The Queen`s Confession

Prisoners in the Temple

We were lodged in the Temple—not that palace which had been the castle of the Knights Templar and in which Artois had once lived and where I remembered driving in my gay sledge one winter’s day to dine with him, but the fortress which adjoined it, the grim prison, not unlike the Bastille with its round towers, slits of windows and courtyards from which the sun was excluded. Here we were kept as prisoners. The Deputy Public Prosecutor Jacques Rene Hebert was in charge of the Temple; he was a man whom the more idealistic leaders such as Desmoulins and Robespierre despised. He was cruel and unscrupulous, delighting in the revolution not because he truly believed it could bring a better life to the poor but because it gave him an opportunity of behaving brutally. He had become powerful through his newspaper Pere Duchesne, in which he had done as much as many men to inflame the mob.

My dismay was great when I learned that we were in the charge of this man. Whenever I saw him he regarded me with insolence, and I knew that he was thinking of the scandalous things which had been written of me.

I read his evil thoughts and in my fear I endeavoured to appear indifferent to him, which had the effect of making me seem haughtier than ever.

But there were men in the Commune whose desire was to show us and the world that cruelty was not in their programme.

They it was who controlled the mob, who had plucked us only recently from its blood-hungry hands. These were the men who wanted reforms—liberty, equality, fraternity—through constitutional methods, and at the rime, they were in control.

Therefore life was not as uncomfortable for us as I am sure Hebert would have liked it to be. The great tower of a the Temple had been fitted out for us and four rooms were given to the King and four for Elisabeth, myself and the children. We were allowed to walk in the grounds—always closely guarded it was true, but we were not to be denied that exercise considered necessary to our health. There was plenty to eat and drink; there were clothes and books. I was astonished how Louis and Elisabeth settled into this life. How different I was) It seemed to me that they had no spirit. Elisabeth was so meek, and accepted the misfortune which had fallen on us as the will of God. Perhaps that was the difference between us—she had a belief which I lacked. I envied them in a way—both Louis and Elisabeth. They were so passive, never wishing to fight, always accepting. Elisabeth had her religion and she told me that she had always thought the life of a nun would be one she would like to adopt, and life at the Temple was like living in a nunnery. Louis had his religion too; he had his food and his drink; he slept a great deal of the day and the night; and as long as he was not called upon to shed the blood of his people, he was resigned.

They exasperated me, yet I admired and—in a way—envied them.

Sometimes I would sit at my window and watch Louis showing the Dauphin how to fly his kite in the gardens. Always kind and patient, he had none of the bearing of a King.

I heard many of the simple people who were brought in to guard us and who had read accounts of myself and the King in Pere Duchesne express surprise to find the King such a simple man, who played with his son in the courtyard, measuring how many square feet there were, for the child’s amusement; sometimes they saw him dozing after a meal or reading quietly. They saw me, at my needlework, reading to the children, looking after them; and I sensed they were astonished. I was haughty, it was true, but how could such an arrogant woman have indulged in those obscene adventures they had heard about? How could such a Jezebel care so much for her family?

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.

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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.

But nothing remained static; and Louis had been right when he had said that they did not wish to assassinate him, but that they had some other plan for removing him.

We heard that Louis was to be tried for treason.

The first move was to rob us of all cutting instruments-scissors, knives and even forks, although we were allowed forks for meals but they were taken from us as soon as we had eaten. One evening Louis was fold that he was to be removed from us.

This was a bitter blow. We had come to believe that we could endure anything as long as we were all together. We wept bitterly but it was of no avail. Louis was taken from us.

Then followed the weeks of waiting. What was happening? I had little idea. All we knew was that the King was no longer merely a prisoner under observation; he was a doomed man.

All through those cold days I waited for news. Sometimes I would hear my husband walking up and down in his apartment, for he was imprisoned on the floor below the one in which we lived.

It was the 20th of January when a member of the Commune called on me and told me that I, with my children and sister-in-law, might visit my husband.

A terrible sense of foreboding filled me when I heard this, for I guessed what it meant.

They had sentenced my husband to death.

I cannot shut from my mind the picture of the room with its glass door. Four of the guards stood by the stove. The light of one oil lamp gave a feeble glow to the room, but as I entered holding the Dauphin by the hand the King rose from the rush-seated chair on which he was sitting and “I coming to me embraced me.

I I clung to him, mutely. What could words say now, t even if I could have uttered them?

I saw that Elisabeth was crying quietly and my daughter with her.

The Dauphin broke into loud sobbing and I found that I could no longer hold bade my tears. i Louis tried to calm us all. He himself showed little emo-i don; his great grief was to see our distress. i “It sometimes happens,” he said, ‘that a King is asked i to pay the penalty for the wrongdoings of his ancestors. “

I cannot shut out the sight of him in his brown coal and white waistcoat, his hair lightly powdered, his expression almost apologetic. He was going and leaving us alone in this terrible world—that was his concern.

To try to calm our grief, he told of his trial, how he had been asked questions he had not been able to answer. He had never meant any harm to anyone, he had told them. He loved his people as a father loves his children.

He was deeply moved when he fold us that among his judges had been his cousin Orleans.

“But for my cousin,” he said, “I should not have been condemned to die. His was the casting vote.” He was puzzled, unable to understand why the cousin who had been brought up close to him should suddenly hate him so much that he wanted him to die.

I always hated him,” I said.

“I knew be was an enemy from the first.”

But my husband laid his hand gently over mine and he was imploring me not to hate, to try to resign myself. He knew well my proud spirit, but there was one thing I had learned: if when my time came I could face death as courageously as he was facing his I should be blessed.

Poor little Louis-Charles understood that his father was to die and he was giving way to a passion of grief.

“Why? Why?” he demanded angrily.

“You are a good man. Papa. Who would want to kill you? I will kill them—I will …” My husband took the boy between his knees and said seriously: “My son, promise me that you will never think of avenging my death.”

My son’s lips were set in the stubborn line I knew so well. But the King lifted him on to his knee and said:

“Come now. I want you to lift your hand and swear that you will fulfill your father’s last wish.”

So the little boy lifted his hand and swore to love his father’s murderers.

The time had come for the King to leave us. I clung to him and said:

We shall see you tomorrow? “

At eight o’clock,” said my husband quietly.

“At seven! Please let it be seven.”

He nodded and bade me look to our daughter, who had fainted. My son ran to the guards and” begged them to take him to the gentlemen of Paris so that he could ask them not to let his Papa die.

I could only lift him in my arms and try to comfort him and I threw myself on to my bed and lay there with a child on either side of me and Elisabeth kneeling by my bed in prayer.

All through the night I lay sleepless, shivering on my bed.

I was up in the early morning waiting for him; but he did not come.

dery came to us.

He feared it would distress you too much,” she said.

I sat and waited, thinking of my husband, of our first meeting and what I knew now had been our last.

I did not know how time was passing. I was numb with misery; and suddenly I heard the roll of drums; I heard the shouts of the people.

Underneath my window the sentry cried: “Long live the Republic.”

And I knew that I was a widow.