Confessions of Marie Antoinette (23 page)

The truth of the matter in this world gone wrong is illuminated moments later when the decapitated head of the poor comte de Dampierre, the stump of his neck still dripping with blood, is shoved at our window. Madame Royale shrieks. Madame Élisabeth begins to gasp in ragged breaths. She clutches the delicate golden crucifix she wears about her neck and begins to murmur a prayer for the soul of the unfortunate comte—cut down by the mob simply for displaying his respect for the crown.

My head swims; my mouth fills with the taste of vomit. Louis’s expression is inscrutable. His jowls quiver as if he is about to weep and is straining to contain his tears. He stares straight ahead, willingly blotting out the spectacle before us, if only for the nonce, because he cannot be observed by his subjects displaying the violence of his emotions.

Departing the carnage of Châlons we divert from our planned route. We stop at the
relais de poste
in Épernay and while the ostlers
are changing the horses, we decide to step inside the coaching inn to stretch our legs and avail ourselves of a light repast. As I am about to enter the hostelry, we are surrounded by another mob that flings mud and hurls obscenities at us. The men who had ridden as our outriders en route to the frontier, now handcuffed and huddled shoulder to epauleted shoulder on the coachman’s box, have become sitting targets for their vitriol. Now they must be protected at swordpoint by the very guards who have restrained them.

Suddenly, the crowd begins to press closer, reaching, clawing for us, and the Garde Nationale whose job it is to escort us back to Paris find themselves defending the family they so despise. In the scuffle, the hem of my gown is torn. At length, when we safely reach the inn, the tavern keeper’s daughter kindly repairs the gash and I give her a louis d’or for her pains.

Yet as Louis exits the inn, grimacing and sweating, his plain gray suit clinging to him like the skin of a shallot, a woman has the audacity to spit directly in his face. A glob of white spittle trickles down one cheek as a salty tear snakes its way down the other. It is all too much, and finally he has broken under the strain. This, people of France, is your king. As I hasten to my husband’s side with the dauphin in my arms, a horrid man shouts, “Don’t show us the brat. Everyone knows that fat pig is not his father!”

The villagers continue to pelt us with curses as we pick our way toward the berline. At least they do not throw stones, but one harridan mockingly taunts, as I mount the traveling steps, “Take care,
ma petite
! you will soon look upon other steps than those!”

“What did she mean by that, Maman?” inquires Madame Royale.

“
Ce n’est rien
. It’s nothing. Bend your mind from it, Mousseline,” I soothe, stroking her dark curls as I endeavor to push away my own images of the hapless marquis de Favras mounting the scaffold for the crime of being a royalist. He was hanged for his
loyalty less than a year and a half ago. Scarcely could I have imagined then how much more dire things would grow in the ensuing months.

Glaring at the crowd I beg the soldiers of the Garde Nationale to ensure the safety of our own protective guard. I despair for Monsieur de Malden and his brave confederates. They must be parched as well, so I insist they be given some cool water to drink.

That afternoon, as we enter a tiny village not far from Dormans, three deputies from the National Assembly meet our carriage. “
Bon après-midi, Votre Majesté
. My colleagues and I have been enjoined to escort you the rest of the way to the capital.” The speaker is Antoine Barnave, a staunch member of the first Jacobin Club, although I have heard that he, like Mirabeau in his day, espouses less radical beliefs than some of his confederates. Barnave introduces me to Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve, an ardent revolutionary, who will also ride in the berline with the royal family, and to the comte de La Tour-Maubourg, who will accompany my ladies-in-waiting in their carriage. I recognize Pétion’s name with a shiver. Just a few days before our ill-starred flight he had been elected president of the criminal tribunal of Paris. Does Pétion’s presence here mean that we are to be tried as felons upon our return to the capital? It is unthinkable. I cannot fathom the attendance of the comte de La Tour-Maubourg, a member of the nobility. Only two years my junior, whatever is he thinking to gain by casting his lot with the revolutionaries? As he ascends the steps to board my ladies’ carriage I meet his gaze unflinchingly. I hope that the sorrow and betrayal in my eyes burn him with shame.

While the interior of our berline is capacious enough to comfortably accommodate four adults and two children, the addition of two grown men makes the remainder of our journey all the more uncomfortable—particularly in the uncommonly sultry heat, where our silks cling to our skin as if we have bathed in them and
the air is so humid it gums together the pages of Madame Élisabeth’s missal. Citoyen Pétion, who has denounced me before the National Assembly numerous times, is now compelled to sit beside me, so close that I can feel the heat of his thigh against my skirts. Perspiration trickles along his cheek from hairline to chin and I am certain that as much of it is due to the awkwardness of the situation as to the stifling conditions inside the coach.

But my family is determined to behave as we might on any other day and we will treat the pair of deputies like honored guests, rather than the adversaries they are. Let the men discover for themselves that I am not the harpy depicted in the pamphlets hawked in the streets, the caricature that portrays me with the body of a winged monster. I offer them roasted quail and ducks’ eggs, cold asparagus with sauce Mornaise, and the pick of the vintage bottles we carry in the berline’s purpose-built wine coolers.

Citoyen Pétion, however, seems disinclined to make small talk. With all the social graces of a policeman, he questions me closely about the details of our departure.

“What was the name of the coachman who drove you as far as Bondy?” My stomach flutters.

“I believe it was driven by a Swede,” Barnave persists.

Fixing our minders with a gaze so cold it momentarily changes the temperature of the berline’s cabin, I reply mildly, “Messieurs, would I be likely to know the name of a hackney driver?”

We spend the first night in the town of Dormans at a humble wayside inn. Our room is guarded by sentries, lest we take a notion to flee in nothing but our night rails and slippers. The iron bedstead is so rusted that Louis prefers to sleep in a chair, although none of our family is able to catch a wink of repose.

“Maman, do you think they will ever stop singing?” Mousseline laments, rubbing her eyes. Directly below us, in the tavern, the
members of the Garde Nationale have been carousing through the night. The thick soles of their boots resound on the floorboards to the accompaniment of an accordion and they sing lewd songs whose verses are unfit for my children’s ears. The dauphin has curled up like a scallop in his shell with a counterpane tugged over his head. He whimpers fretfully. Heaven knows what nightmares invade his feeble slumber.

After a
petit déjeuner
of dry toast and weak coffee, we resume our progress on yet another impossibly hot day. Clearly it has not rained for days. The roads are so dry that the coach becomes covered with dust, cocooned in clouds of it as we rumble toward Paris like a traveling show of garish freaks.

An hour after imbibing a bottle of lemonade, the six-year-old dauphin wriggles in my lap and announces,
“Papa, je dois faire pipi.”
It is all the Assembly delegates can do not to chuckle at the little boy’s bluntness and his utter lack of embarrassment in front of a pair of strangers. But their cynical hearts soften when the king reveals himself to be no tyrant but a concerned father, raising the skirts of the dauphin’s costume to unbutton the breeches the boy wears beneath them. And then, as the carriage lurches to and fro, the king of France reaches under the seat for the silver chamber pot and holds it steady while his little son and heir relieves himself.

To make the time pass, we play games with the children such as counting the number of white horses they spy—Madame Royale believes it will bring good luck to make a wish every time we see one. The dauphin wants to show the gentlemen how much he has improved at reading and asks to look at his papa’s map. With a tiny fingertip he points to various little dots and sounds out the words. Fidgeting in my lap, he expresses the desire to sit upon that of Monsieur Barnave because he has such nice shiny buttons on his coat. That a son of France should be dandled upon the knee of a man
who seeks the destruction of the monarchy chills my blood. But I permit it because this humiliating journey will be less intolerable if everyone’s spirits can be maintained.

The deputies think they already know everything about the royal family because we live so much in the public eye, although they are growing to realize during this unfortunate journey that in so many ways we do not resemble the unflattering portraits that have been painted for years by the caricaturists and pamphleteers. I laugh and ask, “Oh, come, now, did you really think I had talons and scales, messieurs?”

But I wish to draw them out as well, and of the two, Monsieur Barnave, the younger, is the more voluble. “Being an attorney’s son, I was raised with an unswerving devotion to the word and principles of the law,” the deputy admits, then concedes that there was an occasion when he defied the authorities. “It was … an extenuating circumstance,” he says, not daring to look any of us in the eye. “I was only sixteen. And my younger brother was thirteen. He was large for his age—prodigiously round—and his face was covered with spots and pustules, the ravages of early adolescence and overindulgence. Damas was mercilessly bullied by the other boys where we lived in Grenoble. They called him
un crapaud
—a toad—and they would follow him home from his lessons, taunting
‘crapaud, crapaud!’
One afternoon, they instigated an argument with him and shoved him into a ditch, breaking his arm. I was so angry when I discovered what had happened that I challenged the ringleader of the bullies to a duel, even though I knew that dueling was illegal.”

“And did you fight?” I ask.

Barnave nods. “The insult and injustice perpetrated upon my brother was a greater crime to me than breaking the law for dueling.”

All these years later, his eyes still darken with passion as he relates
the tale. They still burn with empathy for his bullied brother. It does not take me long to recognize that Antoine Barnave is loyal to a fault and wears his heart on his sleeve. And he seems surprised to find me a doting mother and a loving wife, as well as a compassionate queen. And I am astonished to meet a revolutionary with a tender heart.

Inside the closed conveyance the acrid stench of perspiration has become overwhelming. I reach beneath my feet for my toiletry case and remove my atomizer, liberally spraying a fine mist of fragrance about the interior of the berline. Citoyen Barnave wrinkles his nose at the heady aroma as the dauphin plays with the brass buttons on the deputy’s blue coat. “Maman, they say things!” he exclaims, running his finger along the raised lettering. Slowly he sounds out the words engraved on the buttons:
Vivre Libre ou Mourir
. “I know
‘vivre’
means ‘live,’ but I don’t understand the rest of it.”

“It means ‘live free or die,’ ” I murmur, meeting Barnave’s blushing gaze. To cover my amazement at finding his face filled with sympathy, I give him one of my famous smiles. Despite what I am discovering about the man, I am doubly surprised to receive one in return.

On the opposite seat, Citoyen Pétion watches Madame Élisabeth crushed up against the door of the coach, reading her prayer book. He seems entranced by the way her lips move as she reads silently to herself.

It is mid-afternoon on June 23 when we reach La Ferté-sous-Jouarre. The berline is halted in front of the mayor’s home, where I am touched to see a cluster of smiling children waiting to present me with bunches of flowers, and the deputies permit the royal family to walk about. It is mercifully quiet here; I cannot recall when the industrious hum of a honeybee has been so pleasing to my ear. Although the air remains thick and sultry, we enjoy a drink on their charming terrace overlooking the Marne; and the mayor,
Monsieur Regnard, invites us to stroll through his gardens. His wife is very proud of her roses. “I am glad that you could see them when they are in full bloom,
Votre Majesté
,” Madame Regnard tells me, somewhat awed that the queen of France should visit her humble residence. Perhaps she has not heard why we are passing through her town. Perhaps there are still men and women in this country who love their sovereigns. Perhaps she has not heard about the poor comte de Dampierre, whose only crime was to show his respect for us.

I avail myself of the opportunity to converse with the two deputies. It is the first time I have become privy to the internecine workings of the National Assembly, and I am surprised to hear how much the delegates are not necessarily of the same mind. “I have been under the impression that they all desire a republic,” I say to Monsieur Barnave, only to be corrected by Monsieur de Pétion.

“Kings and princes have always brought nothing but misery to their subjects,” he tells me, “but the only people in France who favor the concept of a republic are those who have no interest in a constitutional monarchy and who wish to form a third political party—they are nonconstitutional royalists, who, once they obtain power, would then seek to overthrow the new Constitution.” He casts a meaningful glance at Barnave.

Citoyen Pétion’s explanation makes no sense to me. The interpretation I take away is that each of these rival factions craves power and none of them wishes to see the return of an absolute monarchy. The best that Louis and I can hope for, at least for the nonce, is to win as many adherents as possible who will support him as a constitutional monarch. With his rights of office increasingly stripped from him, it will not be easy to convince the majority of the Assembly that we can make common cause with them. We need another Mirabeau. I ask Antoine Barnave his age.