Abundance. Part 34

"If you are to die in Paris," I say, "let me accompany you."

He gently denies my request and reminds me that I must guard the children.

Again, I go to the chapel; I pray all morning, and then I request a chair so that I may sit comfortably with my head tilted back and contemplate the image of G.o.d the Father who flies across the ceiling with his white beard, his bare foot penetrating a cloud.

Sometimes I think of my friends on the road and wonder how they are, in their disguises, traveling and traveling inside their coaches. And what of my husband this day, in Paris?

In the middle of the afternoon, I return to kneel before the altar. I know that the King has his own courage; he has never been a coward. Still, I pray that his heart will be strengthened.

At one point, I hear the voice of my son. He is running, and his dear valet Hue is chasing him. Both of them are completely merry, and the cheeks of Louis Charles are pink from the summer heat. I think of the golden frieze of playing children that encircles the King's anteroom, the Oeil-de-Boeuf. Some of the games of the gilded cherubs are peaceful; but some of the boys are playing at war. Suddenly I desire to see the room again and that largely peaceable kingdom of childhood that it depicts. I want to see the seesaw. The children are displayed against a garden lattice of gold, and it reminds me of the playrooms at Schonbrunn, with their tropical and colorful pictures of vegetation and birds. To my surprise, I find that I am thinking in the German language.

It is in his antechamber, where we waited together those long hours when Louis XV was dying, that the King finds me. I have not heard his horses arrive. Since my friends left the court, there is a stillness at Versailles. I do not run to him but glide as silently to him as a ghost.

"So you have returned. It is you."

The King gives a startled laugh. "Ah, that will be for you to judge-whether it is yet I."

"You have something colorful in your hand." I can see the colors blue and white, and then red.

"It is the tricolor c.o.c.kade. Mayor Bailly, whom I installed, says it is the emblem of the French nation. I think that we would consider it the emblem of the revolution that has now taken place."

I CANNOT BELIEVE that the King is correct in thinking that a revolution has occurred. I had not thought it possible that the people would want to revolt against a good king-kind, moral, rational-such as my husband. The insane George III of England and the American colonies were quite another matter. The physical barrier of the ocean between the two countries made it much more logical that they should exist as separate states.

Yet in the last century, even within the boundaries of England, the church was challenged and the countryside erupted in b.l.o.o.d.y revolution. We had thought ourselves much more civilized, in this more advanced century, than the seventeenth-century English.

When I write to inquire of Count Mercy, fled now to the country and protected by guards, he confirms my husband's words. Written in his own elegant handwriting, Count Mercy's reply to me reads, "Most certainly there has been such a diminution of the power of the crown that one must acknowledge a revolution has occurred, however unbelievable that may appear."

WHEN THE RUSSIAN MINISTER in Paris comes out to visit us, I hear him remark in a very respectful fashion that "the Revolution in France has been carried out, and the royal authority annihilated. I mean of course in the form to which we are accustomed."

"And so the worst is over?" I inquire. I feel both resigned and hopeful.

"I could not go so far as to a.s.sure Your Majesties of that idea," he replies.

Then the King asks, "You would not go so far, if you were I, to advise our friends or the Comte d'Artois to return?"

"No, Your Majesty, I would not," he replies, taking a pinch of snuff.

"The palace seems haunted now," I remark. "Haunted with quietness. I have always adored the company of my friends, but now their faces and presence seem more to be valued than words can express."

The King regards me very sympathetically. "It is necessary to appoint a new governess for the children, since our dear d.u.c.h.esse de Polignac has arrived in Switzerland."

I delight in thinking of my dear friend's safety.

"Yes. The new governess shall be the Marquise de Tourzel. I have already given the matter much thought. She is the mother of five and a paragon of virtue. She will bring her daughter Pauline, who is eighteen, with her."

THE LAST MONTH of the summer of 1789 continues to pa.s.s in a very quiet fashion. Since I no longer have my adult friends, I give myself more fully than ever to the Dauphin and Madame Royale, and to their education. I shall not neglect my daughter's education the way my own education was neglected, nor do I want the Dauphin to receive more than his share of Madame Tourzel's instructional attention at the expense of Marie Therese. Already my daughter likes to read better than I do. Sometimes she reads aloud to me as I do my needlework.

The Dauphin adores his sister, and he is full of mischief. He has a lively imagination and makes up his own stories-even about us!-while his older sister must be transported by the words of others to any world that is not directly before her eyes.

There are aspects about the characters of both my children that trouble me. Like her father, Marie Therese is not so warm or winning as I could wish for her. Certainly, at age nine, she has become less selfish as she has grown older, but she still has a haughtiness about her at times. But I know she would not be indifferent to my death. She loves her family; I am one of her possessions, and she would not want to lose me.

The Dauphin's sensibility is entirely suitable for his age, but he needs to learn to distinguish between fact and fiction. He lacks tact and discretion, though that too is partly a matter of being still less than five years old. Indeed, the world I knew at his age has almost evaporated from my memory, it was so insubstantial. His nerves are not so steady as I would like. He prefers cats to dogs, especially if they are sizable or if they bark loudly. The dogs themselves seem somewhat nervous these days, however.

Ah, I remember my mother saying how she preferred calm, wise dogs to nervous, yippy ones, no matter how cute. I remember using some of the big dogs of Schonbrunn almost like cushions.

Summer has yielded to fall, but it is still warm enough to enjoy being outdoors in the gardens of my Pet.i.t Trianon. Count von Fersen writes me that he will return just as September turns into October.

5 October Ah, he comes to me in the chateau and he comes to me here at the Pet.i.t Trianon, he the most innately n.o.ble, the most handsome, the most kind and good and loving-ah, yes, above all, loving-man in the world.

He has made this most terrible year into one of bliss. I call those moments "islands of timelessness," for when he is with me, we are out of time and s.p.a.ce and into a realm that surely partakes of eternity. In his company, there is no world but the loving nonmaterial tissue of love itself; perhaps it is like being unborn when the world is perfect and all needs are satisfied, yet I feel no sense of enclosure or confinement.

Today I return to the very best of nests: to the moss-lined grotto. I can see my Pet.i.t Trianon from here and imagine the simple elegance of its interior. Perhaps my own house is inside me as much as I dwell in it. But here within the rocks, where a waterfall falls more naturally than any fountain, where the moss is the best of mattresses, where the s.p.a.ce defined is so perfectly artificial that it is the very essence of nature-here, today, I will dream of the bliss of the days that have come before.

It is almost the noon hour, and even the time of day pleases me: the morning is swooping toward its apex, when it kisses the sun both h.e.l.lo and farewell, and begins its descent. It is the crest of the wave, the peak of time, and for me the time to daydream, to remember and savor. To be so loved-surely nothing in the material world can compare to the idea of knowing the beloved and being just as fully understood by the beloved. Who can want more?

Not I, not I, not I. I am so content, my being dissolves into a boundarylessness. I am nothing and everything, I am every place and no place. What other word than bliss can describe the conjunction of like minds?

egalite is one of their words, but they know only its bitter meaning, only the lack of it, and never its perfect realization, which is only to be experienced privately away from the appraising world. Liberte? The heart is always at liberty-the sudden spark of feeling, the quick jet of pa.s.sion, the mellow glow of satiated love. In all these states, the heart has its independence and will not be governed. The great secret is that all the conventions of society can be satisfied, and still the heart is at liberty. The heart knows what it knows, and it knows when it is met in a rapture of recognition.

And what else do they demand? Fraternite. No. Amour. Surely everyone knows that. I sink my fingernails into the cool moss and feel silly. Never mind fraternite-it is so ignorant of sororite! Sisterhood is all-helping, all-vanquishing of domination. Fraternity? They might as well go hunting. As they do go.

Only this I do not understand of Fersen-why he wishes to be a soldier. Why he has been willing to risk his life and our happiness in order to impose the masculine will on whatever it sees. But he does not impose his will on me, any more than I on him. We come and go as we please. And when he is absent, the moment of my awareness of him is just the same as when he is present. We are the perfect friends.

This transcendence of separation is what I learned from our letters to each other. The marks on the page that bring his mind into the habitat of my mind represent his mood and his being in a truthful way, one that is always affirmed when he himself appears. Is there anything so luxurious as long conversations? They are the true hallmark of friendship. Almost, through the words of my own thoughts, I can imagine him into being now-just as he recently was. I can envision him standing in a shaft of light that enters this grotto through a crevice in the rocks.

Now I look out-for this slit was made exactly for this purpose-to see while not being seen.

And I see someone approaching. A messenger from the outside world.

WHEN I ARRIVE at the chateau, I learn a messenger has been sent on a fast horse to find the King, who is hunting. Here are the Comte and Comtesse de Provence, and Madame Elisabeth, and the emissary of the minister of the household, all speaking at once: the people of Paris are marching on Versailles.

Why?

They fear a bread famine now, because the old harvest is used up and the new one not yet ready. They fear a counterrevolution led by the King, using the new troops that have come to Versailles, and they wish to put us in Paris where they can supervise us.

Who leads the people?

It is the market women.

I recall their leather skins, how they pumped their arms obscenely, how they tried to shame me for not producing an heir.

"But now there is yet a Dauphin," I exclaim.

Elisabeth says, "They protest the high cost of bread."

The Comte de Provence says, "They wish the King to remedy the condition of lack of work."

I learn that these women are armed with sickles, pikes, and guns and that it is myself whom they blame for the financial crises, for the famine last winter, for the fact that the weather was colder than in any year of the last seventy-five. It is I, and not the American War, who have emptied the treasury, and I who have enacted the thousands of p.o.r.nographic deeds depicted in the pamphlets, and I, most heinously of all, who have seduced the King into activities that have left the people dest.i.tute. Not even I hold myself blameless, but I am not a harpy and I have lived the life dealt to me with as much kindness as I could.

Their appellation for me is L'Austrichienne, and they clamor for my head as they march, but really what they want is a "scapegoat"-someone upon whom to heap all their suffering and misfortune and disappointment and anger. Yes, if I alone am responsible and they dispatch me, they tell themselves, all will be well. They are to be pitied.

They have no more reason than a troupe of insane children burning with rage.

Some of the ministers say we should flee to Rambouillet, some all the way to Normandie. I will go nowhere till the King returns.

AT THREE IN THE AFTERNOON, the King and his hunting party ride up to the chateau. They come like a whirlwind, like knights of old, their horses and themselves covered with sweat and dust. But once they have arrived, I know well what will follow.

Talk.

The indecision of the King reigns supreme. The time pa.s.ses while more and more people arrive from Paris.

But they have stopped in the courtyards. They do not enter the chateau-yet.

At eight o'clock at night people still arrive and begin to camp in the vast Place d'Armes. Torrents of rain descend on the crowd; still they keep little fires burning. We hear that they are butchering and roasting horses, and I can smell the meat of the animals, b.l.o.o.d.y raw, cooking, and burnt.

In a flurry of confusion, first I tell the ladies to prepare the children to leave. Then I tell the ladies that the King and I and the children will not be going after all. Next, I tell them the carriages are now prepared. "Pack what you can! Hurry."

We hear that when our horses and carriages emerge from the royal stables, they are surrounded by the mob. The harnesses are cut to bits, and the horses are stolen. They disappear into the sea of people on foot. Perhaps the horses are slaughtered and eaten.

Yes, we could yet go to other carriages-they have been offered by Saint-Priest and by La Tour du Pin, their very own carriages waiting beyond the Orangerie. The King and I look at each other. We have lost heart for flight, if we cannot go in our own carriages-I do not understand my own sense of ident.i.ty. Besides, it is raining so steadily, surely the rain will drive them away, will drench their spirits.

I see our inability to impose our wills on this situation. We must wait and see what will happen.

SOMETHING DOES HAPPEN. At midnight arrives the Marquis de Lafayette, commander of the new National Guard, which marches with the populace. Because Lafayette rea.s.sures the King, and the King trusts him, my husband agrees: it is time to go to bed. Here before me stands his valet, repeating with his young and trembling lips the words of the King: "Your Majesty may set her mind at ease concerning the events that have just transpired. The King requests that Her Majesty retire to bed, as His Majesty himself is doing at this moment."

IS IT TWO IN THE MORNING? I hear unnatural sounds, struggle, fighting.

"Save the Queen!"

It is the voice of a bodyguard stationed in the guardroom. From the sounds of desperate fighting, I learn my guards are being slaughtered, their heads severed from their bodies. I leap from the bed, pull on a skirt, something falls softly around my shoulders, and run for the secret door cut in the wall beside my bed. My two ladies are behind me, and I run through the inner rooms toward the inner entrance of the Oeil-de-Boeuf.

The door is locked! I hear my own voice shrieking that the door be opened, that my friends come to my aid, and suddenly! the door opens. A bailiff stands before me. Running past him, I enter the King's bedchamber and find his bed is vacant, but now there are people to help, kind people who speak of safety in the King's dining room.

And just in a moment, here is the King with our son in his arms. And Madame Royale?

There is an interior stair leading to her room. I descend it with wings, then pause, and say with utmost calm that we must quickly leave. I take my daughter's hand-how slender and helpless it is-and guide her back to the others. Here with their coiffures askew are Mesdames Tantes, and I am very glad to see them and embrace them warmly.

I hear desperate fighting in the Oeil-de-Boeuf. But the Dauphin has fetched a chair, and he stands on it, so he can better reach the top of his sister's head. He twines his baby fingers into her hair. He is in a rapture of touching, gently touching, her hair, sliding the strands through his fingers, curling them around a stubby pointing finger. He has no idea that men are fighting and dying outside the door.

Suddenly the Dauphin says, and repeats, "Maman, I'm so hungry."

Outside, in the courtyard, the people are congregating and shouting.

"You must appear on the balcony over the Marble Courtyard," Lafayette says to my husband, who merely nods in agreement.

First Lafayette steps out to face the crowd. They fall silent, as though before a G.o.d. "You have sworn loyalty to the King," he yells in a terrible voice. "Swear again!"

"We swear it." What a sound! Is it hundreds, or thousands, or hundreds of thousands, speaking in unison, as though a mountain had spoken. Almost, I faint.

Hold on tight, Marie Antoinette.

I remember. I remember who I am.

Now the King and I and our children are on the balcony beside the hero, but my husband cannot speak. Some of the people begin to cry at the sight of us. I can see their faces melting in awe and an astonishing mixture of terror, love, pity.

Lafayette promises, speaking in the King's name, that the people will have better and cheaper bread, lumber to repair their homes. But the people are no longer silent. They have begun to chant, louder and louder, and then to shriek their demand: "To Paris!"

Quickly, while Lafayette tries to continue his speech about the condition of the country, the King, the children, and I step back inside. Soon I can no longer hear Lafayette's words, though I can see the side of his face, and the force with which he shouts. But they are shouting too. "The Queen. Let us see the Queen again!"

The children begin to cry. I take their hands-all those around me beg me not to go out-"I will appear to them." And I step out onto the balcony, with the children, into the damp, outdoor air.

"No children!"

Ah, so they may wish to kill me. Better I am alone. My hands first turn the shoulders of Marie Therese, then gently push in the middle of the Dauphin's back, and they are inside. Now I turn and merely face the people. I am full of sadness, but I face them. Fear leaves me. I bow my head. Then I bow my body in the deepest of curtsies. Across my heart, I fold my wrists. My strong dancer's legs hold hold hold the curtsy.

"Long live the Queen."

It is more than I dared hope for. The cry is repeated. Over and over till the courtyard rings with it. But there is another cry too: "To Paris. To Paris."

The people wish to possess their King and Queen.

Slowly, with dignity, I stand and nod my head, to left, to center, to right, so that no group, regardless of where they stand, has been ignored. Then I reenter the bedchamber of the King of France, and of the King before him, and of the one before him.

First, I hold my son in my arms and wash him with my tears. Then I whisper to Madame Necker what I know will be our fate: they will take us to Paris, preceded by the heads of our bodyguards on pikes.

Outside, the people roar and roar till we know we must address them again.

This time the King speaks forcefully in a confident and clear voice: "My friends, I am going to Paris with my wife and children. They are far more precious to me than my own life, and I entrust them to you, my loyal subjects, believing in your love and your goodness."

We return inside. In my own apartment, I quickly put my diamonds in a chest to take with me, and I make gifts of other pieces of jewelry to those who have served me. I notice an odd shining on a ruby pin, and then I see that the sun is rising and a shaft of light has pa.s.sed through a slit in the curtains to strike the heart of the ruby and make it glow.

"The sun is rising," I say gently to my daughter. "Go see." And then I remember, and the remembrance is bitter as gall on my tongue, that the calumny about me began when I innocently wished to see the sun rise. That was one of the first of the pamphlets that dragged my reputation into the mud and began to prepare my image as one to be hated and reviled.

THE JOURNEY OVER the mere twelve miles between Versailles and Paris takes seven hours, such ma.s.ses of people jam the road. During the trip my husband is utterly silent. I sit as though turned to stone. But I can hear the chants beyond the carriage: "We're bringing back the baker, the baker's wife, and the baker's little boy."

The Dauphin, half asleep on my lap, mumbles in a baby voice, "Bake me a cake."

WHEN WE REACH THE GATES of the city, we see that Paris has turned out to greet us. Now in the love phase of their paroxysm of hate-and-love, their worn and crusty faces beam at us. Their faces are pink, and tan, some pale, some sallow-what varieties of complexion flesh can a.s.sume! I see a black face and remember the little black page boy of Madame du Barry. For the first time, I wonder without malice as to what her life may be like. Are these happy, careworn people those who marched out to Versailles, or are they some other, more benign, citizens?

Mayor Bailly, who is also a man of science, an astronomer, comes forward. For an awful moment, I think he is bearing the black head of Louis XV.

No. It is a dark velvet cushion, and on it, in the rays of the afternoon sun, glint the silver Keys to the City.

Holding the pillow and its keys in outstretched arms, Mayor Bailly p.r.o.nounces with utmost sincerity: "What a beautiful day, Sire, on which the Parisians welcome Your Majesty and his family to come into their city."

"Long live the King!" they shout.

Mayor Bailly turns to the King and in a private voice says, "His Majesty's ill.u.s.trious ancestor Henri IV, acting as general, once conquered Paris. Now it is the challenge of the city to conquer Louis XVI with our hearts."