Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette (P.S.) by Sena Jeter Naslund Read Free Book Online Page A

their guidance. The woman half-smiles at me: as though to say she wishes me no harm. What a wanton charm she does possess. She is not afraid.
    I wish that I had not inquired as to the identity of that beautiful woman. Looking at the bounty of her bosom, I feel flat and ignorant. I do not think Louis Auguste or any man would hesitate to melt into her lusciousness, but my future husband sits across from me, his heavy eyelids so lowered that he seems almost asleep. I realize that Madame du Barry is a person he would rather not discuss. Her existence hurts him. Along with the Comtesse de Noailles, he has absented himself from this conversation.
    Perhaps it was a small mistake to ask about her; I must curb my curiosity. My mother has rightly identified curiosity as one of my failings. But all this is no more than a crumb on my shimmering green skirt. I flick my knuckles across the silk, as though to brush away a crumb. Perhaps an ant will find it on the floor tomorrow before the carpet is swept. And that ant will be grateful to me, the kind Dauphine who left her a crumb.
    With this thought, I do break off with my fingernail the corner of a roll. I let my hand dangle beside me and drop a very real crumb on the floor. Bonne chance! I think, to the ants of the world.
    “Do you not enjoy the food?” Louis Auguste suddenly asks me from across the table. He lifts his heavy, dark eyebrows as he speaks to try to make the whole eye open wider.
    “He is so considerate,” Aunt Adelaide announces.
    “You look so very handsome tonight,” says Aunt Sophie.
    “The pastries are always our favorites, aren’t they, dear nephew?” Victoire says happily, and again I recall that she in her great girth has been referred to as “the Sow” since the time when she was as young as my almost portly Dauphin.
    “No meat can taste so sweet,” I say to him and smile, “as that which yourself will someday offer me, after a successful hunt.”
    He blushes and looks down.
    “And how was the last hunt?” Adelaide inquires hurriedly, “before you left Versailles?”
    “Versailles began as a hunting lodge for Louis XIII,” Sophie informs me.
    “It’s so much more today,” Adelaide says, chuckling. “We have music and dancing, and theater, and cards. The wedding banquet is to be staged in the Opera House, finished just for the occasion.”
    “But how was your last hunting?” Victoire inquires again of the Dauphin, whom she rightly guesses to have little interest in conversing about the entertainments of Versailles.
    “Nothing,” he replies. He bows his head and blushes.
    “Well then,” I say cheerfully, “perhaps I may claim, after your next success, that I have brought you luck.”
    Louis Auguste raises his eyes to mine, “I most sincerely hope, Madame, that I shall bring good luck to you. And to our people.”
    The aunts straighten up, startled that he has spoken so felicitously. So, he is neither uncouth nor dull-witted. I never thought he was.
    Suddenly the splendor of our candles, mirrors, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and gleaming fabrics filling this large room at the Château de La Muette is washed to nothing with a fierce jittering of lightning. Everyone gasps but the Dauphin and myself.
    Quite unafraid, I say across the table, as though shyly confiding just in him, “I think the lightning is lovely.”

V ERSAILLES : A R OYAL W EDDING , W EDNESDAY , 16 M AY 1770
     
    Versailles! Our carriage has paused on a small crest. Across the town, spread against another rise, is the Château de Versailles. In all her magnificence of gilded gates and roofs capped with gleaming gold, she holds out her arms to me.
    The immense palace is organized by a series of three U-shaped courtyards, each flanked with stately stone buildings. Each opens into the next. Our coach will enter the largest courtyard first. The second courtyard, paved with cobblestones, is slightly smaller; the buildings of the royal courtyard on each side are less far apart than