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

Chapter 3

Paris

Past midnight on January 30, 1774, eighteen-year-old Count Hans Axel von Fersen, the son of a powerful Swedish nobleman, found himself in the middle of an enchanting conversation. He had no idea with whom.

In the plush, oval auditorium of the Paris opera, a thousand candles flickered off the faux marble and pastel frescoes and tall mirrors and gilded bronze reliefs. The opera house was new, having replaced one that had burned down four years earlier. It was a magnificent room: Ionic columns along the side walls soared past curved tiers of loges, and on the elliptical ceiling an elaborate fresco depicted Apollo and the Muses. Normally it could seat one thousand, but for this evening's event the orchestra had been raised to the same level as the stage, creating a seamless ballroom floor. Couples spun around each other in perfect minuets as lutes and harpsichords played baroque melodies.

As they did so, Fersen was becoming increasingly intrigued by the young woman nodding attentively at his words and responding with such charming bon mots. She was eye-catchingly slender. Beneath a white taffeta dress, her girlish figure seemed still to be taking shape, but there was nothing awkward about her. Her blonde hair was terraced in lustrous curls and adorned with feathers. Her skin was striking for both its whiteness and the delicate flush glowing beneath it. She carried herself with great dignity, yet exuded a natural kindness, and her walk - "indolent, half-swaying, one might say caressing"7 - gave her the air of grace that could only come with fine breeding.

This was all Fersen could tell, for like all the mysterious and fashionable people in the room, including him, she held one of the small half-masks known as dominoes up to her face. The opera was the scandalous destination of the season. Open to all comers, provided they could pay the admission, it allowed for mixing of the classes and sexes. Thanks to the masks, it also afforded an air of mystery and, importantly, a veil of secrecy to the dalliances that took place there. For nobles who spent most of their time scrutinizing and being scrutinized these balls offered a welcome respite. Men and women both enjoyed the privilege of going incognito and mingling flirtatiously, if only for a few hours.

Fersen, for the last three years, had been taking his grand tour, an aristocratic rite of passage that had brought him tumbling through the continent like a polite, taciturn Viking raider. He was tall and slim, with blue eyes and light brown hair, and from the moment of his arrival in Paris a few weeks earlier, he had been accepted into the ranks of the French court. His skills at languages, swordsmanship, riding, and music were much in demand as entertainments, and he quickly fell into the swirl of events in the city and at Versailles. The ladies at court dubbed him "le beau Fersen;" one described him as looking like the "hero of a novel."

"No one could have been more correct or distinguished in his bearing," Count Creutz, the Swedish ambassador, reported to his king, Gustav III. "With his good looks and his charm he could not help but be a great success in society here."8 His name did much to pave his way. So respected was his family that one Swedish wag even said that he knew three types of men: "Frenchmen, Fersens, and rabble."9

This day alone, in the hours before Fersen's meeting with the strange and alluring woman at the opera, had been a dazzling blur of engagements. After a late lunch with the Danish ambassador, he had gone to the home of another aristocrat, Madame d'Arville, for a half hour of banter. Then Count Creutz had driven Fersen to the home of the Princesse de Beauvau, and on to a concert by Stroganoff. At nine, it was back to Madame d'Arville's for supper, which went until one in the morning. Finally, the group went to the opera for the masked ball.