Виктория Холт - The Queen`s Confession

“The children, of course. They shall be as my own.”

‘ The silence occasioned by the cessation of the bells seemed even more alarming than they had been. The Marquis de Mandant, Commander of the National Guard, who had many times saved us from death, received a summons to the Hotel de Ville. We watched him go with misgivings, and when shortly afterwards a messenger arrived at the Tuileries to tell us that he had been brutally murdered on his way to the Hotel de Ville and his body thrown into the Seine, I knew that disaster was very close.

The Attorney-General of Paris came riding in haste. He asked for the King. Louis arose from his bed, his clothes awry, his wig flattened, his eyes heavy with sleep.

“The faubourgs are on the march,” said the Attorney-General.

“They are coming to the Palace. And their intention is massacre.”

The King declared his belief in the National Guard. Oh God, I thought, his sentimentality will get us all murdered! The Guard was all about the palace, but I bad seen the sullen looks on some faces; I remembered how they had sneered at Louis when he had made an attempt to review them, I remembered the man who had broken the line and mocked him from behind.

“All Paris is on the march,” warned the Attorney-General.

“Your Majesties’ only safe place is in the National Assembly. We must take you there and there is not a minute to be lost. Actions would not help us against so many. You see that resistance is impossible.”

Then let us go,” said the King.

“Call the household.”

“Only you and your family. Sire.”

“But we cannot abandon all the brave people who have been with us here,” I protested.

“Should we leave them to the fury of the mob?”

“Madame, if you oppose this move, you will be responsible for the deaths of the King and your children.”

What could I do? I thought of dear Campan, Lamballe, Tourzel. all those who were almost as dear to me as my own family.

But I saw that I could do nothing, and the Dauphin was beside me.

We left the palace. Already some of the people were looking at us through the railings and others had come into the grounds, but they made no attempt to stop us. The leaves were thick on the ground although it was only August. The Dauphin kicked through them almost joyously. Poor child, he was so accustomed to alarms like this that he found them part of his life and as long as we were together he seemed indifferent to them. That was something to rejoice about. In the distance I could hear the shouts and screams. The mob was very close.

I could hear raucous “Allans enfants de la Patrie …”

The King said calmly. The leaves have fallen early this year As we approached the Assembly Hall a tall man picked up the Dauphin in his arms. I screamed in terror, but he looked at me kindly and said:

“Have no fear, Madame. I mean him no harm. But there is not a minute to be lost.” I could not take my eyes from my child. I was terrified, but the Dauphin was smiling and saying something in his precocious way to his captor.

And as we came to the Assembly Hall my son was given back to me. I thanked the man and grasped the boy’s hand so fiercely that he reminded me I was hurting him.

But we had reached the Assembly Hall, and there we were placed in the reporter’s box while the President declared that the Assembly had sworn to stand by the Constitution and that they would protect the King.

During the walk from the Tuileries my watch and my purse had been stolen. I laughed at myself for the momentary concern I felt for these worthless objects. For in the Assembly Hall I could hear the shouts of the mob as they reached the Tuileries, and I wondered what was happening to those faithful friends. I thought in particular of the Princesse de Lamballe who might have been safe in England but who had come back for love of me.

I wept silently and I wondered what would happen next, for we could not return to the ruin which those people would have made of the Tuileries.

But what did it matter? Why fight to preserve an existence which was not worth the effort?

We were lodged in the Temple—not that palace which had been the castle of the Knights Templar and in which Artois had once lived and where I remembered driving in my gay sledge one winter’s day to dine with him, but the fortress which adjoined it, the grim prison, not unlike the Bastille with its round towers, slits of windows and courtyards from which the sun was excluded. Here we were kept as prisoners. The Deputy Public Prosecutor Jacques Rene Hebert was in charge of the Temple; he was a man whom the more idealistic leaders such as Desmoulins and Robespierre despised. He was cruel and unscrupulous, delighting in the revolution not because he truly believed it could bring a better life to the poor but because it gave him an opportunity of behaving brutally. He had become powerful through his newspaper Pere Duchesne, in which he had done as much as many men to inflame the mob.

My dismay was great when I learned that we were in the charge of this man. Whenever I saw him he regarded me with insolence, and I knew that he was thinking of the scandalous things which had been written of me.

I read his evil thoughts and in my fear I endeavoured to appear indifferent to him, which had the effect of making me seem haughtier than ever.

But there were men in the Commune whose desire was to show us and the world that cruelty was not in their programme.

They it was who controlled the mob, who had plucked us only recently from its blood-hungry hands. These were the men who wanted reforms—liberty, equality, fraternity—through constitutional methods, and at the rime, they were in control.

Therefore life was not as uncomfortable for us as I am sure Hebert would have liked it to be. The great tower of a the Temple had been fitted out for us and four rooms were given to the King and four for Elisabeth, myself and the children. We were allowed to walk in the grounds—always closely guarded it was true, but we were not to be denied that exercise considered necessary to our health. There was plenty to eat and drink; there were clothes and books. I was astonished how Louis and Elisabeth settled into this life. How different I was) It seemed to me that they had no spirit. Elisabeth was so meek, and accepted the misfortune which had fallen on us as the will of God. Perhaps that was the difference between us—she had a belief which I lacked. I envied them in a way—both Louis and Elisabeth. They were so passive, never wishing to fight, always accepting. Elisabeth had her religion and she told me that she had always thought the life of a nun would be one she would like to adopt, and life at the Temple was like living in a nunnery. Louis had his religion too; he had his food and his drink; he slept a great deal of the day and the night; and as long as he was not called upon to shed the blood of his people, he was resigned.

They exasperated me, yet I admired and—in a way—envied them.

Sometimes I would sit at my window and watch Louis showing the Dauphin how to fly his kite in the gardens. Always kind and patient, he had none of the bearing of a King.

I heard many of the simple people who were brought in to guard us and who had read accounts of myself and the King in Pere Duchesne express surprise to find the King such a simple man, who played with his son in the courtyard, measuring how many square feet there were, for the child’s amusement; sometimes they saw him dozing after a meal or reading quietly. They saw me, at my needlework, reading to the children, looking after them; and I sensed they were astonished. I was haughty, it was true, but how could such an arrogant woman have indulged in those obscene adventures they had heard about? How could such a Jezebel care so much for her family?

I used to think that if we could have known the people and the people could have known us, there need never have been a revolution.

September came. The weather was still warm. News had come to Paris that the Prussians and Austrians were advancing. The mob came into the street. They were shouting that soon my relations would be in Paris, and they would murder the people who they would say had ill-treated the Queen.

I heard shouts of “L’Autrichienne a la lanterne The short lull was over. What now?

The tocsins were ringing.

We kept in one room, the whole family. Our great desire was to be together in disaster.

It may be,” said the King, ‘that the Duke of Brunswick has already reached Paris. In which case we can expect to be free very shortly.”

If only that were so! I had no optimism left with which to delude myself.

The crowds were about our window. I could hear them shouting:

“Antoinette to the window. Come and see what we have brought you, Antoinette.”

The King went to the window and at once called to me to keep away.

But he was too late. I had seen it. I had seen the pike on the top of which was the head of my dear friend the Princesse de Lamballe.

In that second I knew that as long as I lived I should never banish it from my mind. That once-lovely face now set in staring horror, the still beautiful hair falling about it . and the horrible, horrible blood. I felt unconsciousness enveloping me and I was glad to ” escape, if only temporarily.

i How could they comfort me? i “Why did she come?” I demanded.

“Did I not tell her? i She could have been safe in England. What did she eve) i do … but love me?”

I thought of a hundred incidents from the past. How [ she had welcomed me when I had first come to France . j so much more warm, so much more friendly than the rest of the family.

“She is stupid,” Vermond had said. Oh my dearest and most stupid Lamballe! Why did you come from safety to be with me, to comfort me, to shan my misfortune? And to end like this! How I hated them, those howling savages out there. i flayed my hatred of them into a fury; it was the one way to forget my grief.

Later they brought the ring to me—the ring I had s< recently given her. She had been wearing it when th mob had dragged her from the prison to which they have taken her when they had brought us to the Temple.

This was the result of what was called the September Massacres, when permission had been granted to murder any prisoners who might be regarded with suspicion.

What an opportunity for the mob, when men like Danton approved these murders! And how many of my friend! had suffered in these massacres?

Surely these were the darkest days in the history of France.

Three weeks after that dreadful day we heard the sound; of shouting in the streets again. We gathered together as we had before and waited. What terrible event was o overtake us now?

The guards told us that the people were not angry today They were rejoicing. They were dancing in the streets. W< should hear soon enough.

France no longer had a King. The Monarchy was at an end.

The attitude was changed towards us. No one called the King “Sire’ any more. To say ” Your Majesty’ would be considered a slight to the nation. Heaven knew what penalties that would provoke.

We were no longer the King and Queen but Louis and Antoinette Capet.

Louis’s comment was: “That is not my name. It is the name of some of my ancestors but it is not mine.”

No one took any notice of that. From then on we were the Capet family—no different from any other, except, of course, that a close watch was kept on us and the people continued to revile us and threaten our lives.

Hebert delighted in insulting us. He called Louis “Capet with great relish. He encouraged the guards to do the same. They would yawn in our faces, sit sprawled out before us, spit on our floors, do anything they could to remind us that we had been robbed of our royalty.

But even this did not last. The King still remained a symbol. There were still some to remember and secretly to show us that respect which they could not throw aside merely because they were told we were no longer King and Queen.

We now had only two servants, Tison and Clery. Tison was an evil old man who bullied his wife and forced her to spy on us. The two of them slept in a room next to that one which I occupied with the Dauphin, for I had moved his bed info my room—my daughter slept in the same room as Elisabeth; but a glass partition enabled these two to see everything, and we did not feel safe to move without the knowledge that we were being closely watched.