I hear Madame Sauce’s reply. “My husband would be risking his life, should he allow His Majesty to pass. I value my husband’s life more than that of the King.” I hear anger in her words, which are also full of wonder that she is in a position to formulate such a thought at such a moment as this. Yet she has used her intelligence. I would have said the same.
“Come back upstairs with me,” says the King. “See my children, and my younger sister who accompanies us. Watch us while we quietly gather up our things, so as not to wake the children. We will all go on together to Montmédy. You will accompany us. You will see that it is not our intention to flee the country, but to remain in France, to govern from a safe place among peaceful people, and from there to prepare for a new order in the capital, one that will maintain the order imposed by the monarchy, an order that is necessary for the advent of the long overdue justice due the people. Come go upstairs with me, and let us talk quietly there.”
Without waiting for their answer, or permission, the King leads the group up the spiral staircase to our room. When we reach the top of the stairs, we hear a cry from outside.
“The hussars are here!”
My heart leaps up with hope. Choiseul’s hussars! Our escort!
The King says with supreme calm, “Let their leader be taken here, to this room, to talk with us. We will all confer together. I am in no hurry until you good people are reassured of my intentions.”
The number of people gathering outside has increased, and we hear the threads of a dialogue developing: sometimes the phrase Vive le Roi! Sometimes the phrase À Paris!
It is the young Duc de Choiseul who enters the room, his uniform covered with dirt. He collects himself, bows to the King, and states that he awaits his orders. With incredible tact and courtesy, the members of the town council withdraw.
Yes, young Choiseul tells the King, he is arrived with forty men. Some of his troops he can unseat from their horses. Then the King can ride with the Dauphin before him, and I with Madame Royale before me. The hussars will surround us and protect us as we ride for the border.
“Will your men be in danger?” the King asks.
“We will fight to the death,” Choiseul replies.
The King hesitates. I see the terrible goodness in his countenance. “It has never been my wish that any blood be shed or the death of any Frenchman occur for my personal protection.”
Stunned, Choiseul clicks his heels together and bows in submission. He is too young to try to reason with his King. He has been trained to obey. Would that Fersen were with us!
“Perhaps the town council will decide to let us pass,” the King says hopefully. He instructs Choiseul to tell the council members to return.
“We will stay and await your orders,” Choiseul replies. The whites of his eyes are reddened with fatigue, and his lips are cracked from heat and dust.
As soon as he has gone, I burst into tears afresh, as does Elisabeth. Sitting beside my children in their bed, Madame de Tourzel covers her face with her hands.
With renewed patience and with the confidence only a just man who has taken the course dictated by conscience can assume, the King speaks with the government—the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker—of this tiny, miserable town.
It is not long before Madame Sauce reappears at the door, with a very old woman. In no way ugly, plain is the best way to describe Madame Sauce. Her dark hair is parted to both sides by a straight line through the middle of her head. Her face is oval.
Madame Sauce begins to speak with her head bowed, then she raises her eyes to me. “May I present the grandmother of Monsieur Sauce. Our grandmother is now past her eightieth year. Before she dies, she would like to see her King and Queen and their children.”
I straighten my body, as does the King, so that we may look our parts. I merely nod permission.
With only a quick and frightened glance at us, the bent old woman creeps toward the bed where the Dauphin and Madame Royale lie asleep. She goes to them like an iron filing drawn toward a magnet. Ah, children! For the better part of a century children have stirred her aging heart with hope and love. I see them through her eyes. Never have there been such beautiful children, asleep in their innocence like angels.
The old woman falls to her knees beside their bed, looks first at the King and then at me—as their mother—and humbly asks permission to kiss their hands.
I smile at her. “It would be their honor to be blessed by your kisses.”
Clasping her twisted fingers together, the old woman prays beside my children. Then she opens her eyes. Very reverently she lifts their hands—she knows well how to touch a child without waking him—and brings her old cracked lips to brush their tender skin.
As she struggles to her feet, Madame Sauce assists her on one side, and suddenly the King is there too, with his strong hand under the other elbow. She looks at him in disbelief, and his kind eyes meet hers. Tears well up in her eyes, overflow, and course down her old cheeks.
With bowed head, weeping profusely, she hobbles away.
The King has only begun to confer again with those about him when we hear running footsteps on the spiral stairs. A delegation from Paris has found us here, in Varennes. Our fate is no longer a matter for these isolated townfolk to decide. In his desire for a peaceful passage, the King has tarried too long.
The envoy’s hair is in great disorder, and his tunic has been hastily misbuttoned. He pants and speaks with difficulty in a voice vibrating with emotion. “Sire, in Paris, they are cutting each other’s throats…. It is a massacre…. Our wives and our children will die…. Without you, there is not nor can there be any order…. Sire, we beg you to go no farther…. For the welfare of the state, Sire….”
“What is it that you really desire to say?” the King asks.
“Sire, I present to you the decree of the National Assembly.”
The King quickly reads the paper handed to him, then he tosses it on the bed where our children lie sleeping.
To me, he says bitterly, “There is no longer a King in France.” Then he whispers to me, “Choiseul has sent a message to General Bouillé. Perhaps he will arrive with a much larger force, if we can delay our departure sufficiently.”
I approach the young Choiseul and ask without subterfuge, “Would you be so kind as to tell me, if you know, is Count von Fersen safe in Brussels?”
“Majesty, he is.”
For that information I bless the young man, though he failed to meet us at the appointed place, Somme-Vesle.
FERSEN
The Marquis de Bouillé with his troops does not arrive. Now we are prisoners and helpless.
Surrounded by villains and moving very slowly, the berlin has not conveyed us very far down the road back to Paris when, as we pass through the countryside, a nobleman, the Comte de Dampierre, whose lands are adjacent to the highway, tries to approach our carriage. He wishes to show his respect by greeting us. As we watch him coming toward us, he is taken down by the mob and killed.
I have no more tears, it seems. I turn my face away so that my eyes look out the other side of the carriage.
THE FEET OF THE HORSES and people who travel with us raise such an intolerable cloud of dust that we can hardly get our breath. In addition, the heat becomes intense, and we move at such a slow pace that not the slightest breeze enters the coach. We are obliged to keep the window blinds open so that everyone who wishes may see us.
Hours pass, and with the passing of each hour, the people along the route become more hostile. I determine to use the time as best I can, talking with one of our captors who has chosen to place himself on the seat of the carriage beside me. His name is Barnave, a member of the National Assembly. He is young and willing to be charmed by the conversation of one who passes for the Queen. I do my best to convince him of our humanity and of our concern for the welfare of France.
WHEN WE REACH the Tuileries, the King stumbles from the carriage but walks unaccosted by the howling mob up the st
airs. When I step out, several people lunge at me—I watch their approach with the equanimity of exhaustion. Behold, members of the National Guard step between me and my would-be assailants. A gigantic guardsman takes the Dauphin in his arms and rushes inside.
I am covered by the gray dust of the road. When Madame Campan greets me at the door of my apartment, I take off my cap to show her my hair, which has turned completely white. I ask for scissors and snip off a lock, which I intend to send later to the dear Princesse de Lamballe, whose own escape, I pray, has been accomplished. I shall simply explain that my hair has been blanched by sorrow. Now I ask for a bath.
The King is taken away to offer explanation to the National Assembly for our flight. “Just remember,” I say softly into his ear, my lips so dry with dust that I can hardly form any words, “we never had any intention of deserting France.”
But I worry about the accusations and complaints my husband has so injudiciously left behind in his farewell letter, for all to read, before our flight.
AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, I take up my pen to write to Axel von Fersen:
Put your mind at ease, for we are alive. Yes, I exist, but I cannot begin to express how anxious I have been about you. To know how you have suffered for lack of word from us has doubled my own suffering.
Do not write to me—I know your thoughts and feelings already—and a letter might incriminate us further in some way.
Above all, do not come to Paris under any pretext. It is well known that you planned and helped us to leave, and everything would be lost if you came here.
Although I am watched every minute, both night and day, I do not let that bother me. Do not be anxious, as it is already clear that the Assembly wishes to deal with us in a kindly fashion. They wish to pretend that we were abducted and not ourselves responsible for our absence.
Farewell. I cannot write any more, only to say I love you and indeed that is all I have time to say. Tell me to whom I can send my letters to you because I could not live without being able to write you. Farewell most beloved of men and the most loving of men. With all my heart, I embrace you and only you.
My most dear friend, Princesse de Lamballe,
No, don’t come back, my dear heart, no, don’t throw yourself into the mouth of the tiger. It would only add to my distress and my deep and constant anxiety about my husband and my poor little children. By all means, do not come. My chou d’amour will now sign his name in his own little hand, and you must obey me and your future king.
The princess replies to me, in mid-November, from the home of her father-in-law, the Duc de Penthièvre, that she wishes to return as “a patriotic act.” The winter is coming on, and my dear friend will no longer allow me to remain alone and cold. It seems I am unable to prevent her return, so the good Barnave has persuaded the National Assembly to let her live in an apartment close to me within the Tuileries and to resume her post as the superintendent of the queen’s household.
I SPEND MY DAYS writing to the crowned heads of Europe, imploring them to come to our assistance. I write to Fersen, my champion, who travels from Brussels to Vienna to speak with my brother Leopold, the Emperor, and to speak with his own King Gustavus, who wants to help us. Day in, day out, I weary myself, trying to be convincing, trying to avoid saying anything stupid.
I tell my friends that the tigers who surround me grow more fierce and hungry every day.
With great secrecy and only in whispers to each other, the King and I speak of Count von Fersen and how he hopes to arouse support for our position among the monarchs of Europe. Surely they would rather put down rebellion in France than face it in their own countries. But the King always worries that any force from outside our borders might then try to occupy France.
ON NEW YEAR’S DAY, 1792, I don a new court dress, with wide panniers in the grand old style. If Barnave were still here, he would glory in such a dress, but he has been sent away as too moderate a voice in the Assembly. His party, termed the Feuillants, is being displaced by those called the Jacobins, and the Girondins also struggle for power.
The dress is blue satin and will remind the people of the portrait in blue that Vigée-Lebrun painted of me holding a pink rose, which everyone loved. This dress, however, is more elaborate, and the satin is embroidered all over.
I think there may be civil war; nothing is more horrible in the King’s mind than the idea of Frenchmen fighting against Frenchmen, spilling fraternal blood on the soil of France.
THOUGH STILL BITTERLY COLD, February has come and with it, in disguise and using a false passport, my Fersen! How can I be unhappy when he is here? My joy makes me numb to his danger.
We are full of gaiety at seeing each other again, both of us as splendidly dressed as of old, but he is risking his life to see us. After staying here this evening, he will confer with the King tomorrow, bringing news from the King of Sweden. As soon as it is possible, we embrace, and I remark that it is like embracing a man made of ice.
He tells me that it is so cold outside that his carriage wheels make exactly the same crunching sound that they make in the extreme cold of Sweden as they pass through the snow.
Then he tells me that despite the chill that lingers in his clothing, his heart within is a glowing ember, eternally. Simply to look at him again fills me with the most exquisite pleasure, and I know that it is the same for him. What friends we are!
We speak of that last day at my beloved Trianon. I tell him that I had returned to the mossy grotto among the rocks to remember our intimacy when I saw the messenger coming with the news that the market women were marching from Paris.
“Ah, I had not known that it was in that most hidden and delightful spot that you were lingering when the world changed. To think, we have not had time till now for you to share that moment with me.”
He takes both my hands in his, then slowly with that combination of passion and elegance that he evokes, he bends to kiss my knuckles, then steps backward, our hands still joined, to view me at exactly the distance spanned by our two arms, outstretched. “I am memorizing you,” he says. “Just so.”
“And I you.”
I think that we both have a premonition that we will never see each other again. But it is our disposition and determination to forbid the occasion to be sad. No, every moment that we are together has always been and is to be filled with joy, just as the bee perpetually fills the honeycomb.
“What nectar,” I say to him, smiling.
He knows exactly what I mean.
“It has always been so,” he replies.
With exquisite grace, he draws me a step forward and meets me in a holy kiss.
THE TOWER, 1792
1 September
With a great deal of irony, I think of us this way: One afternoon during the Reign of Terror—that is, on 1 September 1792—the King and the Queen of France sat in the Tower, built as part of the palace of the old Knights Templar, in Paris, playing a game of backgammon.
Taking turns, we each scoop up the dice from the playing board, rattle the spotted cubes in their leather-covered cups, and toss the dice out among the triangular shapes painted on the game board, which have something of the appearance, at least to me, of a dragon’s mouth full of opposing, pointed teeth.
According to the numbers we have rolled, we move our pieces, his chocolate brown, mine cream, in opposite directions so that each little group of pieces has to face and pass through the defenses of the other in order to get home. Usually when we play, I try to keep each of my pieces safe from capture, while the King takes more risks to set up blocks in order to impede the movement of the Queen’s creamy troop.
We are playing for the sake of the children, for Marie Thérèse and Louis Charles, the Dauphin, so that they may think the Temple, as this palace and its towers are known, seems homelike and safe instead of like the prison it actually is. Because the Knights of Malta left a collection of some fifteen hundred books in the Tower, the King has a library here. He would rather have retired upstairs to
read in the turret-study adjacent to his bedroom than to play backgammon. I muse and wonder for a moment about how the King has always been a man who enjoys the company of books, while I prefer active conversation with real minds. I wonder if my life would have been different had I liked to read, or his, if he had liked to converse.
In his turret, my husband reads twice a day, after breakfast and after dinner, for two or three hours at each sitting. Lately he has been studying an account of the English king Charles I, who left his head on the chopping block in the century before. Really, the King has studied this story since he was fifteen, and even before I came to France. Perhaps it has always been a cautionary tale for him.
The French, or rather Dr. Guillotine, have recently introduced a more humane means of execution than the hand-held, shoulder-swung ax of the seventeenth century. A high sharp blade is hoisted between two grooved struts that make the device resemble the skeleton of a tall door, with a slant of steel, something like a butcher’s meat cleaver, but more triangular and without a handle, positioned at the top. If the execution occurs on a bright day, I am told, the glint of the sun on the polished steel can be seen by even those far back in the crowd. Near the base and at a right angle to the upright business, on something like a wooden sled, the criminal is made to lie facedown with hands tied together behind his or her back. The sled with its human cargo is shoved forward so that the head of the person is positioned just beyond the open door, and the blade rattles down the grooved frame to fall straight down upon the neck, lopping off the criminal’s head, which falls neatly into a waiting basket. I suppose there must be a great deal of blood. Spectators have said, I am told, it all happens very quickly, mechanically, and one can hardly believe how brief that moment is between a living body…and what is left, that is, between life and death.