Marie-Antoinette's Watch: Adultery, Larceny & Perpetual Motion

Chapter 3

Shortly after Fersen's arrival, a distinguished looking trio came into the room and began mixing anonymously with the crowd. One of them, the lady with feathers in her hair, engaged Fersen in conversation, and for nearly half an hour he enjoyed their exchange, never growing bored and becoming ever more eager to see behind her mask. In his short time in Paris, Fersen had found the city's aristocracy to be world-weary and jaded, but this lady's conversation was lively, even slightly risqué, without being frivolous. Although he detected hesitancy in her speech, which he took to be shyness, he felt an easy rapport with her.

When, finally, she removed her mask, he discovered that he had been speaking with Marie-Antoinette, the Dauphine, next in line to be Queen of France. He had seen her from a distance at a ball at Versailles three weeks earlier, but this was his first direct encounter. He could take in her full face now: Her eyes were a sparkling blue (imperial blue, the color was called), alive with intelligence and framed by handsome eyebrows; her nose was prominent but well proportioned; she had full lips. The overall effect was of a beauty at once vivacious and dignified with a touch of imperfection that made her all the more approachable.

So much made sense now. The hesitancy he had taken for shyness was, of course, her relative unfamiliarity with the French tongue. He had heard of her tendency to speak to foreigners when she was masked, lest her Austrian accent give away her identity to a native French speaker, and he imagined that someone had described him to her as an interesting and important young man from Sweden. Now, realizing who she was, he spoke in German to her, and mentioned that during his recent visit to Florence he had met her brother, Leopold, the Grand Duke of Tuscany.

Her two companions, who were speaking to other guests, had also dropped their masks, revealing themselves to be the Dauphin, Louis XVI, baby-faced and already exhibiting a tendency toward overweight, and his brother, the Comte de Provence whose broad chin and pursed lips had been passed on from his mother, Maria Josepha of Saxony. Now that their identities were revealed, a crowd of people quickly gathered around the group. Marie, at nineteen, was already the belle of Paris, and her normally withdrawn husband was unusually outgoing this evening, chatting freely with the revelers. People assumed this was the beneficial influence of his young wife, but jealous courtiers took note of something else - the handsome young foreigner with whom the Dauphine had spent so much time speaking. The Dauphine, perhaps sensing this, retreated with her party to the royal box. Afterward, Fersen, in his habitual laconic fashion, would write in his diary merely that the Dauphine "talked to me for a long time," a fair bit of understatement. When he left the ball, it was three o'clock in the morning, as any of the many watch-carrying guests could have told him.

Before the rise of Marie-Antoinette and a decidedly more youthful turn of fashion, such balls had been visions of a dissipated hell peopled by ghouls in powder and poufs. "The ball was almost over, the candles had shortened, the musicians, drunk or asleep, no longer made use of their instruments," a contemporary wrote about one of Louis XV's balls twenty years before. "The crowd had dispersed, everyone was unmasked, rouge and powder flowed down the painted faces offering the disgusting spectacle of dilapidated stylishness."10 These spectacles quickly changed as a younger and more flamboyant generation took to the opera and Fersen and Marie-Antoinette were at the vanguard of this transition.

The balls of 1770s Versailles, if more modern in sensibility, were no less serious affairs. Preparations were begun months in advance; guest lists solidified and reordered to ensure respect to every rank and privilege. The dances, glittering dresses, rich food, and heady perfumes could be intoxicating, but Fersen, who wore a waistcoat, ruffled cravat, and stockings to such events, was of more modest taste, although he did enjoy balls and dinners. He did, however, have a teenager's ambivalence about all the frippery and wrote, after one ball, that "[a]s I was leaving, I thought that the French don't know how to enjoy themselves. They have the bad habit of constantly saying 'I'm bored,' and it poisons all their pleasures."