The Queen`s Confession Read Online Free PDF Page A

enough because he knew that was all I could endure without becoming bored and irritated. Much later when I talked about those days with Madame Campan, who by then was more than first lady of the bedchamber and had become a friend, she pointed out the harm Vennond had done. But she disliked him and she thought he had
    a share of the blame for every25 thing that happened to us. Instead of reading together in our lighthearted way, and his allowing me to break off and give imitations of various people of the Court of whom some remark would remind me, I should have been given a thorough grounding not only in French literature but in the manners and customs of that land. I should, she said, have been made ready for the Court of which I was to be a part. I should have been made to study throughout the day if necessary (no matter how unpopular that made Monsieur Vermond); I should have been taught something of French history and of the people of France; I should have learned something about the rumbling dissatisfaction which long before I went there was making itself felt.
    But dear Campan was a natural bos bleu and she hated Vermond and loved me;
    moreover, she was desperately anxious for me at that time.
    So although I had to substitute a priest for my actors, the exchange was not so bad after all; and the daily hour with Vermond went pleasantly enough.
    But I was not left alone. My appearance was under continual discussion. Why? I wondered, thinking of Joseph’s wife with the dumpy figure and the red spots. I had a good complexion, fine and delicately coloured; my hair was abundant; some said it was golden, some russet, some red. Blonde cendre, the French were to call it; and in the shops of Paris they would display gold-coloured silk and call it chevetix de la Reme. But my high forehead caused a great deal of consternation. My mother was disturbed because Prince Starhemburg, our ambassador in France, reported:
    “This trifling imperfection might appear considerable at a time when high foreheads are no longer in fashion.”
    I would sit before the mirror contemplating this offending forehead which I had not before noticed was different from other people’s; and very soon Monsieur Larsenneur arrived from Paris. He clucked over my hair, frowned at my fore head and went to work. He tried all sorts of styles and eventually decided that if my hair were dressed in a high pile straight up from my forehead, the latter would appear to be low in comparison with the hair. So it was pulled so tightly that it hurt,
    and was held in place by false hair, my 26 own colour. To my disgust I was obliged to wear it like that, and as soon as Monsieur Larsenneur had gone I used to loosen the pins. Some of my mother’s courtiers thought it unbecoming, but old Baron Neny said that when I reached Versailles all the ladies would dress their hair ‘a la Dauphine’. Remarks like that always gave me an uneasy twinge because they implied that the great change was coming nearer and nearer; and I was trying hard to forget this in all the excitement of new hairstyles and dancing steps, and luring Abbe Vermond from the book we were reading to give imitations of people at Court.
    My teeth gave cause for concern too, because they were uneven. A dentist was sent from France and he looked at them and frowned, as Monsieur Larsenneur had over my hair. He was always pushing my teeth about but I don’t think he made much difference and eventually he gave up. They were a little prominent, which, as they said, made my lower lip look ‘disdainful,” I tried smiling, which, although it exposed the uneven teeth, did abolish the disdain.
    I had to wear stays, which I hated, and to grow accustomed to high heels, which prevented my running about the gardens with my dogs. When I thought of leaving the dogs I would burst into tears and the Abbe would comfort me by saying that when I was Dauphine I should have as many French dogs as I desired.
    As my fourteenth birthday