The Queen's Confession Part 30

I s.h.i.+vered. And I forced myself to say: "What else?"

"Then, Madame, a man dressed as a market-man approached me; he had his hat pulled low over his eyes; he seized my other arm and said: 'Yes, tell her over and over again that it will not be with these States as with the others, which brought no good to the people. Tell her that the nation is too enlightened in 1789 not to make something more of them and that there will not now be seen a deputy of the Tiers etat making a speech with one knee on the ground. Tell her this, do you hear me?'"

"So that is what they are saying?"

"Yes, Madame, and when you appeared on the balcony ... they talked across me to each other, but it was really to me."

"And they said?"

"The woman in the veil said: 'The d.u.c.h.ess is not with her.' And the man answered: 'No, but she is still at Versailles. She is working underground, molelike, but we shall know how to dig her out.'"

"And that was all, Madame Campan?"

"They moved away from me then, Madame, and I hurried into the palace."

"I am glad you told me. Please never fail to talk to me of these things."

"Madame, I should believe I had failed in my duty if I had not done so."

I pressed her hand. "At times like this," I said with some emotion, "it is good to have friends."

When I told the King what Madame Campan had heard, he listened gravely.

"There will always be some to speak against us," he said. "Perhaps we should be more surprised when we discover people who speak for us," I retorted bitterly. "We must leave, Louis. It is no longer safe for us to stay."

"How could we leave Versailles?"

"Easily. By slipping away with the children and those of our friends whom we trust."

"Artois should have left by now. I saw the hostile looks directed toward him. There were cries against him and I heard one cry of: The King forever, in spite of you and your opinions, Monseigneur.' And my brother looked haughtily indifferent and they did not like that. I was afraid for him. Yes, Artois must go quickly."

"Artois ... and Gabrielle. They are not safe here. We are not safe here."

"I am the King, my dear. It is my duty to be with my people."

"And your children?"

"The people expect the Dauphin to remain at Versailles."

"I have seen murder in their faces; I have heard it in their voices."

"It will be a matter for the Council to decide."

"Then, call the Council. There can be no delay."

"I believe we should stay."

I talked to him of the dangers which beset us and our children. We should not stay if we valued our lives. I had everything packed. My jewels particularly; they were worth a fortune.

"To where should we fly?"

"To Metz. I have thought of nothing else for days. We could go to Metz and then there would be a civil war in which we should subdue these rebels."

"It is for the Council to decide," insisted Louis.

And the Council met and they talked through the day and night. I paced up and down my apartment I had told my husband that we must leave. There should be no delay. I had ordered my friends to leave as soon as it was dark because I knew it was unsafe to stay. Unsafe for us, more so than for them.

And Louis was listening to the Council. They would decide. But I had impressed on him the need for flight. He could not ignore my pleadings. He always longed to please me.

At length he came out of the council room. I ran to him and looked up into his face.

He smiled gently: "The King," he said, "must stay with his people."

I turned angrily away, tears of frustration filling my eyes. But his mind was made up. Whatever else happened. He and I must stay and so must our Dauphin.

Night had come. There were sounds of m.u.f.fled activity in the courtyard - low voices; the impatient pawing of a horse's hoof.

They were about to go - all those gay friends who had been the companions of my carefree days. I had been alarmed for the Abbe Vermond, who had aroused the anger of the people, because he had lived close to me. I had told him that he must go back to Austria and not return to France until things were happier.

He was an old man, the Abbe. He would have liked to tell me that he would never leave me. But the terror was creeping closer and it was reflected in the faces of them all.

So he too would leave and make his way to Austria.

I had said my last farewell to them all, those of our family and household whom we had ordered to save themselves by leaving Versailles and Paris behind them.

Gabrielle and her family were among them. Dear Gabrielle, who was so loath to go, who had been my constant companion for so long, who had loved me wholeheartedly and had been my true friend; she had suffered with me on the death of my children; she had helped me nurse them, had rejoiced in their childish triumphs, mourned their childish sorrows.

I could not bear to lose her. An impulse came to rush down to that courtyard to implore her not to leave me. But how could I bring her back to danger. I must not see her, not tempt her to remain, not tempt myself. I loved this woman. All I could do for Her now was to pray that she might reach safety.

The tears were streaming down my cheeks. I picked up a paper and wrote to her.

"Good-bye, dearest of friends. It is a dreadful and necessary word: Good-bye."

I laughed bitterly; I had blotted the lines as I always did. But although the handwriting was uneven and shaky, she would understand with what sincerity, what deep and abiding love they had been written.

I sent a page down with the letter, which he was to give to Madame de Polignac in the last seconds before she drove away.

Then I threw myself heavily upon my bed and turned my face away from the light.

I lay listening; and at length I heard the carriages leave.

The great halls were filled with emptiness; silence in the Galerie de Glaces; deathly quiet in the oeil de boeuf, not a sound in the Salon de la Paix. In the mornings we heard Ma.s.s accompanied by a few of our attendants such as Madame Campan and Madame de Tourzel; no fetes, no cards, no banquets. Nothing but this dreary waiting for something more terrible than we could even imagine.

Every day news brought to us of the riots in Paris, and not only in Paris; it was throughout the country. Mobs were raiding the chateaux, burning and looting; no one was working, and so no bread was brought into Paris. The bakers' shops were shuttered and bands of hungry people collected outside and tore down the shutters invading the shops, searching for bread and, when they could not find it, setting fire to buildings and murdering any whom they considered their enemies.

The agitators were busy. Men like Desmoulins were still producing their news-sheets inflaming the people with revolutionary ideas, urging them to revolt against the aristocracy. Copies of the Courrier de Paris et de Versailles and the Patriote Francaise were smuggled in to us. We were dismayed and horrified to read what Marat was writing about us and our kind.

Every day I would wake and wonder whether it would be my last. Each night when I lay down and tried to rest, I wondered whether the mob would come that night, drag me from my bed, and murder me in the most horrible manner it could contrive. In all these sheets my name was prominent. They did not hate the King. They despised him as a weakling ruled by me. I was the harpy, the greatest criminal in this fearful melodrama of Revolution.

Foulon, one of the Ministers of Finance, who had been generally hated for his callous att.i.tude toward the people, was brutally murdered. He had once said that if the people were hungry, they should eat hay. They found him at Viry, dragged him through the streets, stuffed his mouth with hay, hung him on the lanterne and then cut off his head and paraded it through the streets.

His son-in-law Monsieur Berthier was treated in the same way at Compiegne.

I knew that the fate of these two men was due to the fact that Foulon had advised the King to make himself master of the Revolution before the Revolution mastered him.

It was terrible to contemplate the fate of men one had known. I trembled for my dear Gabrielle, who was on her way to the frontier, for I heard that coaches and carriages were being stopped throughout the country, that their occupants were being dragged out and forced to give an account of their ident.i.ty, and if they were proved aristocrats, their throats were cut ... or worse. What would happen to Gabrielle if she were discovered, for her name had been coupled so often with mine.

I dreamed of poor Monsieur Foulon and wondered how his remark about hay had been distorted. They were saying of me that when I had heard the people were demanding bread, I had asked, "Why don't they eat cake?" This was absurd. I had said no such thing.

Madame Sophie had remarked that the people would have to eat pastry crust if they could not get bread. Poor Sophie was always vague and a little odd; she loathed pastry crust; and when she was getting old and ill and near to death, she had made this remark, which was reported and, like so many others, put into my mouth. Nothing was too trivial to bring against me; and nothing too wild. I was, according to the people, capable of the utmost frivolity and folly and yet I was represented as the clever scheming woman.

There was no fighting these libels. The people wanted to believe them.

So pa.s.sed the days of that fearful hot summer. I was trying hard to act normally; to fight the fear which was so often with me.

I tried repeatedly to urge the King to flight. I kept my jewels packed ready. I was certain that we should attempt to escape as our friends had done. I had heard no news of Gabrielle and Artois and I presumed they had reached safety, for if they had been murdered, I should have known.

There were four people of whom I was growing fonder because I realized that their friends.h.i.+p to me was real; and it is at such times that one understands and values such devotion. My dear simple Lamballe, my pious Elisabeth, my children's devoted governess, Madame de Tourzel, and my practical and serious Madame Campan. I was constantly in their company. They risked death, even as I did, but I could not persuade them to leave me.

I think what helped me most was the practical manner in which Madame de Tourzel and Madame Campan went about their duties, as though there had been no change in our fortunes.

I liked to talk to the former about the children and between us we could bring an atmosphere that was almost peaceful into the room.

I talked to the governess of my little anxieties about the Dauphin. "I have seen him start at a sudden noise ... the bark of a dog, for instance."

"He is very sensitive, Madame."

"He is a little violent when angry ... and quick to anger."

"Like all healthy children. But he is good-natured, Madame. And generous."

"Bless him. When I gave him a present, he asked for one for his sister. He has a very generous heart. But I am a little worried about his habit of exaggerating."

"The sign of a fertile imagination, Madame."

"I don't really think he has any notion of his position as Dauphin. But perhaps that is as well. Our children learn all too quickly ..."

We were silent. She must have been wondering, as I was, how quickly he would learn what was happening about us.

A page was at the door.

A visitor to see me. My heart leaped and fluttered uncomfortably. How could I know who was without? How could I know when those people with the faces of bloodthirsty maniacs would be bursting upon me.

I did not ask the name of the visitor. I rose, composing myself.

He was at the door and when I saw him, the reversal of feeling was so overwhelming that I thought I should faint.

He came into the room and took my hands; he kissed them. What did Madame de Tourzel think as she stood there? She bowed, and, turning, left us together.

He was looking at me in silence, as though he were reminding himself of every detail of my face.

I heard myself saying foolishly: "You ... you have come ..."

He did not answer. Why should he? Was it not obvious that he had come?

Then I remembered the horrible cries of the mob, what they had done to friends of the Queen.

"It is not the time to come," I said. "There is great danger here. Everyone is leaving ..."

"That is why I have come," answered Axel.

CHAPTER 22.

"I am beginning to be a little happier, for I can from time to time see my friend freely, which consoles us a little for all the troubles she had to bear, poor woman. She is an angel in her conduct, her courage, and her tenderness. No one has ever known how to love as she does."

-Axel de Fersen to his sister Sophie "I shudder even now at the recollection of the poissardes, or rather furies who wore white ap.r.o.ns which, they screamed out, were to receive the bowels of Marie Antoinette, and that they would make c.o.c.kades of them." "It is true that the a.s.sa.s.sins penetrated to the Queen's bed-chamber and pierced the bed with their swords."

"The poissardes went before and around the carriage of their Majesties crying, 'We shall no longer want bread - we have the baker, the baker's wife and the baker's boy with us.' In the midst of this troop of cannibals the heads of two murdered bodyguards were carried on poles."

-Madame Campan's Memoirs The Tragic October THE PEt.i.t TRIANON HAD BEEN my refuge in the past. It now became my escape from the horrors of reality. In past years in that little paradise I had shut myself away, refusing to take heed of the lessons my mother thrust at me, never listening to the warnings of Mercy and Vermond. Now I would go there and try to forget the rumbling of disaster. I would try to recapture that dream world which I had endeavored to make years ago and in which I still believed that I could have been happy had I achieved it. It was not that I asked a great deal. I told myself that I did not really care for the extravagance, the fine clothes, the diamonds. Had not Rose Bertin been at my elbow to urge me to extravagant follies, had not the court jewelers been so insistent, I should never have thought of buying their goods. No, what I longed for was a happy home with children to care for - above all children - and a husband whom I could love. I loved Louis, in my way; perhaps I should say I had a great affection for him. But just as he was not fitted for the role of King, he was not fitted for that of husband.

The kindest most self-effacing man in the world, his weaknesses were so obvious to me; even when he granted my wishes, I might have respected him more if he had not. He was a man of whom one could be fond but could not entirely respect. He lacked that strength which every woman asks of a man. His people asked it too and he failed to give it to them as he failed to give it to me.

Am I excusing myself for those fevered weeks at the Trianon - those waiting weeks between, that fateful fourteenth of July and the tragic October day which more than any other was a turning point in our lives?

Perhaps I am, but even now, remembering soberly with my life behind me and death so close, looking over my shoulder, I believe I should have acted exactly the same way.

I loved the Trianon more than any place in the world; and the world was cras.h.i.+ng about my shoulders - I was soon to lose the Trianon ... my children ... my life ... So I s.n.a.t.c.hed at that brief idyll. I must fulfill my life. I felt the urgency, the pa.s.sionate need as I never had before.

Axel had left Versailles previously because he had feared the consequences if he stayed at Court; he told me now how he had longed to stay, but that he knew his name was even then being coupled with mine and he knew what harm could befall me if he stayed.

And now? It was different now. The entire picture had changed. I needed him now. I needed every friend I could find; and he a.s.sured me that never in my life would I find a friend such as he was.

"You risk your life staying here," I told him.

"My life is at your service," he answered. "To be risked and lost if need be."

I wept in his arms and said I could not allow it.

He answered that I could not prevent it. I could command him to go, but he would not listen. He had come to stay close to me, closer even than danger.