The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette

by Carolly Erickson

  When Louis climbed in from the balcony, I stepped out, lifting Louis-Charles and helping Mousseline through the window. We walked to the railing of the wooden balcony and stood there, in the rain, the children holding my hands. They had been trained almost from infancy to stand up straight and hold their heads up high on public occasions, not to show emotion but to be dignified as became a prince and princess. They did so now, and I was proud of them. I was sure they could feel me trembling.

  We stood there for what felt like half an hour, but in reality must have been only a few minutes. The hubbub had died down slightly when the children came out, but now it rose again.

  “No children! No children!” came the renewed shouting. “We want the Austrian bitch alone!”

  Now I saw, for the first time that afternoon, muskets raised and leveled at me. I turned then and helped Louis-Charles and Mousseline climb back inside, into the arms of their waiting father. My last hope is gone now, I thought. This is what they came for, to make a sacrifice of me. In that instant of time many images raced through my mind, images of my mother’s face, young and beautiful, of Axel, lying naked and smiling at me, of poor Louis-Joseph and Sophie, of the green hills of Fredenholm and the stables at Schönbrunn where the starlings built their nests under the eaves.

  All but overcome by these tumbling memories, with tears in my eyes I turned and walked slowly to the edge of the balcony once again. All at once I was aware of how I must look, a stout, wet, bedraggled woman in a wrinkled yellow dressing gown, without rouge or powdered cheeks, my graying hair uncombed and loose around my shoulders. This was no queen, I thought, but an exhausted and pitiful woman.

  I shut my eyes, said my prayers and waited.

  And waited.

  The rude chanting continued. I heard cries of “Shoot the Austrian bitch” and “Kill her, kill her!” Yet no muskets were fired. After a few moments I opened my eyes and looked out across the courtyard, across the sea of faces. Tears and the rain blurred my vision, but I could make out some in the crowd. I thought, is Amélie among them? To my astonishment I saw one of the women cross herself. Another knelt in the mud. Then a man stepped forward. “Vive la reine!” he shouted. Immediately he was struck and pummeled by those around him, but his cry was taken up nonetheless.

  “Vive la reine! Vive la reine Antoinette!”

  I heard Chambertin calling to me through the window. “Come in, come in,” and I turned and reentered the chamber. Almost at once I fainted.

  When I revived Madame Thibaut was sitting on the cot where I lay, with a tray of food and a bottle of wine. She told me that we were going to be escorted to Paris, and that Louis and the children were already on their way to the waiting coach. I ate greedily and swiftly, washed and dressed, and then joined them.

  I slept most of the way to Paris, with Louis-Charles sleeping on my lap and Mousseline leaning against me. It was very late when we arrived at the Tuileries palace, but I felt restless and couldn’t get to sleep in the bed that had been made up for me there. Too much had happened on this eventful day. I had to write it down.

  Dawn is breaking. I can see, through the dirty window, the first steaks of pinkish light on the horizon. The household is beginning to stir. There is no one here to light the fire in my room, and I am cold. Autumn is here, and winter is coming. What is to become of us?

  THIRTEEN

  November 1, 1789

  I cannot sleep here. The old bed they found for me, a bed last used by Louis’s late mother, is hard and lumpy, with a frayed canopy and no proper bed curtains. All our featherbeds at Versailles were torn apart by the mob from Paris. The whole palace was full of feathers. So there was no bedding to bring with us here to the Tuileries palace. I lie on a pile of blankets over a straw-filled mattress that stinks of the stables.

  I cannot sleep—but not just because I am cold and the bed is very uncomfortable. I have nightmares. I dream of Eric, my handsome, faithful Eric, with his head being severed by a single savage blow and blood shooting up out of his neck and onto me. I dream of being chased, endlessly, by a howling, rampaging crowd of grinning women, who get closer and closer until, just when they are on the verge of trampling me to death, I wake up screaming.

  The nightmares wake me up, and then I spend hours fretting, listening for noises in the corridor outside my bedroom, imagining that a new attackwill come, worrying about Louis-Charles and Mousseline, and how I will ever manage to keep them safe. I thinkof waking Sophie, who sleeps on a pallet at the foot of my bed, and asking her to keep me company, but I don’t have the heart to disturb her. At times I miss the familiar sound of Louis’s loud snoring. He is sleeping far away in the guardroom, on Lafayette’s orders, surrounded by dozens of soldiers.

  Tomorrow is my birthday. I will be thirty-four years old, yet I know I look forty at least. Thank goodness there is no mirror in my bedroom.

  November 16, 1789

  We are prisoners here. There is no other word for our condition but captivity. The Gardes du Corps, our loyal bodyguards for so long, have been ordered to leave and have been replaced by the surly National Guard, who are more our jailers than our protectors.

  They take pleasure in goading and offending me, making coarse jokes about me loudly enough for me to hear, laughing and snickering when I pass by and belching or worse in order to annoy me. They listen to my conversations and I’m sure they would want to know what I write in this journal if they knew I kept a journal. Probably if they ever did find it they would tear it to pieces.

  They drink and then they become rowdy and start fights with the palace servants. Lafayette cannot control them, and they pay no attention to anything Louis says. Their rude staring and sullen, hostile looks frighten me.

  Sometimes I don’t know which are worse, the angry, rude soldiers or the excitable loud crowds that keep up a constant chanting and shouting in the courtyards and under our windows. The din starts at dawn and continues until after midnight, the demonstrators carrying torches and warming themselves over bonfires that they feed with shrubbery from the palace gardens. Even now, as the weather is turning quite cold at night, they keep up their noisy vigil, calling for Louis or for me, threatening us, and singing the fearsome new song that has become their rallying cry, the Ça ira.

  I hear it in my brief troubled dreams, that terrible song. “It will happen! Yes it will!” they sing gleefully. “Hang all the aristocrats from the lampposts!” Raucous singing, drums beating, artillery booming—the National Guard is forever testing its cannon—it is enough to drive anyone mad.

  December 9, 1789

  I have injured my leg again and this time our new doctor, Dr. Concarneau (Dr. Boisgilbert emigrated with Charlot), says I must stay in bed until it heals. It is merely sprained, not broken. It hurts very much.

  December 16, 1789

  Thank heavens Axel has returned from my brother’s court. As a representative of King Gustavus he is able to go and come freely while French subjects are often detained at the border by the National Guard. The assembly is more and more suspicious of anyone who is wellborn. We are all hated and mistrusted.

  Axel has rented rooms in the rue Matignon near the palace and the assembly meeting hall which is in the palace gardens. He has given up his military posts in order to devote himself to helping us and no longer wears the uniform of the Swedish Regiment. I like him better in the sword and white stockings of a nobleman of rank. How I wish he could be with me during my long sleepless nights!

  He says Joseph is very ill but still cantankerous and difficult. Joseph did not give Axel the money I asked him for, much to my great disappointment. Axel says Joseph thinks the upheavals here in Paris are only temporary, and will soon pass. He thinks it is all the result of court factions fighting one another. He hasn’t seen what I have seen, what I see every day: the triumphant, leering faces of the poor Parisians, jeering at us and eager to do us harm. If he could see these faces with his own eyes Joseph would be as frightened as I am.

  January 5, 1790


  I am allowed to walk for half an hour each afternoon. My leg is getting better. On afternoons when it is not too cold or rainy Louis and I and the children put on our thick coats and cloaks and walk in the gardens. It feels good to be up and walking. I was very tired of lying idle all day, resting my leg, being read to and hearing Sophie’s stories and playing whist with Mousseline, who is learning well.

  One thing I did accomplish, though it was sad. I sent away all my pugs and my old yellow cat to Naples, with a friend of Carlotta’s who offered to take them. Much as I will miss the dear little dogs and my sweet yellow companion at least I will not be fearful every time one of the hateful guards starts to tease them and kick at them.

  January 28, 1790

  This afternoon we went walking in the English garden near the riding school. I was walking ahead, with Loulou, and Louis-Charles walked between us, skipping and jumping and now and then dashing into the bushes and then rushing back to us. He made a game of this and we became accustomed to hearing the sound of rustling branches as he wove in and out of the evergreen foliage that lines both sides of the path.

  Louis and Axel were some twenty or thirty paces behind us, along with four soldiers of the National Guard who strolled along in a most unsoldierlike way, neglectful of their task—which was to protect Louis—and preoccupied in talking among themselves, their conversation interrupted often by unpleasant laughter.

  I knew what Louis and Axel were discussing. Axel was preparing to leave for Spain, supposedly on a diplomatic mission for King Gustavus but really to try to persuade Louis’s cousin King Charles IV to give us some money. Axel believes he must go at once, as quickly as possible. Louis can’t make up his mind when Axel should go. They have been debating about this for several days. When the soldiers are nearby they pretend to be talking of horseracing, of all things.

  “Sire, I must impress on you most earnestly,” I heard Axel say, “to run that horse in the very first race. He is ready. He will win for certain. If you delay—”

  At that moment we heard a heavy rustling in the bushes and a tall man stepped out, reached for me and thrust a knife toward me. In a vivid flash I saw the blade go past me, just missing my cloak.

  “Maman!” Louis-Charles cried out. I ducked to pick him up, and in that instant avoided another thrust of the deadly knife. I was barely aware that Loulou had fallen to the ground in a faint, so intent was I on holding onto the screaming Louis-Charles and beginning to run back down the path toward Axel and Louis and the soldiers. I could not run very fast because of my leg. With every step I felt a sharp stab of pain.

  In a blur Axel ran past me, sword raised, shouting.

  “Stand aside! Throw down the knife or I will cut you in two!”

  Louis, dazed, stood where he was, open-mouthed. I kept on running, nearly colliding with the four soldiers of the National Guard who were moving—far too slowly I thought—to Axel’s assistance, ignoring me entirely.

  I ran back into the palace, gasping for breath when I got there as Louis-Charles was very heavy, and practically fell into the arms of Chambertin, who appeared to be on his way out to join our walking party.

  “Help! Call the guards! Call Lafayette! A man attacked me!” Taking Louis-Charles from me, Chambertin hastily called out for aid and then, satisfied that Louis-Charles and I were unharmed and that the commotion in the garden had died down, led me up to my apartments.

  I was shaking. I am still shaking now, as I write this, with twelve guardsmen in the corridor outside my door and as many more standing just outside my windows, watching for any intruders. I am safe, but for how long?

  February 12, 1790

  Today after eating my midday meal with Axel I suddenly began to feel terribly ill, so ill that I had to lie down immediately. I clutched my stomach and moaned.

  “Get Dr. Concarneau,” Axel shouted to one of the pages, who ran off at once. To Sophie, who was bending over me, feeling my hot forehead, Axel said, “Did you change the sugar in her sugar bowl today? Tell me the truth.”

  Sophie hung her head. “No. I meant to, but—”

  “I told you to change it every single day, without fail!” I had never heard him speak so sharply to anyone.

  “Don’t you know what danger the queen is in? Anyone could put poison in the sugar bowl! Anyone at all!”

  I saw a man enter the room, youngish and florid-faced, carrying a bag.

  “Who are you?”

  “Sir, I am Dr. Concarneau’s new assistant. He was called away on an urgent case.”

  I moaned again. The pain was growing worse. I thought, they’ve poisoned me for certain. I’m going to die.

  “Get Dr. Concarneau now!”

  “Sir, he is an hour’s ride from here, in Saumoy. One of the Duke de Penthièvre’s tenants is ill.”

  “What is he doing attending to peasants! He is needed here!”

  For a few seconds Axel paced the floor in exasperation. Then he turned to the young man.

  “Damn it then, come over here. She’s been given poison.”

  Ill as I was, and doubled over on my couch, I felt a new sensation—fear—as the young physician assistant approached me.

  “Axel—” I called out, holding out my hand to him.

  “Yes, my darling, you’ll be all right now. He’ll give you something to counteract the poison.”

  “You do have an antidote, don’t you?”

  The young man, evidently flustered, fumbled in his bag.

  “Yes, yes sir, I do.”

  “What is it?” The question was asked in Louis’s booming voice. He entered the room with a brisk step and came up to the physician, who had put his bag down on the carpet and was kneeling beside it, rummaging for something.

  “What is the antidote?” Louis demanded again.

  “I—I can’t remember, your highness. Something Dr. Concarneau gave me—”

  At that moment a glass vial fell out of the man’s pocket, and with it a red, white and blue tricolor cockade, the revolutionary symbol.

  “Seize him!” Louis shouted, and a guardsman and two valets rushed forward to take hold of the physician’s assistant.

  With surprising quickness Louis snatched up the vial that had fallen onto the carpet, took it to the window, and held it up to the sunlight. Then he smelled it.

  “Poison!” he cried. “A distillate of mercury! Take this hateful stuff away and throw it in the fire,” he said to one of the grooms, who enfolded the vial in his lace-trimmed handkerchief and left the room with it.

  “Sweet almond oil!” Louis said. “That’s what she needs! That’s what physicians use when someone has taken poison.”

  “Do perfumers use it too, by any chance?” I heard Axel ask urgently. I heard him—as if from a distance. I was nearly fainting, now, from all the pain.

  “Yes, yes.”

  Axel ran out. The would-be poisoner had been dragged from the room, struggling and protesting.

  Sophie sat at the foot of the sofa, rubbing my feet and legs. Louis knelt beside me, holding my hand and patting my shoulder.

  “Poisons work very swiftly,” Louis was saying to me. “Whatever is making you ill, if it hasn’t killed you by now, probably it won’t.”

  His words were not very comforting. I felt as if an acid had been poured into my stomach and was corroding me from the inside.

  After what seemed an hour, Axel came in with a small flask and a cup. He poured out thick oil from the flask into the cup and handed it to me.

  “This will cause you to empty your stomach,” he said. “I got it from a tradesman I know who mixes perfumes.”

  Axel held my head while I drank, and kept on holding it when I vomited into the basin Sophie held under my chin. Slowly I began to feel better. The pain receded and in a while I was able to stand. Louis patted my hand and left.

  “From now on there must be fresh sugar brought to the table with every meal,” Axel announced to my servants. “No exceptions. No excuses. It might be wise to appoi
nt a food taster.”

  Feeling more myself again, I tried to make light of the situation.

  “A food taster?” I said. “No one would want that position.”

  “What does it pay?” came a cheeky voice from among the servants who had gathered in the corridor outside during the crisis. I laughed as heartily at this as everyone else, and am still chuckling as I write this now, though I sip at my water glass cautiously, and have decided not to sweeten my drinking water any longer with sugar from the sugar bowl.

  February 20, 1790

  The man who attacked me in the garden was a professional killer brought from Rome, we have discovered. He was hired by a rich man with an accent but he did not know the man’s name. Axel is satisfied that the guardsmen have gotten all the information out of him that they can. He will be turned over to the National Assembly for punishment.

  The poisoner who posed as Dr. Concarneau’s assistant managed to escape the guards and has disappeared. I fear he may come back and try again.

  For many weeks now, ever since I was attacked, I have been arguing with Louis about our leaving the country. We must go. I am absolutely convinced of it. Everyone at court assumes that we will go, secretly, and we receive many private offers of help.

  Dr. Concarneau, who is a Breton, assures me that in his part of France Louis is loved and revered and that if we took refuge in Brittany we would be protected. He offers to help us in any way he can. Axel has a plan all ready. He wants us to disguise ourselves as servants, Louis as a very portly valet with an eye-patch, me as a chamberwoman or laundress (he says I would make a very charming laundress). He will arrange for us to be brought, along with a group of other genuine servants, to his rooms in the rue Matignon and from there we would be taken by a secret route which he has arranged to Normandy and from there by ship to Sweden or England or Italy (where Charlot and Carlotta are) if we prefer.

  Everyone is pressing us to leave, but Louis is stubborn.

  “I will not be chased out of my own kingdom by a band of rebels,” he says. He insists that before long foreign armies will invade France, arrest or kill all the deputies in the assembly, and restore order. Many people say that there will be warfare within France, between the assembly and National Guard and soldiers from the provinces, where Louis is still revered and the Parisians are hated.