the mob for doing something which they were constantly screaming should be done.
“No,” I said.
“Let him go. Open the door for him and send him away from the palace. He came to murder me, and if he succeeded the people would be carrying him about in triumph tomorrow.”
The valet obeyed me, and when he returned I thanked him and told him that I was grieved that he should be exposed to danger on my account.
To this he replied that be feared nothing and that he had a pair of very excellent pistols which he carried always with him for no other purpose but to defend me.
Such incidents always moved me deeply, and I said to Madame Campan as we returned to my bedroom that the goodness of people such as herself and the valet would never have been appreciated by me but for the fact that these terrible times brought it home to me.
She was touched, but she was already making plans to have all the locks changed the next day, and she saw that the King’s were too.
Now the great Terror was upon us. It was as though a new race of men had filtered into the capital—small, very dark, lithe, fierce and bloodthirsty—the men of the south, the men of Marseilles.
With them they brought the song which had been composed by Rouget de Lisle, one of their officers. We were soon to hear it sung all over Paris, and it was called the “Marseillaise. Bloodthirsty words set to a rousing tune—it could not fail to win popularity. It replaced die unrilnow-favourite ” Ca ira’ and every time I heard it it made me shiver. It haunted me. I would fancy I heard it when during the night I woke from an uneasy doze, for I was scarcely sleeping during these nights.
“Allans, enfants de la Patrie, Le your de gloire est arrive.
Contre nous, de la tyrannic, Le couteau sanglant est leve, Le couteau sanglant est leve.
Entendes-vous, clans les camp agnes Mugir ces feroces soldats.
Us viennent jusque clans vos bras Egorger vos fils, vos comp agnes
Aux comes, dtoyens!
Formes vos bataillons, , Marchons, marcfwnst Qu’un sang impur Abreuve nos siltons* The gardens outside the apartments were always crowded. People looked in at the windows. At any moment one little spark would set alight the conflagration. How did we know from one hour to another what atrocities would be committed? Hawkers called their wares under my window.
“La Vie Scandaleuse de Mane Antoinette’ they shrieked. They sold figures representing me in various indecent positions with men and women.
“Why should I want to live?” I asked Madame Campan.
“Why should these precautions be taken to save a life which is not worth having?”
I wrote to Axel of the terror of our lives. I said that unless our friends issued a manifesto to the effect that Paris would be attacked if we were banned, we should very soon be murdered.
Axel, I knew, was doing everything possible. No one ever worked more indefatigably in any cause.
If only the King had had half Axel’s energy. I tried to rouse him to action. Outside our windows the guards were drawn up. If he showed them he was a leader they would respect him-I had seen how even the most crude of the revolutionaries could be overawed by a little royal dignity. I begged him to go to the guards to make some show of reviewing them.
He nodded. I was right, he was sure. He went out and it was heartbreaking to see him ambling between the lines of soldiers. He had grown so fat and unwieldy now that he , was never allowed to hunt.
I heard the snigger. I saw one man break from the ranks and walk behind him imitating his ponderous walk. Dignity was what was needed.
I was a fool to nave expected Louis to show that.
I was relieved when he came in. I looked away, for I did not wish to see the humiliation on his face.
“La Fayette will save us from the fanatics,” he said heavily.
“You should not despair.”
The climax arrived when the Duke of Brunswick issued the Manifesto at Coblenz. Military force would be used on Paris if the least violence or outrage was committed against the King and the Queen.
It was the signal for which they had been waiting. The agitators were working harder than ever. All over Paris men were marching in groups—the sons-culottes and the ragged men of the south; they sang as they went:
“Allow enfants de la Patrie …”
They were saying that we were preparing a counterrevolution at the Tuileries.
On the tenth of August the faubourgs were on the march Hi and their objective was the Tuileries.
id A We were aware of the rising storm. All through the night of the ninth and the early morning of the tenth I had not cc taken off my clothes. I had wandered through the corridors M accompanied by Madame Campan and the Princesse de Lamballe. The King was sleeping, though fully dressed. M The tocsins had started to ring all over the city and Elisa-n beth came to join us.
w Together we watched the dawn come. That was about four o’clock, and the sky was blood-red. I said to her: “Paris must have seen something like this at the Massacre of the Saint Bartholomew.” t She took my hand and clung to it.
“We will keep together.”
I replied: “If my time should come and you survive t me …” < She nodded.
“The children, of course. They shall be as my own.”
‘ The silence occasioned by the cessation of the bells seemed even more alarming than they had been. The Marquis de Mandant, Commander of the National Guard, who had many times saved us from death, received a summons to the Hotel de Ville. We watched him go with misgivings, and when shortly afterwards a messenger arrived at the Tuileries to tell us that he had been brutally murdered on his way to the Hotel de Ville and his body thrown into the Seine, I knew that disaster was very close.
The Attorney-General of Paris came riding in haste. He asked for the King. Louis arose from his bed, his clothes awry, his wig flattened, his eyes heavy with sleep.
“The faubourgs are on the march,” said the Attorney-General.
“They are coming to the Palace. And their intention is massacre.”
The King declared his belief in the National Guard. Oh God, I thought, his sentimentality will get us all murdered! The Guard was all about the palace, but I bad seen the sullen looks on some faces; I remembered how they had sneered at Louis when he had made an attempt to review them, I remembered the man who had broken the line and mocked him from behind.
“All Paris is on the march,” warned the Attorney-General.
“Your Majesties’ only safe place is in the National Assembly. We must take you there and there is not a minute to be lost. Actions would not help us against so many. You see that resistance is impossible.”
Then let us go,” said the King.
“Call the household.”
“Only you and your family. Sire.”
“But we cannot abandon all the brave people who have been with us here,” I protested.
“Should we leave them to the fury of the mob?”
“Madame, if you oppose this move, you will be responsible for the deaths of the King and your children.”
What could I do? I thought of dear Campan, Lamballe, Tourzel. all those who were almost as dear to me as my own family.
But I saw that I could do nothing, and the Dauphin was beside me.
We left the palace. Already some of the people were looking at us through the railings and others had come into the grounds, but they made no attempt to stop us. The leaves were thick on the ground although it was only August. The Dauphin kicked through them almost joyously. Poor child, he was so accustomed to alarms like this that he found them part of his life and as long as we were together he seemed indifferent to them. That was something to rejoice about. In the distance I could hear the shouts and screams. The mob was very close.
