She had been an intimate of the Queen. The Queen had kissed her often.
‘Take her away,’ he said.
He had the satisfaction of hearing the gasp of demoniacal glee from the crowd as she stepped into the street, a guard on either side of her. But what were two guards in such company? He saw a knife raised; he saw the red blood of an aristocrat. The Princesse had fallen swooning to the ground and the crowd were upon her.
Outside the Temple the crowd was calling for Antoinette.
‘Come to your window, Antoinette. See what we have here for you.’
The shouts and blood-curdling screams filled the Temple.
The King went to the window, and started back in horror at what he saw.
‘Antoinette! Antoinette! Come to the window, Antoinette!’
The shouts continued. ‘Come and see your dear little friend. Come and kiss her lips now.’
Antoinette was behind her husband.
‘No,’ said Louis. ‘No … no! Go away.’
‘I must see. I must see …’ cried the Queen.
But Louis had seized her and forced her back into the room.
Elisabeth was with them. Her horrified eyes went to the window; the head of their dear friend was scarcely recognizable. It was fixed on a pike, covered with mud and blood; and behind it on other pikes came the remains of the once beautiful body of the Princesse de Lamballe.
‘Come and kiss the lips of the Lamballe,’ chanted the crowd. ‘Come, Antoinette! It is your turn now …’
Antoinette did not see that ghastly sight, thanks to the intervention of Louis who for once was prompt. But she understood. She fell fainting to the floor.
Later that night a ring was smuggled in to her. Someone had managed to tear it from the finger of the murdered Princesse and return it to the Queen.
Engraved in the ring were the words ‘A tress whitened by misfortune’.
It did not seem to matter to the Queen that the National Guard had managed once more to save the royal family from the mob.
‘I feel my heart is broken,’ said Antoinette that night. ‘I feel that I have reached the very dregs of sorrow. I know that all feeling will be soon drained from me and that I shall wish only for death.’
Three weeks later there was more shouting in the streets. This time the shouts were of joy.
‘The monarchy is abolished,’ cried the people. ‘The man in the Temple is no longer Louis Seize. He is Louis Capet.’
Now it was the delight of all in the Temple to show the Capets that they were ordinary folk. The lowest servant would sprawl on a chair and put his feet on the table in the presence of the Queen. An uncouth couple named Tison were brought ostensibly to keep the cell clean, but their main work was to spy on the family. Any who were likely to come into contact with them were ordered to address them as plain Monsieur and Madame; and to take off a hat when addressing them would be considered an insult to the new France wherein all men were equal.
The family went about its daily life with quiet dignity, teaching the children, playing with the children, subdued, a certain hopelessness manifest in their faces.
The children were charming, and even the rough servants could not help softening towards them. This was particularly so in the case of the Dauphin. Even the grimmest of their captors – even Hébert – was not quite immune from the Dauphin’s charm.
Then came that terrible day when Louis was ordered to make ready to leave his family.
‘Where are you taking me?’ he asked.
‘To other quarters.’
‘In this building?’
‘Yes, in this building.’
Louis was less distressed. They were not to be entirely separated then.
He had to learn that his jailers had no intention of leniency for, although he was kept in the same building, he was not allowed a sight of his wife or children, nor was he given any news of their health.
Antoinette lost her control when he prepared to go.
‘No,’ she said, ‘this is too cruel. In all our misfortunes we have been together.’
‘Have courage,’ said Louis.
‘I cannot let you go. I cannot.’
‘Remember the children. We shall meet soon. They cannot separate us for long.’
She kissed him fervently, remembering all his goodness, and she was filled with remorse because she had loved another man more than this kind Louis.
‘It is more than I can bear,’ she cried. ‘I would they would kill us and put us out of our misery.’
But the children were coming in, and they must hide their grief.
‘Papa,’ said the Dauphin, ‘where are you going?’
‘Away for a little while, my son. I’ll be back.’
And with a kiss for them all, and a pat on the head for the Dauphin, he went.
Antoinette received no news of Louis. She could only wonder what was happening to him.
‘Oh, Louis … Louis …’ she would cry into her pillows at night. ‘Where are you? Why do they torture us?’
She was allowed no newspapers. The woman, Tison, watched her every move. Everything she said, everything Elisabeth or the children said, was falsely recorded, was twisted … written down to be used against them.
During that December of the year 1792 Louis stood on trial for his life. The revolution was victorious. The French had turned the tide of war in their favour. Their enemies had evacuated Verdun and retired across the frontier.
France would show the world that it cared nothing for the rattling sabres of the King’s friends.
Louis was accused of treason, of assembling armed forces to attack Paris.
He protested but mildly. ‘I have always had the right of ordering troops,’ he explained patiently, ‘but I never had the intention of shedding blood.’ And when they continually referred to him as Louis Capet, he mildly reproached them. ‘Capet is not my name,’ he said, ‘it is the surname of one of my ancestors.’
They continued to call him Capet; and they continued to call him traitor.
‘The tree of liberty grows when it is watered with the blood of tyrants,’ said one.
‘I vote for death,’ cried Robespierre.
‘I vote for the death of the tyrant,’ declared Danton.
There was another who voted for death; the Duc d’Orléans.
The voting was over, and the President announced the result.
‘365 have voted for death,’ he announced; ‘286 for detention or banishment; 46 for death after a delay, as an inseparable condition of their vote; 26 for death, while expressing a wish for the sentence to be revised by the Assembly. I declare, therefore, in the name of the Convention, that the punishment pronounced by them against Louis Capet is that of death.’
There was silence in the great hall; and the man who seemed less disturbed than any was the King himself.
There was one last interview.
She had known, as soon as she had been told that she might see him. She threw herself into his arms and clung to him, weeping bitterly and calling down curses on the men who had condemned him to die.
‘Nay,’ he said, stroking her hair, ‘remember the children. And you must not blame these men. They thought they did their duty. You must forgive them, Antoinette, as I do.’
The Dauphin cried: ‘Where are you going, Papa? Why do you say good-bye?’