Confessions of Marie Antoinette (36 page)

Turning into the Place du Carrousel, our humiliating carriage ride toward the Temple continues, rumbling along at a snail’s pace so as not to deprive the citizenry of their opportunity to witness the ultimate degradation of the once omnipotent King and Queen of France.

That night, the nation’s razor, Dr. Guillotin’s hideous invention, is moved from the courtyard of the Conciergerie to the center of the Place du Carrousel, directly opposite the central portal of the still smoldering Tuileries Palace.

TWENTY-THREE

Hideous Adieux

S
UMMER
1792

The Temple, consisting of a walled fortress some sixty feet high to the parapets, built around a quadrangle, and a palace with a pyramid-shaped roof, had been the residence of the Grand Priors of the Knights Templar. The last of the Templars’ Grand Priors was the comte d’Artois, and before him, Louis’s cousin Conti, a prince of the blood. I have always harbored an absolute horror of this gloomy edifice: its pointed towers remind me of torture chambers. A thousand times I have urged Artois to tear it down.

I last visited the little palace fourteen years ago, a guest at a fête hosted by Artois. The air that wintry night was icy and I was driven by sledge over a cover of snow that blanketed the packed earth and froze the
rues
. Then, I was swathed in white marten and jewels; my red-gold hair, lightly powdered, had been teased three feet off my scalp and dressed with diamond aigrettes and egret
plumes. Now I am grateful for a borrowed gown; and beneath my simple cap, my hair is the same color as that distant snowfall.

The Temple, too, has changed considerably. Ivy snakes up the base of the four towers. Weeds choke the gloomy inner courtyard and wayward tufts of grass sprout up from between broken cobbles. Louis and I alight from the coach to find every window in the palace illuminated in anticipation of our arrival, but even in the torch-lit quadrangle we can hear the wind whistling through the bars on many of them.

Mayor Pétion stands at the main portal of the palace to welcome us. He conducts our party upstairs to the mirrored Salle des Graces, where a sumptuous meal awaits, served on Sèvres from silver vessels. After the leisurely supper, which does not end till nearly midnight, Louis and I take a turn about the various salons, their furnishings still opulent after all these years of disuse. “These rooms would make a charming apartment for you,
ma chère
,” he tells me, referring to a capacious suite on the main floor, furnished in some of my favorite colors. He then goes on to assign rooms to the children and Madame de Tourzel—“This is perfect, for she can sleep adjacent to her charges”—and selects a suite for himself with a salon, a bedchamber, and a library. “We will be quite comfortable here, Citoyen Pétion,” says my husband, adding, “If one must be imprisoned, we could do considerably worse.”

At this remark the mayor’s face reddens. He clears his throat. “
Erhm
—I am afraid it is my duty to inform you, monsieur, that your family will be lodged within the fortress itself—inside the archivist’s apartments at the Tour de César, the small tower. However, those accommodations are not yet available, as the gentleman has yet to vacate the premises; and until they are ready for you, your family and attendants will reside elsewhere within the tower.”

They have lured the mice into a pretty trap, only to feed them
poison. How cruel it was to dangle before us the prospect of comfort and elegance, first satiating us with a fine meal, only to trip the springs, catching us unaware and exacerbating our mortification!

Louis and I refuse to allow the mayor to gloat over our dismay, so we maintain a stoic and tranquil mien in his presence. Yet this news makes it clearer than ever that we are indeed prisoners of the state. A medieval edifice intended to repel invaders, the stone walls of the fortress are ten feet thick and permanently damp. The children risk catching the ague. I hope there will be sufficient tapestries to line the walls.

It is one in the morning by the time we are conveyed to the disused rooms in the tower. Slime drips from the vaulted stone ceilings. The chambers are impossibly tiny and cramped and smell of stale urine. Madame Royale shrieks at the sight of a monstrous rat scuttling along the floorboards. “I will not sleep in here!” she declares, clinging to her father. The beds are scarcely better than boards, barren of all linens. The mattresses are filthy and who knows what vermin they may house?

Pétion smirks that we will be well protected here, for no one can penetrate the fortress. In sober truth, we have been incarcerated here for precisely the opposite reason: the Commune fears our escape. If there was any question of our being rescued, the small tower’s enormous oaken portal, strengthened with iron sheeting, answers it. So do the men assigned to watch us. Soldiers are stationed on every level and a detachment of eight municipal officers guards the ground floor. Louis and I have forfeited all rights of privacy; a representative from the Commune must remain in the room with us at all times.

Even behind the thick walls of the Tour de César, sleep is as much of a luxury as it was at les Feuillants. Far below us, the guards, underscoring their animosity, sing a taunting refrain throughout the endless night:
Madame mont à sa tour. Ne sait quand descendra
—“Madame climbs her tower, not knowing when she will descend.”

The following morning, I suggest that we all take a stroll about the inner courtyard so that the children can enjoy some fresh air and a bit of exercise. But the sunlight does not penetrate into the quadrangle and they grow frightened by the high stone walls. “I don’t want to play here, Maman,” the dauphin complains. “It feels like a tomb.”

We settle in as best we can, in the hope that the allied armies that are on the march will soon be at our door. In the meantime, we must endeavor to enjoy a normal family life. The king is a beast defanged; he has no more power. What else does the Nation want of us? But less than a week later, on August 19, I receive the reply: our friends. Outside the Temple the newsboys cry the latest
nouvelles
. We learn that Antoine Barnave has been arrested and imprisoned, charged with being a clandestine royalist.

Escorted by Pétion, two officers from the Paris Commune arrive at the Temple late that evening. The taller of the two bears writs of arrest for the princesse de Lamballe, Madame de Tourzel, and even for Louise de Tourzel’s young daughter Pauline, who, having survived the horrific massacre at the Tuileries in August, has been living with us ever since. My six ladies-in-waiting are also under arrest, all in the name of the Commune.

“What have they done?” I demand, my heart pounding. “What possible harm could a young girl and a handful of women who sit about all day and do needlework cause the Nation?”

“They are enemies of the state,” the officer replies curtly. “This writ remands them forthwith to the women’s prison of La Force.”

My knees tremble. I can barely remain steady on my feet. My head begins to spin. “I refuse to let them go, messieurs.” Flinging open my arms to shield them I declare, “These women are under my protection.”

“You have no power here, madame,” Pétion replies coldly. “Their fate is not yours to decide.”

Pauline, my daughter’s companion, is just a child. They are all in tears. I cannot send them away. They will be worked to death in La Force. They will starve or succumb to disease there. Laying aside all dignity, I clasp the mayor’s hand, imploring, “At least spare the princesse. Not only is she a kinswoman of mine, but she is unwell. She is too frail to endure the hardships of imprisonment.”

Madame de Lamballe’s eyes are huge with terror. With her flaxen curls framing a paper-white complexion, she looks as though she is already one of the angels. She flings her arms about my neck and the two of us burst into uncontrollable sobs. I feel as if I am saying farewell to another sister.

The officers of the Commune are deep in conversation, speaking too low for me to overhear. At length, the man with the writ announces, “The carriage awaits, mesdames.”

None go quietly. Their weeping grows more hysterical with each passing moment. I break the embrace with the princesse in order to bid adieu to each of my other ladies, urging little Pauline to be brave. “
Sois courageuse, ma petite
. Mousseline and I will pray every day for your safety.” But I fear she is doomed. The nation did not spare the children of the Tuileries on the tenth of August.

“
Ma chère
Louise, I can never thank you enough,” I tell the royal governess. “But I must beg of you one final favor: Look after my dear Lamballe.” As I kiss Madame de Tourzel good-bye, I whisper in her ear, “And try to prevent her from having to answer any awkward or embarrassing questions.” Louise understands what I mean: Axel.

The princess once again embraces me and whispers an urgent plea to look after her Scottish terrier.

“I will cherish him as I will always cherish you,” I promise her. The words choke in my throat.

My ladies are led away. Their shrieks of terror echo off the courtyard walls and rise into the moonless night. The people blame me for destroying the nation. I blame myself for destroying my women’s lives.

Nearly three weeks after our transfer to the Temple, we are informed that the archivist’s five rooms are ready for us. The small but well-appointed chambers are as pleasant as can be under the circumstances. The tenant we have displaced was evidently a man of discerning taste, and the chambers are filled with maps and books, enough to keep Louis occupied for months. He immediately places an order for 250 more volumes, a sop that the Commune readily grants. The Nation’s insult is keenly felt, but we intend to maintain our composure in the presence of our jailers, particularly the vicious Jacques Hébert, who also publishes an incendiary newspaper called
Le Père Duchesne
, writing in the guise of a crusty and cantankerous old republican. Although Hébert is as fastidious about his wardrobe and toilette as any Versailles courtier, the fictional Père Duchesne is depicted in a red liberty cap, perpetually puffing upon his clay pipe. No sooner does Monsieur Hébert return from his weekly visits to the Temple, intended to represent a show of respect for the royal family, than he publishes another screed issuing from the lips of Père Duchesne, demanding that “the boozer and his whore be shaved with the national razor.”

Yet even in the midst of our enemies we are gradually building a new household. Louis’s faithful
valets de chambre
, Monsieur Hüe and Hanet Cléry, escaped the massacre at the Tuileries by flinging themselves out of the windows. Three of our former cooks have managed to sneak into the Temple by informing the guards, who had no idea who they were, that they had been sent by the Commune to work in the kitchens. One of them, Louis François Turgy, makes good use of his thrice-weekly excursions to shop for food
and wine—as we eat even better here than we did at the Tuileries—passing messages to our friends, and acquiring news of them and of the Duke of Brunswick’s armies.

But we have few friends to wait upon us nowadays. After the removal of my ladies to La Force, the Commune sent a married couple, the Tisons, and their daughter to serve us. Bearded and built like a bear, Monsieur Tison is surly and resents his assignment, while his wife is a vain and selfish woman who becomes incommoded at the slightest provocation. She refuses to dress either my hair or the king’s, so the tasks of
friseur
have fallen to Louis’s faithful Monsieur Cléry, whose father used to be a barber. He is even teaching Madame Royale to style her own tresses.

Proper newspapers are forbidden to us here, so we must devise alternate methods of learning about the world beyond our heavily guarded stone walls. To outwit our jailers, Monsieur Turgy fashions bottle stoppers made from pieces of paper bearing notes written in the “invisible ink” of lemon juice or with an extract of gall nuts that will dissolve once the message has been deciphered and read. Wrapping them in cotton wadding, Turgy conceals notes between the mattresses of Mousseline or Madame Élisabeth, whose personal effects are less likely to be searched. He also stuffs the notes inside of hollowed lead pellets which he then hides within bottles of almond milk.