The Queen`s Confession (60 page)

Louis slept. I could almost hate him. Was he a man . to sleep while

we were all in such danger? He must not have bloodshed . he must not harm his dear children 447 . his children . those screaming beasts out there;

‘ he called them his children. Why was not Axel with us? ” Axel would have fought his way through them. 1 How I lived through that fearful night I do not know. But c the dawn came, and with the daylight the noise outside the < house increased.

1 I tried to close my eyes; I tried to sleep. If only I could
sleep for a few minutes as Louis had all through the night. A hammering on the door startled me. I heard heavy feet on the stairs, and two men burst in upon us. I recognised one of them as a man named Romeuf who had guarded us in the Tuileries. The other was a man named Bayon.

They explained that they came on order from the National Assembly. One of them handed a document to the King. I read it with him. His rights were suspended and these two men had been sent to prevent his continuing on his journey.

I screwed it up and threw it into a corner of the room. The men looked on helplessly. At least they had some shame.

The King said gently: “The Marquis de Bouin6 is on his way to Varennes.

If you try to force us to return to Paris there could be bloodshed.

”

“On the orders of Monsieur de La Fayette we are to take you back to Paris, Sire.”

“And what of the orders of your King?” I asked indignantly.

“We are obliged to obey the Assembly, Madame.”

“I wish to avoid bloodshed,” said Louis gently.

“I do not wish to fight my people. When the Marquis de Bouille arrives I shall leave here and, from a place to which we shall go, come to an understanding with those who are making this revoluon.”

Romeuf looked at his companion.

“We could wait for the Marquis to arrive,” he suggested, ‘since we were given no orders as to when we were to return to Paris. “

Bayon did not possess his loyalty.

“Are you a fool?” he demanded.

“Bouille is armed. What have the people but 448 their pitchforks and a few knives? We must set out for Paris before Bouille arrives.”

We are exhausted,” I said.

“There are the children to consider.”

Bayon did not answer. He left us and I heard him go out of the house and talk to the crowds.

Romeuf looked at us apologetically and said: “You must think of anything. Your Majesties, which will delay the departure. Once Bouille arrives you are safe.”

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

Bayon came back. Already I heard the shouts of “A Paris’ outside the house.

“Prepare to leave at once,” said Bayon.

“The children must not be frightened,” I told him.

“They are exhausted. They must finish their sleep.”

“Arouse them at once, Madame.”

Madame de Tourzel and Madame Neuville awoke them. The Dauphin looked at Bayon and Romeuf and shrieked with pleasure.

‘now we have soldiers! ” he cried.

“Are you coming with us?”

“Yes, Monsieur Ie Dauphin,” said Bayon.

Even the soldiers agreed that we must eat before we left, and Madame Sausse was told to prepare food. I saw the determination in her face to take as long as she possibly could, doing so.

Bayon was impatient. He warned her that the people would not feel very kindly towards a dilatory housewife who was responsible for holding up their orders. Poor Madame Sausse, she did everything she could to help us. Such people as herself and Romeuf brought great hope to us in our difficulties.

I tried to eat but could not. In fact the only ones who could do justice to the food Madame Sausse had been so long preparing were the King and the children.

“Come now,” said Bayon. And there was no sign of Bouille.

It is all over, I thought. We can find no excuse to stay longer. Oh

God, send Bouille. Please give us this. 449 Come,” said Bayon, roughly.

“There has been enough ? delay.”

1 He was hustling us to the door when Madame NeuviUe gave 1 a little cry and slipped to the floor; she started to throw her ( arms about and made strange noises as though in a fit. ( I knelt beside her. I knew she was acting. I cried:

1 “Fetch a doctor.”

‘ Bayon, cursing, gave the order; but everyone outside was determined that the doctor should be brought in record time.

All the time I watched Madame Neuville lying there on the floor I was praying: “Oh God, send Bouille.”

But it was the doctor who came, not Bouille, and Madame Neuville could no longer keep up her pretence. She was given a potion and helped to her feet. She swayed and would have fallen again, but Bayon supported her and with the help of the doctor dragged her out to the cabriolet.

No sign of Bouille.

“A Paris!” shouted the mob. No more waiting. There was no help for it.

We must all follow Madame NeuviUe out of the house. A shout went up when we appeared. I held the Dauphin’s hand tightly, too frightened for him to fear for myself.

It was coming again . I knew so well. I should never forget. The humiliating ride . a longer one this time, not merely from Versailles but from Varennes to Paris.

The journey to Paris lasted three days. I thought when we had come from Versailles that I had reached the nadir of humiliation, horror, discomfort and misery; I was to learn that I had not done so.

The heat was intense; we could not wash or change our clothes, and all along the route were those shrieking screaming savages. I cannot call them people—for all semblance of human kindness and dignity seemed to have left them. They hurled insults at us—mostly at me. I was the scapegoat as I had become accustomed to being.

“A bos Antoinette V they screamed.

“Antoinette h la Ian-temel’ Very well then, I thought, but

quickly—quickly. Gladly 450 I will go rather than submit to life in these circumstances. Only let my children go freely. Let them live the lives of ordinary gentlefolk . but let me die, if that is what you want.

They had set two men of the National Assembly to guard us—Petion and Barnave. I suppose they were not bad fellows;

indeed I know they were not, now. There was a difference between the rabble and those who believed that the revolution must come about for the good of France, whose creed was liberty, equality, fraternity;

they would have been ready to bargain for it around a conference table and Louis would have been eager to grant them what they wished. Men such as these were far removed from those animals outside who shrieked obscenities at us, who demanded our heads . and other parts of our bodies . who wanted blood and who laughed with demoniacal joy at the thought of shedding it. Oh yes, these men were different. They talked to us, as they thought, reasonably. We were only people, they told us. We did not deserve to be privileged because we were born in a different stratum of society from them. The King listened gravely, inclined to agree with them. They talked of the revolution, and what they wanted from life, and the inequalities of it; it was not reasonable to suppose that a people would go on indefinitely in want while a certain section of society spent on a gown what would keep a family in food for a year.

The Dauphin took a fancy to the two men and they to him. He read the words on the buttons of their uniforms.

“Vivre libre ou mourir.”

“Will you live freely or die?” he asked them gravely; and they assured him they would.

I felt that Elisabeth and Madame de Tourzel were near breaking point.

I knew that it was for me to keep them sane. My way of doing it was to attempt a lofty indifference. It did not please the mob, but it forced some respect from them. When we were obliged to draw up the blinds of the berline, which they demanded now and then, and Bamave or Petion would declare we had better do so as this mob was getting violent, I

would sit staring straight ahead. They would come 451 up to the window and call obscenities at me and I would ” look straight ahead as though they were not there. 1 ” Whore! ” they shouted and I would not seem to hear. 1 They jeered, but it had its effect on them. ( Food was brought to tike berline for us; the people shouted that they wanted to see us eat. I Elisabeth was terrified and thought we should pull up the blinds as the crowd demanded, but I refused to do so.

We must keep our dignity,” I told her.

Madame, they will smash the berline,” said Bamave.

But I knew that to draw up those blinds was to degrade ourselves, and refused to do so until I wished to throw out my chicken bones, and this I did into the crowd as though they did not exist for me.

Petion was the fiercer of the two; I detected in Bamave an admiration for me. He admired my manner with the mob and I could see that he was changing his ideas of us. He had thought arrogant aristocrats were unlike human beings, but I noticed how astonished he seemed when I spoke to Elisabeth and called her ‘little sister,” or she addressed the King as ‘brother.” These men were astonished at the way we talked to the children and impressed by the obvious affection between me and my family.

They must have been fed for years on those absurd scandalous sheets which had circulated through the capital. They thought I was some sort of monster incapable of any tender feelings—a Messalina, a Catherine de Medici.

Petion tried in the beginning to speak insolently of Axel. There had been many rumours about our relationship.

We know that your family left the Tuileries in an ordinary fiacre and that this was driven by a man of Swedish nationality,” he said.

I was terrified. They knew, then, that Axel had driven us!

We should like you to tell us the name of this Swede,” went on Petion, and I could see by the gleam in his eye that he enjoyed talking about my lover before my husband.

Do you think I would know the name of a hackney coachman? ” I demanded

scornfully. 452 And the haughty look I gave him so subdued him that he did not broach the subject again.

Pedon was a fool. When Elisabeth slept she was next to him her head fell on his shoulder and I could see by the smug manner in which he sat still that he believed she had laid it there purposely. As for Bamave, his manner was becoming more and more respectful towards me with the passing of every hour. I believed that given the opportunity we could have turned these two men from their revolutionary ideas and that they would have been our loyal servants.

These were the lighter moments of that nightmare journey. It lives with me now; in so much horror it still haunts me.

We were exhausted, dirty, unkempt; the heat seemed more unbearable than ever, the crowds more dense and hostile.

When someone in the crowd called “Vive Ie Roi,” the mob turned on him and cut his throat. I saw the blood before I could stop myself looking.

This was Paris that same city in which I had once been told, a lifetime away, that two hundred thousand of its people had fallen in love with me.

They were all round the beriine now.

A face looked in at me, lips drawn back in a snarl, lips I realised I had once kissed.

“Antoinette a la lanterne.”

It was Jacques Armand, that little boy whom I had found on the road and brought up as my own until my children had arrived and made me forget him.

Were all my past sins and careless frivolities coming home to roost like so many vultures watching for the end?

I held my son against me; I did not wish him to see.

He was whimpering. He did not like it. He wanted to see the soldiers, he said. He did not like these people.

“We shall soon be home,” I told him.

Home that dark, dank prison from which a few days ago we had escaped.

I do not want to write of it; I cannot bear to think of it. None who have not lived through it could realise its horror.

I was almost glad when we arrived at the Tuileries and 453
exist—nothing more. How anxious I have been for you and all you must have suffered in having no news of us. On no account think of returning. It is known that it is you who helped us to get away, and all would be lost if you should show yourself.p>

I can tell you that I love you and have only time for that. Do not be troubled about me. I am well. I long to know the same of you. Tell me where I should address my letters so that I may be able to write to you, for I cannot live without that. Farewell, most loved and loving of men.

MARIE ANTOINETTE TO THE COMTE DE FERSEN

Tribulation first makes one realise what one is. My blood courses through my son’s veins and I hope that a day will come when he will show himself worthy to be the grandson of Maria Theresa.

MASSE ANTOINETTE TO MERCY

Feb. 13th 1792: Went to see her. Made very anxious because of the National Guards.

Feb. l4th: Saw the King at six o’clock. Louis, is, in truth, a man of honour.

COMTE DE FERSEN’S JOURNAL

The Marseillaise was the greatest General of the Republic.

NAPOLEON

The Faubourgs on the March

During those first days back in the Tuileries I existed in a state of numbness. I would start up in my sleep imagining filthy hands on me, foul wine-sodden breath in my face. I lived again a thousand times the horror of that ride 455

to the jeers and bloodthirsty threats stumbled out of the berline.

We were ingloriously home.

Exhausted, desolate, we made our way to our old apartments.

“It is over,” I said. We are where we were before we attempted to escape But of course that was not true. We had gone forward towards disaster.

There was no longer a King and Queen of France. I knew it—although no one had told me yet.

I took off my hat and shook out my hair.

It was a long time since I had looked at myself in a mirror. I stared for a few seconds without recognising the woman with the red-rimmed eyes, the face covered with the dust of the roads, the torn gown. But it was not these things which startled me.

My hair, which Madame du Barry had referred to as ‘carrots’ and which the dressmakers of Paris had called the ‘colour of gold,” was completely white.