Confessions of Marie Antoinette (58 page)

BOOK: Confessions of Marie Antoinette

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The marquis de Favras was indeed summarily executed for
being a member of the nobility (although technically it was for plotting to sneak the royal family out of Paris—except that the royal family knew nothing about it!) years before the guillotine was put to use decapitating aristocrats simply for having blue blood.

The disastrous events of the family’s ill-starred flight to Montmédy are as I described them. Louis really did get out of the hackney and wander about the outskirts of Paris to help hunt for the berline—imagine if he’d been seen! The party really did get turned around in the streets getting out of the city, the broken axle incident actually occurred, and Léonard Hautier really did tell the cavalry not to show up, although if the royal family hadn’t wasted so much time getting lost in the first place, the
friseur
’s frazzled message might have been moot.

Some of what Louis’s valet Hanet Cléry tells Marie Antoinette right after the king’s death, conveying his last words to her, comes from Louis’s Last Will and Testament, but I wanted the queen to be aware of them then and there, and they fit nicely within the moment. Louis did, however, give his wedding ring to Cléry to hand to Marie Antoinette, saying, “Poor princesse; I promised her a crown. Please tell her that I leave her with sorrow.”

It is also true that the vendors in the marketplace provided the choicest meat and produce to the staff at the Conciergerie when they were informed that the food was for “the poor queen,” putting the lie to the historical contention, as well as that perpetuated by the revolutionaries during Marie Antoinette’s lifetime, that absolutely everyone from the lower social orders detested her.

And as Marie Antoinette was transported in the jouncing tumbrel through the rue Saint-Honoré en route to the guillotine, a baby in his mother’s arms really did blow her a kiss. Even now I get a lump in my throat writing about it.

As for Marie Antoinette’s last letter, written to her sister-in-law Élisabeth from the Conciergerie just hours before her death, I
translated it from the original French and debated whether to include it in the novel. It is hardly a literary masterpiece, and from a levelheaded editorial perspective somewhat stops the forward momentum of the narrative at a time when we are hastening to the guillotine. Then again, it might be just the right moment to step back and take a breath.

Marie Antoinette’s correspondence has been an integral part of this trilogy and her last letter is indicative of her final thoughts—a bit random and disordered—as well as her thought processes themselves. My interpretation of both the phrasing and the content is that despite her efforts to convey a certain level of tranquility, to convince Élisabeth that she was at peace with the inevitable, underneath it she was desperate to unburden herself of a few things and did not want to die without doing so. So, while her letter will never enter an epistolary pantheon, after she has so generously shared every detail of her life with me for the past several years, it seemed churlish not to give her the last word.

Vive la reine. Vive la reine martyre
.

Questions and Topics for Discussion

1. It’s almost axiomatic that History demands a scapegoat when something goes wrong. In Marie Antoinette’s case, the “arrogant Austrian,” the “selfish spendthrift,” made the perfect target for the revolutionary demagogues. How often throughout history has the outsider, the “other,” been blamed for the failure, for example, of a nation’s economy? Discuss examples, past and present.

2. Historians have debated for more than two centuries as to whether Marie Antoinette had a love affair with Count Axel von Fersen, and if so, how far it went on a scale of platonic to sexual. Do you think they had a relationship? If so, how intense do you think it was? Do you think Louis knew about it? Do you think he forgave Marie Antoinette? Do you think she forgave herself?

3. During the ill-fated flight to the frontier on the night of June 20–21, 1791, why do you think Louis insisted that Axel leave the royal family at Bondy, even though Axel was the
mastermind of the plot to escape? Tragically, there was a domino effect of mishaps and screwups with the plans from that point on. Do you think that if Louis had allowed Count von Fersen to remain on the coachman’s box, the family might have made it to safety?

4. The French nicknamed Louis XVI
“Le Désiré”
when he began his reign. He ended up deposed and executed. Do you think Louis was a good ruler? Why or why not?

5. If you had lived during the years 1789–1794 would you have been a revolutionary, a royalist, or more like the characterization of the young sculptress Louison Chabry, who was neither wealthy nor impoverished, and who struggled to comprehend what the massive social and political changes were all about and tried to make sense of them?

6. What do you make of the fact that some of the most bloodthirsty revolutionaries, specifically Jacques Hébert and Maximilien Robespierre, dressed not like the
sans-culottes
they identified with politically, but like the aristocrats they condemned? Discuss this in conjunction with the numerous condemnations of Marie Antoinette’s ostentatious wardrobe and the accusations of her extravagant expenditures on it.

7. Biographers and historians have claimed that Madame Royale, Marie Antoinette’s daughter Marie Thérèse, whom she nicknamed Mousseline, was as a child, very cold to her mother and as an adult extremely unforgiving of Marie Antoinette’s character. Marie Thérèse’s own memoirs are indeed not very charitable toward her mother. What do you make of this and why do you think Madame Royale felt this
way? Do you think her feelings are justified? Do you believe Marie Antoinette loved her daughter as much as she did her sons?

8. In August 1791, in a letter to the comte de Mercy-Argenteau, Marie Antoinette penned a remarkable sentence, which those who believe her to have been insensible of the turmoil around her might find to be surprisingly self-aware. She wrote, “Tribulation first makes one realize what one is.” What does that statement mean to you in light of her life’s journey and where it had led her by this point? How did tribulation both affect and change Marie Antoinette? If you were in her shoes, how might you have coped with the same tribulations?