Confessions of Marie Antoinette (53 page)

I sip a glass of water while I await the verdict. It gives me something to do with my hands. A plump young girl I have never seen before brings me a bowl of soup. “Mademoiselle Lamorlière said I could take your bouillon to you because I told her I wanted to meet you,” she blurts, as if I am still Queen of France. In her eagerness to serve me, she spills half the soup. It splatters all over the floor and a sepia-colored stain spreads across the front of her apron.

Rosalie herself comes to remove the tray. “I heard you answered like an angel,” she says encouragingly. She presses her lips together and blinks back tears. “Perhaps you will only be exiled,” she adds, before departing with the empty bowl.

At four o’clock on the morning of October 16, I am summoned back to the Grand Chambre. “The accused will be seated to hear the jury’s verdict,” intones Fouquier-Tinville. Their foreman, the marquis d’Antonelle, rises and speaks a single word: “Guilty.”

I am strangely numb as the Public Prosecutor demands the death sentence. Citoyen Hermann rises and announces with triumph in his voice, “The proclamation of this verdict shall be printed and displayed across the Republic and the said Marie Antoinette, widow of Louis Capet, is to be taken to the place of execution in the Place de la Révolution where the judgment will be carried out by noon of this day.”

At this pronouncement, my head is suddenly filled with sound. Everything around me is a blur. Seeing me falter as I rise from the chair, Lieutenant de Busne gallantly proffers his arm to lead me out of the Grand Chambre. In his other hand he holds his black bicorn; under the circumstances his bare head is a sign of humility in my presence.

As we reach the flight of stairs that spirals down to the courtyard, my vision suddenly darkens. “I can hardly see to walk!” I exclaim fearfully. A moment later my foot slips and I begin to pitch forward. The lieutenant grips me by the elbow.

“Do not be afraid, madame, I will not let you fall. I will save you.”

“
Merci
, monsieur,” I murmur. “But I am afraid nothing can save me now.”

THIRTY-THREE

Adieu
À Tout le Monde

O
CTOBER
16, 1793

They have left two candles burning on the table in my cell, a special dispensation for the condemned, I suppose. Enough to compose my farewells—the paper and ink being another concession from the Nation. I anticipated this moment—but even when the time comes, I did not expect it to be so soon. There is never enough time to bid adieu. And I will never be able to say good-bye to some of the people who have been the dearest to me, because they are gone already or else I dare not endanger them by sending a farewell: Maman and Papa. My siblings. Louis. Lamballe and Polignac. Axel.

I could chide myself for scoffing at the advice imparted by Papa, which Maman had given me during another good-bye, charging me to read it on my journey from Vienna to Versailles. Papa, who died too suddenly and too young, had prepared a copy of his advice for each of his children.
Take time out twice a year to prepare for death
, he urged us. How silly I found it at the time, as a girl of fourteen with a glorious future mapped out before me.

It is nearly dawn by the time I begin to write my last letter. I fear that it will never reach Mousseline or Louis Charles and so it is to Madame Élisabeth I convey the contents of my heart, my hopes for my children, my regrets, and my sorrows.

The quill moves across the paper as if God guides my hand. It is just as well because there are moments when I cannot see through my tears and the nib makes unsightly blots reminiscent of my girlhood penmanship.

I have just been condemned to a death that is in no way shameful—that is a fate reserved for criminals—but to rejoin your brother. Like him, I am innocent. I hope I will show the same strength as he did in his last moments.

I am calm, as one always is when one has a clear conscience. My profoundest regret is that I must abandon my poor children: You know that I have lived only for them, as well as for you, my good and gentle sister. You have sacrificed everything to be with us and your friendship has always sustained me. In what circumstances have I left you! I learned through the proceedings of my trial that my daughter was separated from you,
hélas!
The poor child; I dare not write to her; I doubt she would receive my letter.

I do not even know if this will reach you. I leave you with my benediction, for yourself and for both of my children. I hope that one day when they are older they will be reunited with you, so that they may fully enjoy your tender care. I have always endeavored to impress upon them that their principles and exact devotion to duty are the foundations of life and that their affection and mutual confidence in each other will constitute its happiness.

May my daughter feel that at her age she should always aid
her brother with the advice that experience has taught her; and let my son in his turn render his sister all the care and service that affection can inspire. May they both recognize that, whatever positions they find themselves in, they will never be truly happy without one another, and may they follow our own example. How often, in our own misfortunes, has our affection for each other provided us consolation! In times of happiness, we rejoice doubly when we can share it with a friend—and where can one find a friend more tender and more united than within one’s own family?

May my son never forget his father’s last words: that he should never seek to avenge his death.

I pause to consider how to address the most wrenching moments of my trial. Élisabeth was not present when the heinous allegations were made and I refuted them as gallantly as I could. Perhaps she does not even know that the charge was dismissed. But even though the law has erased it, the words cannot be unsaid and the damage to my son’s mind and to his aunt’s upright and noble character may never be completely undone.

I wish to speak to you about something that is painful to my heart. I know how much hurt my son must have caused you. Forgive him, my dear sister; remember his youth and how easy it is to make a child say whatever one wishes, especially when he does not comprehend what he is saying. The day will come, I hope, when he will feel only the value of your goodness and your love for him and his sister.

In a few minutes it will be time to make my peace with God. I want Élisabeth, always so devout, so correct, so good, to know that I have not left this earth unrepentant for my sins.

I die in the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion, that of my fathers, that in which I was raised and which I have always practiced. Having no spiritual consolation to attend me in my final hours, not even knowing whether there still exist here any priests of this religion, and indeed knowing that I would expose them to danger were they to enter this place even once, I implore God for His sincere pardon for all the faults I have committed throughout my life. I hope that in His goodness He will accept my final prayers, as well as those which for a long time I have addressed to Him, and ask Him to receive my soul into His mercy. I ask pardon of all those I know, and from you, my sister, in particular, for all the pain that I have unwittingly and unwillingly caused you. I pardon all my enemies the evil they have done me. I bid farewell to my aunts and to all my brothers and sisters. I had friends. One of the greatest regrets I have in dying is the idea of being forever separated from them and from their sorrows. Let them know that right up until I drew my last breath, I was thinking of them.

Farewell, my good and tender sister; may this letter find its way to you! Think always of me; I embrace you with all my heart, you and my poor, dear children—my God, it is breaking my heart to leave them forever! Adieu, adieu! I must now devote myself to my spiritual preparation. As I have no freedom in my own actions, someone might bring me a priest, but here I will protest that I will not say a word to him and I will treat him as an absolute stranger.

~Marie Antoinette
La Conciergerie

It is an odd way, an abrupt way, to end a letter, I know, but they may come to take me away at any moment and I must pray before
I go. I write a few words in the prayer book I have carried since I was dauphine. Bound in olive-green Moroccan leather embossed with gold filigree, it was printed during the reign of Louis XV, in 1757, when I was only two years old. The frontispiece is stamped “Office of the Divine Providence for the use of the Royal House of Saint Louis at Saint Cyr and of all the Faithful.” An anonymous schoolgirl, some daughter of an impoverished nobleman, would have first owned the prayer book before it became the property of the last queen of France. Who will carry it next? I wonder. Who will read the words I inscribe before I enter immortality?

mon dieu, have pity on me!

my eyes have no more tears

to cry for you my

poor children; adieu, adieu!

                  
Marie Antoinette

After I have finished my devotions I take the opportunity to lie down and rest for an hour. Thisbe settles on my
poitrine
, and the soft rise and fall of her silky chest steadies my nerves. Perhaps it is not such an absurd thought, but I realize that it is the last time I will be able to lie upon my back, or my side, or curled up like an infant. It is the last time I will ever recline as a whole human being. The next time I lie down on my stomach, my head will be severed from the rest of me.

The bells of Notre-Dame de Paris toll ominously. At seven o’clock, Rosalie enters the cell, her eyes red and swollen. “Would you like any nourishment, madame?” she asks, choking on the words.

I long to ease her pain, to take her in my arms and tell her it will be all right, to transfer all the love I have for my precious children into the embrace I would give to this sweet young woman.
But I cannot touch her. To do so would seal her own warrant of execution. “I do not need anything, Rosalie.
Merci
. All is over for me,” I answer quietly.

“It will make me happy if you just take a few spoons. For me,” she says, trying hard to smile.

I have no appetite, but I manage a spoonful or two of bouillon. Rosalie offers to help me dress. My long chemise is soaked with blood. I must have a clean one. I do not want them to shed my blood on garments that are already embarrassingly stained. The guard is watching me haughtily. “
S’il vous plaît, monsieur
, for modesty’s sake, permit me to change this one last time behind the screen.”

He tells me curtly that it is forbidden. With a sigh, I don fresh linen, a shift that Rosalie had, I am now certain, been saving for this day. The dear girl tries to shield my body from his impertinent stare. Yet I cannot leave the blood-soaked chemise on the bed for my enemies to find after I am gone, to gloat over as some sort of macabre relic of my feminine infirmity. Weeks ago I noticed a crevice in the wall. During a moment when the guard’s gaze is fixed upon something else, I crush the garment into a ball and wedge it into the gap.

Sitting upon the cot I roll my black silk filoselle stockings over my legs and secure them with embroidered garters. I am about to step into my black gown when the guard says “
Non!
It has been forbidden.”

“What else am I to wear, monsieur? I am in mourning for my husband and the year has not expired.”

“The Revolutionary Tribunal has declared that it may be construed as an insult to the people.”

“To decently mourn my husband?” I repeat incredulously.

“To mourn a king.”

The only other gown I have that is in tolerable condition was
sent to me from the Temple by my
belle-soeur;
it is a simple dress of cotton piqué in purest white with long narrow sleeves and a small ruffle about the neck. In some ways it reminds me of my golden days at Trianon. And then, in a flash of clarity I recall a lesson from my girlhood with abbé Vermond about the medieval queens of France, whose formal mourning attire was not black, but white. With a secret smile I think,
I will indeed go to the scaffold in full mourning and the Revolutionaries are too ignorant to know it
.