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.
y jmig wuuiu umc oa <uij aoluu illiul, There was always needlework to be done, for Elisabeth and I had to mend our clothes.
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 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.
