Madame de Saverne

by Achim von Arnim

translated by Michael Wooff

part 1

The war in America had humbled England and cemented the fame of French arms. The whole of France rejoiced and sang the praises of the wisdom of its king, Louis XVI. As the female sex there attended somewhat more than in other countries to public affairs, many a woman was seized by the general enthusiasm for the king, only this had more to do with his body and personality than his wisdom, which can cut only an allegorical figure. It was not unusual in France to find a bust of the king, adorned with flowers, in the bedrooms of rich women like a household god, where otherwise only stands for hoods and mannequins were seen.

Gradually this enthusiasm, like everything else in the restless, censorious French capital, had lost its edge. The king was plagued by bad weather, spoiled lunches and boring lovers. Initially, the flowers vanished, then the busts were used as stands for hoods and soon caricatures appeared, while provinces further away still persisted in their deep respect and admiration for the distant king.

No-one was as zealous in her worship as Madame de Saverne, the wealthy widow of a papal official in Avignon. As a woman born in France, the daughter of the rich silk merchant Lonny in Lyon, she had the right to respect in the person of the king the father of her land. His bust was her greatest treasure, much to the annoyance of her father confessor, who would rather have replaced it with the picture of her patron saint.

She forgot all her friends and admirers in wishing to bask in, in Paris, the rays of royal graciousness up close. To no avail her father confessor sought to hamper this decision on her part, speaking to her of the affection she was held in by his then absent brother, a papal captain, but Madame de Saverne wanted to see the king at least once. She thought that she would not otherwise be able to live in peace and considered her wish to be quite innocent, quite natural and, if other women from the area were going to Paris to give free rein to their feelings there for lovers, it was given to her to allow the purest of infatuations, which her attachment to the father of her fatherland had generated.

Her father confessor remained unconvinced. No well-intentioned person should go to Paris, for he would there be deceived. If anyone went there with mischief in mind, he would find there a veritable playground.

En route, she would often remember this conversation and had to laugh at this arch-enemy of Paris who, without even knowing them, could damn half a million souls, but his final words to her, when she was neatly packing the king’s bust, had left an unpleasant taste in her mouth: “Now you’re encumbering your carriage with that bust and will carefully cradle like a child the chest that it’s in on your lap but, when you come back, it’ll be with a shudder that you’ll handle money as well as the bust itself. In this way your sinful pleasure you’ll atone for.”

But she attributed all this to the anger that the man had felt at her taking all the wealth she had there with her instead of bequeathing it to a convent or monastery, and even more so at the loss of the good food to be had in her house. The most irksome thing for her was that he had persuaded her maid not to go with her to that wicked town. Now she had to take as her companion a Parisian woman who had nurtured the wish to go back there.

The name of this maid was Manon. She had outgrown her youth a long time ago and had worked abroad as a governess. She had numerous tales to tell about what had happened to her, but it was always as if the thread was missing that ought to have joined these strange adventures together. Madame de Saverne could not quite trust her.

* * *

Apart from that, the maid did know her way around Paris, could name the street through which they were travelling, had the carriage stop at a hotel where the landlady bade them a friendly welcome, also helping them to move into their desired lodgings immediately. Before long, the heavy chest and the bust, along with all the other things that they’d brought with them, were installed,

Madame de Saverne wanted to hurry to the Tuileries, led by her landlady, where she might catch sight of her beloved king. When the landlady had wormed out of her this reason for her journey, she shook her head and assured her that none of their residents, sitting where it was warm, would get up to see the king. He’d done this and that and would no doubt do so again.

Madame de Saverne did not joke about such things. She ordered her therefore to shut up, but the woman laughed disdainfully and affirmed that she would not see the king, because he was at Versailles. No sooner had the good Saverne heard this than she rushed impatiently to send for horses and, despite her chambermaid’s frustration, she travelled to Versailles that very same day after giving a month’s rent in advance to her landlady.

What struck her as strange was that a rider accompanied the carriage to Versailles, whom nobody knew and who dismounted at the same time she did, at the same hotel. Meanwhile, she had more important things to think about but she bore his face in mind.

The guests in the hotel approached her in an oddly inquisitive fashion. They seemed to know that she wanted to see the king and told her that his health seldom permitted him now to visit the garden. She lamented his illness with great animation. The people there smiled and said that he was not in danger.

Madame de Saverne found the place charming and quite to her taste. She spoke of acquiring property in the area, looked at houses near the Palace of Versailles but was taken aback that none of the owners were willing to come to an arrangement with her, even though her bids were well above the dwellings’ true value. She settled down into a very simple lifestyle.

Bookshops brought to her a fortune in books on the history of France and the late war. The landlady looked after her meals. The chambermaid was her only company, for she had got out of the way of socializing with her deceased husband, who had lived a very solitary life and harboured but little desire to see the foreign countries that her father confessor depicted as highly depraved and deceitful. In the morning she read books. In the afternoon, it was the Palace garden that attracted and preoccupied her.

As they were just laying a new terrace in the garden, several workers were constantly gathered there who once, during their leisure hours, spoke to one another of their fortunes while Madame de Saverne was sitting on a bench in their vicinity. She heard how one of them described the dangers he had survived as a prisoner among savages in the late war and how, at present, he had received no compensation for all he had been through. She was moved by this. Going up to the man, she pressed a gold coin in his hand and said: “Your just king will take care of you. In the meantime, please accept this trifle!” The man thanked her and looked at her in amazement.

In the days that followed, she found herself addressed by workers begging for money, who reported to her all their deeds in the war and their misfortune. She gave something to each one, contrary to the injunctions of her chambermaid who scolded all these people as liars. “Even if they’ve lied,” said Madame de Saverne, “why did heaven grant me wealth and a modicum of good sense if I’m not allowed to give away what’s surplus to requirements for me?”

The chambermaid complained that she would squander her wealth in this manner, but Madame de Saverne referred her to that verse in the Bible that states that we must use worldly wealth to gain friends for ourselves, so that, when it is gone, we will be welcomed into everlasting dwellings. “I can see you in a dwelling already, in a dirt poor dwelling still down here on earth!” the pert chambermaid riposted.

The latter’s objections were gradually becoming disagreeable to her mistress. She should therefore leave her service. She insisted however that she could not be dismissed. She roped in a police official who presented as certain that dismissal could not be envisaged before a certain length of time had elapsed since her employer had no reasonable ground for complaint.

Madame de Saverne had no knowledge of the law, and the police official was a paragon of all the brazen coarseness that clung then to most of those who devoted themselves to this disgusting occupation. She decided out of fear of the man’s rudeness to bide her time patiently though it weighed very heavily upon her.

The maid was still in her service when news came that the king would visit the garden for the first time in a long time one evening to celebrate the restoration of his health. It was a joyful day. Madame de Saverne decorated the king’s bust in the morning and was in the afternoon the first to stand near the door, out of which the king was to walk. Soon, people were gathering, and she noticed in her immediate vicinity the very person who had accompanied her from Paris to Versailles, whose jay-like face with a huge mouth made him resemble a nutcracker. She would subsequently always call him this.

The Swiss Guards give the signal that the king was coming. Madame de Saverne bent forward and found herself being pushed even further forward by some. But, just at that moment, the Nutcracker dragged her back, implying that it wasn’t decent for a woman to force herself into the king’s way like this. She protested, but the man pulled her back relentlessly while the crowd raised cries of “Vive le roi !” and she was thus deprived of the sight she had so long longed for. The crowd now followed the king’s progress boisterously, her moment had been and gone. She felt slighted and still by several people mocked, who had sided with that one.

When she returned wretchedly home, she found an unhappy man who elicited her sympathy because she was known for her gentle nature. He had lost a leg in the war and had now settled to a trade and wanted to marry. Should she wish to lend him the capital, he would bring her model testimonials of his diligence and skill. She forgot her grief, opined it was a stroke of the greatest good luck that had led her to perform this good deed by being excluded from the festivities and gave the man a thousand livres, enjoining him to pay her back without interest when he had worked himself up to be rich. Today however he should drink a glass in honour of the king, for he owed this good deed to the latter’s return to health. The man would have fallen prostrate at her feet but she ran up to her bedroom.

Immediately after this, she heard a violent quarrel taking place in the anteroom. The chambermaid was wrestling with the man with the wooden leg and constantly shouting that her mistress had nothing to give, that she was under observation. It wasn’t long before the police official turned up and tried to get the money back. People gave way, but she got such peculiar looks from them that she soon took to her room in dismay and, she knew not why, was compelled to think back to her father confessor.

She prayed a great deal that day and once more had to take exception to her chambermaid, who explained to her that she would rather read a comedy by Molière for her own entertainment and rather pay two thousand livres for an embroidered dress than give away one thousand to the poor.

The following day the Nutcracker came, judicially attired, with another man, who looked at her, half-smilingly, half-timidly. He told her he had been sent by the court to make enquiries regarding her personal fortune as several reports about her had been coming in. The other made to kiss her hand but felt her pulse instead. Surprised and diffident, she had no doubt as to the legitimacy of the business and, as her affairs were very straightforward, a cursory survey of her papers could suffice to accede to the request.

Afterwards they talked of matters neither here nor there, but the other man brought the conversation around to the king. With her southern vivaciousness, she did not conceal from them what great expectations she still entertained for the good of her fatherland from the king’s kindness and insight. The two men looked at each other apprehensively and then took leave of her, assuring her of their planned return later in the day.

After lunch, Madame de Saverne wanted to go on her usual walk to the garden but the Nutcracker, on his own, approached her at the door and insisted that she get into the carriage he had just had come for her in order to give, by herself, further information to the court.

It was in vain that she objected he had brought no written order with him, that she would not follow him without one and without prior consultation with a lawyer. He threatened to have her forcibly removed if she did not go with him willingly. In voicing this threat he seized her hand, and several people rushed to help her but the police official stuck his nose in, too. Some of the by-standers spoke up for her but, as soon as the Nutcracker had whispered something to them, they backed off, shrugging their shoulders.

She entreated all and sundry just to tell her what they had started to do to her. As she was addressing those around her so beseechingly that many had tears in their eyes, the policeman grabbed her body to carry her into the carriage, to which action the Nutcracker right away lent his support. But righteous indignation gave the little woman a strength seldom met with. She struggled. Everything became a weapon for her. Amid cheers from the crowd, both her bloodstained enemies were struck down. She went exhausted, reeling, out of breath, back to her room.

Proceed to part 2...