Farewell, My Queen by Chantal Thomas, translated by Moishe Black A woman whose function it once was to read books aloud to Marie-Antoinette is haunted by the memory of her last days at the French court of Versailles, when Louis XVI's magnificent palace succumbed to the irrepressible forces of revolution. Now exiled in Vienna, Madame Agathe-Sidonie Laborde looks back twenty-one years to the legendary opulence of Versailles and, overcome with nostalgia and remorse, discovers the full measure of her fascination with the Queen she served. Transporting us to eighteenth-century France with the skill of a consummate storyteller, Chantal Thomas meticulously re-creates the miniature universe of Versailles, brilliantly juxtaposing its beauty and its dawn-to-dusk ritual with the chaos that erupts. Her portrait of Versailles and of Marie-Antoinette is an incomparable account of the collapse of a lost world. Chantal Thomas is Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. She is the author of The Wicked Queen: The Origins of the Myth of Marie-Antoinette. This is her first novel. Hardback, 51/2 x 81/4 in., 248 pages ISBN 0-8076-1514-5 $22.50 (Can. $34.00) Paper back rights sold to Simon and Schuster For glowing reviews, please click here. To read an excerpt, please click here.

From THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (August 31, 2003): "...delightful historical novel...Thomas is a historian specializing in 18th century France, and she knows her subject...In language both vivid and elegant, the novel also captures the mood of panic that soon had servants and soldiers felling their posts, and nobles, clergy and hangers-on looking to save their skins...rich tableau vivant." From THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD (August 24, 03): "...elegant powerful novel...dazzling imaginings...Thomas gets the tone and feel of 18th-century court uncannily right...She is a master at recognizing and providing the telling detail...It's a bravura glimpse into a time past and a dreamlike life." From LIBRARY JOURNAL(July 2003): "A masterly, haunting account of the downfall of the ancien regime. Timid Agathe Sidonie is the perfect witness, hidden in the corners but capable of musing intelligently on monumental historical change and the particular tragedy of Marie-Antoinette." From the ORLANDO SENTINEL (August 24, 2003): "...illuminating first novel...meticulous detail...Nuance, vitality and glints of humor...Thomas' thorough research and her compassion for her subject not only imbue the novel with remarkable authenticity, but also render it a memorable bill-doux to a bygone France." From the starred KIRKUS REVIEW (April 15, 2003): "A former reader to Marie-Antoinette recalls July 1789, in an edifying and masterly first novel, winner of the Prix Femina...Scholarly precision in an artful, fluid, compelling narrative: Vive la reine!" From the CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR (June 12, 2003): "Madame Laborde begins determined to defend her beloved mistress against 'a campaign of propaganda tending to stigmatize Versailles as a bottomless pit of needless expenses.' At that impossible task, her testimony fails completely, but as a record of the way people react - or fail to react - to changes that threaten their lifestyle, this little book is an unsettling success." From the TENNESSEAN NEWS (May 4, 2003): "...The entire tale is fascinating..." From the starred PUBLISHERS WEEKLY review (June 9, 2003): "...The story of Marie-Antoinette's final days is well known, so the delights of this rendition lie in the details. [The main character] Laborde is a keen observer of the queen's moods and appearance, and her attempts to cheer her mistress with well-chosen passages give her story extra depth. Like the tiny enamel painting of Marie-Antoinette's bright blue eyes that inspires Laborde's reminiscences, this is a cunning, gemlike miniature." From the starred BOOKLIST review (May 15, 2003): "...[The main character's] status as courtier makes her the best kind of narrator—at once an insider and an observer of the royals. She describes the final days before the revolution engulfs the palace with insight and surprising slices of humour....Thomas's formidable skills as a researcher give the book authenticity, and her keen eye for human behavior and talent for storytelling make it sing."

EXCERPT:          My visit was expected. I went up the marble stairway leading to the second story where her bedchamber was. I can still see the curve of the stairway, the blue-and-white porcelain pots that were set on the steps (the sight of them always made me long to go to Holland; I am exceedingly fond of windmills), the somewhat narrow corridor, built to allow two people to brush past one another, the doors on which were chalked the names of those few friends considered worthy to spend the night at the Petit Trianon. (During country sojourns at Marly, Fountainebleau, or Saint-Cloud, guests' names were likewise written on the doors of lodgings requisitioned from local residents to accommodate those for whom rooms had not been found at the château.) There were also, in various corners, little improvised rooms for the servants, removable boards on which they would lay a thin mattress that they rolled up immediately on awakening and stowed out of sight.          At the Petit Trianon, as at Trianon itself and at the château, day erased the traces of night. But not in her special place, no, not in her bedchamber, not in the private territory that she marked with her gentle sweetness, with her scent. There, night and day commingled, prolonged each other, met, and intertwined. And this was especially true in that bedchamber at the Petit Trianon, which was so dear to her because it could not be confused in any respect with an official setting. The room looked out onto an ornamental pond and onto the Temple of Love, partly hidden from view by a little forest of reeds. Forest? That at any rate was how she referred to the ten or a dozen reeds whose rustling, when the window was open, was part of the enchantment I found in that bedchamber at the Petit Trianon. Sounds of water and reeds, voices of the lace makers, seamstresses, spinners, and ironers, whose songs the Queen liked to hear as they went about their work in the washhouse. That, in my memory, is the music of the Petit Trianon, and not the succession of concerts held there, numerous though they were. It is the music of the garden and of women's voices. And the fragrances? Like the music, these come in the first instance from outdoors. They are delicate, and they change, in the spring, with the changing garden blossoms. But one there is that persists, identical across the seasons: the smell of the coffee brought to the Queen for her breakfast. If I chanced to arrive just when she was having her coffee, she would ask her attendants to bring another cup for me. And the instant it touched my throat, the savor of the strong black brew, that to her was the flavor of her daily awakening, became part of the very flavor of my life. If I search my memory, there is one other fragrance, more fraught with meaning, with a very strong, smooth odor to it, that I smelled only when I came to the Petit Trianon. But I was afraid to breathe it in, because it was too closely involved with the Queen's body and the care she lavished on it. This was a jasmine-flower salve that she had her women smear around the roots of her hair. The salve had the property of preventing hair from falling out and even making it grow. All the women longed to get some for themselves, but Monsieur Fargeon, of The Scented Swan in Montpellier, jealously guarded it for the Queen's exclusive use. *   *   *          When her attendants showed me in, the Queen was drinking her coffee. The white hangings of her bedchamber with their colorful flowered motifs, the huge bouquets of dahlias in their crystal vases, the transparence of the finely embroidered net curtains, all conspired, that morning, to make you forget the dull weather. But nothing would have had any effect on me had it not been for the charm of her smile, dawning when I appeared, then, when I stood up after my curtsey, shedding a joyful, golden warmth over everything: drapes, partitions, rugs, mirrors, writing stand, and harpsichord, even the hollyhocks that stood in bright sprays around the half-opened curtains of her bed.          "How good of you to have walked all this way in order to come and read to me here at Trianon. And so early in the morning, too . . . I don't know how to thank you."          "I would walk much farther, and with the utmost willingness, should Your Majesty so desire."          "I know, I know, you are entirely devoted to me. And it is a great comfort to me to think of all these willing people ready to offer me their services."          A chambermaid handed me a cup of coffee. I was so flustered that I swallowed it too hot. The table stood ready, as did the stool on which, when she signed to me that I might do so, I took my seat. My throat was on fire. I got off to a bad start, in a voice that probably sounded hoarser to me than it actually was and made me uncomfortable. I had intended, by way of light reading, to start with La Vie de Marianne, for the Queen enjoyed Marivaux, then continue with a travel narrative, and finally conclude with the few pages of pious reading (extracts from Bossuet's sermons or from Fléchier's funeral orations) that the Queen had been supposed to hear each day since she came to live at Versailles, thus obeying the expressed wishes of her mother, Empress Maria-Theresa. The Empress had been dead for nine years now, but I observed that with the passage of time her precepts, far from losing potency, had steadily gained it, and though in a way the Queen seemed to comply with these precepts against her will, she no longer sought to avoid them.