Confessions of Marie Antoinette (37 page)

Turgy and I develop a code consisting of subtle gestures, each pertaining to a specific troop movement. In this way, Louis and I are able to remain informed regarding the location of the individual detachments of allied forces that we pray will deliver us and whether—and where—they have gained a victory. When the Austrian and Prussian forces are only fifteen leagues from Paris, Turgy will bring his fingers to his lips.

Yet the cruelty and ignorance of our minders knows no bounds.
One morning Mousseline approaches me with a tearstained countenance. In her hands are scraps of paper.

“What is that,
ma petite
?”

“My drawings,” she blubbers. “Madame Tison ripped them up because she says they are pictures of enemy generals. I told her that they are the heads of the Roman Caesars, emperors who died before the birth of Our Lord, but she did not believe me. She asked me how I would know what an Octavius or a Nero or a Caligula looked like. I
hate
her. She’s fat and stupid and is missing half her teeth.”

Madame Royale wishes me to confront Madame Tison and put her in her place. “You’re the queen. She has to obey you,” Marie Thérèse says angrily, stamping her foot.

Endeavoring not only to calm her but to school her, I try to make my daughter understand that her father and I are determined to appear unperturbed in the face of our servants’ cruelty. “To scold them or behave haughtily in their presence will only reinforce their prejudices against us. But if they come to see that we are kind and compassionate and sensitive and our temperaments and manners no different from anyone else’s, they will surely find their own hearts and become kinder and more compassionate to
us
.” Taking her hands in mine I remind Mousseline, “We have been given the opportunity to demonstrate to some of our loudest detractors that we are not in fact the monsters they portray us to be.”

It is a difficult lesson for a young girl whose world has been upended. Since the first assault upon the Tuileries, she has grown even more sullen and withdrawn.

The dauphin is too young to comprehend the gravity of our situation, and so he appears pleased when one of the municipal guards, Monsieur Goret, confiscates the multiplication tables that
Louis has instructed him to practice.
“Mais pourquoi, Papa?”
our son inquires, wanting to know the reason for it.

“Perhaps—perhaps Monsieur Tison desires to learn mathematics,” Louis replies gently. “But he is too mortified to let anyone know it and so he borrowed yours.” Turning to address me and Madame Élisabeth, the king shakes his head. “The imbecile thinks the tables contain some sort of secret formula for breaking ciphers,” he murmurs.

In our dining room, a copy of the Declaration of the Rights of Man is tacked to the wall. Madame Tison makes a point of showing me that the stove’s brass doors are embossed with the motto of the Republic:
Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité
. That afternoon, under orders from the Paris Commune, our bread rolls are once again served to us crumbled and torn to pieces. Our jailers suspect that messages have been baked into the bread by royalist sympathizers. The inspection of our food is but one example of the intimidation and insults perpetrated upon our family by the nation.

“It is for your own protection, Monsieur,” Goret sneers, to Louis’s demand whether such scrutiny is necessary. He removes his pipe from between his lips just long enough to reply. Well aware of the king’s antipathy to pipe smoke, the officer deliberately exhales directly in his face, encircling Louis’s head with an acrid wreath.

Because every stitch of clothing and stick of furnishings we had owned was ruined during the invasion of the Tuileries, the Commune grants us a surprisingly generous allowance with which to purchase new goods. Employing Rose Bertin is out of the question; her life and livelihood having been imperiled by our lengthy association, she emigrated to England a year ago. The thirty seamstresses kept fully occupied with creating petticoats and chemises, bodices, skirts, lawn cotton sashes and bonnets, coats of Florentine taffeta, lace caps, black beaver hats, and simple gowns of cotton dimity and toile de Jouy are—with the exception of the court
dressmaker Madame Éloffe—staunch republicans. I order garments and accessories in my favorite muted tones: puce, dove gray, pale blue, and the cool brown color we call
“boue de Paris.”
Sprigged cotton gowns are ordered for Madame Royale and sailor suits for the dauphin. Louis is content to alternate between his two nearly identical chestnut-colored coats with silver filigreed buttons, paired with waistcoats of white piqué. His sole extravagance is a silk riding coat in a shade that was once fashionable at Versailles, the peach-gold hue of my hair known as
cheveux de la reine
.

I look upon it as a measure of revenge on our jailers by being profligate with their
assignats
, commissioning shoes and gloves, fichus, fans, and lace-edged handkerchiefs. Yet the Commune has not complained about the expense. And since I cannot abide the stenches that permeate the walls of the Temple, I have ordered countless scented candles and pastilles, as well as numerous perfumes. What is 100,000 francs’ worth of fragrances when the Duke of Brunswick is on the march? Soon the allies will be in Paris. I have taken to studying the maps in Louis’s new library, comparing them to the itinerary for the allied invasion that the comte de Mercy’s courier was able to smuggle into the Temple.

“They plan to cross the frontier and enter Verdun on the first of September,” I confide to Madame Campan, showing her the itinerary. Then I tell her the date the forces will besiege the city of Lille. From there I begin to count the days until the soldiers will reach Paris. I live in hope of our rescue. When we are freed, we intend to journey to Strasbourg in order to preserve this most important frontier city for France. One day this madness will end—it must—and the monarchy will be restored. I came to France to bear the Bourbons a son. Louis Charles must have a legacy.

Meanwhile, they are enlarging our prison, demolishing homes adjacent to the Temple in order to expand the walls that enclose us. On the morning of September 2, Louis, fascinated as always by
masonry, stands at the window of his room overlooking the destruction. Beside him is Monsieur Daujon, the Commissioner of the Commune. With every splintering crash of wood and falling stone, my husband bursts into laughter, discoursing with Daujon upon the masons’ efforts, enjoying the spectacle the way I might savor the performance of an opera.

Their conversation is interrupted abruptly by the rumble of cannon fire, distant, but unmistakable. The king glances about fearfully as a second report is heard, followed by a third terrifying boom. Louis looks helplessly at Monsieur Daujon, who informs us grimly, “Those are the warning guns.”

“Warning of what?” Louis inquires warily.

Moments later, the church bells of Paris clang with the frightening alarm of the tocsin, calling the people to arms. Louis begins to tremble, his sangfroid deserting him entirely. Soaked with fear, he tries to mop his brow with a handkerchief, but can neither contain nor control his perspiration. Approaching the commissioner, I implore, “Monsieur, you must save my husband!” Madame Élisabeth sinks to her knees and, clasping Daujon’s hand, urges, “
S’il vous plaît
, have pity on my brother!”

But it is not the commissioner we need to fear. After several agonizing hours of pacing the carpets, unsure of what will befall us, Monsieur Turgy bursts into the room, his mustard-brown jacket and breeches spattered with blood.

“Have you been to the abbatoir?” I ask, aghast. And if so, why has he intruded upon our private rooms still smeared with gore?

“All
Paris
has become an abbatoir,” Turgy replies breathlessly. “Notices are affixed to every lantern post calling upon the citizens to take justice into their own hands.” He thrusts a crumpled paper at the king. I read it over Louis’s shoulder. The broadsheet proclaims, B
EFORE WE RACE TO THE FRONTIER TO MEET OUR FOREIGN
ENEMIES, WE MUST PUT THE BAD CITIZENS OF
F
RANCE TO DEATH
.

“Who are they calling ‘bad citizens’?” I demand.

Louis squints as though he has the migraine. “I believe I can answer that, madame—from the people’s perspective. We must protect the priests who refused to swear the oath to the Constitution, the near and dear of the émigrés who remained in France, aristocrats and their servants who have been wrongfully imprisoned merely for being our friends—”

He breaks off. Surely he is thinking about the princesse de Lamballe and Madame de Tourzel and her daughter. My God, how can we protect them now?

“The nonjuring priests are already being massacred,” Turgy tells us, his face contorted with the horror he has witnessed. “This—this blood is theirs,” he says, pointing frantically to his coat and breeches. “I—I lost my hat—no, I did not lose it—I covered the eyes of one soldier of God who was in the throes of agony, death so close and yet so painfully far away. He had been bayonetted several times through the belly and then gutted like a fish. I could not bear the thought that he would take his last breaths staring helplessly at his own entrails.”

“Sacré Dieu,”
Madame Élisabeth murmurs to herself. Clutching her rosary, she hastens from the room to find a basin in which to vomit.

“The murderers were bare-armed, their complexions swarthy, like Greeks or Corsicans. To a man, they wore the
bonnet rouge
,” Turgy tells us after the princesse has quit the chamber. His description of the assassins sounds like the brutal Reds from Marseille. Have the Parisians imported mercenaries to do their bloody work for them?

News arrives late that evening that Verdun fell today to the
Austrians. A woman wearing the
tricolore
as a sash, secret royalist or rabid republican I know not, manages to get into the courtyard of the Temple, and holds a placard up to our windows. V
ERDUN IS TAKEN
.

“Is that why this carnage has begun?” I ask the king softly.

“Who can say?” Louis replies. His pale blue eyes mist over. With so much mayhem in the streets we cannot even savor the allies’ victory. “I don’t know how the citizens could have gotten word so quickly.”

Hours later, two commissioners from the Commune arrive with another writ of arrest. This one is for Louis’s
premier valet de chambre
, Monsieur Hüe. The king immediately springs to his servant’s aid. “He dresses me every morning, messieurs. He shines my shoe buckles. This man is no criminal.”

“Is it not enough that we are, all of us, prisoners of the Nation, cooped up behind the thick walls of a castle keep?” Fuming and cursing with a fervor I have never before seen in her, Madame Élisabeth levels an accusatory finger at the officers. “What possible glory can you hope to win by depriving innocent men of their livelihood?”

“It is merely their latest and most cowardly method of torturing us,” I interpose, fighting back bitter tears. “It is evident that the Commune’s intention is to separate our family from the people who are most attached to us and in whom we continue to place our trust.”

“Silence!” bellows Monsieur Mathieu, the taller of the two commissioners. His face has become the color of a ripe persimmon. “The alarm guns have been fired!” He points to the window. “Do you hear that? The tocsin is still ringing its call to arms. The enemy is at your doors, baying like wolves for blood—anyone’s blood—and demanding heads. Will it be yours that they take first?”

Mathieu’s words send chills along my spine. But they do not
lessen my desire to protect an innocent man, about to suffer for the sins of his sovereigns. “Monsieur Mathieu, if the situation is so dire that the prisons are being broken open and the inhabitants cut down like summer wheat, by arresting Monsieur Hüe tonight you sentence him to death.”

By now the commissioners have each grapsed one of the valet’s arms to haul him away. “If you wish to demonstrate good faith, at least take him to the lockup of the Commune,” Louis urges, in a final effort to preserve his lackey’s life. “If I cannot stop you from imprisoning him, at the very least I beg of you to guarantee his life.”

The men look to Monsieur Daujon. After a few moments he nods his head. “Take him to the Commune.”

Monsieur Hüe clasps the king’s hands and bends his head to kiss them. “Sire, is there anything more I can do for you?” he murmurs.

“
Oui
, monsieur. Stay alive.”

“Et vous aussi, Votre Majesté.”

Beyond our walls, the carnage continues throughout the night. Word reaches us the following morning that the Bicêtre, Salpêtrière, and La Force prisons have been emptied, and the detainees slaughtered like livestock. Commissioner Manuel assures us that the princesse de Lamballe has survived. Under the pretext of visiting the green market, Monsieur Turgy is willing to risk his own life to deliver a message to her, if he can find her. His cousin, a Madame Bault, is employed at La Force.

A few hours later, he returns, his complexion a sickly shade of green.

“Did you find the princesse?” I ask, desperate for news. “And Madame de Tourzel—and Pauline?” If La Force has been emptied, what is their fate?

But he begins to speak of little boys instead, stories he has heard in the streets about urchins from the Bicêtre which, along with the Salpêtrière, incarcerates a disproportionate number of humanity’s fallen souls: children, beggars, and prostitutes. Turgy is shaking, raging against the horrors he has witnessed today. As if yesterday’s carnage had not been vicious enough, now the monsters—women as well as men—are butchering children.

“I saw a boy—perhaps he was the son of one of the whores; he could not have been older than monsieur le dauphin—being torn limb from limb. The swarthy men with no sleeves dragged him out of La Force by his legs, his little head bumping along the cobbles. He was battered and bruised but still he did not die. Then the little boy was set upon by the mob, stabbed from all sides, and still he clung to life. A woman offered me her knife and asked if I wanted to participate. I didn’t know how to say no without imperiling myself so I told her that she was doing a fine job without me. At the sudden crack of a pistol I nearly jumped out of my skin and saw that someone had shot the child in the head. As the light went out of the beggar boy’s eyes, he was surrounded by a halo of blood. ‘At that age it is hard to let go of life,’ said his executioner casually, as if to explain why he needed to discharge the fatal shot. When I left, they were pissing on his corpse.”