Marie Antoinette (96 page)

^*70
The words, which inspired innumerable popular engravings, may be apocryphal, but the sentiments were for real.
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^*71
The memoirs of the Marquise (later Duchesse) de Tourzel, and her daughter Pauline (later Comtesse de Béarn), are crucial testimonies to the life of the royal family from this time forward, since in their different ways they were so intimately involved.
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^*72
Nor is it plausible that Fersen marched among the women in order to find out what was going on and warn the Queen; he never mentioned this—surely vital—detail in his account to his father of the events of Versailles on 5–6 October; the evidence rests solely on the
Souvenirs
of the Comtesse d’Adhémar, published years later.
³⁹
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^*73
The Marquise de Tourzel’s narrative is thus a first-hand source; Madame Auguié related everything to Madame Campan the next day, which makes the latter’s relation of events another good source even if she was not personally present.
⁴¹
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^*74
The London
Times
had as its headline the next day, “The Attempt to Murder the Queen,” with which Marie Antoinette would have agreed; the more lurid but inaccurate story in the
Morning Post
had the Queen being paraded around with a noose about her neck, to symbolize her humiliation.
⁴⁴
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^*75
Writing her memoirs as an old lady for her descendants, Pauline Comtesse de Béarn recalled the King’s instruction gratefully: “It is thanks to him that I can beat you today, my dears.”
¹³
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^*76
The term, taken from the disused convent where the Jacobin Club met, was beginning to be used for the revolutionary wing of the National Assembly.
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^*77
Easter Communion had been obligatory since the fourth century and is still today a precept that must be fulfilled “during paschal time” by members of the Catholic Church.
⁶
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^*78
A
berline de voyage
was the eighteenth-century version of a modern touring coach.
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^*79
Both these royal dressing-cases survive, one in the Louvre and one in a private collection; originally the latter belonged to Madame Auguié, sister of Madame Campan, to whom it was given by the Queen. The sheer weight of such a dressing-case on the knee, let alone when carried, is the remarkable feature to a modern observer, apart from its luxuriousness—but the Queen of France, accustomed to the daily ritual of being dressed at the hands of others, was not expecting to handle it herself.
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^*80
These posting-stations, where the exhausted horses were changed for relays of fresh ones, were of vital importance in any journey in eighteenth-century France. The
postes
existed, every fifteen miles or so, along the main routes; if travellers intended to deviate to the byways, arrangements had to be made in advance for fresh horses to be found.
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^*81
The story that the Queen and Malden, having taken a wrong turning, wandered about the rue du Bac on the Left Bank of the Seine, having crossed the river from the Tuileries by the Pont Royal, is implausible; this would have needed not one but a whole series of wrong turnings, to the right, then out on to a quai and over a bridge, without their realizing what was happening.
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^*82
Not out of a foreigner’s lack of knowledge of the city; Fersen had been living in Paris on and off for many years.
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^*83
Today a plaque at the modern
gendarmerie
at Sainte-Menehould commemorates the site of the former
poste
from which Drouet and Guillaume “launched the pursuit of the King Louis XVI.”
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^*84
Today at Varennes a plaque on the clock tower commemorates the arrest. The town also has a museum with a room dedicated to Louis XVI, which includes memorabilia such as a silver soup tureen left behind. The town’s position on the Argonne front during World War I means, however, that mine warfare is also remembered here and there is a memorial to the many American soldiers who fell in the campaign in 1918. There is still a Hôtel Le Grand-Monarque. At the time Varennes was presented with a tricolour flag in recognition of its services to the nation.
²³
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^*85
It seems to have been—not inexplicably—a recurring dream of the little boy about this time, since the Marquise de Tourzel recounts a somewhat similar dream en route at Dormans; in this case the wolves were threatening his mother, and he had to be shown the Queen in order to be reassured.
³⁰
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^*86
The name, like that of the Jacobins, derived from the former convent in which their meetings were held.
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^*87
Since 1954 this portrait has been kept in the Queen’s room at Versailles, having been preserved by Tourzel descendants.
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^*88
Although Queen Charlotte’s hair did turn white overnight at the first madness of King George III when she was forty-four.
⁷
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^*89
Paul et Virginie
, first published in 1788 to universal admiration, concerned two young people brought up together in a state of innocence on an idyllic island (which was based on Mauritius). Rediscovering each other as adults in tragic circumstances, Paul and Virginie were finally united in “the celestial paradise” after death, of which the earlier paradise of their youth had only been a prefiguration. It is easy to see how the plot might appeal to Marie Antoinette’s sensibilities.
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^*90
This correspondence ended up in Sweden, the most probable explanation being that the Queen gave it to Fersen for safety.
¹²
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^*91
Two other visitors to the fireworks were Emma Hamilton and her husband Sir William, ambassador to the Neapolitan court; they were received by the Queen who took the opportunity to send a letter to Maria Carolina.
¹⁶
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^*92
Not only were the Spanish Bourbons related to the French, but as the daughter of Madame Infante, Queen Maria Louisa was Louis XVI’s first cousin; also the King of Spain’s sister was married to the Emperor Leopold.
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^*93
Other people also gave a political twist to their dogs’ names; the witty Prince de Ligne called two of his Turgot and Mirabeau because “I always think of hunting dogs when I hear the names of ’those Economists.’”
³¹
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^*94
This general term for a revolutionary activist—meaning literally without breeches—referred to the typical costume of baggy trousers, short jacket (
carmagnole
) and wooden sabots of the working class, whether small tradesman, labourer or vagrant.
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^*95
This scene at Mass was subsequently the subject of a picture by the painter Marie Antoinette favoured, Hubert Robert.
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^*96
There were many accounts of this time by survivors; one person, however, who never mentioned her experiences during the next few days was Madame Royale, an unusual omission—her account of Varennes is very full—presumably indicating that it remained too painful to contemplate.
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^*97
Royalist pilgrims will not, however, find the Temple today. Napoleon did in 1808 what Marie Antoinette had wanted Artois to do: had it knocked down, specifically to avoid the creation of a hallowed site.
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^*98
Its universal use had been decreed by the Assembly in March; not only was the guillotine considered a swift and thus humane instrument of justice, but it was also a symbol of the new equality—in this case equality in the face of death.
¹⁰
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^*99
This was certainly not impossible; many of the prostitutes were raped before being killed, as were even some of the very young girls, although Madame Bault’s testimony makes it mercifully unlikely that the Princesse was still breathing at the time.
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^*100
Others were tracked down and restored to France over the following two centuries; as late as 1976 the great Sancy diamond, which Marie Antoinette (and Maria Lesczinska) had worn in parures, was returned, thanks to an act of public-spirited generosity; with the Regent diamond, it is now in the Louvre.
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^*101
Now in the Musée Carnavalet, Paris.
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^*102
This room has been recreated in a display at the Musée Carnavalet, Paris, which has some of the original artefacts including Madame Elisabeth’s bed and dressing-table.
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^*103
There is also a story of Marie Antoinette seeking to console herself by sending for her erstwhile official draughtsman Redouté to paint the cactus known as the night-flowering cereus; if true, the cactus must have been acquired elsewhere than in her apartments; perhaps it was Redouté, able to maintain his position as an official draughtsman despite his royalist past, who brought or sent in the botanical drawing.
²⁹
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^*104
These were surely traditional Christian sentiments, rather than Louis XVI forgiving Marie Antoinette at the last minute for her affair with Fersen.
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^*105
It was a point that Trotsky would later make against holding a trial of Tsar Nicholas II: putting the deposed monarch in the dock was to envisage the possibility at least of his innocence.
³⁶
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^*106
Hence the persistent tradition that country houses in the U.S., as for example in Maine, were prepared for the arrival of Marie Antoinette.
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^*107
Turgy implied that there was a salutation then and there, not in his
Recollections
of 1818, but in an interrogation of an impostor in 1817. But of course he could just as easily have tested an impostor with a false incident as with a true one.
⁶
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