Madame Tussaud

“Are you going to answer the call?” Henri asks. The tocsin of Saint-Merri is still ringing.

“I don’t have a choice.”

IT IS TEN the next morning before Curtius returns. Henri and Jacques arrived at seven. We closed the Salon and have been listening to the newsboys shout the latest events. If their sources are correct, it’s a catastrophe for the king. My uncle’s clothes are stiff with mud, and his hair is soaked. Henri takes his jacket while I remove his boots. He is too tired to speak, so we follow him up the stairs and watch while he eats.

Curtius cradles a cup of coffee in his large hands. There are circles beneath his eyes so deep they look black. “Yesterday morning,” he recounts, “the National Guardsmen marched without Lafayette’s approval. Twenty-five thousand people descended on Versailles, and Lafayette might as well have been their prisoner. He sent a messenger ahead to warn the royal family so that when the mob arrived, the guards would be ready. I didn’t see Wolfgang or Johann, but Edmund was there. There were thousands of soldiers. Every man in the Swiss Guard and the Flanders Regiment. When the poissardes realized there would be no getting into the palace, they went to the Salle des Menus Plaisirs and pleaded their case with the National Assembly. They believe the monarchy wants to rid France of commoners by killing them with hunger.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Jacques is indignant. “Without the Third Estate, there are no taxes to maintain a palace, no revenue to run a kingdom!”

“These are simple people,” Curtius explains. “The women have been reading Marat’s L’Ami du Peuple and listening to the revolutionaries in the Palais-Royal.”

“They should have those revolutionaries arrested for inciting rebellion,” Henri says, and Jacques agrees.

“The king has already given orders,” Curtius says, “for the Duc d’Orleans to be sent to England. But this is bigger than the Duc. Bigger than any one person.” The curtains in the room breathe in and out. The storm hasn’t passed, and the rain is still falling in heavy sheets. “I should think that whatever the king does now,” Curtius continues, “it’s simply too late.”

He tells us how the mob was calmed with the offer of food and drink. But as soon as the sun set and cold replaced hunger, drunken revolutionaries made their way to the palace. By then, they were at least forty thousand strong. They approached the queen’s window and demanded that she appear. When she stepped onto the balcony with her daughter and the dauphin, the men began shouting, “Without your children!” For a moment she hesitated. Then the children were sent inside and she was left alone to face the revolutionaries. There were cries of “Shoot!” and “Kill her!” from the crowd. But the queen summoned her courage, and she curtsied to the mob.

“Then suddenly they began to cry ‘Long live the queen!’ ” Curtius says. He shakes his head. “Remember, these are poissardes.”

“And guardsmen,” Henri says incredulously. “One minute they’re calling for her death, the next they’re hailing her as queen. Do they understand what’s happening in the Assembly?”

“I don’t think they care,” Curtius replies. “They want bread and circuses.”

Like the Romans, I realize, and think of Madame David. I always thought the purpose of time was to move forward, not backward. Curtius describes how the queen bowed her head and curtsied not once but twice. I can imagine her fear, the way she would have held her chin high despite the trembling in her legs and the nervousness in her stomach. As the crowds shouted “Vive la reine,” Lafayette appeared on the balcony and kissed the queen’s hand. This show of camaraderie calmed them. But when the pretty doll disappeared back inside, the mob grew angry and resentful, and began to demand that the king replace his soldiers with men from the National Guard.

“Lafayette acted as the go-between,” Curtius says. “It was very tense. But after several hours, the king agreed. He is sending the Royal Flanders Regiment home.”

“And the Swiss?” my mother and I ask in unison.

“Are allowed to remain.”

But the worst is yet to come. Despite the king’s agreement, the mob outside the palace refused to leave. “At dawn,” Curtius says, “they broke into the palace.” A fight ensued, and two of the king’s bodyguards were killed— Durepaire and Miomandre de Sainte-Marie.

Soldiers who’d taken my brothers under their wing when they were new to Versailles.

“When they realized the mob was making for the queen’s chamber, they shouted for her to escape. They died saving her life,” he says. “The mob would have killed her. When the people saw that she’d fled, they looted her gowns and destroyed her paintings. The men were singing songs about killing and”—Curtius looks at me uneasily —“rape. Before they could find her in the Salon de l’Oeil-de-Boeuf, the National Guard stepped in.”

My mother crosses herself. The only sounds in the room are the crackling of firewood and the beat of the rain on the windows. I imagine what sort of tableau such a terrible scene would make. The Hunted, it would be called, with the royal children huddled next to the queen and their foolish father, whose chance to escape must now be lost. I hope that Madame Elisabeth is safe in her chateau. I hope the children can forget this frightening night, especially Madame Royale, whose life in Versailles has already fashioned her into a bitter child.

“If they were threatening to kill the queen,” my mother says, “they must have threatened her bodyguards as well.”

“Yes,” Curtius admits. “But Lafayette came to their aid, even when they threatened to kill him.”

This is serious. To be threatened by your own men means that all authority has been lost. But then who is leading the National Guard? I squeeze my mother’s hand, since I know she is thinking about my brothers.

“And the royal family?” Henri questions.

“The mob demanded that they leave Versailles and come to Paris.”

“They didn’t agree?” I gasp.

Curtius nods at my question. “There was no other choice.”

So the king stood on the balcony overlooking the Marble Courtyard and announced to his subjects that the royal family would depart at once. Pleased with their triumph, the crowd began to shout, “Long live the queen!” Ten minutes before, they had sung about her death. Now, they wished for her health again.

“But where will they live?” I exclaim.

“I assume they’re to be taken to the Tuileries.”

I think about the beautiful Hall of Mirrors, the cheerful Laiterie, and the blossoming gardens around the Hameau. What will Madame Elisabeth do without her little chapel in Montreuil? And who will watch over the Palace of Versailles? I wonder what happens to an abandoned chateau. Do they board up its windows and lock its gates? What about the hundreds of secret passageways and little doors? Do they close them, too?

Curtius stands. He looks terrible. “I’m sorry to come with such news.” To me he says, “Unfortunately, Marie, the time has come to remove the royal tableaux from the Salon. The royal family came within minutes of their lives. Maybe seconds. And if they had been murdered, your brothers would not have been far behind.”

That evening, it’s Henri and Yachin who help me remove the royal tableaux. There have always been three rooms filled with royal models in the Salon de Cire, and I can still remember the morning, eight months ago, when the queen smiled with pleasure to see her likeness in wax. The dinner table, the dresses, the figure of Rose—all of it must go. When everything is finished and the rooms are cleared, I stand in the workshop and fight back tears.

“It’s not so bad.” Yachin pats my hand tenderly. “You’ll find other people to model. If you’d like, you can even model me.”

I laugh. “Thank you, Yachin. I don’t think I’m at any loss to find subjects just yet.”

“Then why are you crying?”

“I’m not crying,” I say sternly.

“She’s upset that time is passing,” Henri explains as he comes into the workshop. He clears a space and lowers a box onto the floor. It’s filled with the silver bowls and pretty china that once brightened the table in the Grand Couvert. “Things change, and not always for the better.”

“You mean because of what happened this morning, and how the people were singing?”

“What do you mean?” I ask him.