The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette Read Free Page B

Austria and France will be served by this marriage. And the sooner it is made, the better.”
    August 1, 1769
    I am to marry the dauphin Louis, heir to the throne of France.
    The Duc de Choiseul brought me his picture. He is ugly,but the duke assures me that he is very pleasant and well-mannered, though a bit shy.
    August 5, 1769
    I can’t think of anything except going to France. Carlotta and I talk and talk about our futures. She is betrothed to Ferdinand of Naples—the prince Josepha was to marry—and poor Josepha’s trousseau is being altered to fit Carlotta, who is much stouter.
    We promise to write to each other often after we are married, but how often will we see each other, once I am in France and she is in Naples?
    We are both very curious about what it will be like, sleeping with our husbands. We know very little, but we know it has to do with having babies and with what Father Kunibert calls the wickedness of fornication.
    “What is fornication?” I asked Father Kunibert one day.
    “Wicked carnality. Sinful congress between people who are not married—or who are married to others.”
    “But what is it exactly?”
    “Ask your mother,” he told me curtly. “After fourteen children, she is an expert.”
    But my mother was very vague on the subject when I asked her, talking of a wife’s loving obligation to please her husband, whatever he asked of her.
    “What will he ask of me?”
    “That is between you and Louis.”
    It was no use. I tried asking Sophie, but she merely shook her head and said “You will find out.”
    Finally I decided to ask the servants. One day after I had returned from riding on Lysander, and was in the stables watching the horse receive his rubdown, I approached Eric.
    Eric is eighteen or nineteen, strongly built and with darkhair and deep blue eyes. I like him and feel safe when I am with him. Once, when Lysander had bolted, Eric had come after us and stopped the runaway horse and I have always been grateful to him for that. He also told me where to find Josepha, something I have never confided to anyone—not my mother, not Father Kunibert when I made my confession to him, not Joseph when he came to me and demanded to know how I had discovered where our poor sick sister was being kept.
    So I said to Eric, as he was brushing Lysander, I am to be married soon, and no one will tell me what to expect. Will you tell me?
    Eric stopped brushing the horse, letting the brush rest against Lysander’s powerful brown haunch. Without meeting my gaze, he said, “That is not for me to tell you, your highness.”
    “But you’ve always answered my questions before. I count on you.”
    He trembled and dropped the brush into the straw. Quickly, before I had time to realize what was happening, he reached for me and kissed me.
    I was on fire. I could not think, or breathe, or react. It was the most delicious moment of my life.
    He released me. “There,” he said, breathless, “that is what you can expect. That and more. And if you tell anyone about this”—he bent and picked up the brush and began brushing Lysander’s coat again—“I will be dismissed—or shot by the guards.”
    “I won’t say anything.” I was smiling. I wanted him to kiss me again.
    August 10, 1769
    Eric will be accompanying me to France, along with Sophie and my laundress and my new tutor, Abbé Vermond, who isteaching me to speak proper French instead of the court French we speak here in Vienna. The abbé says we all have thick German accents.
    As for who else will go with me, I will not find out for many months. Mother says I am expected to leave my old life behind when I go to France. I must become a Frenchwoman, so that my husband’s subjects will find me acceptable as their queen.
    “You must become as much like the French as possible,” maman told me, “but in your heart and blood you will always be a Hapsburg. By your marriage you will save Austria. As long as Hapsburg and Bourbon are allied by