I stepped on to the balcony. I was murmuring a prayer under my breath and I was thinking of my mother and all the warnings she had sent me, and I wondered if she was watching me in Heaven now. I had been guilty of great folly, but at least I would not disgrace her now. If I was to die I would do it as a Hapsburg, as she would expect me to.
I stood there, my head high, determined to show no fear. There was a silence which seemed to go on for a long time . and then someone called: “Vive la Reine.” The shouts were deafening. I felt dizzy, but I stood there smiling.
Down there the people were shouting for me, for the King and the Dauphin. It seemed that they no longer hated us. They loved us.
But I was not the fool I had once been. I knew that the people’s love one day was its hatred the next. Hosanna and crucify had not been far apart.
At length that interminable day was over and we sank exhausted into our beds. Louis was immediately asleep. But I lay wondering what new trials awaited us in the days ahead.
The next day the King told me what had happened in Paris. Refreshed after his sleep he gave no sign of the ordeal through which he had passed. I never knew a man who could face calamity with such indifference. It was almost as though Divine Providence had especially equipped him for the re1e he was to play.
When he had arrived in Paris, Bailly, the Mayor who had become President of the Third Estate, was waiting to receive him and offer him the keys of the city. This return to an old custom aroused Louis’s optimism, never far from the surface. Everything was going to be all right.
Bailly said: “I bring Your Majesty the keys of your good city of Paris. These were the words which were spoken to Henri Quatre. He reconquered the people; here the people have reconquered their King.”
The words were less comforting; the contrast between him and the King whom the French had always considered their greatest was insulting; but Louis showed no rancour, and calmly accepted the keys. I could well imagine his benign smiles on the menacing rabble which closed about his carriage. The fact that he would not appear to see their menaces would, I would well imagine, disconcert them.
Someone fired a shot at him in the Place Louis XV, but it missed him and killed a woman: and in the general tumult the incident was scarcely noticed.
At the Hotel de Ville, Louis descended from his carriage and men with pikes and swords made an avenue under which he passed.
There he made his way to the throne while shouting men and women crowded into the hall. I could picture the scene, which would have struck terror into any heart but his, yet he must see himself as the little father-sad because his children were behaving very badly, but ready to smile and forgive at the first sign of repentance.
There was no repentance. They were the masters now, and although his demeanour bewildered them they were determined not to forget it—and that he should not either.
He was asked if he accepted the appointment of Jean Sylvain Bailly as Mayor of Paris and Marie Joseph Gilbert Motier de La Fayette as Commander of the National Guard. He agreed that he did.
He then took off his hat and standing bareheaded declared : “Upon you I throw myself. It is my wish that I and the nation should be one, and in full reliance on the affection and fidelity of my subjects I have given orders to the troops to remove from Paris and Versailles.”
There were cheers. He smiled benignly, refusing to believe that now he had given the rebels a free road to revolution.
When they gave him the tricolour to put into his hat he was not dismayed. How would his grandfather have reacted to such an insult?
Who would have dared offer it to Louis XIV? But my Louis mildly took it, removed his hat and stuck in the symbol of the people. He, the King, was one of them. And what could they do? Even at such a time they must have been just a little overawed by royalty.
They cheered him.
“Vive Ie Roi!’ they cried.
Fortunately there were some men present who while they wished for reforms loathed violence and realised that the country could only be saved from disaster if they were brought about in an orderly and constitutional manner. One of these was the Comte de LallyTollendal.
He cried: “Citizens, rejoice in your King’s presence and the benefits he will bestow.” And to my husband: “There is not a man here. Sire, who is not ready to shed his blood for you. King and citizens, let us show the world a free and just nation under a cherished King who, owing nothing to force, will owe everything to his virtue and his love.”
When I visualise this scene as Louis told it to me I believe even now that he could have saved France. His very courage demanded their respect; his good intentions were always present. If only he had been single-minded; if he had not seen every side; if he had pursued a straight course; if he had taken a decisive action. But then he would not have been Louis. :
Then he stood before that crowd and with tears of emotion in his eyes he cried: “My people can always count on my love.”
And so, surrounded by his cheering subjects, the tricolour in his hat, he came back to Versailles.
The next morning we talked. I had been awake all night making my plans. We could not stay here. I knew we were in danger.
I had sent Madame Campan to mingle with the crowds in the courtyard so that she might report to me what she had heard, and this had proved to be very revealing.
“It was easy to see, Madame,” she had said, ‘that many of the people in the mob were disguised. -They were not of the poor people, although their clothes might indicate that. Their manner of speaking betrayed them. “
“Did you speak to any?”
I shivered. And I forced myself to say: “What else?”
“Then, Madame, a man dressed as a market-man approached me; he had his hat pulled low over his eyes; he seized my other arm and said: ” Yes, tell her over and over again that it will not be with these States as with the others, which brought no good to the people. Tell her that the nation is too enlightened in 1789 not to make something more of them and that there will not now be seen a deputy of Ac Tiers Etat making a speech with one knee on the ground.
Tell her this, do you hear me? “
“So that is what they are saying?”
Yes, Madame, and when you appeared on the balcony . they talked across me to each other, but it was really to me. “
“And they said?”
“The woman in the veil said: ” The Duchess is not with her. ” And the man answered: ” No, but she is still at Versailles. She is working underground, mole-like, but we shall know how to dig her out”.”
“And that was all, Madame Campan?”
“They moved away from me then, Madame, and I hurried into the palace.”
“I am glad you told me. Please never fail to talk to me of these things.”
“Madame, I should believe I had failed in my duty if I had not done so.”
I pressed her hand.
“At times like this,” I said with some emotion, ‘it is good to have friends. “
When I told the King what Madame Campan had heard he listened gravely.
“There will always be some to speak against us,” he said.
“Perhaps we should be more surprised when we discover people who speak for us,” I retorted bitterly.
“We must leave, Louis. It is no longer safe for us to stay.”
“How could we leave Versailles?”
“Easily. By slipping away with the children and those of our friends whom we trust.”
“Artois should have left by now. I saw the hostile looks directed towards him. There were cries against him
