort of memorization, she was muttering the words for her own benefit. I would come to a stop, whereupon she would go back to speaking audibly, and the fairy tale would resume its course . . .
The fairy has asked the girl what gift she desires to have bestowed on her, and the girl has replied: “Beauty.” At once the fairy grants her wish and Félicie is overjoyed.
“HORTENSE. You rejoice at my gift; I wonder if it should not make you uneasy instead.
“FÉLICIE. Be assured, Madam. You shall have no cause to repent.
“HORTENSE. So I hope; but I mean to add one thing more to this present I have just given you. You are going out into the world; I want you to be happy out in the world, and for that I need to be perfectly informed of your inclinations, in order to ensure that the sort of happiness you find will be the one most suited to you. Do you see the place where we now are? This is the world.
“FÉLICIE. The world! And I thought I was still quite close to home.”
At which point the Queen had had enough. Among the books I had put on the table, she had espied the latest issue of the Magazine of New French and English Fashions. That was the reading she wanted to hear. It was all about bonnets, the ornaments for grand Court apparel, and trimmings for ladies’ dresses:
“Dresses are commonly trimmed with a webbing of gold or silver, but the ornaments preferred today are tulle or net trim, accompanied by garlands of various flowers mingled with clasps fashioned into love knots.” A questioning note must have crept into my voice, for the Queen, her manner unpleasantly troubled, firmly directed me to continue . . . “To these are added acorns in the Chinese manner, or horns of plenty scattering flowers and berries over the background of the fabric. When the background is plain, a dress may also be adorned with flowers and plants in imitation of nature, such as sunflowers, lilies, hyacinth, lily of the valley, hawthorn . . . ” She was entranced. But it was when I embarked on the topic of embroidery work that she truly listened to me with bated breath: “From lawn caracos embroidered in a variety of colors, our ladies of fashion have rapidly moved on to dresses likewise embroidered. This vogue for embroidery is so pleasing that they are bound to put forth their best efforts in the perfecting of it.”
Embroidery work was the great innovation of that July. The Queen, as though gripped by inspiration, sat suddenly erect amid her pillows with a surge of energy such as I had not seen her display of late. She called for The Queen’s Wardrobe Book. The reading session was at an end; what followed was the responsibility of Rose Bertin. By the time I had retrieved the books I had brought with me and arranged them in my big cloth bag, the Queen was already absorbed in contemplation of her precious Wardrobe Book. Eyes fixed on the samples of fabric glued to its pages, she was withdrawn from the world. She was choosing her gowns. And as though, in her insatiable desire for those stuffs—those silks and velvets, those goffered materials and fabulous weaves created to please her—the sense of sight did not suffice, she was stroking the samples with her fingers, wanting to feel them against her skin as she sat there and gazed pensively off into space. Absentmindedly, she removed her nightcap. Soft and very fair, her hair spread cloudlike over the pillow, while at the same time a powerful smell of jasmine