Виктория Холт - Flaunting, Extravagant Queen

That night the news went round the Temple: ‘Madame Tison has gone mad.’

The Queen was at the barred window. He could not see her but she could catch a glimpse of him now and then. How he had changed! He no longer seemed like her little boy. His clothes were stained and greasy; his hair was unkempt.

He shouted as he ran about the courtyard. That gross man, Simon, played games with him … rough games.

They sang together. Antoinette recognised the revolutionary song ‘ Ça ira ’. It was strange to hear those words on the lips of a son of the royal house.

But was he well? Was he happy?

If only she might speak to him, have his own assurance that all was well with him.

‘My darling boy …’ she murmured.

Then she heard the thin reedy voice of her son singing in the courtyard below.

‘ Allons, enfants de la patrie … ’

‘They have taken him from me completely,’ she told herself. ‘What does anything matter now? Surely I have touched the nadir of all my sorrows.’

But she was wrong. A greater sorrow awaited her.

It was decided that the time had come for the Queen to stand her trial.

One August morning a carriage came to the door of the Temple. With resignation Antoinette said good-bye to Madame Elisabeth and Madame Royale.

She seemed dazed as she walked out of the Temple; and as she passed under the low porch she forgot to stoop, and knocked her head on the hard stone.

‘You have hurt yourself,’ said one of the guards, overcome by compassion.

‘Nothing can hurt me now,’ she answered.

She stepped into the carriage and was taken to the Conciergerie.

There was little comfort in the Conciergerie.

She was taken to a small room with barred windows recently vacated by an old General who had left that day in a tumbril for the Place de la Revolution.

Moisture trickled down the walls of the cell and it was impossible to keep the mattress dry.

The Conciergerie was known throughout Paris as the prison of doom. Few left it nowadays except for that last journey to the guillotine.

Hébert was inflaming the people against the Queen. It was time, he said, that she tried on Samson’s necktie. It was time the executioner should play ball with the she-wolf’s head. She should be chopped into mincemeat to pay for the blood she had on her conscience.

But the military commanders were not eager for the death of Antoinette. The war was going less satisfactorily, and it was felt that alive she could be used to bargain with the Austrian enemy.

Fersen was in despair when he heard of her removal to the Conciergerie, and at the root of his fear was his feeling of helplessness.

He wrote to his sister: ‘Since I have heard that the Queen is in the Conciergerie, I have no longer felt that I am alive, for it is not life to exist as I do and to suffer the pains which I now endure. If I could do something to bring about her release my agony would be less. It is terrible that all I can do is to go about imploring others to act. I would give my life to save her. My greatest happiness would be to die that she might live. I reproach myself for breathing this pure air while she is in that loathsome place. My life is poisoned, so that I veer from pain to wrath and from wrath back to pain.’

But Fersen was powerless. He could only mourn.

There was more kindness in the Conciergerie than there had been in the Temple. Was this because the place was known as the ‘ante-room of death’?

The jailer’s wife, Madame Richard, was a kindly woman. She was charmed by the Queen’s graciousness and did all she could for her comfort. She made her husband fit a piece of carpet over that part of the ceiling through which the water dripped onto the bed. And when Madame Richard’s little boy came into the cell, the Queen embraced him because he was as fair-haired as the Dauphin was, and of the same age.

‘You see, Madame Richard,’ she said, ‘he reminds me of my own son.’

Madame Richard turned away to hide her tears, and after that she asked the police commissioner, Michonis, who had been a lemonade-seller before the revolution and was now an inspector of prisoners, if he would discover and bring news of the Queen’s children. ‘For what harm can that do to the Republic?’ she asked. ‘And look what good it can do to a poor mother!’

So Michonis, who was a good-hearted man, brought little bits of news about Madame Elisabeth and Madame Royale. The Dauphin was well and not unhappy, he said. ‘These young children,’ he added, ‘they are resilient. They recover from griefs more quickly than we do.’

Then there was Rosalie, the young servant girl, who adored her mistress, and who cleaned the cell as she cleaned no others; she brought in a box so that the few clothes the Queen possessed might be folded carefully and kept as well as possible. Every morning she would scrape the mildew from the Queen’s shoes, for it would gather during the night in that damp cell.

The Queen had aged considerably. Her hair was white now; there were rheumatic pains in her legs so that some days she found it difficult to stand. She was suffering from haemorrhages which made her very weak.

These good people took it upon themselves to smuggle comforts into the cell – some warm blankets to keep out the damp, some new sheets, a new mourning cap. Madame Richard and Rosalie did little jobs for her when they could, such as washing and mending her clothes.

One day Michonis came to inspect her cell, and with him was a stranger, a man who, he explained, wished to see what the inside of a prison was like.

Antoinette looked at this man and believed she recognised him. He was carrying a nosegay such as was generally carried by visitors to prisons and such places where the foul air might provoke disease.

He threw this nosegay behind the Queen’s stove, and when he had gone the Queen picked it up and found a note inside it. On this was written: ‘I shall try to find some means of showing my zeal for your service.’

She remembered the man now. He was the Chevalier de Rougeville, and she guessed that he had been inspired in this by Fersen.

Thoughts of the man she loved gave her new hope. Fersen! He had seemed invincible. She had believed in the old days that he would save her and take her to happiness. She found that belief revived.

She must answer the note. How? She had no pens, but she had a scrap of paper, and she had a needle, for since she had come to the Conciergerie her good friends there had provided her with one.

She pricked out an answer. Now, how to get it to the Chevalier? She could ask Madame Richard or Rosalie to pass it on, but she remembered then what had happened to poor Toulan. No. If anything went wrong they would be the first to be suspected.

She dared not involve those who were so close to her and who were already suspected of being too friendly.

At length she decided to give it to Gilbert, one of the gendarmes who seemed a trustworthy fellow.

She could give him nothing, she said, but the gentleman to whom he delivered the note would reward him with 400 louis.

The gendarme was tempted – both by his desire for the money and his desire to help the Queen; but when heads were being severed in the Place de la Revolution every day it made a man wary.

He showed the note to Madame Richard, who was terrified and asked Michonis’ advice.

It was one thing to have sympathy for the Queen; it was another to work against the Republic.

Michonis took the paper from Madame Richard and told her to say no more about it.

But the gendarme could not forget it. He mentioned it to his superior officer, with the result that an inquiry was immediately set in motion.