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.
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.