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

please you,” I reply.
     
     
     
    W HEN I TALK with Count Mercy, I ask him if he, like the abbé, believes I have been a good influence on the Dauphin.
    “Without doubt,” he replies, with crisp energy. Everything about the count is crisp and orderly. His mind and his clothing are cut from the same elegant cloth. Without flaw, his deportment and demeanor are full of subtle innuendo, which I do not understand, but I trust him.
    “And the King likes me too,” I say, with a slight question in my voice.
    “Perhaps you have noticed, however, that the King is most expressive of his love when you go to his apartment without the companionship of Mesdames, your aunts?”
    “They like to go everywhere with me.”
    “Like a herd of lapdogs,” he lightly teases.
    “I could not live without their devotion.”
    “But then you do much to further their causes,” he replies.
    I am silent.
    “In the matter of the du Barry,” he explains. “My advice would be to treat her with more civility. To speak to her, from time to time. The King will love you the more for it.”
    I cannot argue with the count; I am not clever enough. But the aunts have told me that I do well to keep the King reminded that the du Barry association is not respectable.
     
     
     
    F OR MY FIFTEENTH BIRTHDAY , there is much celebrating. Both the Dauphin and the King shower me with gifts, though I neither need nor want anything. Best of all, the very next day, the Générale visits in the morning.
    The Dauphin attends me and congratulates me, while I rest in bed.
    To my surprise and pleasure, he begins to speak to me quite frankly.
    “My dear friend, my dear Dauphine,” he begins, “I wish to assure you, now that you are fifteen, that I do, indeed, understand everything about the marriage act. Quite deliberately I have refrained until we were both a little older.”
    I regard him with joyful amazement.
    “I have been following a plan,” he continues. “You know how I love the hunting at Compiègne. As does my grandfather. When we go next to Compiègne, there I shall act the part of a man with you.”
    My heart gives me my reply: “Nothing pleases me but to follow the will of my husband in the path that will lead to our happiness and that of France.”
    Most tenderly, he takes my hand and kisses it. “You are perfect in all ways,” he says. “I promise it. At Compiègne, I will make you my true wife.”
    When he leaves my bedside and I dismiss my attendants, I pinch my nipples in the hope of stimulating their growth.

A L ETTER FROM THE E MPRESS
     
    Rather to my amazement, my mother the Empress now wants me to be more careful not to offend Madame du Barry. The Empress admonishes me to take better care of my appearance. She has spies everywhere, and the Princess Windischgrätz, who visited here and then at Schönbrunn, has tattled on me. I sit at my desk, with the eyes of all my surrounding ladies glancing up in fluttering rhythms at me from their needlework to check my mood. While I wear a mask of perfect calm and equanimity, I read my letter from the Empress:
 
    Because I asked her with my direct questions, the Princess was forced to admit that you are failing to take good care of yourself, even in the matter of keeping your teeth clean. Your teeth are a major aspect of making a good impression, and you will recall that before you left Austria, we spent much time with them in straightening wires, something that became necessary expressly because you suddenly became, by the Grace of God and the untimely deaths of others, in line to marry the throne of France. Finding that you could neither read nor write in any language, we immediately set out to correct that situation as well. When you left Austria, your appearance was entirely presentable, even charming, though that is due more to your manner than your natural endowments.
    Teeth are a key point in the pantheon of beauty, and even more so is your figure, which the Princess reported under my