Виктория Холт - The Queen`s Confession

The King would leave his bed at six o’clock; then Clery would come to my room and dress my hair and that of Elisabeth and my daughter, and we would all go and nave breakfast with the King.

Louis and I gave our son his lessons, for Louis was eager that he should not grow up ignorant; he often said sadly that he had no intention of allowing his son’s education to be neglected as his had been. He was particularly keen that the Dauphin should study literature, and would make him learn passages from Racine and Comeille, to which the boy took with enthusiasm. But all the rime we were watched. I remember one occasion when I was, teaching little Louis Charles his tables, the guard, who could not read, snatched the book from my hands and accused me of teaching him to write in ciphers.

Thus we passed our days. Had it not been for the gloom a of our surroundings, for the continual surveillance, I think I could have been moderately happy in this simple life. I a saw more of my children than I should have done had I been living in state at Versailles and the affection between us grew. If I do not write so much of my daughter as I do my son it is not because I loved her less. She was gentle and sweet-natured; she lacked the more violent temperament of her little brother; she was very like Elisabeth and one of the greatest comforts of my life. But because Louis Charles was the Dauphin I was in a continuous state of anxiety about him; I must be thinking of his welfare continually, and thus he was more often in my thoughts.

When we had taken our meals like any simple family, the King would doze as any father might; I would sometimes read aloud, usually history; and Elisabeth and Marie Therese would take it in turn to read from lighter works such as The Thousand and One Nights or Miss Bumey’s Evelina. The King would awake and ask riddles from the Mercwe de France. At least we had each other.

y jmig wuuiu umc oa <uij aoluu illiul, There was always needlework to be done, for Elisabeth and I had to mend our clothes.

But every day we had to endure humiliations, to be reminded that we were prisoners, that we were no different from anyone else now—in fact we were not so important, for our jailors were at least free men.

We had friends, though. Turgy, one of our serving men, who had been with us at Versailles (he it was who had opened the door of the Oeil de Boeuf for me when the mob had been at my heels), was constantly keeping us informed of what was going on outside. Madame Clery used to stand outside the walls of the Temple and shout out the latest news so that we could know what was happening. I discovered that some of those guards who arrived full of hatred were won over when they saw us all together acting in such a manner as to belie all the gossip they heard. I used to show them cuttings of the children’s hair and tell them at what age they had been when I had cut off all these locks. I had tied them with scented ribbon and I used to cry over them a little. I often saw some of those grim-faced men turn away more than a little moved.

But nothing remained static; and Louis had been right when he had said that they did not wish to assassinate him, but that they had some other plan for removing him.

We heard that Louis was to be tried for treason.

The first move was to rob us of all cutting instruments-scissors, knives and even forks, although we were allowed forks for meals but they were taken from us as soon as we had eaten. One evening Louis was fold that he was to be removed from us.

This was a bitter blow. We had come to believe that we could endure anything as long as we were all together. We wept bitterly but it was of no avail. Louis was taken from us.

Then followed the weeks of waiting. What was happening? I had little idea. All we knew was that the King was no longer merely a prisoner under observation; he was a doomed man.

All through those cold days I waited for news. Sometimes I would hear my husband walking up and down in his apartment, for he was imprisoned on the floor below the one in which we lived.

It was the 20th of January when a member of the Commune called on me and told me that I, with my children and sister-in-law, might visit my husband.

A terrible sense of foreboding filled me when I heard this, for I guessed what it meant.

They had sentenced my husband to death.

I cannot shut from my mind the picture of the room with its glass door. Four of the guards stood by the stove. The light of one oil lamp gave a feeble glow to the room, but as I entered holding the Dauphin by the hand the King rose from the rush-seated chair on which he was sitting and “I coming to me embraced me.

I I clung to him, mutely. What could words say now, t even if I could have uttered them?

I saw that Elisabeth was crying quietly and my daughter with her.

The Dauphin broke into loud sobbing and I found that I could no longer hold bade my tears. i Louis tried to calm us all. He himself showed little emo-i don; his great grief was to see our distress. i “It sometimes happens,” he said, ‘that a King is asked i to pay the penalty for the wrongdoings of his ancestors. “

I cannot shut out the sight of him in his brown coal and white waistcoat, his hair lightly powdered, his expression almost apologetic. He was going and leaving us alone in this terrible world—that was his concern.

To try to calm our grief, he told of his trial, how he had been asked questions he had not been able to answer. He had never meant any harm to anyone, he had told them. He loved his people as a father loves his children.

He was deeply moved when he fold us that among his judges had been his cousin Orleans.

“But for my cousin,” he said, “I should not have been condemned to die. His was the casting vote.” He was puzzled, unable to understand why the cousin who had been brought up close to him should suddenly hate him so much that he wanted him to die.

I always hated him,” I said.

“I knew be was an enemy from the first.”

But my husband laid his hand gently over mine and he was imploring me not to hate, to try to resign myself. He knew well my proud spirit, but there was one thing I had learned: if when my time came I could face death as courageously as he was facing his I should be blessed.

Poor little Louis-Charles understood that his father was to die and he was giving way to a passion of grief.

“Why? Why?” he demanded angrily.

“You are a good man. Papa. Who would want to kill you? I will kill them—I will …” My husband took the boy between his knees and said seriously: “My son, promise me that you will never think of avenging my death.”

My son’s lips were set in the stubborn line I knew so well. But the King lifted him on to his knee and said:

“Come now. I want you to lift your hand and swear that you will fulfill your father’s last wish.”

So the little boy lifted his hand and swore to love his father’s murderers.

The time had come for the King to leave us. I clung to him and said:

We shall see you tomorrow? “

At eight o’clock,” said my husband quietly.

“At seven! Please let it be seven.”

He nodded and bade me look to our daughter, who had fainted. My son ran to the guards and” begged them to take him to the gentlemen of Paris so that he could ask them not to let his Papa die.

I could only lift him in my arms and try to comfort him and I threw myself on to my bed and lay there with a child on either side of me and Elisabeth kneeling by my bed in prayer.

All through the night I lay sleepless, shivering on my bed.

I was up in the early morning waiting for him; but he did not come.

dery came to us.

He feared it would distress you too much,” she said.

I sat and waited, thinking of my husband, of our first meeting and what I knew now had been our last.

I did not know how time was passing. I was numb with misery; and suddenly I heard the roll of drums; I heard the shouts of the people.

Underneath my window the sentry cried: “Long live the Republic.”

And I knew that I was a widow.

They gave me mourning clothes; I had a black dress and petticoat, black silk gloves, and two head scarves of black taffeta.

I looked at them with indifference. I told myself that it could not be long now until the end.

I never went down to the courtyard because I could not bear to go past those rooms which the King had occupied; but with Elisabeth and the children I went to the top of the tower for fresh air; there was a gallery there surrounded by a parapet, and there we would walk during those winter afternoons.

Toulon, one of the guards, had brought to me a ring and a seal and a lock of Louis’s hair. These had been confiscated by the Commune, but Toulon had stolen them and brought them to me because he believed they would comfort me. ” Toulon! A man who had been at the storming of the Tuileries; who had determined on our destruction. He had been set in charge of us because of his fierce revolutionary views; because he was trustworthy and reliable. They had forgotten that he also had a heart.

I had seen the tears in his eyes; I had seen his admiration for our fortitude. He was a brave man. There was another too, named Lepitre, who had been won over to our side.

I still had Clery, the King’s valet, and Turgy, who had been in the kitchen of Versailles; he was a bold and brazen fellow and very brave, for he had managed by fabricating stories about his revolutionary zeal to become one of my guards.

I am thankful to these loyal people; it was they who gave me hope during those dark days. For the first weeks after Louis’s death I would sit listless thinking of the past, full of remorse, accusing myself of a hundred follies.

I would talk to my friends sadly of the loss of the Ring. It was Toulon who said: “Madame, there is still a King of France.”

This was true. My little boy was now Louis XVII. If I could get him out of this prison . if I could join my friends . I was suddenly alive again. I had a purpose.

My little circle was delighted in the change in me. I realised that I was the centre of that little circle, for Elisabeth was too passive to be, the children too young. Toulon and Lepitre thought of all kinds of ways of smuggling news in to me. Turgy, who served meals, would wrap notes round the corks of bottles so that it would appear that the paper had been put there to make them fit more securely; and although the Tisons would examine the bread to see if notes H were in it and peer under the covers of dishes, they never id discovered this ruse. Turgy sometimes would carry notes in his pockets and at an arranged signal one of us would lift them out as he brushed past when serving us. From ; Madame Clery shouting the news outside our windows I learned that the whole of Europe was shocked by the execution of Louis; even in Philadelphia and Virginia, murder was shuddered at. All very well to depose a tyrannical monarchy, but not ruthlessly to kill its figurehead, who could scarcely i be entirely responsible.

Sensing the disapproval did nothing to make the Republic more lenient towards us; in fact it increased their severity.

But the thought that I had friends had given me a reason for living: Escape.