Let Them Eat Cake

Some of you may not be familiar with the fabled sugar episode of Marie Antoinette. It is said that she had sugar (extremely expensive in that day) poured all over her garden and that she danced in it in her bare feet. When an advisor cautioned her, saying "Your majesty, the peasants have no bread to eat!" She is said to have replied: "Then let them eat cake!" The story is, alas, probably not true. But the legend, however spurious, nevertheless is fascinating enough to me to have written this little ditty! I hope you enjoy it!

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Let Them Eat Cake

Marie scrutinizes the small granules in her hand. There are only a few, and she can easily discern their crystalline facets, white on her pale, royal palms. With an audible giggle, she stretches out her tongue and licks her hand. The sweet taste of the sugar is instantaneous and glorious. It fills her mouth as hoar frost coats a leaf in deep, humid winter. She glances at her toes and wiggles them deeper into the white grains. It tickles. She giggles again.

How oft we forget, she thinks, the sweetness of simple things. And how soon to dismiss for complex matters that are, in the end, trivial, unimportant, and ugly. We trudge through life like beaten soldiers slogging through muddy fields littered with the debris of war, but it is only a dream--our shared waking dream that is less real than peppered sauce on rotting meat and more nightmare than all of the gargoyles sticking their necks out from Notre Dame. So sad, the queen pines, so melancholy. All around: behold! The sweet sings to us, sighs to us, but so silent, and oh so subtle. How oft we forget. How oft we miss it.

Marie tilts her head, as if to catch on a new breath of wind a slightly different voice or sound. The smile on her blazing red lips widens, but she shows no teeth. Her lips are closed. Her dimples are deep. Her eyes are the blue of aged ice. Those eyes close now, gently, as she concentrates, listening.

So subtle, she considers, But if one listens--listens carefully--listens like the eagle must listen to the south wind as he flies, we can hear. If we but open our eyes, the images will float to us, sweet and serene, a million feathers in a room with no breeze. They will call our secret names in subdued whispers. She pauses, listening to her heart dance softly within her breast. Sweet things are intimate, tender, and cautious. It must be so.

She opens her eyes and places her bare, white knees onto a billowing drift of sugar. She must adjust her gown and train to accommodate this action, and her head, hair piled high with white wig of curls and ribbons, feels heavy and out of balance. Hands outstretched, she reaches into the sugar both for balance and for pleasure. As she lifts them out again, sparkling granules coat her fingers.

It is the magic of goodness, of love, this pixie dust that surrounds me.

She slowly, willfully lifts her chin and looks to a window far above her. The nape of her neck catches the light of the afternoon sun and a few stray grains of sugar glisten there as her eyes plead upward.

Like stars it glimmers; it flashes like my passion for you. All around me--do you see? It is my selfish gift to you, it is my love.

He comes to the window then, looks down and sees her there, kneeling before him in the courtyard in her finest red gown. Sugar is piled in sweeps and swells all around her. Her eyes, even at this height, are deep and bold in their blueness. Small orange topiaries and a few yellow flowers shout their colors to him in vain amidst the white of the sugar and the blue of her eyes. He smiles at her childishness, but manages to blow her a kingly kiss. It is caught by a breeze, she thinks, and is swept around the courtyard, but she is sure she can feel it, blushing her cheek. As she touches where it lands with her fingertips, more crystals of sugar find their way to her face and pepper her rouge with transparent white. She sighs, closing her eyes again, thoroughly enjoying the sensation of the kiss her mind has imagined.

He suddenly scowls, as he looks beyond the tall fence and gate. Already, they are coming. Peasants. Pitchforks in hand and trembling with rage. He hears their barks and calls. The loud murmur of their angry voices is only slightly stifled by the thick shrubs near the outer wall. He watches as the guards, fine in their red and gold and embroidered brash chevrons and fleur-de-lis, line up to greet them. Pitchforks are no match for pikes and swords, he knows, but it troubles him nevertheless, this childish woman kneeling in her vast field of very expensive sugar. He feels what she is saying in her mind, and knows it to be love, or passion, or something else that is potent and dangerous and puzzling.

Feel, my sweet, her heart pleads.

As he averts his eyes and takes himself inside, away from the window, she lays her back onto the sugar. For the first time, she hears the sound of metal clashing against metal and the cries of injury and desperation.

For you, her mind calls. For you! Sweet and pure--my people! Come see the symbol of my passion for you!, her mind cries, fiercely. But pitchfork continues the struggle against sword, and as she desperately siezes the glistening grains around her, she only half realizes that most escape through her fingers and are lost.