Read Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette (P.S.) for Free Online Page B

marrying a total stranger.
     
     
     
    A LL AROUND US is the clatter of conversation as pleasant as the faint rap of silver against porcelain. Still, I find it hard to eat. I ask the Comtesse de Noailles to tell me something of the beautiful widow Lamballe and her husband.
    The Comtesse de Noailles informs me, “Her husband was not old.”
    “And was he as handsome as she is beautiful?” I ask.
    “Handsome enough,” she answers. “But given to vices. Unspeakable vices,” she whispers. She glances around, unsure that the topic is appropriate for a supper party among the notables. How the dresses and frock coats gleam in the candlelight. The odor of powder from the wigs hangs heavy in the air. “We were all very sorry for her.”
    I say of the Princesse de Lamballe, “She has the special beauty that sadness leaves on a face.”
    “And how can Antoinette know anything of sadness?” The comtesse speaks to me from amid her thousand wrinkles, speaks lightly to me, as though she would encourage me in my happiness. Is there faint mockery in her tone?
    I inquire if the Princesse de Lamballe might not marry again.
    “Should she do so—” The Comtesse de Noailles speaks with a certain haughtiness and sits even straighter in her chair. “Should she do so, she might lose that standing she now enjoys at court.”
    When I ask for further explanation, the comtesse expounds: the rank of the princess springs from the family into which she married. “The Princesse de Lamballe devotes herself to her husband’s father, the Duc de Penthièvre. His generosity toward her is well known, as is his generosity to the poor.”
    The story is interrupted as the Dauphin suddenly asks me if I have read the works of the English philosopher David Hume.
    I reply that I have not had the pleasure, but I feel a flicker of irritation in my brain, for I am much more interested in the story of the Princesse de Lamballe.
    “I met David Hume when I was but a child,” the Dauphin tells me. “And I often read his work.”
    “My brother, the Emperor Joseph, advises that I spend two hours a day with books,” I reply. “But so far, I have not had the time to do it.”
    “Hume writes with great insight about the plight of Charles I.”
    Suddenly the Dauphin’s chubby brother, Louis Xavier, the Comte de Provence, rolls his eyes in his expressive face. “But, please, none of that bloody ax business at table.”
    The Dauphin bows his head, acquiescing, and says graciously to the comtesse, “Pray continue your account of the beautiful princess, whom my grandfather honors with his special esteem, as do we all.”
    Ah, my Dauphin does not lack social graces, if he chooses to employ them.
    “The duc, her gracious father-in-law, is himself a grandson of Louis XIV.” When the comtesse suddenly lowers her voice to a whisper, both the Dauphin and Louis Xavier courteously look away to either side. It is the gesture etiquette requires, I note, when someone in the conversation group whispers to the Dauphine—to myself. And perhaps to anyone?
    Appreciating that she is among gentlemen, the comtesse confidently hisses on. “The duc’s father was a bastard son. Louis took pity on this son, called the Comte de Toulouse, who possessed something of the goodness evident in his saintly and immensely wealthy progeny, and declared him legitimate.” The Comtesse de Noailles seems as smug as though she herself has had the power to declare an immoral result “legitimate.”
    Inhaling, I enjoy the aroma of mushrooms in butter, of pheasant, of pork in cinnamon and stewed apples, of haricots in slivered almonds, of a puff pie stuffed with truffles and onions, chestnuts and hazelnuts, but for all their lovely fragrance, I merely nibble. I am too stuffed with information and with impressions to have room for real food.
     
     
     
    A CROSS THE ROOM , I note a certain woman I but glimpsed from a distance at Compiègne. Not the Princesse de Lamballe, but another woman, less