Madame Tussaud

I am right. As soon as we enter the cafe, I see Rose’s commanding figure. She is surrounded by half a dozen women, all of them eagerly listening to her tale, but when she sees me, she excuses herself and joins us at a table in the corner. The five of us pull our chairs close together, and I ask, “Is it true? Are they captured?”

“Last night.” She tells us the story. At Easter, when the royal family was forbidden to leave the Tuileries for their annual visit to Saint-Cloud, the king realized that he should have listened to the queen and escaped. “All this time,” she laments, “when everyone with sense was telling him to flee, he wanted to believe in the good of the people. But at Easter, there was no denying reality,” she says. “So the queen summoned Fersen’s help, and they began to plan.”

This is not the first time I’ve heard Fersen’s name associated with the queen’s. Madame Elisabeth called him her sister-in-law’s dear friend. But what dear friend risks his life for a married woman unless there is something more between them?

“She stopped ordering cheap gowns from Madame Eloffe,” Rose says, “and began buying robes a la francaise in black and lavender from me.”

“And that’s when you knew,” I say.

“Yes.” She brings a handkerchief to her nose and blows discreetly. It wouldn’t do to be seen weeping openly over the royal family’s capture. “The preparations went on for months,” Rose admits. “She wanted so many dresses that it took a second coach to carry them.”

“What vanity,” Jacques says critically.

“Her wardrobe was the only thing she felt she could control,” Rose offers. “I tried to convince her that there would be dressmakers in Montmedy—”

“So that’s where they were going?” Henri asks. Montmedy is a city on the border of the Austrian Empire, near Flanders. “That’s nearly eighty leagues away. How did they get there?”

“They didn’t. But they hoped to go through Varennes. The king refused to split up the carriages, so they all went together. The queen, the children, the Marquis d’Agoult, Madame Elisabeth, three attendants, several bodyguards … And all of them in two enormous green-and-yellow berlines.”

I put my hand to my head. “And no one told them that this was disaster?”

“I did!” Rose exclaims, then lowers her voice. “They might have gone in separate, smaller carriages and traveled through Reims. That’s the quickest route. But the king thought this was the first road his pursuers would take, and the queen refused to leave her wardrobe behind.”

“Count Axel von Fersen is the Swedish ambassador,” Jacques says. “He must have told them this was madness.”

“This is the king,” Rose says dryly. “Of course, he knew best.”

So Fersen found the funds to build two coaches and purchased them in the name of the Baroness von Korff. He kept them at his home, and on the night before last, he arrived at the Petit Carrousel, not far from the Tuileries, dressed as a coachman. He waited in this square while each member of the royal family escaped the palace and made their way to him. The governess was disguised as the Baroness von Korff, while both the six-year-old dauphin and Madame Royale were dressed as her daughters. The king was her valet, while the queen was costumed as the children’s governess.

Everything was loaded into the carriages. Bread, cheese, a dozen bottles of wine. The queen’s jade manicure set rode with her, along with a chess set and a mahogany writing palette. Fersen only accompanied them for four leagues to Bondy, then made his own escape to Flanders while the royal family switched drivers. But without Fersen, everything fell apart.

“Leonard was supposed to meet the berline in Varennes with fresh horses and soldiers,” Rose says. “But he wasn’t there.”

“The queen’s hairdresser?” Henri asks. “They could have chosen a soldier, someone with experience.”

“But they didn’t,” Rose says.

I imagine Madame Elisabeth clutching her silver rosary as the carriage was stopped sixteen leagues from their destination. She would have been praying to all the saints in heaven, but most especially to the Virgin. “How were they discovered?” I ask quietly.

“There is talk that a man recognized the king’s face from a fifty-livre-assignat,” Rose says, then closes her eyes. The early assignats were printed with the image of King Louis. Now they carry only symbols of the Revolution. “It could be rumor, but if I know the king, it will be true.”

“But why would he show his face?” my mother asks.

Rose opens her eyes. “Because he’s a fool!” she says in exasperation. “Because he wanted to stop and dine at an inn along the way. They should have kept Fersen,” she says. “They should never have separated from him. Of course, the king’s brother the Comte de Provence has escaped and is probably at Koblenz by now.”

“With the Comte d’Artois?” I ask.

“Yes. The pair of them should enjoy that,” she says bitterly. “Nothing to do but make trouble in their uncle’s city while Antoinette and the king are prisoners here.” She looks at me. “Curtius is close with Lafayette, and he is the one who signed the order for their arrest. So what does he say will become of them?”

I wish she spoke German. Then I could tell her what my uncle learned yesterday without worrying who might overhear. As it is, I say as softly as I can, “They will probably take them back to the Tuileries and keep them under guard. My guess is they will force the king to sign the new Constitution.”

“And the queen?”

The news will not be as good for her. Especially not when the people discover that her family was making for Montmedy, so close to her brother’s empire. “They are talking about sending her to a convent and finding the king a new wife.”

My mother exhales. “You cannot break up a marriage sanctified by God,” she says in German.

“God does not rule here anymore. It is the National Assembly,” I say. I don’t tell her that the Assembly has already mentioned the Duc d’Orleans’s daughter as a possible replacement.

“And do you think this is likely to happen?” Rose asks.

“If it doesn’t, then there is talk of trying her for adultery.”

“Leopold will save her,” Rose says fervently.

My mother crosses herself. “He must.”

Chapter 41

SEPTEMBER

14, 1791

THE KING HAS SIGNED THE CONSTITUTION INTO LAW THIS morning. France is to be a constitutional monarchy, with an assembly that will share power with the king. A hundred years from now, perhaps even five hundred, this will be a day remembered by the people of France, possibly by people across the world. The rejoicing in the streets has already begun. Henri and Jacques are to launch a balloon over the Champ-de-Mars announcing an end to the Revolution.

At sunset, we ride to the Champ-de-Mars, where people are already filling the stands. Two months ago, this was the scene of a massacre. A group of angry citizens, gathered to sign a petition to overthrow the king, became unruly. Lafayette appeared with his National Guard, and when the petitioners began throwing stones at the soldiers, shots were fired. Thirty men were killed, and Marat’s L’Ami du Peuple called it the Champ-de-Mars Massacre. The papers turned against Lafayette. And when it emerged that the queen had slipped past him on the night the royal family escaped, men like Robespierre started to speak openly against him.

But today, the crowds are joyful. Jacques has brought the wicker basket and the balloon, and both have been arranged in the grassy center of the stadium so that thousands of people can watch it take flight. Henri asks if my mother and I would like to hang tricolor ribbons from the gondola, and while we’re helping, a woman comes up to Henri and asks, “Are you one of the Charles brothers?”

“I am,” he says.

She claps her hands. “Then this must be the Charliere!” She looks up at the giant gold balloon—a color chosen in my honor—then back at Henri. “I am a great admirer of men of science.”