Confessions of Marie Antoinette (41 page)

“
Je le jure
, Papa,” the dauphin manages between sobs. “I swear.”

“I asked the National Convention for three days’ grace, so that I might have more time to prepare for the end—to say adieu,” Louis confides, clasping my hand to his cheek. “But they refused my request.”

At half past ten, he rises from the table and opens the doors. The royal family follows him, unable to check our weeping. “I will see you tomorrow morning at eight o’clock,” Louis tells me.

My face drains of color. “Eight? Why so late? Why not seven?”

“Seven then it will be,” he says, averting his gaze, so I know he is lying, in a hopeless effort to make the awful circumstances a tiny bit more bearable for me.

“I wish to accompany you, Papa.”

Louis looks aghast. “To the scaffold, my son?” He shakes his head, but the dauphin explains, with all the desperate passion of naïvete and youth, “I will stand on the platform and speak to the people. I will order them to forgive you.”

Louis lifts the boy into his arms, hoisting him so that they can see eye to eye. “My precious, precious son,
mon brave—
” He chokes up, unable to complete his thought.

Setting our son back down, Louis takes my hands in his and draws me into an embrace. “I have never been a man of words,” he confesses. “And I have always become even more tongue-tied in your presence, Toinette. I have not shown you proofs of my honor and esteem, perhaps, as much as I should have. I can count on one hand the occasions I have told you I love you. Our union was not of our making, and it took me far too long to acknowledge and appreciate your beauty and your grace. I am sorry if I have never been the husband you might have dreamed of, if I have disappointed you all these years. I brought you from your homeland to”—he gestures helplessly—“to this.” He kisses my brow, my cheeks, my lips. “Please,
mon amour
, forgive me for all the ills you have been made to suffer for my sake and for any grief I have caused you during the course of our marriage.”

The pain of parting is unspeakable. “
Mon très cher mari
, you have nothing to reproach yourself for. It is
I
who has ever been the cause of
your
misery. I am the one whom the people have always despised and whom you have always defended. And now you are paying the ultimate price for my sins. I should be apologizing to you!”

Louis shakes his head. “I will never believe that,” he murmurs through his tears.

Madame Royale craves one more farewell embrace from her father.
But after launching herself into his arms she sinks to the floor in a swoon. Louis stoops, scooping her up and placing her gently onto the divan. He presses another kiss upon her brow.

Enfolding me in his arms once more, the king murmurs, “Don’t think of this as au revoir, my sweet. Try to imagine that we are only bidding one another
bonsoir
.” Our mouths meet for the last time, tasting of tears and bitter defeat.

I do not sleep this night. Nor do I undress. The fire has gone out and I lie shivering with cold upon my bed, drenched with an endless supply of tears. In the darkness I am visited by a parade of memories: the day I first met Louis in the forest of Compiègne, complete strangers to one another, yet by virtue of a proxy ceremony in Austria, already husband and wife. He was so shy and sullen I thought he despised me. His wincing when he saw me in my wedding dress; his palms always so moist. All those years when he could not bring himself to consummate our marriage—innumerable nights of
rien
—and then, when I was finally brought to childbed, it was he who saved my life when I was suffocating by ripping off the paper that sealed the windows shut and raising all the sashes; his perennial defense of my conduct, no matter the accusations against me; and his enduring patience and kindness.

At five I hear a rustling coming from the direction of Louis’s rooms and bolt upright, listening to every sound. It is Cléry lighting the fire in the king’s bedroom. An hour later, there is a knock on my door and, startled, I rush to open it, expecting to see my husband one last time. But is only an officer of the Garde Nationale.

“I have come to borrow the princesse’s missal,” he announces. “For Citoyen Capet’s celebration of Mass.”

Entering the chamber, Madame Élisabeth kisses her prayer book and crosses herself before handing it to the soldier. It will give
her comfort to know that her brother will have something from his family when he receives his final Communion. The officiant, at Louis’s side by his invitation, is Madame Élisabeth’s confessor, l’abbé Edgeworth de Firmont.

The rumble of rolling drumbeats fills the air. At nine o’clock, I hear Santerre giving commands in Louis’s rooms amid the tromping of boots. Although our shuttered windows prevent us from seeing anything, outside, the hubbub of hundreds of voices fills the Temple courtyard and beyond. Troops, I assume, assigned to line the route from the Temple to the Place de la Révolution and to escort the king to the scaffold

Minutes later, the footsteps descend the stairs, receding to the
rat-a-tat-tat
of drums and the blare of trumpets. I approach my window, imagining that as Louis crosses the courtyard and prepares to climb into the coach that will convey him to his final destination on this earth, he will pause mid-step and turn back, hoping that I stand at my window. I touch my fingers to my lips and press them to the shutter.

The clatter of carriage wheels informs me that the king is leaving the courtyard. I wonder what sort of day it is. Will Louis’s last glimpse of the world be the glaring rays of sunshine? Will a fine mist settle upon his shoulders as he mounts the scaffold? Will fog obscure the view of his execution, depriving the crowd of the ending they have long lusted for?

Louison Chabry’s back aches and her feet are tired. Armand has insisted that they arrive at the Place de la Révolution before dawn to secure an excellent vantage. Her lover was prescient, as it turns out, for at daybreak the perimeter is already secured by a regiment of soldiers from the Garde Nationale, as resplendent as the
tricolore
itself in their blue coats with red facings, white breeches and gaiters.
Their white vests glint with brass buttons that look as though they might have been given a particularly vigorous polishing in honor of the tyrant’s demise.

A damp January mist chills Louison to the bone. Her woolen cloak offers minimal protection and she gazes enviously at the soldiers’ black bicorns, embellished with the revolutionary cockade. Their heads are doubtless warm and dry. A few hours more in this weather and she is certain her brown curls will drip with icicles.

“Follow me.” Armand clasps Louison by the hand, threading his way through the excited mob, his destination the raised wooden platform upon which Madame Guillotine awaits her fatal appointment with the
“gros cochon,”
the fat pig of a former sovereign. But a military unit, bayonets pointing skyward, prevents onlookers from getting too near.
Is this to deter any clandestine royalist from rushing the scaffold?
Louison wonders. She is not entirely sure how close she wishes to be after all. If she and Armand were to stand right up front they would have to crane their necks to catch a glimpse of the blade when it falls, as the platform looms several feet off the ground. She would rather not be sprayed with blood, no matter whose it is.

“Regardez! Les tricoteuses!”
Armand exclaims excitedly, drawing Louison’s attention to the women who sit just below the platform, their wooden knitting needles clicking away ceaselessly during the entire spectacle. The
tricoteuses
attend every public execution, pausing only to shout
“À bas les aristos!”
—Down with the aristocrats!—after each severed head is displayed to onlookers thirsty for blood and hungry for revenge. The sculptress wonders if it’s true what the people say—that the
tricoteuses
knit locks of victims’ hair into the scarves that depict each aristocrat’s coat of arms. What do they do with their grisly trophies?

As the morning progresses, Louison stamps her feet to keep
warm. To occupy her mind, she searches the throng for familiar faces and begins to tick off on her fingers the ones she recognizes from seeing their likenesses drawn in
Père Duchesne
and Jean-Paul Marat’s radical newspaper,
L’Ami du Peuple
. Conversing with the executioner are Marat himself and Citoyen Robespierre. Near the foot of the stairs approaching the scaffold are Danton and Desmoulins, accepting the acclamation of the crowd. Standing aloof, although he is surrounded by people pressing for his attention, is the king’s cousin, Philippe Égalité.
How he must hate his own kinsman to sentence him to death
, Louison muses.
Or is it because he is a Revolutionary partisan now and places the needs of the Nation above ties of blood?
Watching the former duc standing lost in thought holding a fresh white handkerchief to his very red nose, she wishes she could ask him.

Soon the drummers begin to tap out a tattoo. “The tyrant must be near,” Armand exclaims, pulling Louison to him affectionately. He has never been so excited about anything, she thinks. Not even when the renowned David accepted him as an apprentice. As the unmarked black coach bearing the deposed monarch approaches, the jubilant mood in the Place de la Révolution becomes infectious, a rising soufflé of anticipation and glee.

Armand grumbles. “What is the matter?” Louison shouts, in an effort to be heard above the din. He draws her close so he can whisper in her ear, complaining about the
cochon
being driven in a closed carriage. “He does not merit such dignity. And they agree with me,” he adds, gesturing as broadly as he can in the mad crush, referring to the jeers that greet the arrival of the Nation’s nemesis. Someone lobs a cabbage head at the
ci-devant
sovereign as he descends the coach’s folding steps. Absurdly, given the circumstances, a pair of soldiers whirl to face the crowd, lowering their bayonets menacingly.

There was a time, thinks Louison, when we did not despise
him so. Wasn’t there? When Louis XVI was not a subject of scorn and ridicule? We were mere children then.

The National Guardsmen form two lines, flanking the former king. Are they preventing the mob from doing the executioner’s job, or warning Citoyen Capet not to entertain any final thoughts of escape? He would never run, however. Louison knows this. When she joined the march on the Tuileries that rainy autumn day more than three years ago, the king bravely faced thousands of angry citizens, women—and men as well—who would willingly have assassinated him. But he listened attentively to her enumeration of the people’s grievances. He was kind when she fainted. Armand would not have missed this day for all the world. He has talked of little else for months—how important it is to be standing in the Place de la Révolution when the oppressor is shaved by the national razor and history is made. “The tree of liberty must be watered by the blood of tyrants,” he is fond of saying. But Louison has not risen before dawn to witness a macabre act of horticulture. And she isn’t comfortable with the way her lover continually refers to the man who was King of France as a tyrant. Although she can never admit it to Armand, she has come to the Place this morning out of respect for the disgraced sovereign. Because for one tiny fragment of time, a king was kind to her. Louison has come to say good-bye.

Wearing a simple brown suit, his hair lightly powdered, the king mounts the wooden staircase that leads to the scaffold. The executioner permits him to say a few words, but the roar of the crowd and the thundering drums all but drown out his final remarks. Louison and Armand are close enough to hear him protest his innocence, which elicits howls of derision from the crowd. “Death to all tyrants!” Armand shouts.

Chevalier Charles Henri Sanson de Longval, the
bourreau
, asks Citizen Capet to remove his coat, vest, and neck stock. In his white
chemise with its billowing sleeves, the accused looks even stouter. Then the executioner tugs the shirt away from the former king’s neck so the guillotine blade will strike true and his death will be more humane. His strong hands, those of a workman, only much whiter, are bound behind his back; when he refuses a blindfold, Louison gasps. In his final moments Louis XVI desires to look upon his subjects.

The drummers are given a signal. The fusiliers shoulder their muskets. The king is guided to the horizontal plank and lowered onto his belly, earning hoots of laughter at the sight of his broad stomach balanced upon the narrow board. Armand’s gaze remains riveted, but Louison wonders if, as a measure of respect for the sovereign, she should look away.

And then, in a blinding flash, the angular blade descends. A moment later, Sanson lifts the late king’s head out of the basket beneath the plank and holds it aloft for the crowd to ogle. Louison covers her mouth, suppressing her urge to vomit. Louis Capet’s eyes are wide open, as if he can still see her—see all of them—rejoicing at his death. His mouth is open, too, as if he has something else to say. The sculptress feels something warm on her face; when she reaches up to touch it, her fingers become smeared with blood. The blood of a tyrant. Of a king. Of a man.

After his head and body have been removed from the scaffold and the onlookers reluctantly disperse, Louison notices that some are rushing toward the platform instead. Eerily drawn to the grisly scene, she follows them. The king’s blood puddles on the floorboards, leeching into the wood. When she sees someone dip his handkerchief into the blood, Louison gasps. Some of these trophy hunters are zealots who seem to crave a souvenir of the greatest event of their lives. Others, judging from the reverential manner in which they stain their handkerchief, as if they are collecting the relic of a martyr, must be clandestine royalists.

Louison is neither. But she knows she has to dip her own square of linen in the pooling blood. Something to show to the children she will bear one day, to prove that she was there. To be able to tell them, “Your maman knew a king.”