Confessions of Marie Antoinette (15 page)

Madame Royale takes the box from me and peruses its inscription for herself. Moments later, with all the force she can muster, she hurls it across the room. The box hits the opposite wall of the salon, nicking the ivory paint, and clatters open, spilling its macabre contents about the room like dozens of tiny bones. Then, one by one, and without a word, my daughter angrily tosses each domino into the fire.

On the last day of February we receive word of another insurrection.
Rioting has begun in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, incited by Monsieur Santerre, the same commander of the National Guard battalion who had hovered ominously behind my chair when the widow and son of the executed marquis de Favras attended our
grand couvert
. The rebels attack the castle of Vincennes, demolishing a parapet and dismantling parts of the dungeon. Perhaps it is just a rumor that we are in danger, but several noblemen, their weapons concealed beneath their cloaks, hasten to the Tuileries to defend the royal family. When Axel arrives for his daily visit, he insists that I barricade myself in my apartment. The mood, both on the streets of the capital and in the corridors of the château, is ugly. Rumors have been flying that the aristocrats intend to assassinate the National Guards who are on duty.

“Preposterous!” I exclaim. “Absurd.”

“C’est vrai,”
he agrees. “But the people believe it, nonetheless.”

Madame de Tourzel brings the children to me. Campan and Lamballe follow, sailing down the long hallway in a rustle of taffeta. We listen through the bolted doors, hearts thumping beneath our stays. The sounds of brawling echo through the high ceilings and hard surfaces of the palace, raised voices, cries of pain, the sickening thud of musket butts connecting with human heads and limbs. When the tumult dies down, Madame Campan opens the doors cautiously and, turtlelike, peers about. All is well for the nonce. But the following day, the event is inflated out of all proportion, reported in the newspapers as
la Journée des Poignards
—the Day of Daggers—an attempt by
hundreds
of nobles,
armed to the teeth
, to perpetrate a massacre.

We are no longer safe in this palace. Nor, in the rebels’ eyes, is the royal family their only enemy. The aristocracy of France—nay, anyone who expresses loyalist sympathies for us—is now marked as a traitor to their cause.

ELEVEN

Go?

S
PRING
1791

Our last chance has been taken from us.

“They say the comte de Mirabeau saw his parish priest for an hour, so his arrival in the other world must have been extremely painful,” remarks Madame Élisabeth piously as she turns her embroidery hoop in her hands in order to catch a shaft of sunlight.

I do not know whether to credit illness, the melancholy to which he had lately succumbed, or his dissolute manner of living for Mirabeau’s demise. They say the comte attended an orgy at the house of an opera dancer on March 28, the night he fell ill, and four days later he was dead. But what does it matter, really? He is gone all the same, only forty-two, just seven years my senior. I weep for the lion of the Revolution, whose candle was snuffed out too soon. And yet the last time we had seen him, Mirabeau had confided in the king his fears that he had already done his best for us. “There are no more moderates in the Salle du Manège,” he had intoned,
shaking his huge head. “The deputies no longer wish to listen to me, or even to Lafayette. The
Journée des Poignards
in February was not the culmination of their fervor. It was the beginning.”

The comte de Mirabeau is to be interred with great pomp within the new Pantheon. Louis is despondent, believing the statesman’s passing signals the monarchy’s mournful coda.

It is becoming clear that flight may be our best option. Paris is too hot, as Mirabeau might have said. Perhaps it is merely my imagination, but in the wake of his death the streets seem flooded with a new inundation of scurrilous pamphlets. Most denounce me in the same vein as the
libelles
have done in the past. But now I am presumed to have a different panoply of lovers, as so many of the nobles I was once accused of bedding have long since been banished or fled. Now they claim I have slept with at least two-thirds of the soldiers in the National Guard.

Louis takes to his bed with a fever. My husband, whose health has always been hale, is coughing blood. His body drips with perspiration. His hair, beginning to gray with woe, is damply plastered to his forehead. “I made the wrong decision,” he repeats, referring to his Christmastime capitulation to the revolutionaries, his signing of the decree forcing France’s priests to swear fealty to an entity and a document that is beneath divine law. The Pope is dismayed, if not angry with his action, insisting that even if the sovereign had to abdicate the rights inherent in the royal prerogative, he has no right to alienate and abandon what belongs to God, and as King of France, Louis is His eldest son.

“I did it for the public safety,” Louis mutters, his voice choked with emotion. “If I had refused, it would have been a certainty that priests and nobles alike would be massacred by our enemies. If His Holiness could but see what is happening here … the awful choices that faced me …” My husband sobs like an infant. His conscience rent, he pens a pledge to build a church in honor of the Sacred
Heart. “O, God, You see all the wounds that tear my heart and the depths of the abyss into which I have fallen.” I visit Louis’s bedside several times a day, in between my secret sessions with Count von Fersen, wherein I am becoming a skilled mistress at the art of cryptography.

What will become of his family if Louis dies? Will I be sent back to Austria? Dispatched to a convent for the remainder of my days? Imprisoned for life? After all, I remain the revolutionaries’ raison d’être for all the nation’s ills. In October 1789, soon after we first arrived at the Tuileries, I became aware of a plan to effect my escape. Without my permission my private secretary, Jacques-Mathieu Augeard, a former tax collector, developed an entire plot where I would quit the Tuileries alone under cloak of secrecy and seek sanctuary with my brother the emperor in Vienna, leaving an apologetic note to my husband and children. Augeard was convinced that France might be saved from descending into the abyss of Revolution were I to martyr myself by sacrificing my family and my crown so that my husband might retain his, and the dauphin would have one to inherit.

“Unthinkable!” I’d exclaimed, when Monsieur Augeard revealed his idea to me. “I would never leave my children! Nor could I allow the king to remain in the bosom of his enemies. I have pledged, to myself, to His Majesty, and to God, that our family shall never be separated. And if need be, I will uphold my promise with my dying breath.”

Yet—though we must stay together, we cannot stay here. The notion of emigrating to an area with strong monarchist sympathies, whether in France or across her borders, holds an increasing allure for me. Louis is still reluctant to leave his kingdom, but remaining in Paris is a dangerous prospect.

At least, after the Day of Daggers, we both agree that we cannot stay in the Tuileries. Most of our servants are spies. The new
bodyguards, Lafayette’s own troops, are our enemies. On Palm Sunday, just two weeks after the comte de Mirabeau drew his last breath, the king insists on hearing Mass said by the Cardinal de Montmorency, one of the brave nonjuring priests who continues to push back with all the might of his faith against the tidal force of the Revolution’s new zealots. Upon Louis’s return from the chapel, the grenadiers of the Garde Nationale refuse to line the route of his carriage, exposing him to attack.

This in itself is an act of defiance, yet that is how the Assembly views my husband’s refusal to hear Mass from a cleric who has sworn the oath to uphold the Constitution. The following day I am awakened by Hanet Cléry, the king’s loyal valet, with the news that His Majesty has decided to remove the royal family to Saint-Cloud so that he may convalesce in peace. We communicate in hushed voices only amongst ourselves and our most trusted attendants. The princesse de Lamballe and Madame Campan know our plans, although they will remain at the Tuileries. Ably assisted by Madame Élisabeth, the marquise de Tourzel prepares the children of France for the short journey, dressing them in their best clothes.

But word of our sojourn has somehow spread like a spark in dry straw. A crowd—no, a mob—is gathered in the vast cobbled courtyard, spreading into the Place du Carrousel, cawing and baying like animals, and as our family is assisted into our carriage they accuse the king of quitting the capital in order to
unconstitutionally
complete his Easter Week worship! “You saw me; I did not receive communion from the cardinal this morning,” Louis mutters to me behind his handkerchief. Never in our lifetimes has the Catholic Church been under such an assault. There are nearly as many
libelles
denouncing nuns and priests for fornication and corruption as there are scurrilous pamphlets proclaiming me a harpy and a whore. Demagogues with loud voices and an aura of authority feed
the poison to the illiterate, or those too lazy or too poor to read the lies for themselves. In January, Mirabeau had foretold that the resignation of 20,000 priests who preferred to leave their parish rather than swear the Constitutional oath would produce an anti-Revolutionary reaction within the kingdom that would cripple the National Assembly’s authority. What would he say today if he knew that things had only become worse?

The jeering throng refuses to countenance our departure. The horses barely leave the confines of the Tuileries when their bridles are seized by a number of men and our coach is brought to a jolting halt.

“What is happening, Maman?” asks Madame Royale, and I unlatch the window and peer outside. The members of the Garde Nationale are making no effort to disengage the ruffians from the harnesses. I worry about the beasts, who are frightened by the commotion. They aren’t war horses, which are trained not to shy from mayhem and artillery fire. I crane my neck and look to the rear of the carriage. Having deserted their perch, our bewigged postilions are racing to the front of the conveyance to offer their assistance to the coachman, yet as soon as they attempt to free the bridles, the grenadiers raise their sabers, threatening our royal servants with bodily harm if they dare to continue.

Our carriage is rocked from side to side like a child’s toy. The dauphin begins to cry and I pull him onto my lap and gather him into my arms, covering his ears with my hands. Madame Royale’s face is pale as hair powder. I shut the window when I hear a volley of muskets and a clatter of hoofbeats. The crowd suddenly moves away from the coach. Soon the faces of Lafayette and Monsieur Bailly peer into our windows. Then they step back and order the guards to do their duty and clear a passage for our departure.

But the general and the mayor face a surprising rebellion from
their own troops. “We do not wish the king to leave!” shouts one of the grenadiers. Placing his hand upon his heart he adds, “We swear that they shall never leave!” This soon becomes a sickening chant.

Louis has had enough. He opens the window and calls for silence. When his command proves ineffective, he sticks his arm outside the window and frantically waves his handkerchief. I bury my face in my hands. Of all the things: a surrender.

But my husband’s words are just the opposite of capitulation. “My good people,” he begins, “it would be extraordinary if, having given the Nation its liberty, I should not be free myself!”

Reason and logic, alas, mean nothing to a mob nourished by the poison of their demagogues. “Fat pig!”
“Cochon!”
“Damn aristo!” The insults and epithets fly, accompanied by deliberately aimed spittle. Louis quickly ducks inside the window. With tremendous dignity, he takes the handkerchief and wipes away the gobbet of mucus that rests upon his cheek like a malevolent tear.

Agonizing minutes pass as we remain the people’s captives. Finally, unable to subdue his own adherents, Lafayette taps upon the window with the handle of his riding crop. Louis unlatches it and receives his former general’s suggestion to proclaim martial law. “Force is the only effective remedy, Sire.”