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Authors: Juliet Grey

Tags: #Fiction, #Historical, #Romance, #General, #Biographical

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BOOK: Confessions of Marie Antoinette
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Soon, dozens of our periwigged guards in their blue coats with white facings, begin to stack gilded and brocaded furniture. As armchairs are precariously perched atop tables and heavy sideboards are rolled into place, blocking doorways, the comte de La Tour du Pin thunders, “We will not let ourselves be captured here, perhaps massacred, without defending ourselves!” Amid the mass of blue uniforms heaving furniture to and fro is a tall figure in a bottle-green coat, his light brown hair barely powdered.

“Axel,” I murmur under my breath, wondering how I have been unaware of his presence until now. I cannot greet him without drawing attention to the act itself. But knowing each other as we do, the mere fact that he is the only courtier—and he is not even a Frenchman—who is willing to aid the soldiers in their efforts to safeguard us is enough to demonstrate the depth of his feelings, not only for me, but for Louis as well. I pray that he will turn around so that I might catch his eye and convey the contents of my heart, but Axel is intent on his task. He balances an armchair upholstered in sea-green brocade upon an inlaid chest, which already sits atop a
table, and orders a trio of guards to help him push everything against the closed doors.

I am concerned that the children of France will be frightened by the commotion, so I hasten to my library, retreating into my private suite of rooms through a doorway cleverly concealed by the damasked wall covering. I find the four-year-old dauphin Louis Charles happily sprawled on the carpet, playing with his older sister Madame Royale, under the watchful eye of their new governess the marquise de Tourzel. My son has nicknamed her Madame Sévère.

Louise de Tourzel rises when I enter the room.

“Maman!” The dauphin looks up and grins at me, gripping a yellow wooden ball in a chubby fist. Mousseline frowns and, now that I am in the room, pointedly turns her back on her brother. Nearly eleven, my daughter makes it clear that she would rather not be cooped up with a little boy.

Catching the look of concern in my eyes the marquise approaches and I take her hands, drawing her close enough to whisper, “Who can say what will happen, but the children’s routine should not be disrupted, unless of course—”

There is a scratching at the door. Madame Campan opens it to admit a footman who pauses breathlessly at the threshold. Spying the royal children, he whispers urgently, “
Votre Majesté
, the king has returned!”

I sweep my son and daughter into my arms and press my lips to their sweet brows. Campan and Tourzel curtsy to me as I head to the door, placing my finger to my lips as a reminder not to unduly alarm the children. But how much longer, I wonder, can I shield them from the events that threaten our doorstep?

I glide through the State Rooms, entering the Salon de Mars to see Louis, still wearing his tall hat, his hunting suit of olive-hued velvet spattered with mud. His ministers cluster around him like
colorful lichens on a stone wall. I spy the powdered head and incongruously dark eyebrows of the loudest speaker, Jacques Necker, who strains to be heard over their raised voices. The council chamber now honors its celestial namesake; it has become a war room.

“You
must
stay here, Sire.” Necker glares at the comte de Saint-Priest, Secrétaire d’État of the royal household. “Think of how it would appear to the mob if you were to flee!” he insists.

What have they been discussing in my absence?

“I was not the one who suggested that His Majesty abandon the throne,” Saint-Priest retorts hotly. “I merely said that—for their own safety—the
queen
and the
children of France
should be taken under escort to Rambouillet. If you were listening, you would have heard my proposal that the
king
ride with his bodyguard of eight hundred men and the two hundred troops of the Chasseurs des Évêchés to meet the advancing Parisians. A force of a thousand men is confrontation, messieurs, not retreat!”

It would not be a long ride to the Île de France; Rambouillet is not far. Still, I worry about making the journey. Six years earlier Louis had purchased the château, a medieval fortress in its early days, for its location at the perimeter of a lush game forest. There, the children and I would be secure, at least for the time being.

The comte de La Tour du Pin clearly agrees with Saint-Priest; however, being Minister of War, he sees ahead, as if everything is an enormous game of chess. “But it is said that there are some six thousand on the march. When a thousand men stand to be outnumbered, you have only two alternatives: to attack with the element of surprise and then fire upon them, and to have another plan, should the first one fail.”

“I will not order the blood of any Frenchmen shed—especially on my account,” Louis says bluntly. “And you tell me these are disgruntled
women
. Under no circumstances will I give the order to fire upon women!”

The War Minister inclines his head. “With your permission,
Majesté
, these are very
angry
women. Now, if by some misfortune the rebels will not turn back, nor will they heed reason, then, as you will be under heavy guard, you will have adequate time to withdraw to Rambouillet. From there, you and the royal family can set off for Normandy, placing greater distance between yourselves and the disturbance.”

I spare a beseeching glance at the portraits of Louis XV and my late mother, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, suspended on opposite walls of the vast salon, gazing at each other from a sea of blood red damask. What would they do in our place: Louis the monarch who would dither and delegate and my autocratic Maman, always so certain, so decided about everything?

“I don’t want to compromise anyone,” Louis insists. Does he refer to our safety, to the ministers’ conflicting advice, or to the goodwill of the people? Within the enfilade of State Apartments hundreds of courtiers murmur amongst themselves. Marquises and duchesses hide behind their ivory-handled fans, snapped open and fluttering nervously. None dares address me.

The men continue to debate the subject as the hour strikes four. At the sound of the chime I turn my head to look out the window toward the parterres where the topiaries are silhouetted against the encroaching dusk. What will the end of day bring? A tingling creeps up the small of my back and I shiver.

Suddenly Louis’s voice rises above those of his sparring ministers. “Messieurs, I will make no decision unless Her Majesty agrees.” The Mars Salon grows suddenly silent, the hubbub diminishing to a hush in an instant. All heads turn as one.

I have but one thought at this moment. I look across the room at my husband, my gaze meeting his, although with his shortsightedness I doubtless resemble no more than a silvery gray blur. “I do not wish the king to incur a danger that I cannot share,” I say.

“Then for the nonce we remain,” says Louis with finality. “And remain together.” The comte de La Tour du Pin emits an exasperated roar.

In every room the clocks of marble and gold tick and chime as the hours inexorably proceed. By five o’clock we receive word that the mob, fortified on brandy, had stopped at the National Assembly, the entity formed by the Third Estate this past June. They call themselves a people’s government, but thus far all they preach is hatred and intolerance and all they seem to wish for is blood. Not one of them knows how to govern; none has formed an acceptable solution to the nation’s ills, and yet they loathe the monarchy, blaming it, and us, for their every misfortune.

News arrives from the mob’s effort to meet with the Assembly. Evidently we have been misinformed. There are men amid the rabble as well, including an anatomy professor from the University of Paris, a Docteur Guillotin. Not every marcher is disenfranchised and impoverished. Someone has goaded them into this act of rebellion; each footstep taken by a fishwife in wooden sabots is shared by an intellectual in buckled shoes.

“What more do they desire?” Louis asks the messenger from the National Assembly. “They now have freedom of the press. The Church has been forced to forgo lucrative rents and revenues. The perquisites of the nobility have been abolished—all within the last three months. And now this new hubbub about the ‘Rights of Man’—what more do they want?” he repeats, bewildered.

It is incomprehensible. Everything is moving so fast. Yet for the rebels, the world cannot change quickly enough.

“They are hungry, Your Majesty,” replies the messenger. “They believe the Assembly contains enemies of the people who are the cause of the famine. They say wicked men are giving money and bonds to the millers so they will not grind their grain. When the
president of the Assembly demanded specific names, they told him that the Archbishop of Paris was one of them. At this, the deputy from Arras, Monsieur Robespierre, urged the women to climb upon the benches and shout for bread.” The messenger casts a desperate glance in my direction. “It is not good for the queen, Sire. One of the fishwives pulled a hunk of black bread from her filthy apron and announced to everyone that”—he pauses, and inhales a gulp of air.

“Continuez, s’il vous plaît, monsieur,”
I say softly.

His eyes dart anxiously about the room. “She said she wanted to make
l’Autrichienne
swallow it before she wrings her neck.”

The room falls silent again, but only for a moment. Then the uproar begins anew as every courtier sputters in outrage and every minister tenders his opinion at the top of his voice. But they are drowned out by a clamor at the gates.

Outside, darkness is falling and a heavy mist blankets the sky. A member of the royal guard informs us that hundreds, if not thousands, of women are pressing up against the iron bars, demanding entry. Regardless of their cries, I know that what they really crave is my blood. I would be a fool not to fear them.

“I cannot ignore them,” Louis insists. “A king is the father of his people, and even the rebellious are my children. If they are merely disgruntled market women, I see no present reason for panic.” He agrees to meet a delegation of five of them, chosen from among the mob. They are to be escorted to the Oeil de Boeuf by deputies from the Assembly. I pray that none conceals a weapon that will not be detected in advance by our bodyguards.

Yet when the delegation arrives I fret that perhaps there was more to fear from the deputies. The man from Arras, introduced to Louis as Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre, seems a stranger to smiles. His face is as insolent as a rat’s and his
bearing and manner of dress are more fastidious than that of many courtiers. The spills of white lace at his throat and cuffs are pristine, as are his hose, and his shoe buckles are polished to such a sheen that they glimmer in the candlelight. As he crosses the vast hall, Robespierre’s dark eyes dart avidly, if not enviously, about the Galerie des Glaces, as if to make note of the magnificent trappings of the monarchy he so despises. And yet he dresses like a marquis. It is enough to convince me that he cannot be trusted.

Scurrying alongside Monsieur Robespierre is one of the more moderate deputies, Monsieur Mounier, who takes a moment to bow to me when the man from Arras is looking elsewhere, most likely at his own reflection in the myriad mirrors. “Robespierre is piqued, Your Majesty,” Mounier whispers loudly, “because word reached the Assembly this afternoon that the king has refused to ratify the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man.’ ” He speaks as he trots along the parquet, struggling to keep pace with the rest of the delegation, even as he lags behind to communicate this turn of events. “After all, the Assembly ratified it on the twenty-sixth of August and they have been waiting more than a month for His Majesty’s imprimatur. Their patience has reached its limit. But I do believe that violence may be averted if the king can be persuaded to sign it immediately.”

I blanch. I have read this document and recall with clarity what the people demand: Sovereignty residing not within the monarchy but in the “nation,” whatever that means? Citizens determining of their own accord whether or not to pay taxes? “Today?”

“You must convince the king,
Majesté
. It may be the only way.”

“Monsieur, I would never attempt to persuade my husband to do something that runs contrary to our sacred belief. Louis Seize rules by divine right. The members of your National Assembly are nothing more than self-anointed usurpers, and if the ‘principle of sovereignty,’ according to the ‘Rights of Man,’ resides in
every
man
and woman, then you have nothing but anarchy.
Who
therefore
reigns
? I will tell you, Monsieur Mounier: Chaos.”

We reach the end of the Hall of Mirrors and round the corner into the Oeil de Boeuf where Louis, surrounded by guards, permits the market women to have their say. I hear him asking each of them about their métier, their husbands and children. He speaks kindly to them, without condescension. Instead he offers paternal solicitude. There is genuine concern in his pale blue eyes. A pretty young woman in a leather apron smeared with mud, her brown curls spilling out of a
tricolore
tied about her head like a scarf, tells him her name is Louison Chabry. “I am a worker in sculpture,” she says, putting the lie to the rumor that we have been set upon by thousands of
poissardes
. “We are hungry,” she adds, clutching her chisel. I eye it warily, fearing that she might prove a madwoman who at any moment might attack him. My thoughts are not so unfounded; Louis XV was nearly assassinated by a deranged man right in the Cour Royale.

“The millers are not grinding,” the girl says. “We have no bread. I have not eaten for two days.” Mademoiselle Chabry’s gaze darts around the Oeil de Boeuf, taking in the grandeur of the salon, the vast marble pilasters, the unusual ox-eye window that gives the anteroom its name, the enormous chandelier fashioned from thousands of glittering crystals. “Your head, Sire,” she murmurs. “The same profile I see on every coin!” She is clearly overwhelmed in the presence of the monarch, by his own majesty and by the splendor of Versailles. Her eyes roll back in her head as she sinks to her knees and a moment later she is lying on the floor, supported by her sisters in rebellion.

BOOK: Confessions of Marie Antoinette
9.76Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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