“That’s ridiculous.” Jacques is indignant. “Without the Third Estate, there are no taxes to maintain a palace, no revenue to run a kingdom!”
“These are simple people,” Curtius explains. “The women have been reading Marat’s L’Ami du Peuple and listening to the revolutionaries in the Palais-Royal.”
“They should have those revolutionaries arrested for inciting rebellion,” Henri says, and Jacques agrees.
“The king has already given orders,” Curtius says, “for the Duc d’Orléans to be sent to England. But this is bigger than the Duc. Bigger than any one person.” The curtains in the room breathe in and out. The storm hasn’t passed, and the rain is still falling in heavy sheets. “I should think that whatever the king does now,” Curtius continues, “it’s simply too late.”
He tells us how the mob was calmed with the offer of food and drink. But as soon as the sun set and cold replaced hunger, drunken revolutionaries made their way to the palace. By then, they were at least forty thousand strong. They approached the queen’s window and demanded that she appear. When she stepped onto the balcony with her daughter and the dauphin, the men began shouting, “Without your children!” For a moment she hesitated. Then the children were sent inside and she was left alone to face the revolutionaries. There were cries of “Shoot!” and “Kill her!” from the crowd. But the queen summoned her courage, and she curtsied to the mob.
“Then suddenly they began to cry ‘Long live the queen!’ ” Curtius says. He shakes his head. “Remember, these are poissardes.”
“And guardsmen,” Henri says incredulously. “One minute they’re calling for her death, the next they’re hailing her as queen. Do they understand what’s happening in the Assembly?”
“I don’t think they care,” Curtius replies. “They want bread and circuses.”
Like the Romans, I realize, and think of Madame David. I always thought the purpose of time was to move forward, not backward. Curtius describes how the queen bowed her head and curtsied not once but twice. I can imagine her fear, the way she would have held her chin high despite the trembling in her legs and the nervousness in her stomach. As the crowds shouted “Vive la reine,” Lafayette appeared on the balcony and kissed the queen’s hand. This show of camaraderie calmed them. But when the pretty doll disappeared back inside, the mob grew angry and resentful, and began to demand that the king replace his soldiers with men from the National Guard.
“Lafayette acted as the go-between,” Curtius says. “It was very tense. But after several hours, the king agreed. He is sending the Royal Flanders Regiment home.”
“And the Swiss?” my mother and I ask in unison.
“Are allowed to remain.”
But the worst is yet to come. Despite the king’s agreement, the mob outside the palace refused to leave. “At dawn,” Curtius says, “they broke into the palace.” A fight ensued, and two of the king’s bodyguards were killed—Durepaire and Miomandre de Sainte-Marie.
Soldiers who’d taken my brothers under their wing when they were new to Versailles.
“When they realized the mob was making for the queen’s chamber, they shouted for her to escape. They died saving her life,” he says. “The mob would have killed her. When the people saw that she’d fled, they looted her gowns and destroyed her paintings. The men were singing songs about killing and”—Curtius looks at me uneasily—“rape. Before they could find her in the Salon de l’Oeil-de-Boeuf, the National Guard stepped in.”
My mother crosses herself. The only sounds in the room are the crackling of firewood and the beat of the rain on the windows. I imagine what sort of tableau such a terrible scene would make. The Hunted, it would be called, with the royal children huddled next to the queen and their foolish father, whose chance to escape must now be lost. I hope that Madame Élisabeth is safe in her château. I hope the children can forget this frightening night, especially Madame Royale, whose life in Versailles has already fashioned her into a bitter child.
“If they were threatening to kill the queen,” my mother says, “they must have threatened her bodyguards as well.”
“Yes,” Curtius admits. “But Lafayette came to their aid, even when they threatened to kill him.”
This is serious. To be threatened by your own men means that all authority has been lost. But then who is leading the National Guard? I squeeze my mother’s hand, since I know she is thinking about my brothers.
“And the royal family?” Henri questions.
“The mob demanded that they leave Versailles and come to Paris.”
“They didn’t agree?” I gasp.
Curtius nods at my question. “There was no other choice.”
So the king stood on the balcony overlooking the Marble Courtyard and announced to his subjects that the royal family would depart at once. Pleased with their triumph, the crowd began to shout, “Long live the queen!” Ten minutes before, they had sung about her death. Now, they wished for her health again.
“But where will they live?” I exclaim.
“I assume they’re to be taken to the Tuileries.”
I think about the beautiful Hall of Mirrors, the cheerful Laiterie, and the blossoming gardens around the Hameau. What will Madame Élisabeth do without her little chapel in Montreuil? And who will watch over the Palace of Versailles? I wonder what happens to an abandoned château. Do they board up its windows and lock its gates? What about the hundreds of secret passageways and little doors? Do they close them, too?
Curtius stands. He looks terrible. “I’m sorry to come with such news.” To me he says, “Unfortunately, Marie, the time has come to remove the royal tableaux from the Salon. The royal family came within minutes of their lives. Maybe seconds. And if they had been murdered, your brothers would not have been far behind.”
That evening, it’s Henri and Yachin who help me remove the royal tableaux. There have always been three rooms filled with royal models in the Salon de Cire, and I can still remember the morning, eight months ago, when the queen smiled with pleasure to see her likeness in wax. The dinner table, the dresses, the figure of Rose—all of it must go. When everything is finished and the rooms are cleared, I stand in the workshop and fight back tears.
“It’s not so bad.” Yachin pats my hand tenderly. “You’ll find other people to model. If you’d like, you can even model me.”
I laugh. “Thank you, Yachin. I don’t think I’m at any loss to find subjects just yet.”
“Then why are you crying?”
“I’m not crying,” I say sternly.
“She’s upset that time is passing,” Henri explains as he comes into the workshop. He clears a space and lowers a box onto the floor. It’s filled with the silver bowls and pretty china that once brightened the table in the Grand Couvert. “Things change, and not always for the better.”
“You mean because of what happened this morning, and how the people were singing?”
“What do you mean?” I ask him.
“They were singing when they brought the king to Paris. I heard they surrounded his coach and were shouting that they’d brought the baker, the baker’s wife, and the baker’s son. My father says the revolutionaries had barrels of flour and soldiers had bread loaves on pikes. Is that true? Is there really so much bread in Versailles? Will the bakeries be filled now?”
“That’s a lot of nonsense,” Henri replies. “The king had enough to feed the ten thousand people who lived in Versailles, and that’s it. That flour won’t feed an entire city. It won’t even last the week.”
Yachin looks disappointed.
“Why don’t you help my mother?” I say. “I think she might have a few cakes.”
Yachin is gone before I can tell him to be careful on the stairs. Henri shuts the door behind him. “Cakes is the magic word.”
“We feed him whenever he comes. And my mother gives him food to take home.”
“That’s very kind of her.” Henri encircles my waist with his arms. “That must be where you get i
t from.”
“Kindness?” I laugh.
“You wouldn’t be upset about the royal tableaux if you weren’t concerned about the real people.”
“Perhaps I’m upset that I’ll have to find new models for those rooms,” I offer.
“I don’t believe that for a second. I can see through that hard mask of yours, you know.”
“Really?” I ask teasingly. “And what do you see?”
“A woman who wants to make sure that the door is locked …”
I giggle. I’ve discovered that there are ways to give and receive pleasure without risking pregnancy. They are a coquine’s ways, but that doesn’t bother me. I lock the door and blow out the lamps.
Chapter 34
OCTOBER 7, 1789
We have left the cradle of our childhood—what am I saying? Left! We were torn from it.
—MEMOIRS OF MADAME ÉLISABETH
WHEN I LOOK UP FROM THE CAISSIER’S DESK, THE FIRST thing I notice is her tricolor cockade. Rose has never come to the Salon without a reason. She hands me an envelope without speaking, and while I read the letter, she looks around.
You will have heard something by now of what has befallen my family. I do not need to tell you how devastated I am to have left behind my beloved Montreuil and the palace that has been my home since birth. Upon our flight to Paris, we took nothing with us. The queen’s milliner, Rose, and her hairdresser, Léonard, have been like guardian angels, offering to retrieve our most important things from Versailles, where our lives, our possessions, even our history, have all been left behind. I understand that it is a great imposition—and I hope you know that I would never ask except under the most dire of circumstances—but I was wondering if you might go with Léonard and Rose to salvage whatever is left in Montreuil. I’m afraid my circumstances will not allow me to return to the home that has given me such joy. If you think you might be able to honor this request, please find enclosed a small list of items that are beloved by me and that I am loath to live without.
The letter is signed by Madame Élisabeth. I look at the enclosed list, expecting to find precious jewelry and gowns, but instead there are more personal items: books and portraits, papers and mementos, even her wax figure of Christ.
“Will you come?” Rose asks quietly.
With so many things to do? There are three empty rooms that need to be filled, seven new models to be made, and who knows how many signs for the new tableaux. “When are you going?”
“Now. Lafayette is outside with guardsmen. Léonard is in the coach with empty baskets and chests. We’re to find whatever is on these lists and keep the items in our homes until further notice.” She raises her brows. “I had no idea you were so well regarded in Montreuil.”
I fold the letter and put it back in its envelope. “Neither did I.”
I go upstairs to find my mother and tell her what’s happening. She will need to mind the caissier’s desk with Yachin. Outside, Lafayette lifts his hat to me, and when he calls me by my first name, I know that Rose is impressed.
“A pleasure to see you, Marie,” he says. “I didn’t know you were on such close terms with the princesse.” There’s no accusation in his voice. After all, we are in similar positions. While we both believe that France is in need of its monarchs—that too much freedom, too fast, would be dangerous—our jobs are to serve the people.
“I was her wax-modeling tutor. But as you know from my uncle’s service,” I add cautiously, “there are no better patriots.”
“I have no doubt.” He helps me into the carriage, then holds out a gloved hand for Rose.
“Thank you,” she breathes, and her fingers remain on his hand longer than they need to. She is fooling herself if she thinks she’ll make a friend of Lafayette. There’s nothing he despises more than the vanity of the ancien régime, and with her powdered hair and wide silk dress, she is the opposite of Madame de Lafayette in every way. She seats herself next to a young man who has been watching me closely. When the door is shut and the horses pull away, he introduces himself as Léonard.
“Her Majesty’s hairdresser,” I reply. He’s a handsome man, with a shock of dark hair and exceptional skin. His culottes are the best quality silk, and the diamond buckles on his shoes are larger than any I’ve seen the king wear. He is obviously well loved by the queen, who has never cared what station of life people come from if they have talent.
“And you are the wax modeler,” he says. “I thought you’d be different. I imagined you older. Uglier,” he admits. Rose gives him a sharp look. “What? She’s quite pretty. Most tutors in the palace are ancient,” he confides. “The music tutor would make Methuselah look spritely.”
I don’t know what to say, so I keep my silence. Methuselah lived to see his nine hundred and sixty-ninth birthday.
“You are not a woman of many words,” Léonard decides.
“She’s a woman of plentiful words and firm opinions,” Rose says. I’ve never seen her so dejected. She had always imagined that the royal family would triumph. Now they are all but held captive in the Tuileries Palace.
“Then what do you think of this?” Léonard asks. “Of all the people in Versailles, we’re the ones they’re trusting to retrieve their possessions. A dressmaker, a hairdresser, and a sculptress. And none of us nobility.”
“It’s a sign of desperation,” I say. “They don’t know whom to trust. And if France can carry on without Versailles,” I add, “who’s to say there will ever be a court again?” It’s a heavy thought, and the three of us ride the rest of the way in silence.
When we reach Versailles, I hear Lafayette giving instructions to the National Guardsmen on patrol. They’re to unlock the doors of the king’s palace, then follow us to Montreuil, where I will collect Madame Élisabeth’s belongings. Suddenly, I’m nervous. Rose opens her fan and snaps it shut again. None of us want to be in a palace empty of everything but memories.
The carriages roll up the Avenue de Paris, and when they pass through the main gate, with its golden coat of arms depicting the crown and the horn of plenty, both Léonard and Rose inhale.
“Only princes of the blood pass through this gate,” Léonard whispers. “Even the nobility are forbidden.”
But the carriages stop in the royal courtyard. The three of us sit motionless; then our coach door is opened and we are instructed to get out. I am conscious of the feeling that, with every step, we are trampling on tradition. Only those with the Honors of the Louvre have walked across these stones. From the time of Louis XIV, everyone else has driven into the court of the ministers, where you can hire a sedan chair to take you to the palace if you’re unfit to walk.
“This isn’t right,” Rose says quietly.
We wait while a guardsman unlocks the door to the palace. I have never seen such a massive building abandoned. Hundreds of men are working on boarding up the windows. Tomorrow, the Palace of Versailles will be cast into darkness.
“After you,” Lafayette says when the doors have been opened. Men with empty chests stand ready behind us. We step inside, and I am struck at once by the silence. A hundred years of courtiers hurrying down these halls, and all that’s left are the scuffs on the marble floors where they ran to escape. For all of its laws and august traditions, it took only a mob to demolish nine hundred years of kingship.
“What we need is in the queen’s apartments,” Rose announces, her voice unsteady. We follow behind her and regard the damage done by the rampaging crowds. There are mirrors broken on every wall, tapestries torn as if their heavy threads were made of paper and not wool, and vases shattered into a thousand pieces, their fragments showered across the floors. Who will clean this? And what will become of all these possessions? Surely the National Assembly will want them, but they belong to the king. These are his lamps, his chairs, his commodes, all bought with the money he inherited from his grandfather, who inherited it from his father, Louis XIV.
We pass the grand staircase, and Lafayette stops to run his fingers o
ver the pockmarked walls. I realize with shock that bullet holes have chipped the marble and scarred the paneling. Lafayette exhales angrily, and the guardsmen behind him shift uneasily on their feet. “I want this cleaned,” Lafayette says. “All of it, before the palace is boarded up.”
When we reach the queen’s apartments, even Lafayette hesitates before the door. No one has ever entered without permission. But there is no one to give us permission. No ushers, or guards, or even ladies-in-waiting. He pushes open the heavy wooden doors, and Léonard goes first.
“My God! Look at what they’ve done,” he exclaims.
The gilded walls have been torn apart, as if someone dragged a pitchfork across the paneling. The silk hangings, the mirrors, the chandeliers—everything is damaged or destroyed.
Léonard bends down to collect the broken pieces of a box and wipes a tear from his eye. “Why would they do this to her?”
Yet the bed is exactly as she left it. Rose draws back the curtains to reveal the queen’s robe and her forgotten slippers. She must have run barefoot to the king’s apartments in nothing but her nightgown.
“How did she escape?” I ask.
Rose walks to the corner of the room and reveals a hidden door to the left of the alcove. “If it weren’t for this,” she says somberly, “we’d be arranging her funeral.”
We are all silent. If I hold my breath, I am sure I can catch the faint laughter of women and the sharp wit of the courtiers who filled this chamber. I see Rose square her shoulders and set her jaw. “Find her jewelry box,” she commands. “Take anything that looks irreplaceable.”
But it all looks irreplaceable to me. The bust of soft paste porcelain, the commode veneered with tortoiseshell and horn, the pair of brass firedogs with elaborate designs. What do you choose when everything has its own history?
I gaze up at the paintings by Boucher and wonder if he could have ever imagined a time when his Four Virtues would be looking down on commoners rummaging through Her Majesty’s chamber.
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