Confessions of Marie Antoinette (43 page)

“How then will we get past the Tisons?” The couple charged with overseeing our welfare lacks the slightest vestige of sympathy or kindness.

“Their Spanish tobacco,” Toulan says, referring to their penchant for snuff. “If we secretly drug it, Citoyen Tison and his wife will be unconscious for several hours. By the time they awaken, your family will be long gone, already en route to your rendezvous with the Chevalier de Jarjayes. He will safely conduct you to the Normandy coast and from there you will board a ship bound for England.”

Commissioner Lepître has undertaken to secure false passports for us through Général Dumouriez. Although the general was responsible for defeating the Austrian army at Jemappes last November, after he publicly advocated against Louis’s execution, he was accused by the National Convention of not being a true patriot—in my view, the finest compliment a man could receive in these dark times.

For the next several days my heart is lighter. With renewed
hope I continue my son’s lessons. Although I was always an appalling student, as a teacher I strive to excel. I wish to make Louis proud.

As we wait for news, at the end of March I entrust the Chevalier de Jarjayes with a painful task: to deliver Louis’s wedding ring and the royal seal into Monsieur’s safekeeping. My brother-in-law remains out of harm’s way in Brussels. As my husband’s senior surviving brother, the comte de Provence should possess these treasures, for they belong to the Bourbons. In the same letter I dispatch the chevalier on an additional, and more cryptic, mission, writing, “Toulan will give you the things that are to go to the princes. But the wax impress on the sheet of paper that I include here, taken from a little gold signet ring, is something else again. When you are in a safe place, I would very much appreciate it if you brought it to my great friend who came to see me last winter from Brussels, and you are to tell him when you give it to him
that its motto has never been more true
.”

The image is a device I had conceived in collaboration with Count von Fersen and it is to Axel that I am sending it, as a way of informing him that he remains in my thoughts. Now more than ever I am convinced that only he can devise a successful plan to liberate my family. The motto depicts what at first we had believed to be a pigeon in flight with the motto
Tutto a te mi guida
—All things lead me to you. It was Axel’s emblem, although we later discovered that because the wax seal had partially melted, blurring the image, we’d mistaken the flying fish for a bird. Each night as I lie abed endeavoring to fall asleep, I see Axel’s face before me. When, I wonder, will we see each other again?

“What is the Committee of Public Safety?” I ask Commissioner Toulan, after I hear the
nouvelles
from my window on the sixth of April.

“It is Danton’s latest office,” he replies, “charged with organizing food supplies, raising new armies, if necessary, and”—he rakes his hand through his lank, unpowdered hair, the tonsorial style affected by the
sans-culottes
—“rooting out France’s enemies from within and without her borders.”

“What does this mean for the royal family?” I whisper.

“It means,” the commissioner says sadly, “that it is time to formulate another plan for your rescue.”

Within the week the news crier in the rue du Temple announces a shocking turn of events. Philippe Égalité, the
ci-devant
duc d’Orléans, a prince of the blood and the man who had evidently cast the vote that decided the difference between my husband’s exile and his execution, has been arrested by the Committee of Public Safety. If such a prominent and outspoken friend of the Revolution, the most influential of the aristocrats who turned republican after the abolition of noble titles, has been placed under arrest, what does it bode for me?

And then on the morning of April 20, the crier declares, “Général Dumouriez turns his coat and defects to the allies!” According to the
nouvelles
, Dumouriez’s desertion was precipitated by the publication of a letter revealing the former Minister of War’s threat to march his army on Paris if the National Convention did not agree to his leadership.

What does
this
mean for our plans?

Butterflies dip and spiral in my belly. It is difficult to conceal from Madame Tison my anxiety about the next visit with Commissioner Lepître, for the jailer’s wife regards my every move with undisguised suspicion. I cannot unfold a napkin or lift a spoon, or speak to my own children without sensing her malevolent stare. “All traitors to the republic will be rooted out and punished!” announces the news crier. They are waiting for us to make a misstep.

But it is Citoyen Toulan who arrives with the devastating news.
“Our friend is in a panic, madame. Dumouriez’s open betrayal of the republic means that my colleague will no longer be able to secure the passports from him.” He twists his coat buttons anxiously. “Fearful that something might go wrong, he regrettably hesitated to request your
laissez-passers
. Now, of course, it is too late. Dumouriez can do nothing for you. And your family’s safety is not a priority to the Austrians, I’m afraid.”

The faithful Toulan suggests that it might still be possible to attempt a much smaller plan that will smuggle me out of the Temple, but I would have to leave alone. If we cannot quit this prison as a family, then we must all remain, I tell him.

I write to the Chevalier de Jarjayes,
we have dreamed a beautiful dream—nothing more. However, my son’s interests must be my sole guide from now on, and however happy I may have been to escape from this place, I could never agree to leave him. No matter where I might be, nothing could bring me joy if I abandoned my children
.

That night we are already abed, the candles extinguished, when the sound of someone pounding at the door fills me with panic and dread. I hear voices on the narrow staircase, followed by a jangling of keys and the scrape of a bolt as the door is unlocked from the outside. Madame Élisabeth clutches her nightgown about her and whimpers, too frightened to reach for her silk wrapper.

At the head of a formation of armed guards, the white X of their bandoliers glowing in the torchlight, stands Jacques Hébert. Perhaps it is only my imagination but his expression appears even more diabolical when his face is cast in flickering shadows. Removing a piece of parchment from his coat, he announces coolly, as if he has not invaded a residence and interrupted women and children in their slumber, that by this decree the Convention has ordered our premises to be searched.

“Searched? For what?” I breathe.

Madame Tison pushes through the cluster of soldiers and
catches me roughly by the arm, pulling me to my feet and subjecting me to the most indecent groping of my person. Whatever would I hide under my night rail? When she completes my humiliation she compels Madame Élisabeth to submit to an equal degradation. Supervised by the grim-lipped Hébert, the soldiers pull open every drawer, and rummage through all of our personal effects. When it is Madame Royale’s turn to succumb to the probing and poking of Madame Tison, she stands still and stiff as an oaken plank, silent tears trickling along her pale cheeks.

“The mattresses, too,” Hébert commands; and the blue-coated fusiliers begin to thrust at them with their bayonets. “That one, too.” Hébert points to the truckle bed. A soldier raises his rifle and is about to stab at the coverlets when I shriek at him, throwing my body between the deadly blade of his bayonet and my slumbering son. “There is a child in there!” I scream. “Can you not tell?” For amid the commotion, the little king has somehow managed to remain fast asleep.

Hébert remains impassive. “Then I suggest you awaken him, Citoyenne Capet, if you wish him to live.”

I rush to the bed and lift Louis Charles into my arms, struggling to balance his weight while keeping a blanket wrapped tightly about his shivering form. Now that he has been disturbed, he blinks open his eyes and at the sight of so many strangers with nasty faces ransacking the room, he begins to bawl hysterically.

The soldiers search for hours. Yet all they can find is a small wax cameo of the ancient princess Medea, given to me by an officer of the Temple—an odd reminiscence, (although Citoyen Jobert could never have known it), of a tapestry that hung upon one of the walls of the temporary pavilion on the Ile des Epis when I was handed over by the Austrians to the French; a slip of paper with the address of a shop written upon it—a sentimental memento, but useless now that Rose Bertin has shuttered Le Grand Mogol and
fled to England—a stick of red sealing wax belonging to Madame Élisabeth; and my daughter’s Sacred Heart of Jesus. In these secular times, do they consider Marie Thérèse’s small comfort a sacrilege?

“What is this?” Hébert demands, lifting a black bicorn from the seat of a chair with the tip of his walking stick.

“It belonged to the—my brother,” Madame Élisabeth replies quietly, grasping for the hat. But Citoyen Hébert, taking pleasure in her distress, taunts her by moving it out of reach. He confers for a few tense moments with the guards and then announces that the hat is being removed from the premises because it is a suspicious object.

Her customary mildness forgotten, the princesse grows hysterical. “
S’il vous plaît, monsieur
, it is just an ordinary hat. Unimportant to you. But I beg you to let me keep it for the love of my brother.” Choking on her sobs, she sinks to the floor and clasps the commissioner’s wrist.

“Take away the hat,” Hébert commands, ignoring her plaintive entreaties.

The clock chimes four as the soldiers file out of our rooms. Dawn will break soon, leaving us to salvage what we can out of the wreckage left in their wake. I believe they have done as much to destroy our dignity as they have to our precious few remaining possessions. No sooner has our door been locked against further intrusion, than gasping for air in short, convulsive breaths, I stagger and collapse.

Over the next several days it becomes clear that the events of April 20 have disordered our minds and taken a toll upon our bodies. During the first week of May, Doctor Brunier is summoned to minister to Madame Royale. In the throes of her first visit from Générale Krottendorf, she is bleeding more copiously than I believe is normal. My son has a high fever and ever since the soldiers
frightened him in the dead of night, he has been suffering from headaches and convulsions. The poor boy’s digestion has become terrible as well. Dr. Brunier fears an attack of worms. He is concerned about our diet, but Madame Tison insists, her hackles raised, that our soups are nutritious and that the meat and fowl roasted for our dinners and suppers is always of the first and freshest quality.

We must be saved or will surely perish during this incarceration. Doctor Brunier returns only a week after his first visit because the little king complains of excruciating pain around his privates. There appears to be a slight bulge down there, as well as in his lower abdomen. After securing permission from the Tisons for a new visitor to the
détenus
—by explaining that Louis Charles Capet is more valuable to the revolutionary cause alive than otherwise—Brunier sends for Hippoy Le Pipelet, a celebrated maker of trusses.

“But he’s just a child—only seven,” I protest to Monsieur Le Pipelet. “What has happened to him?”

“He has developed a hernia in the groin; that is the reason for the swelling in his scrotum and all the discomfort the boy is experiencing,” Doctor Brunier explains. “Monsieur le Pipelet can build him a truss, which will alleviate the swelling.”

“But he has a bruise as well,” I add. “In the same place. I cannot imagine what has caused this.”

The
médecin
kneels so that he meets my son at his eye level. “Tell me,
mon brave
, what sort of games do you play? Do you toss a ball about with your sister when you take your exercise in the courtyard? And did you perhaps get hit down there one day when the ball came at you?” Louis Charles shakes his head dolefully. “What then?” the doctor inquires gently. The boy shyly points to his hobbyhorse. “I suppose you place that stick between your legs and ride as strenuously as your papa used to do when he hunted.”

Tears fill my son’s eyes. “I never got to hunt with Papa. They
wouldn’t let him and when he did hunt I was too little to join him. I ride to the frontier as fast as my horse will run,
monsieur le médecin
. Because we didn’t go fast enough before.”

Something between a sob and a gasp escapes my throat. At his age, while he plays he should still be singing the nursery rhyme my friend the Duchess of Devonshire taught him: “Ride a cockhorse to Banbury Cross to see a fine lady upon a white horse …” Instead, he dreams of another desperate flight to safety.

Addressing me, Doctor Brunier explains, “I am afraid that such energetic exertion is the cause of the bruising about his testicles. His inguinal hernia may have its origins with the hobbyhorse as well. The condition is highly unusual in such a young child.” At the doctor’s suggestion that the hobbyhorse be consigned to the rubbish heap, Louis Charles becomes hysterical. Clutching the horse’s head he begs the
medécin
not to take away his trusty mount. “Tonnerre is my friend,” the boy bawls.

I manage to convince the doctor and Monsieur Le Pipelet to reconsider confiscating my son’s favorite toy. But Louis Charles’s fantasy of escape is never far from my own mind as well.

“You have sympathizers in surprising places,” Baron de Batz informs us in June, as a new plot has been set in motion. The baron’s experience as a financier enabled him to attain a prominent leadership position during the brief life of the Constituent Assembly. But he has always been a clandestine royalist, receiving payments from the crown for his efforts on our behalf since the Revolution began. I am forever indebted to the baron for his efforts to subvert Louis’s execution on January 21 when he tried to incite the crowd gathered in the boulevard de Bonne Nouvelle to protest the regicide. Although he was unsuccessful, he has never abandoned his plans to liberate the royal family. “Citoyen Michonis,” he tells me.