The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette (29 page)

“You must realize that he could never agree to that. He would work with all his strength—as would I—to see you destroyed first.”

“Spoken like an ex-aristocrat. I would take off my hat to you, if I were wearing a hat, or if we still observed those outworn customs. But I must say once again, and I urge you to listen to me, what will it take to make your husband see reason and emigrate? Anarchy throughout the country? Civil war? Another assassination attempt—on his life this time?”

At this I felt frightened. I had been able to escape the Italian assassin and the poisoner. Louis might not be so lucky.

“It could well happen, you know. He goes out hunting often, does he not? With only a few huntsmen and a trusted friend or two? He could easily be abducted, taken to some lonely place in the forest and killed.”

It was true. Louis was very vulnerable—and so were my children.

“I must not stay,” Mirabeau said. “I am watched, just as you are. And my visit here, if it became known, would harm my position and make it harder for me to assist you.”

His leavetaking was as unceremonious as his arrival had been. He rose, turned his back on me and slouched off heavily toward the door of the orangerie.

“Don’t forget,” he called out over his shoulder. “I am your best hope.”

And don’t you forget, I retorted under my breath, that you are dealing with a Queen of France, and the daughter of Maria Theresa.

September 1, 1790

I have done all I can to prepare for our departure. New wardrobes for all of us have been made up and sent to Arras,
along with a large armoire containing everything we are likely to need, from caps and combs and supplies of my orange-flower water and ether to games for the children and a traveling altar for saying mass.

With Axel’s help I have ordered a spacious new traveling carriage with a stove and dining table so that we can eat on our way. It is a large and handsome vehicle painted dark green and yellow with upholstery of white velvet.

Axel points out that it would be better for us to travel in farm wagons, so no one would look twice at us. Better still, he says, we should not travel as a family at all, but as individuals. He can send the children to the Normandy coast with one of Eleanora Sullivan’s trusted servants, an old Italian tightrope walker no one would ever suspect of hiding the dauphin and his sister the princess. King Gustavus will send a ship to pick them up. I can pretend to be one of the hundreds of cooks who serve the Royal Swedish Regiment. When the regiment goes back to Sweden, I can travel with it. Or I can join the thousands of farm laborers who come up from the south to harvest the grapes, and when the harvest is over I can leave with the others and cross the border into Italy.

Louis is the most difficult to disguise, because of his size and because it will be hard for him not to insist on being treated as a king. But Axel thinks he can arrange for Louis to dress as a huntsman in the service of a Hungarian nobleman, Count Olezko, who could go hunting in the forest of Compiègne and leave Louis at his hidden retreat there. Chambertin would be waiting to accompany Louis by wagon, both of them disguised as farmers, on the journey north toward the border. As long as they kept to the forest paths and stopped only in small villages Axel thinks they could reach the border at Fourmes where he can arrange to have troops waiting.

Either way, whatever plan we follow, we must go, and soon. My carriage will be ready before long. Perhaps, as Mirabeau
thinks, some new terrible shocking thing will happen and Louis will suddenly change his mind and decide to go after all.

October 17, 1790

I have thought of a clever way to save Mousseline. We will arrange her marriage to a foreign prince. She is old enough to be betrothed, and she is still a princess of France. (Whatever Mirabeau may say about titles, she has the royal blood of the Bourbons and the Hapsburgs in her veins.) I will write to Carlotta and Leopold and Louis’s cousin Charles to see what can be arranged.

December 1, 1790

I am at my wits’ end with Louis. Sometimes I feel so exasperated with him that I could scream. I do scream, in private, when only Sophie and Loulou can hear me. I am at my worst at times like this when Axel is away (he has gone to Turin where Charlot is attempting to gather an army of emigres to rescue us) and there is no one but Chambertin to help me cope with Louis’s tantrums.

He is as unmanageable as an unruly child. He curses at Lafayette when he comes to report on the soldiers. He even slams the door on me now.

“Emigration, emigration, all this endless talk of emigration! I’m staying here. I’m never leaving! Ever!”

His irritation makes no sense, because he hates the Tuileries palace as he often says and has begun to hate the Parisians too, for all his fine talk about being the loving father of his people. He wears around his neck a medal they gave him not long ago.
It says “Restorer of French Liberty and True Friend of His People.” Stanny laughs at it, which only vexes Louis more.

January 9, 1791

I have been ill. All the fear and tension we experience daily and my futile efforts to change Louis’s mind about leaving have exhausted me and brought on the fever and cough that have kept me in bed for so long.

At first I was worried that I might have been given some sort of slow-working poison, the kind that weakens a person gradually day after day until they finally die. Dr. Concarneau has decided that is unlikely. He thinks it is a rheum in my chest brought on by cold weather (the palace is very chilly and our supply of coal is low this winter) and my general weakness. I am too thin. My cheeks used to puff out but now they are sunken inwards and my bosom, once quite large, has shrunk and all my gowns have had to be taken in a good deal. Axel says he quite likes my white hair, but I know he does not admire the dark circles under my eyes or the deep lines that are etching themselves into my skin. I look like what I am: an ill woman marked by anguish and worry.

“My dear, my dearest dear,” Axel said, taking my face between his hands when he returned to the Tuileries from Turin to find me ill in bed, “all this trouble is destroying you with worry. You have been carrying France on your shoulders. I long to bring you peace. I must get you out of France, somehow.”

I put my arms around his neck and buried my face in his shoulder. I felt so glad, so relieved to see him. He had just arrived, and was still in his travel-stained clothes, his breeches spattered with mud and wet with rain. He had his big wolfhound Malachi with him—he takes the dog everywhere
he goes now—and Malachi too came up to us and pushed his warm pointed nose into my hand.

Axel sat with me awhile, talking to Dr. Concarneau when he came in to see me and hugging the children when Madame de Tourzel brought them in to say goodnight. I told him that my efforts to arrange a betrothal for Mousseline had come to nothing.

“They will not let her go,” I said. “The Spanish king was willing to make an offer for her hand, to marry his son. But the assembly has forbidden any of us to leave French soil. They say this decree is for our safety, to prevent us from being kidnapped or held hostage. But the truth is they want us for hostages of their own. We are more useful to them here!”

“Mousseline is so like you,” Axel said when Madame de Tourzel had taken the children to their rooms. “And Louis-Charles too. We must make your cheeks rosy again like his.”

He told me that his meetings with Charlot in Turin had been disappointing. Charlot was gathering men and had managed to raise a small amount of money. But he was many months, perhaps even years, away from assembling a force large enough to invade France and defeat the National Guard.

“Your brother Leopold must join in, and bring his Austrian troops,” he said. “Otherwise the forces opposed to the revolution will have no chance whatsoever of succeeding.”

I sighed. My bad leg had begun to ache, and I felt very tired. I lay back against the pillow and gently Axel tucked me in, pulling the blankets up around my chin.

“Never fear, little angel,” he said, kissing me on the forehead. “I have another plan. Give me a month and it will be ready. Then we will put the bloom backinto those cheeks again.”

February 24, 1791

I went to Axel’s rented house and there, waiting in the courtyard, was my beautiful green coach!

Of course I was eager to go inside and I was amazed at how large it seems, and how spacious it is. A lever is touched and a dining table comes up out of the floor. There are cupboards and a larder for food and a stove for warmth and for cooking.

I climbed up beside Axel on the coachman’s seat and we set off along the Vincennes road.

“Where did you learn to drive a carriage?” I asked him as the horses gathered speed, the rhythmic clopping of their hooves loud on the dirt road.

“My father’s coachman, old Sibke, taught me when I was just a boy. He started me off with ox-carts and then went on to four-horse rigs and finally carriages. But this heavy thing is the largest coach I have ever attempted to drive. I pity the poor horses, dragging such weight. They will have to be changed every fifteen miles, you realize, once the journey is under way. It may be difficult to provide that many strong fresh horses at such frequent points along the route. If need be, I will buy them.”

“You have already been too generous.”

Axel shrugged.

“Many others have made contributions. The king of Spain, Italian princes, well-wishers in Vienna and St. Petersburg and Stockholm. Even a certain former circus acrobat who told me to tell you she hopes you will be safe and prays for your swift emigration.”

“Thank Mrs. Sullivan for me.”

“I will.”

“There is one thing I must askof you, Axel,” I said as we turned into a parkand began the long return journey to Axel’s house.

“Yes?”

“Don’t come with us.”

“But you need my protection.”

“General Bouillé promises to meet us with his troops and escort us across the border soon after we leave the outskirts of Paris.”

“But you may meet with outlaws, renegade soldiers, bands of revolutionaries.”

“We will be armed. Besides, the smaller our party is, the less likely we are to attract attention.”

“This carriage,” Axel replied, patting the seat beside him, “cannot help but attract attention. You can be certain of that.”

“I want you to leave France by a different route than the one we take. If the worst happens and our escape fails, you must remain free, not captured along with us and most likely executed. I am selfish about this. I could not bear to lose you. I would die. I know I would.

“Besides,” I went on, “you must travel alone and by a different route so that if we should be captured, you can continue to work on our behalf. We need you.”

“At least let me drive you out of Paris, to make certain you leave the palace safely.”

“All right. But then you must go on alone.”

“It won’t be long, you know. Soon we’ll both be out of France, no longer answerable to this monstrous assembly which has taken over everything.” He took my hand and raised it to his lips.

“Soon, my little angel, all this long nightmare will be over for us both.”

March 2, 1791

Finally, after much effort, I have convinced Louis to agree to Axel’s escape plan. He is in very low spirits and frightened, yet he has seen letters from both my brother Leopold and his own cousin Charles telling Axel very frankly that they will do nothing until we are out of France and cannot be held hostage by the assembly. So Louis realizes that we now have no choice but to leave.

He is angry that the assembly has now decreed that he should no longer be called king but “Chief Public Functionary.”

June 19, 1791

Tomorrow we go. I have been afraid to write in this journal for the past several months, fearing that if it should fall into the wrong hands and be read, our escape plan would fail. Now, however, we are ready to leave and so far we have been fortunate.

“Are you ready for the play?” I asked the children tonight when they came to me to say goodnight.

Louis-Charles giggled. “I get to be a girl, and wear a dress, and have ribbons put into my hair.”

“And you mustn’t laugh,” Mousseline told him. “We have to be onstage all the time, just like in a play, and do a good job of pretending.”

“And who am I?” I asked them.

“You are our governess. You give us our lessons.”

“And how do you address your governess?”

Louis-Charles looked puzzled.

“We call her madame,” said Mousseline. “We do not call her maman.”

“What do we call papa?”

“Monsieur Durand. He is M. Durand, the valet.”

“Now, who is your maman, just for tomorrow?” I asked.

“Madame de Tourzel is our maman,” said Louis-Charles staunchly. “Only her name isn’t Madame de Tourzel any longer. It’s Baroness Korff, and she comes from Russia.”

I embraced him and kissed him. “Perfect!” Then I embraced Mousseline, my beloved daughter. My heart aches for her. If only I had been able to arrange a marriage for her, and send her away to some foreign court!

All is in readiness for tomorrow. Axel was here earlier, bringing us our official passports and making one last check on our timetable for departure. If all goes as we hope, in two days we will be across the frontier and on friendly ground, surrounded by troops loyal to the monarchy, out of danger and with all the troubles and fears of the past two years behind us for good.

June 27, 1791

I am going to set down here, while it is all still fresh in my mind, the details of our journey, a journey unlike any other I have ever taken, and one whose outcome I could never have foreseen.

We started off after midnight on the night of June 20 in the greatest secrecy, having managed, through much cleverness on Axel’s part, to elude the palace guards. Once we were all safely in the carriage we rode as quickly as the horses could carry us past village after village, stopping only to exchange our weary horses for fresh ones. It was very dark and the roads were bad. We dropped into deep ruts and had to stop several times while the postilions got down and moved fallen trees and branches out of our path. There was no moon. The children slept, leaning up against me, but my fears kept me awake. I kept thinking of the Committees of Search that were said to ride along every road and imagining that I heard hoofbeats approaching in the distance.