The Queen's Confession Part 33

My daughter began to cry and I said: "It's all right, darling. Don't be frightened, little Mousseline. The people only want to see me."

It was Axel who thrust my daughter's hand in mine and, lifting my son, put him in my arms.

"No!" I cried.

But he was pushing me onto the balcony. He believed that the people would not harm the children.

There was silence as I stood there. Then they cried: "No children. Send the children back."

I was sure then that they were going to kill me. I turned and handed the Dauphin to Madame de Tourzel. My daughter tried to cling to my robe, but I pushed her back.

Then alone I stepped onto the balcony. There was buzzing in my head, but perhaps it was the whispering below me. It seemed to take minutes to make that one short step. It was as though time itself had stopped and that the whole world was waiting for me to cross the threshold between life and death.

I was alone and defenseless, facing those people who had come to Versailles to kill me. I had folded my hands across my gold and white striped robe into which I had been hastily put when I was aroused from my bed; my hair fell about my shoulders.

I heard a voice cry: "Now, there she is. The Austrian Woman. Shoot her."

I bowed my head as though to greet them; and the silence went on and on.

What happened in those seconds I do not know - except that the French are the most emotional people in the world. They love and hate with more vehemence than others. All their feelings are intense and the more so perhaps for being transient.

My apparent lack of fear, my extreme femininity perhaps, my cool indifference to death touched them momentarily.

Someone shouted: "Vive la Reine!" And others took it up. I looked down on that sea of faces - on those disreputable people with their knives and cudgels and their cruel faces. And I was not afraid.

I bowed once more and stepped into the room.

There I was received by a few seconds of bewildered silence. Then the King was embracing me with tears in his eyes and my children, clinging to my skirts, were crying with him.

But this was a momentary respite.

The crowd was shouting again; "To Paris. The King to Paris."

The King said this matter must be discussed with the National a.s.sembly. They should be invited to come to the palace.

But the people outside were growing restive.

"To Paris," they chanted. "The King to Paris."

Saint-Priest was gloomy. So was Axel. "They will break into the chateau," he said. "It is clear, Monsieur de La Fayette, that you have no power to restrain them."

La Fayette could not deny this.

"I must save further bloodshed," said the King. "I will go peaceably to Paris." He turned to me and said quickly: "We must be together ... all of us."

Then he stepped onto the balcony and said: "My friends, I shall go to Paris with my wife and children. I shall trust what is most precious to me to the love of my good and faithful subjects."

There were shouts of joy. The journey had been a success. The mission carried out.

La Fayette stepped from the balcony into the room.

"Madame," he said gravely, "you must consider this."

"I have considered," I answered. "I know that those people hate me. I know they are intent on murdering me. But if that is my fate, I must accept it. My place is with my husband."

It was one o'clock when we left Versailles. Yesterday's rain had given place to sunshine and it was a lovely autumn day, but the weather could not lift our spirits.

In the carriage in which I rode with the King were my children and Madame de Tourzel, with the Comte and Comtesse de Provence and Elisabeth.

I shall never forget that drive and although I was to experience greater humiliations, greater tragedies, it stands out in my mind. The smell of the people; their leering faces beside our carriage; the murderous looks which came my way; the long slow drive which took six hours. I could smell blood in the air. Some of these savages had murdered guards and carried their heads before us on pikes - a grim warning, I suppose, of what they would do with us. They had even forced a hairdresser to dress the hair on these heads; the poor man, revolted and nauseated, had been obliged to do so at the point of a knife.

Astride the cannon were drunken women who shrieked obscenities to each other. My name was mentioned often; I was too sickened to care very much what they said of me. Some of the women, half naked, for they had not bothered to replace their skirts, went arm in arm with the soldiers. They had robbed the royal granaries, and carriages had been loaded with sacks of flour which were well guarded by the soldiers. The poissardes danced about the carriage crying: "We shall no longer lack bread. We are bringing the baker, the baker's wife, and the baker's boy to Paris."

My little son was whimpering: "I'm so hungry, Maman. Chou d'amour has had no breakfast, no dinner ..."

I comforted him as best I could.

And at last we came to Paris. Bailly, the mayor, welcomed us by the light of torches.

"What a splendid day," said the mayor, "when Parisians are at last able to have His Majesty and his family in their city."

"I hope," replied Louis with dignity, "that my stay in Paris will bring peace, harmony, and obedience to the laws."

Tired out as we were, we must drive to the Hotel de Ville.

There we sat on the throne where the Kings and Queens of France had sat before us. The King told Bailly that he should tell the people that it was always with pleasure and confidence that he found himself among the inhabitants of his good city of Paris.

Bailly, when repeating this, left out the word confidence and I noticed this at once and reminded Bailly of his omission.

"You hear, gentlemen," said Bailly. "This is even better than if my memory had not betrayed me."

They were mocking us. They were pretending to treat us as King and Queen when we were merely their prisoners.

And then we were offered a brief respite. We were allowed to drive from the Hotel de Ville to the Tuileries - that gloomy, deserted palace which they had chosen for us.

CHAPTER 23.

"No one would believe all that has happened in the last twenty-four hours and yet whatever one imagined would be less than what we have had to endure."

-Marie Antoinette to Mercy "When one undertakes to direct a revolution, the difficulty is not to spur it on but to restrain it."

"Oh, excellent but weak King. Oh, most unfortunate of Queens! Your vacillation has swept you into a terrible abyss. If you renounce my advice, or if I should fail, a funeral pall will cover this realm."

-Mirabeau "He (Fersen) has established himself at the village of Auteuil ... and so goes to Saint-Cloud under cover of darkness. A discharged soldier of the guard met him leaving the castle at three in the morning. I thought it my duty to speak of this to the Queen. 'Do you not think,' I said to her, 'that the presence of the Comte de Fersen and his visits to the chateau may be a source of danger?' She looked at me with that disdainful air which you know. 'Tell him so yourself, if you think it right to do so ...'"

-Saint-Priest "I thank you indeed for all that you say concerning my Friend (Marie Antoinette). Believe me, my dear Sophie, she deserves all the feeling you can have for her. She is the most perfect being I have ever known or could know ..."

-Axel de Fersen to his sister Sophie Tuileries and Saint-Cloud WITH WHAT A HORRIBLE FEELING of doom I entered the Tuileries. It was long since the place had been inhabited; it was damp and cold. The pa.s.sages were so dark that even by day they had to be lighted by oil lamps, which smoked. We were so exhausted that all we wanted to do was sleep. The Dauphin had given up declaring that he was hungry; his eyelids were drooping, but he said: "This is an ugly place, Maman. Let us go home now."

"Why, mon chou d'amour, Louis Quatorze lived here and liked it. So you must like it, too."

"Why did he like it?"

"Perhaps you will find out."

He was too sleepy for more questions and I was glad of that.

I tried to sleep on the hastily improvised bed, but I kept waking, startled and fancying I could feel the movement of the coach, hear the shouts of the people, and see those b.l.o.o.d.y heads held aloft on pikes.

What will become of us now? I wondered.

The King slept heavily.

In the morning my spirits were lifted a little. The sun showed up the decrepit appearance of the palace, but at least the daylight was comforting; and I felt that to have lived safely through the night was somehow a triumph.

The King was full of optimism. "We will have furniture brought here from Versailles," he said. "I am sure my people will wish to see us properly housed."

It seemed incredible that he could still believe in the love of his people.

Our faithful servants found some food for us and we were able to explore the palace. The only part that seemed in order was that which looked on the gardens. On the first floor were several rooms which could be lived in and these became the King's bedroom, Elisabeth's bedroom, one bedroom each for the Dauphin and his sister, a drawing room and a few reception rooms; on the ground floor was my bedroom with four more rooms; a flight of stairs connected the apartments so that in any emergency we could very quickly all be together.

But it seemed we were to have little peace, for with the coming of the morning the people were a.s.sembling again. My son heard them and came running to me.

"Mon Dieu, Maman," he cried, "is it yesterday again?"

I tried to comfort him, but the women were already shrieking for me to appear on the balcony. I stepped out, believing as I had yesterday that I could well be stepping out to death; but this was a different crowd, I saw at once, a more sober crowd. These were the citizens of Paris; they stood firmly behind the revolution, but they were not the criminals and prost.i.tutes who had marched on Versailles. I sensed at once the difference and I believed that I could speak to them.

There was a silence as I stood there. I knew that they respected my courage in showing no fear in facing them.

I said: "My friends, you should know that I love my good city of Paris."

"Oh, yes," cried a voice, "so much so that on the fourteenth of July you wanted to besiege it and on the fifth of October you were about to flee to the frontier."

There were cheers and laughter; but how different it was from yesterday.

"We must stop hating each other," I said; and there was again that silence. Then someone said: "She has courage, this Austrian woman." Another silence and then: "Vive la Reine".

When I stepped into the room, I felt greatly comforted, but I knew nothing would ever be as it had in the past.

I sat down and wrote to Mercy, whom I had told to keep away from the Court for a while because I feared that the Austrian Amba.s.sador would be considered an enemy and would doubtless be in danger: "If we forget where we are and how we came here, we should be pleased with the people's mood, particularly this morning. I hope that if there is no lack of bread, a great many things will settle down ... No one would believe all that has happened in the last twenty-four hours and yet whatever one imagined would be less than what we have had to endure."

The King came into my room and said: "I heard the people applauding you. This is the end of the revolution. Now we will work out a new order ... the best for us all."

I embraced him, but I did not really agree with him. I could not forget that however mild the mood of the people today, we were prisoners; and as I said to Madame Campan when I knew that they were going to force us to leave Versailles for the Tuileries: "When Kings become prisoners, they have not long to live."

The mood of the people certainly had changed, for within the next few days furniture began to arrive from Versailles. Carpenters and upholsterers were in the palace all through the day and in a very short time those apartments we had chosen began to look more suitable for a royal residence. Our royal bodyguards, chosen from n.o.ble families, had of course been dismissed and replaced by members of La Fayette's National Guard and we found this tiresome, for these men were curious and ill-bred and showed little restraint in invading our privacy.

I was terrified that my son would offend these guards and I impressed on him the need to be friendly with them. This he did not find difficult; he would question them and talk to them in a way which they could not fail to find charming.

He was old enough to be puzzled by what was happening, to compare the present life with that of the past; all of us attempted to hide our apprehension in his presence and to try to lead him to the belief that everything that was happening was perfectly natural.

But he was too bright to be taken in.

One day he ran to the King and said: "Papa, I have something very serious to say to you."

His father smiled and said he would be glad to hear more of this serious matter.

"What I do not understand, Papa," said the Dauphin, "is why the people who used to love you so much are all at once angry with you. What have you done to make them so cross?"

The King took the boy on his knee and said: "I wanted to make the people happier than they were, but I want money to pay for the cost of wars, so I asked the people for money, as all Kings must do. But the Magistrates who make up the Parlement opposed this and said that only the people had the right to consent to it. I asked the princ.i.p.al inhabitants of all the towns, whether distinguished by birth, fortune, or talent, to come to Versailles. That is called a States General. When they came, they asked concessions of me which I could not make either with respect to myself or in justice to you, who will one day be their King. Wicked men, who urged the people to rise, have been responsible for what has happened during the last few days. You must not think the people are to be blamed for this."

I do not know whether he understood it all, but the boy nodded gravely; and after that conversation he seemed to lose a great many of his childish ways.

The dreary winter progressed. We had settled down to routine which was very different from the old life. Versailles and the Pet.i.t Trianon seemed years away. But I had changed too.

I was thirty-four years old and I had learned a terrible lesson. I was beginning to see that if I had behaved differently, I should not have been reviled as I was by the people. They did not hate the King as they hated me.

I had changed so much that I chose those apartments on the ground floor so that I could be apart from my family, so that I could be alone to contemplate. How strange that I who had never been able to concentrate for a few seconds or so on any subject which did not interest me should now seek to know myself.

I would spend hours in writing, setting down what had happened in the past, which I have continued to do, and which is the only way I can know myself and follow each step to the place which I have now reached.

I had become changed. I had grown from a frivolous girl into a woman. The change had been sudden - but only as sudden as the change in my fortunes. I felt as though I had lived through a lifetime of suffering and fear in twenty-four hours. That must have its effect on anyone.

When I remember the letters I wrote to Mercy, I know how great the change was. I wrote: "The more unfortunate I am, the stronger grows my affection for my true friends. I am looking forward so much to the moment when I shall be able to see you freely and to a.s.sure you of the feelings which you have every right to expect from me - feelings which will last to the end of my life."

At last I realized the worth of Mercy, for now I saw how different everything might have been if I had paid attention to his warnings and those of my mother.

But I took courage from the fact that now I could see that I was wrong - a fact of which I had been ignorant until great suffering opened my eyes.

During that dreary winter the days seemed long and monotonous. My great comforts were my children and Axel, who was able to visit me frequently. I would sit in the schoolroom while the Abbe Davout was teaching my son and I saw how difficult he found it to concentrate, which reminded me so much of my own childhood that I warned him against this.

"But, Maman," he said gravely, "there are so many soldiers here, and they are so much more interesting than lessons."

Great soldiers, I reminded him, had to learn their lessons too.

We all attended Ma.s.s each day and took our meals together. We were more intimate than we had ever been before, for we lived like a bourgeois family sitting at table with the children, who joined in the conversation. Poor Adelaide and Victoire had changed very much. Sophie had died and they were always saying: "Lucky Sophie. To have been spared this."

But they were no longer my enemies; this misfortune had changed them too. They had enough sense to realize that the scandals they had spread about me in the past had played a strong part in bringing us all to the state in which we now found each other, and they were contrite. I think they were astonished too that I bore them no malice. I had no time to be vindictive; I could take no pleasure in reminding them of all the harm they had done me. I could only be sorry for them who had lived so long in a state of society which was now cracking under their feet and leaving them defenseless.

Their att.i.tude toward me had taken a complete turnabout; they were affectionate and devoted - perhaps even adoring, for Adelaide could never do anything by halves and Victoire, of course, followed her sister.