Confessions of Marie Antoinette (6 page)

More of the bandits have gathered outside our windows. “The king! The king! We wish to see the king!” they roar, demanding that he appear on the balcony. Louis looks to Lafayette. After nineteen years of marriage I know my husband well enough to see that he fears the rabble, aware that they have both betrayed and abused his trust. After meeting with the delegation of market women, moved particularly by the poor young sculptress who had fainted from hunger in his presence, he had ordered the grain stores to be opened and bread disseminated among the sodden hordes, but their storming of the château at daybreak had prevented his plan from being brought to fruition. With the greatest effort, Louis surmounts his trepidation, not wishing to appear craven in the presence of his brother and Lafayette. I wonder whether the pair of them enjoy his trust as well, for neither merits my confidence.

The king throws open the mullioned doors and rushes onto the balcony. Raising his arms, he cries, “My good people, your sovereign craves your mercy—not merely for myself, but for my faithful defenders.” He refers to our pair of unfortunate bodyguards who have paid the ultimate sacrifice. They were brave young men, with families. “Let no more blood be shed on this or any other day.”

After hearing a resounding cheer, followed by, “The queen! The queen on the balcony,”
“Allons, mes enfants,”
I say, taking each of the children of France by the hand. “We will greet our subjects as a family.”

The crowd grows ominously silent, as if a dark cloud has passed over their heads. “The queen alone!” shouts a single voice, high
and shrill. “No children!” My shiver passes all the way through my arms into the small warm hands of my son and daughter. At the sight of so many fearsome people with their weapons raised against us, the children both burst into tears. Madame de Tourzel appears at the window and I usher them indoors, safely into her care.

Below me, a sea of angry faces wear frowns that only moments before were smiles prepared to welcome their king. A cry pierces the morning air announcing that I am an agent of Austria. “Just look how she’s dressed!” the woman adds, and not until this moment do I realize what she means. From where they stand my striped silk
lévite
appears to be yellow and my hat is of course black—the colors of the Hapsburgs. The plume in my hat is the white of the Bourbons and the point where it is affixed is embellished with a black cockade, an emblem worn proudly by France’s aristocracy.

Among the thousands of
poissardes
and market women are a fair number from other walks of life, and I venture a guess that a good many are shop girls, although some of them are arrayed more expensively, if not flamboyantly. Demimondaines. Streetwalkers from the area around the Palais Royal, I assume. Yet others, similarly dressed in gowns of fine white muslin, with tricolor scarves artfully draped like banners across their chests or tied like bandeaux about their curled and powdered locks, convey the impression of wealth. The salons of Paris have been emptied of intellectual women seeking an adventure. These
petites bourgeoises
stand before me, amid their inferiors, including women who troll the coffeehouses and arcades, wearing without irony the same type of gown that just a few years ago the entirety of France derided me for favoring. My
gaulles
, the
chemises à la Reine
, were described as the ultimate luxury for their fragility, and now they are the frock of choice for these harpies who claim them as the ideal garment to
denote classical purity and simplicity, a denouncement of the trappings of wealth by the gown’s distinct lack of embellishment.

I am shocked by the harridans’ brazenness, but mask my emotion from my enemies. They will not know what I am thinking, will not so much as see my lip tremble, or my eyes dart about. It is one of the virtues of a queen. This is what being regal is. Instead, with every ounce of will, I endeavor to transform their hatred to love by acknowledging them and giving credence to their right to assemble here. Despite the fact that they have cried out for my blood. Despite the fact that they have demanded in great detail various parts of my body as though I were a calf they were driving to the slaughterhouse.

And so I sink to my knees in a deep court curtsy, inclining my head in a show of profound humility. The roar diminishes to a murmur. And when I rise, I lay my arms across my bosom and raise my eyes heavenwards, offering a prayer to God to spare my husband and children as well as myself. Out of the corner of my eye I spy a man in the crowd raising a musket to his shoulder and peering over the barrel. I can even see him squint as he takes aim at my breast and I pray with greater fervor. The crowd falls silent. Will this would-be assassin pull the trigger?

But when the moment comes, he cannot bring himself to commit regicide in the presence of thousands of witnesses; he is unprepared to become a martyr to the Revolution.

It seems to take an eternity, but he lowers his musket. My armpits are wet with perspiration. For another few moments the mob remains hushed, but then the spell is broken by one, then two, then a chorus of ragged cries of
“Vive la reine!”
Soon the courtyard reverberates with resounding applause. I shut my eyes and thank heaven, and a moment later, am sensible of someone beside me. Lafayette has stepped through the doorway onto the balcony. With
tremendous deference he makes a great show of raising my hand, bringing it to his lips and kissing it as the approbation continues.

“Madame,” he murmurs, for my ears alone, “what are Your Majesty’s personal intentions?”

I am no fool. “I know the fate that awaits me,” I reply softly. “But my duty is to die at the king’s feet and in the arms of my children.”

With one hand the general raises my arm to indicate that we are united, while with his other, he calls for silence. “Men and women of France, the queen has been deceived,” he tells them. At this, one cannot hear so much as a hairpin fall. “But she promises that she shall be misled no longer. She promises to love her people and to be attached to them as Jesus Christ was to His Church.”

The applause crescendos again, to cries of
“Vive la reine! Vive le général!”

My cheeks are now wet with tears. The people think they are tears of shame.

But before the clapping peters out, a lone voice shouts, “The king to Paris!” Within seconds, dozens of others have taken up the call, transforming it into a chant, and once more I am frightened. “To Paris! To Paris!” they cry. His hand on my elbow, Lafayette guides me inside. The crowd’s admiration is so fleeting that shots are once again being fired from the courtyard. I shudder and look to Louis to see what he thinks we should do next, but he is deep in conversation with Monsieur Necker. Necker’s wife and daughter Germaine, Madame de Staël, are in the king’s bedchamber as well, witnesses to the scene on the balcony just now.

I approach Madame Necker. “They are going to force us to go to Paris with the heads of Messieurs Deshuttes and de Varicourt on pikes at the head of the procession, just to prove that our bodyguards are useless. We are prisoners of the people, now.” I glance at the Provences, Monsieur and Madame. For they, too, will be compelled
to accompany us to the capital; if the mob is to be appeased, the entire royal family must depart Versailles. Marie Joséphine looks terrified, her complexion more green than usual. But my
beau-frère
’s sangfroid is admirable, unless of course he has no reason to be afraid.

The comte de Saint-Priest is shaking his head. If only we had fled to Rambouillet as he had urged, we would not be in such a predicament.

Out of Général Lafayette’s earshot, Louis confides in his family. “I feel we must go,” my husband says heavily, his voice barely above a whisper. “Although I have never been fond of wagering, if I were to stake one bet this day it would be that my cousin has something to do with this attack. If I—if
we
—do not acquiesce to the people’s demand, there is a chance they will try to place the duc d’Orléans on the throne in my stead. There will be no more shedding of blood; the Salle des Gardes is already red and reeking with the sacrifice of two brave souls and many more guards are dead and injured.”

My husband rises from his armchair and makes his way back to the balcony. Addressing these vicious insurgents as his friends, he tells the mob, “I will go to Paris with my wife and children. I confide all that I hold most dear to the love of my good and faithful subjects.”

They have won. And so they cheer him.

We are lost.

My ladies help me pack what I can, but there is not much I can salvage. My bedchamber has been gutted and it is probably unwise to bring too much from the royal wardrobe. Général Lafayette’s word to the people of France that I have seen the error of my ways would appear to be worthless if I continued to dress as opulently as ever. And so, in this grandest of shams I must play a role, feigning humility before those who hate me and wish me dead, no matter
what I wear. But if it will keep my children safe and my husband alive, I will do it.

“Do you think we will ever return?” I ask Louis, as we reach a small staircase which leads to the Cour de Marbre. We cannot even exit the Château de Versailles the way we entered the palace in June of 1774 after my husband ascended the throne. There will be no descending the grand marble stairs in the manner of monarchs—because the treads are slick with blood. Instead, we flee like refugees.

The king makes no reply. At least he makes no pretense of sweetening a bitter cordial by lying to me. I swallow hard, not wishing the ministers and courtiers, nor even my attendants to see that I am on the verge of tears. I wonder in this instant what my late mother would have made of this moment. Would she chide, “I warned you many times, but you never heeded,” or would the corners of her mouth, usually set in an expression of formidable determination, soften and her eyes dim with tears, fretting over the fate of “the little one,” her favorite child?

By the time we are ready to depart, the clock has struck one
P.M
. The carriages that will convey us to Paris wait in the courtyard, yet we all must run a gauntlet of sorts to reach them. Lafayette and his Garde Nationale clear a path and we make our way through the rabble as their jeers and curses rain down upon us. An old woman clears her throat and spits upon the dauphin, the gobbet landing on my son’s smooth pink cheek. He begins to cry and I wipe the spittle away with my handkerchief. I immediately turn to say something to the harridan, but we are surrounded by raised weapons, so I remain silent instead.

The mob chooses not to fire the cannons in a celebratory salute announcing our departure because drunken women have clambered upon them and are riding astride the black iron barrels as though the guns are war horses. Soldiers from the Garde Nationale
open the gates and our coach begins to roll forward, the horses scarcely moving, for they have nowhere to go. We are surrounded on all sides by harpies who continue to hurl insults at us through the closed windows of the carriage. At the front of this procession of two thousand carriages, conveying not only the royal family but our courtiers and household goods, the severed heads of our bodyguards are carried aloft on pikes, macabre trophies of the people’s victory.

And so, we leave Versailles, after being trapped within the carriage for twenty-five interminable minutes. I consider turning around to look back, but I would see nothing of the palace that was my residence for nearly twenty years because we are mobbed on all sides. They call me
l’Autrichenne
—the Austrian bitch—but I have been a Frenchwoman since I was fourteen, for longer than many of the rioters are old. They crowd the coach and peer into the windows, pulling ugly faces and frightening my children.

The king cannot bring himself to brave their leers. He is weeping but dares not let the
canaille
see his disgrace, so he buries his face in his handkerchief. He does not see the marchers use their scythes and knives to slash the branches from the trees as we rumble by, weaving tricolored ribbons through the golden leaves. Brandishing these colorful trophies they dance alongside our coach as if they are performing a pagan ritual about a bonfire, taunting our family with increasingly offensive slurs. I do not have enough hands to cover my children’s ears.

We travel at the pace of a funeral cortege, passing through one village after another on the twelve-mile journey to Paris. With so much time in the company of my thoughts I recall the velocity at which the reeking corpse of Louis XV made its final journey to his sepulcher at Saint-Denis. He had been
le Bien-Aimé
, yet at his death was so despised by his subjects that they taunted his hearse as it flew by them on the road. My husband and I, seated side by side as
we were that day in May so many years ago, were cheered as our carriage followed the former king’s.
“Louis le Désiré!”
our people cried. As quickly as we sped that spring afternoon in 1774, today we crawl, to the accompaniment of
“Louis le Détesté,”
shouted lustily by those old enough to know what they parody.

The coach lurches forward as we come to a halt. The dauphin, who had fallen asleep on my lap with his thumb in his mouth, awakens and looks about like a turtle poking his head from his shell. “Where are we, Maman?”

I look to Louis, who lowers the handkerchief from his face and tries to peer through the crowd of people surrounding our carriage. He replies, “We’re in Sèvres.”

Whatever for?
I wonder. I am certain the rabble has not paused to purchase porcelain. I take my father’s gold watch from my reticule. It is easier to focus on the motion of the minute hand as it slowly makes its way around the dial than it is to give consequence to the hordes outside who taunt us.

The dauphin goes back to sleep, the slumber of the innocent. Madame Royale is hungry, and from a pocket of his coat Louis produces a handful of nuts and shares them with our daughter. She nibbles them slowly, taking care to savor each one as if she doesn’t know when she will eat again.