Confessions of Marie Antoinette (4 page)

It is the king himself who calls for smelling salts. As the courtiers look about helplessly, no one wishing to be the first to offer a vinaigrette to the young sculptress, the hubbub of raised voices carries all the way from the courtyard. One cry pierces the air so distinctly
that it feels as Damiens’s dagger must have done to the heart of Louis Quinze. “We will bring back the queen’s head on the end of a pike!”

All eyes turn from the fallen mademoiselle to me. I stand up straighter and hold my head high. I do not want these market women to see that I am afraid. They do not see me bite my lower lip. Louis sighs with the weight of all France upon his broad shoulders and turns back to the woman collapsed on the floor. “Have you come to harm my wife?” he asks her pointedly. I do not hear her reply.

I hear Louis promise the delegation of women that they shall have bread—they shall
all
have bread—from the palace stores. We have plenty of it, he tells them. Let it not be said that the king of France does not comprehend his subjects’ pain.

One of the marquis de Lafayette’s aides-de-camp presses his way through the audience. During the American colonies’ revolution against the British the redheaded marquis had been a general in their Continental Army serving under George Washington, the man who has just been elected the infant nation’s first president. Regrettably, Lafayette returned with the rebellious fire still pulsing in his blood. After the Bastille was stormed in July he answered the call, not to help the crown, but to aid our enemies instead, accepting the appointment as commander in chief of the Garde Nationale, the militia formed by the citizens.

Elbowing his way to the king, “A word,
Majesté
!” he demands. Louis holds up his hand, but the adjutant insists, “Sire, it cannot wait.” He announces that the commanding officer of the Paris Garde Nationale is marching on Versailles with thirty thousand men at arms, including the former French Guards, soldiers once loyal to the crown.

As the comte de La Tour du Pin demands the immediate removal
of the market women and the Assembly deputies, Saint-Priest reiterates his recommendation for the royal family to remove to Rambouillet. Maximilien Robespierre and I cross paths as he exits the antechamber and our eyes lock. His are black and cold, like those of a fish. Someone jostles me and presses a paper into my hand, but I cannot, dare not, read it in the middle of a crowd.

The king quits the Oeil de Boeuf leaving a sea of confused courtiers in his wake, and the two of us repair with the ministers to his private apartments. In the quiet of Louis’s library, Saint-Priest actually throws himself at his sovereign’s feet and passionately urges a decision. “If you are taken to Paris tomorrow,
Majesté
, you will lose your crown!” The clock atop the mantel strikes the hour of eight. For the second time today, my husband looks to me for advice before he will commit to a course of action.

There is no thought of leaving him, especially as the peril draws even closer. “We go now,” I say. I kiss his cheek and turn, racing downstairs to the children’s apartments where I instruct Madame de Tourzel and one of their
sous-gouvernantes
to pack as much as they can. “
Vite, vite!
We depart in a quarter hour!”

By the next chime of the clock the family, including the king’s sister, the princesse Élisabeth, are gathered in the hall below the Salon d’Hercule by the foot of the grand marble staircase. My son and daughter are wrapped in cloaks of inky blue wool and cling to the skirts of their gentle aunt. Madame Élisabeth’s lower lip trembles with fear. Thinking first of the safety of my children, I usher them outdoors into the night. As we set foot in the Cour de Marbre, a jeer rises. The Place d’Armes just outside the gates is crowded with market women. They raise their weapons in the air, holding aloft scythes and pikes. I am grateful that the king’s eyesight is so poor he cannot see these implements raised against us.

We scuttle along the edge of the buildings like rats, headed for
the royal stables where our carriages await. “A fugitive king, a fugitive king,” Louis mutters, as if the phrase is the most distasteful to ever leave his mouth.

But no sooner are the gates to the stables thrown wide than the mob cries as one hysterical, furious voice, “The king is leaving!” They surge toward our coaches and hurl their bodies upon the carriages, cutting the harnesses and leading the terrified horses whinnying into the night. We are trapped. Saint-Priest and the comte de La Tour du Pin, who have come to see us depart, offer their own carriages as a last resort. They are harnessed beyond the gates of the Orangerie. If we can manage to make it there without hindrance, we can hope for a more discreet exit from Versailles. But the mob now presses toward us. The regiment of Flemish mercenaries—the only thing that stands between us and this sea of human vitriol—does all they can to keep them in abeyance without firing a single round, for Louis still forbids any attack upon his subjects. There is nothing for us to do but retreat.

Back upstairs, in the State Apartments, my heart beats beneath my stays, but I betray no emotion. I must be strong for everyone. They have enough fear of their own. Every candle is lit, as if to stave off the demons of the night by creating a perpetual day. Some courtiers pace the Galerie des Glaces, their red heels echoing upon the gleaming parquet. Others sit in the Games Room, playing hand after hand of piquet or écarté, laying their cards and markers upon the green baize with eerie deliberation, as if by prolonging the game they forestall whatever fate lies in store for us.

At eleven o’clock Louis and I receive a number of courtiers as well as a handful of officers, among them Count von Fersen. Axel’s chin juts angrily and his eyes, their color so changeable, are steel gray tonight, conveying much, even as he speaks little.

“Give me an order, Your Majesty, authorizing us to take horses
from the stable so we might defend the royal family if you are under attack,” he insists.

I look at my husband but he is deep in conversation with deputy Mounier, who is still pressing him to sign the “Declaration of the Rights of Man.”

“I will consent to give the order on one condition,” I tell Axel. “If His Majesty’s life is in danger, you must use it promptly. But if I alone am in peril, you will not use it.” Count von Fersen gives me an inexorable look and tears spring to my eyes. “Those are my orders,” I repeat.

I had already informed the marquise de Tourzel to convey the dauphin and Madame Royale to the king’s private apartments, should she feel the slightest cause for alarm.

“But where will you spend the night, dear sister?” Madame Élisabeth’s blue eyes are red-rimmed from crying. Her
dame d’honneur
, the marquise de Bombelles, seems powerless to comfort her. “Won’t you be safest with the king?”

I know what these market women want. By now I have read the anonymous note I was passed in the Oeil de Boeuf.
YOU WILL BE MURDERED AT SIX IN THE MORNING
. But the
poissardes
and their confederates still trust Louis. I feel my chest constrict within my stays. “I know they have come from Paris to demand my head,” I tell Madame Élisabeth. “But I have learned from my mother not to fear death and I shall await it with firmness. I prefer to expose myself to danger, if there is any, and protect His Majesty and the children of France. I shall sleep alone tonight.”

Yet sleep remains a long way off. His eyes brimming with tears, Louis reluctantly agrees to sign the “Declaration of the Rights of Man” and deputy Mounier watches each stroke of the pen like a vulture eyeing fresh carrion. I have never seen my husband looking more defeated. I stand behind his chair and wrap my arms about
his shoulders, pressing my lips to the top of his head. Although his face betrays no perspiration, his scalp is damp, sticky with fear.

Shortly after the clocks strike the hour of midnight, the mud-spattered marquis de Lafayette arrives at the palace, so exhausted from riding posthaste from Paris that he limps into the Salon de Mars. His face is drawn, drained of its customary ruddiness, and he struggles to remain on his feet. With a dramatic sweep of his arm worthy of the great Clairval he announces to Louis that he has left his men in the Place d’Armes. “Sire, I thought it best to die here at Your Majesty’s feet than to perish pointlessly in the shameful light of the torches at the Place de Grève.”

“Are you turning your coat yet again,
monsieur le général
?” I inquire of the commander of the Garde Nationale. “Have you abandoned your citizens’ militia and come back to offer your assistance to your king?”

Lafayette shakes his head. “They want to be heard,” he tells Louis. “They want to know that you have listened to their concerns and that action will be taken.”

My husband splays his hands. “They demanded bread and I have already promised it from our own stores. It seems imprudent to dispense it in the damp dead of night. At daybreak there will be bread aplenty. You may reassure them of this.” He looks imploringly at the general. “I have always been a man of my
parole
. A man of honor.” He lowers his voice to a whisper that could still be heard on the stage of the Comédie-Française. “But they must promise not to think of harming the queen.”

“Tell her to set her mind at rest and go to bed,” Lafayette says to the king. He has convinced Louis to entrust him with the security of the palace. The French Guards will resume the posts they deserted a month ago. Is this wise?

Louis retires for the night as well. I cannot imagine how he will sleep. I do not wish to endanger my women, so at two o’clock I urge
them to leave me. My first waiting woman, Madame Thibaut, and Madame Campan’s sister Madame Auguié are in attendance this night, along with their own maids. But they will not depart even after I insist that they go to the room where my other ladies have gathered. Madame Auguié is weeping. She looks to Madame Thibaut for reassurance as she reminds me that there are thirty thousand troops and ten thousand brigands, with forty cannons mustered outside our gates. “Once upon a time they would have protected Your Majesty. Now the world has turned upside down and it is just the four of us,” she sobs, indicating Madame Thibaut and their maids. “
We
are your only
sauvegarde
now. It would be wrong of us to desert you.”

We compromise. I will not place their lives at risk by allowing them to sleep in my bedchamber. And so they drag four armchairs outside my door and prepare to spend the night in these
fauteuils
. The muffled sound of tattoos beaten on sodden drumskins reverberates from the Place d’Armes where the market women and soldiers are encamped, a hoarse, frightening call to protest that has lasted without surcease through the night. I do not think I will be able to sleep after all.

I lie upon the featherbeds gazing at the underside of the pink and gold brocade canopy. With no comprehension of how much time has passed, suddenly I bolt upright, my eyes blinking open, my heart pounding. Below my windows, a commotion seems to be coming from the direction of the Orangerie. A single chime strikes and I look at the clock. Half past five. My feet bare, I rush to the bedroom doors, clutching the thin cambric of my night rail to my breast. Madame Thibaut jumps out of her chair, then swiftly rearranges her skirts and sinks into a curtsy.

“Did you hear that?” I ask her. The other women are now wide awake.

“Some of the marchers must have made their way to the parterres,”
she answers. “With nowhere else to sleep, perhaps they sought refuge on the terraces.” The regiment of French Guards, so newly reinstated, had been assigned to patrol the gates and entrances to the parks. But are they to be trusted, despite the
général
’s assurances? Had Lafayette been naïve, deceived, or an outright liar? “I think it is safe to go back to bed,
Majesté
,” says Madame Thibaut. “In any case, the men of the
gardes du corps
are stationed in the hall. Try to sleep, madame,” she adds gently, closing the heavy wooden doors.

As the clock strikes six I hear a fearful pounding. My ladies throw open the doors to my bedchamber. Their faces are drained of color. Madame Auguié is hysterical. “Rise, Your Majesty! They are coming up the marble staircase—hundreds of them—armed with pikes and muskets and broomsticks and knives. They are headed through the Galerie des Glaces, making straight for your bedchamber.” The two maids cry for help and frantically wave their arms to simultaneously stave off the stampede and summon the royal bodyguard.

“It is as if someone has given them a map of the palace,” adds Madame Thibaut. “Otherwise, how would they know exactly where you sleep?”

Fractured phrases reach our ears. “Kill! Kill!” “No quarter!” “… make a
cocarde
from her entrails!”

“There is no time to dress, madame!” urges Madame Auguié. “
Vite, vite
—you must make for His Majesty’s
petits appartements
.”

They open the doors to my wardrobe and pull out the first petticoat they find, along with a wrapper or
lévite
, a loose-fitting dressing gown of pale yellow and cream striped silk. There is no time to search for stays. From a drawer I grab a pair of white stockings and a fichu but cannot stop to don them. Madame Thibaut pulls a black velvet hat with a white plume from the top shelf of the wardrobe
and thrusts it in my other hand, while Madame Auguié shouts “Shoes!” and gives me the first pair of black satin heels she finds.

The din of the approaching mob increases, their resounding footsteps augmented by guttural shouts, bloodcurdling screams, and the sounds of splintering wood, shattering glass and porcelain.

I remind myself to keep my wits, though my bedroom threatens to become a blur of rose and gold. My hands are full of accessories and so I use my shoulder to press against the secret panel beside my bed, thrusting my weight against it as I fumble for the hidden latch that will release the door.

“We must have the bitch’s heart!” “Where is she?” I hear, the voices growing closer. My women are now right behind me and we disappear behind the door into the passage that connects the queen’s bedchamber to Louis’s rooms. What a stroke of brilliance the comte de Mercy had to have suggested its construction all those years ago! Who could ever have foreseen that the secret passage intended to facilitate the
creation
of life, that of the children of France, would one day play a role in
saving
mine?