REESE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Class THE LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE ^^?F UNIVERSITY THE LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE FROM THE FRENCH OF G. LENOTRE, Aiithor of " The Flight of Marie Antoinette BY MRS. RODOLPH STAWELL many Illustrations PHILADELPHIA: J. B, LIPPINCOTT COMPANY IONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN 1907 THE LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE FROM THE FRENCH OF G. LENOTRE, Author of " The Flight of Marie Antoinette" BY MRS. RODOLPH STAWELL With many Illustrations PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN 190; Printed in England CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION xi LES FEUILLANTS LES FEUILLANTS (August 10th-13th, 1792) ... 1 DUFOUR'S NARRATIVE (August 10th-13th, 1792) ... 4 THE ROHAN-CHABOT INCIDENT (The Night of the llth August, 1792) 13 THE TEMPLE THE TEMPLE (August 13th, 1792 August 1st, 1793) . . 21 THE NARRATIVE OF DAUJON, COMMISSIONER OF THE COMMUNE (August, 1792 October, 1793) 33 THE NARRATIVE OF TURGY, A MANSERVANT EMPLOYED IN THE TEMPLE (10th August, 1792 13th October, 1793) . . 59 THE NARRATIVE OF TOWN- COUNCILLOR GORET . 81 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF JACQUES FRANCOIS LEPITRE (December, 1792 October, 1793) 102 EXTRACTS FROM THE NARRATIVE OF MOELLE, MEMBER OF THE COMMUNE , 134 39G4 CONTENTS THE CONCIERGERIE PAGE THE CONCIERGERIE (August 2nd October 16th, 1793) . . 144 THE NARRATIVE OF ROSALIE LAMORLIERE, SERVANT AT THE CONCIERGERIE (August October, 1793) . . . 150 NOTES BY MONSEIGNEUR DE SALAMON (1796) . . .172 THE INQUIRY OF MADAME SIMON- VOUET (1836) . . . 175 THE NARRATIVE OF MADAME BAULT, WIDOW OF THE GAOLER AT THE CONCIERGERIE PRISON (September llth October 16th, 1793) 186 THE QUEEN'S COMMUNION IN THE CONCIERGERIE . . 196 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF MADEMOISELLE FOUCH (Recorded in 1824 by M. le Comte de Robiano) . . . .207 THE DECLARATION OF THE ABBE MAGNIN (1825) . . . 215 THE TRIAL NOTES BY CHAUVEAU-LAGARDE, COUNSEL FOR THE QUEEN (14th-16th October, 1793) 228 EXTRACT FROM THE RECOLLECTIONS OF MOELLE, A MEMBER OF THE COMMUNE AND A WITNESS IN THE TRIAL (15th- 16th October, 1793) 235 THE EXECUTION NARRATIVE OF Louis LARIVIERE, TURNKEY IN THE CONCIER- GERIE ........ 238 THE NARRATIVE OF DE BUSNE ..... 245 NARRATIVE OF THE GENDARME LE"GER . . . .247 THE NARRATIVE OF DESESSARTS ..... 249 vi CONTENTS FAOB THE NARRATIVE OF THE VICOMTE CHARLES DESFOSSES . . 250 THE NARRATIVE OF ROUY, AUTHOR OF " LE MAGICIEN RE- PUBLIC AIN" ....... 253 MARIE ANTOINETTE'S WILL . . * . . . 255 THE CEMETERY OF THE MADELEINE . . .264 THE EXHUMATION OF THE REMAINS OF KING LOUIS XVI. AND QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE 269 vn LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE MARIE ANTOINETTE IN MOURNING AT THE TEMPLE . Frontispiecz MARIE ANTOINETTE IN HUNTING COSTUME . . To face 8 GENERAL PLAN OF THE TEMPLE PRECINCTS IN 1792 . . 25 PLAN A. THE SURROUNDINGS OF THE TEMPLE TOWER IN AUGUST, 1792, ACCORDING TO UNPUBLISHED DOCUMENTS . 29 PLAN B. THE SURROUNDINGS OF THE TEMPLE TOWER IN JANUARY, 1793, ACCORDING TO UNPUBLISHED DOCUMENTS . 31 THE PRINCESS DE LAMBALLE .... To face 44 THE UNFORTUNATE Louis XVI. . . . Tofaoe 60 THE LAST INTERVIEW OF Louis XVI. WITH HIS FAMILY, THE NIGHT BEFORE HIS EXECUTION . . . To face 68 PRINCESS MARIA CHARLOTTE THERESA . . To face 80 THE TEMPLE TOWER IN SEPTEMBER, 1792 . . To face 84 J. B. CLE"RY ...... To face 88 LAMOIGNON DE MALESHERBES . . . To face 92 THE TOWER, WITH THE BUILDINGS OF THE BAILLIAGE OF THE TEMPLE (AUGUST, 1792) .... To face 94 DEATH OF Louis CAPET ON THE PLACE DE LA REVOLUTION (JANUARY 21, 1793) .... To face 96 MADAME ELIZABETH ..... To face 122 Louis XVI. TEACHING HIS SON GEOGRAPHY IN THE TEMPLE ...... To face 138 THE QUEEN'S Two CELLS IN THE CONCIERGERIE . . 151 ix LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE PASSAGE LEADING TO THE QUEEN'S FIRST CELL IN THE CONCIER- GERIE ACTUAL CONDITION ..... 155 THE COUR DBS FEMMES AT THE CONCIERGERIE . . . 189 THE ABBE" MAGNIN, THE QUEEN'S LAST CONFESSOR To face 216 THE TRIAL OF MARIE ANTOINETTE (OCTOBER 14, 1793) To face 228 CONDEMNATION OF MARIE ANTOINETTE BEFORE THE REVO- LUTIONARY TRIBUNAL .... To face 232 THE QUEEN ON HER WAY TO THE SCAFFOLD . . . 251 THE CEMETERY OF THE MADELEINE .... 265 THE TOWER AND GARDEN OF THE TEMPLE, OCTOBER, 1793 . 279 PLAN OF THE VAULT OF THE BOURBONS . . . .282 THE VAULT OF THE BOURBONS IN THE CHURCH OF SAINT- DENIS . . To face 282 OF THE UNIVERSITY c F INTRODUCTION THIS is not a new book about Marie Antoinette : it is a recapitulation, an almost daily record, of the life led by the prisoner in Les Feuillants, the Temple, and the Conciergerie ; a collection of notes whose chief merit is their absolute authenticity. Nothing has been included but the narratives of eye- witnesses : of those who, on one ground or another, were admitted to the Queen's presence during the period between the 10th August, 1792, and the 16th October, 1793. These were neither gentlemen of the Court nor official historio- graphers. The Dangeau and the Saint-Simon of these dark days were a gaoler's wife, a menial of the pantry, an upholsterer, a servant-girl, a gendarme, a sweeper witnesses, that is to say, whose style does not aim at any great elegance. But I think their rugged sincerity will strike us as being more impressive than the poetical and pompous redundancies of the official writers of the Restoration. " Marie Antoinette's life in the Temple belongs to History," says M. Wallon ; "the reader does not wish such a subject to be quickly passed over : he is greedy of details and likes to dwell on them, because, in the face of so striking an example of the instability of human affairs, his emotions are as great as the misfortunes that call them forth." The amazing contrast between the Queen's first years, between the dream- like life at Schoenbrunn and Versailles, and her overwhelming sorrows, is enough to move the most callous heart. One xi INTRODUCTION remembers Trianon and all its flowers as one stands in the dark cellar of the Conciergerie where the poor woman endured her death-struggle ; and one perforce contrasts the brilliant portraits in which we see her all gentleness and smiles, a majestic figure under her crown of fair hair, with that sorrowful woman whom Paris saw in the executioner's cart, wrapped in an old shawl, nearly blind, with the short strands of white hair round her temples whipping her thin cheeks. It is not surprising that this melancholy epic should have proved attractive to a great number of historians. As soon as the Terror was over the writers set to work ; but either because the events of the nineteenth century diverted atten- tion from other things, or because every one was anxious to forget the horrors of the Revolution as quickly as possible, or because the chroniclers in question were afraid of rousing into activity the critics of the Empire by reviving the memory of the House of Bourbon, twenty years slipped by before any serious inquiry into the Queen's imprisonment was set on foot. Then came the Restoration ; and instantly there was such a flood of brochures Les Augustes Victimes Les Illustres Persecutes Les Malheurs de la Heine de France that in a few months the supply of elegiacal banalities ran out. It was only then that the people whom the chances of the Revo- lution had placed in contact with the prisoners of the Temple were brought out of their obscurity. There were numbers of municipal officers, conventionists, gaolers, gendarmes, warders, and servants of all kinds who, even if they possessed no original documents, must at least have had accurate recollec- tions of the drama of 1793. But by the time it occurred to anyone to question them, many of them were dead ; others, not caring to remind the royal family of the part they had played, kept silence ; a few, thinking it to their interest to speak, told their tale ; and thus it is that we see successively appearing, between 1815 and 1820, the Narrative of Dufour, Turgy's Fragments, the evidence of Goret and Lepitre, the xii INTRODUCTION Letters from the Widow Bault, the Recollections of Rosalie Lamorliere, etc. These narratives, published for the most part in the form of short pamphlets of a few pages, shared the fate of all pamphlets : they disappeared. Indeed, I think as a matter of fact they were not looked for very zealously, for they have been so often quoted that everyone thinks he knows them. All the historians who have described the Temple prison and told the story of the imprisonment of the royal family have had these for their only sources of information ; and for such a long time now every writer has been touching them up and colouring them, and making dramas out of them, and arranging them to the best advantage for the support of his own particular theory, that those who take the pains to consult the ungarbled text of the original copies find it absolutely unrecognisable. And yet one would have thought that such valuable and rare documents, concerned with events such as these, would have inspired enough respect to save them from the super- fluous additions that tend to smother not merely their individual flavour, but also their chief characteristic of authenticity. Everything that has been thought to be an improvement to them has, on the contrary, quite remarkably detracted from their value by robbing them of that vividness of things seen which no secondhand narrator, however clever he may be, can ever recapture. To the very clumsiness of these uncultured tales we owe many an involuntary revelation. How much it surprises us to hear of the ill-concealed emotion of the commissioners of the Commune, uneducated men of narrow mind for the most part, who accepted the office of guarding the prisoners, and came to the Temple in a spirit of bravado as it were, filled with excitement and coarse delight at the idea of hearing Capet sigh, and of snubbing the chattering Austrian. Gradually, as they approached the Tower, a vague feeling of pity grew upon them ; as they mounted the stairs they were choking with emotion ; in the xiii INTRODUCTION presence of the prisoners the most truculent were silenced and the roughest softened by an instinct of respect which they tried in vain to hide. These simple folk, these artisans and shopkeepers, were embarrassed by the role that had been thrust upon them ; without being willing to confess it, they were ashamed to see the King and Queen lodged in this narrow, low-ceiled, uncomfortable little room ; and so real was this feeling of embarrassment that these officials soon began to avoid the corvee of the Temple, none of them being willing to undertake it except certain members of the Commune, always the same, whose devotion the prisoners had won. This apparent contradiction is easily explained. In the intervals of the artificial excitement of which these great revolutionary demonstrations are born the little Parisian bourgeois is neither cruel nor vindictive. He is, as much as any man, the slave of the impression of the moment ; and had it not been for the overpowering fear that was the pre- vailing sentiment in those troubled times, many of the municipal officers on duty at the Temple would have opened the door and shut their eyes. But outside the prisoners' circle of attraction were com- rades of the club and of the section, boon companions before whom it was necessary to play at cynicism and curse the tyrants for whom any sympathy that was felt was un- expressed and the pity that had begun to well up was weakened by a flood of words over the counter of the wine- shop. Yes, the thing was well organised, and those who had schemed it all, now that the tragic climax on which they had long resolved was near at hand, had skilfully secured the support of the Parisian populace : they guarded against its innate sentimentality by playing upon its vanity, interest, and fear : but now the weights were no longer equal and the scale dipped upon the wrong side. These remarks may throw some light upon those inexplicable and complex xiv INTRODUCTION characters, Tison, Busne, Moelle, Lamarche, Bault, Prud'- homme, Simon, and others whom we shall meet in the course of these narratives. There is another element in the story that will be no less^ surprising : the calmness, one might almost say the indiffer- ence, of the prisoners, and the kind of familiar good-fellow- ship that they showed in their relations with their warders. Here, again, it seems to me that historians have made the facts unrecognisable by creating characters all of a piece : disdainful pride on the part of the prisoners, coarse ferocity on the part of the gaolers. How much more human is the relaxation of manners that resulted from this enforced com- panionship, and what unexpected pictures it evokes ! The Queen, in the course of a walk in the gardens of the Temple, sits down under a tree beside the member of the Commune on duty, and they enter into conversation. The daughter of Maria Theresa, looking at her prison, asks the official what he thinks of it. Whereupon the latter describes an expedi- tion he once made to Coucy-le-Chateau, and embarks upon the history of Gabrielle de Vergy. The Queen, amused by the tale, calls her husband, who is at a little distance play- ing at ball with his son, and both of them then begin chatting with their gaoler on matters of geography, archaeo- logy, and travels. And later on the Queen, whose haughti- ness has been so much insisted upon, shows her gaoler a collection she has made of her children's hair at different ages : she sprinkles scent on her hands and waves them before his face. The whole party plays chess, makes jokes, plays upon the harpsichord ; there is no sign of haughtiness, no complaint, no recriminations. And how these poor women persisted in deluding them- selves ! With what deceptive details they fed their feverish and tenacious hopes ! They believed the men of Nantes were on their way to Paris : the Spanish Army, no doubt, must have joined them: had they already reached Orleans? Had xv INTRODUCTION not the Swiss declared war ? / An interchange was carried on of notes containing news, written in invisible ink ; romantic names were used : Produse, Constant, Fidele ; a language of signs was invented. All this reminds us with a pang of the comedies of Trianon. Shall we still be here in August ? asked Madame Elizabeth. Alas ! Tell us the bad news as well as the good, she added. Not ever again would she hear news that was good. When, one after another, their illusions have died, when no earthly hope is conceivable any longer, a noble and mysterious figure comes upon the scene. We do not refer to the Abbe Magnin, who, by risking martyrdom for the sake of bringing some comfort to the Queen, simply fulfilled the duties of his office, but to that poor girl who had neither money, nor credit, nor interest, and was, moreover, deformed, yet who by the force of her own will obliged the whole machinery of the Terror to yield before her, and simply made her way into the Con- ciergerie, carrying some fine linen, a cake, and some preserves for Marie Antoinette. I know of nothing more touching than the placidity of this girl, who, though brought up behind an old-clothes shop, was neither disturbed by the presence of the Queen nor by the coldness with which the prisoner received her. At once, without regard to her surroundings, fearlessly and quietly she found the right words, and spoke to the Queen as she would have spoken to one of her neighbours in trouble. Seeing that the Queen was paying no attention to her, the brave girl calmly set herself to overcome the suspicion with which she felt herself regarded by tasting the jam and the cake, taking her time over it, without consider- ing for a single moment that she was under the knife of the guillotine and that her courage was simply sublime. For a long time we believed that this story, which sounds so unlikely and has been so much discussed, was a fabrication. We shall show why our suspicions have been overcome, and give the reasons that have led us to accept, as absolutely true, the narrative of the Abbe Magnin. xvi INTRODUCTION The evidence that we have collected on the subject of the Queen's last hours is still more affecting. No doubt the whole story of the martyrdom has already been told : but what description in the world, even were it by the most eminent of poets, could rival the tale of those who can say : / have seen ? Such are those who will show us the daughter cf Emperors in the anguish of that dawn of the 16th October, stretched upon her truckle-bed, her cheek resting on her hand, as through the barred window she watches the growing light of that sad day. Two candles are flickering out upon the table ; the gendarme, in a corner, is reading and smoking. The servant enters and offers the prisoner some broth that she has made for her ; but the poor woman's throat refuses to swallow, and she only takes two spoonfuls. We shall hear of the abrupt entrance of the executioner; of the suppressed sighs, and movements of horror that convulsed the unhappy woman, revolting from the idea of death ; of the man who cut off her hair and put it in his pocket .... Such things as these, recorded by those who actually saw them, are so intensely impressive that they could hardly be more so if they had taken place under our own eyes. Afterwards we shall return, with the commissioners who came back from over there, to the Conciergerie, which, in spite of the crowd of prisoners, seemed to be empty that day, so much had the presence of its great victim appeared to fill it. Here there was a general feeling of consternation in the air. The Queen's hair was being burnt in the registrar's office ; that hair once so fair which in the days of the pastorals of the Trianon had lent its name and colour to the stuffs that clothed the fashionable world. The dead woman's little dog was wandering piteously through the passages, while an inventory was being taken of the modest possessions left by the victim. For a long time to come everyone who awaited death in this place asked : " Which was her room ? What xvii b INTRODUCTION did she say ? " It was her memory, already, that dominated all the others. Such are the narratives that are here published. Repro- duced as they are in their entirety and arranged in their present form, they will, we are sure, appear quite new to many people. Even for those who have made the Revolu- tion their special study our work, we think, will not be useless, since it puts at their disposal documents of unques- tionable interest, documents that it is almost impossible to find nowadays in their original form. We would especially call their attention to the most important of these papers, the greater part of which has remained unpublished until now. The description it contains of the events of September 2nd and 3rd gives us food for much thought. At that sinister date the Temple was besieged by a horde of proved murderers, monsters, drunken brutes, carrying the head, entrails, and heart of the Princesse de Lamballe. They were received by the municipal officers on duty, who had a considerable armed force at their disposal. How were they received ? With powder and shot ? Not at all. All the arms were hidden ; the troops were drawn up in line ; the vile mob was harangued, with allusions to its glory and its exploits ; and the commissioners put themselves at the head of the procession that carried the hideous trophy. It is true that the triumphant horde was carried off in another direc- tion by this means ; but how much more quickly the same end would have been gained by stopping its progress in the beginning by a briskly sustained fire ? This narrative of Daujon's is perhaps the saddest of all, in that it explains the others ; showing us the authorities compounding with the murderers and bowing before their threats. The same weakness that was the undoing of Louis XVI. was destined, by a strange repetition of history, to be the undoing of those who had compassed his fall. With the exception of certain expressions whose coarseness it is impossible to reproduce, we have deleted nothing from xviii INTRODUCTION Dauj on's manuscript. A number of incidents are recorded in it whose horror, some may think, should have been modified such as those unutterable words of the Dauphin. But our respect for the truth is too great, and; our independence in searching for it too sincere, to allow us to curtail the deposi- tion of a witness and to choose from it only what pleases us. Facts let us have facts ! Let us first find out how events occurred : judgment can be passed on them later. The history of the Revolution is still only at the stage of enquiry and examination. When the dossier is complete the time will come for addressing the jury ; the verdict then will at all events be found in full knowledge of the facts, and if the occasion arises each individual may, with a safe conscience, pronounce the words of condemnation or of acquittal. xix LES FEUILLANTS (AUGUST 10-13TH, 1792) IT was the 10th August, 1792, and the hour was seven o'clock in the morning. The Legislative Assembly met in the Riding School of the Tuileries, and entered upon that great sitting whose tragic issues are for ever memorable. The deputies, like the whole of Paris, were in a state of fever : the excited mob surged round the hall, ready at any moment to break out into open riot; everyone felt that the hour of the crisis was about to strike and that it would be terrible. Upon the benches the tumult, agitation, and confusion were indescrib- able ; outside the walls the murmuring throng grew ever larger ; in the narrow corridor that connected the hall with the Passage des Feuillants an overwhelming multitude was crowded : in the passage itself the murderous work had actually begun ; several heads were raised aloft on pikes. Suddenly a man appeared at the bar of the hall, and announced breathlessly that the King and his family were crossing the gardens, on their way to take refuge with the Assembly. Almost at the same moment there appeared at the wide entrance that yawned under the seats of the members the soldiers of the Royal Guard, trying with fixed bayonets to force their way through the dark passage in which the frantic crowd was struggling. There was a general cry : " No soldiers ! No arms ! " The benches were emptied in an instant ; the deputies dashed down and repulsed the Guard. At that moment the King appeared ; then from the back- wash of the surge came the Queen, with Madame Elizabeth holding Madame Royale by the hand, and behind them a grenadier of the National Guard carrying the Dauphin above the level of the people's heads. There was a moment of comparative silence while the two hostile powers, the Court and the Assembly, reconciled for an instant by their common danger, faced each other in dismay. 1 B LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE Then, while an aimless discussion followed, leading to nothing, the deputies arguing, with an affectation of calmness, as to whether the King should sit here or there came the news from without of a succession of disasters. The palace had been broken into ; M. Mandat had just been murdered ; the insurgent army was gaining ground ; its furious waves were beating against the walls of the Riding School with a noise like the thunder of a raging sea ; the courts were invaded. The Assembly, over-confident in its own authority, decreed that twenty of its members should be commissioned to speak to the people and soothe their agitation. It was half-past nine when they started on this errand. Suddenly the report of a gun was heard : the whole hall rose and listened, trembling. The public, crowded together in the galleries, were jostling each other in the effort to escape, when an officer of the National Guard, bursting through the barrier, rushed into the semicircle crying : " To your places, gentlemen ; they are breaking in ! " The president it was Guadet left his seat and sought shelter. From without came a sound of roaring guns ; and during the short interval between the constant reports could be heard the sustained fire of musketry, drawing closer and closer to the Assembly. At this point the twenty deputies who had been despatched to make peace returned in disorder. One of them, Lamarque, with a gesture of despair addressed the president, but his words were hardly distinguishable. " We reached the end of the court of the Riding School We came too late ! An immense crowd of armed men we know no more we could not possibly go any further." His voice was lost in the tumult : the tocsin was ringing at the churches of the Conception, Saint Roch, and the Assumption, the sound of the guns was growing louder every moment : some musket-shots were aimed at the windows of the Riding School, and shivered the glass to atoms. Some of the deputies attempted to fly, but were recalled and prevented from leaving the hall. " It is here that we ought to die ! " A yell arose from the galleries : " Here are the Swiss Guards ! " J And the Assembly, believing their last hour had 1 As a matter of fact some Swiss Guards tried to force the doors of the hall, in order to protect the royal family from the insurgents, who were on the point of breaking into the Riding School. Weber mentions the fact in his Mdmoires : "We shouted to the gendarmes to let us in," he writes, "but they LES FEUILLANTS come, rose as one man and answered with a shout : " Vive la liberte, vive la nation ! " We have no intention of giving a detailed account of that long and agonising day : we have merely summed up, almost in the original words, the principal facts recorded in the official report. 1 This sketch will suffice to show the extent of the prevailing agitation, the complete absence of decided action, and the con- fusion and terror that reigned on the occasion. The armies on both sides of the struggle were marching with their eyes shut, and none could foresee what the morrow would bring forth. It is certain that at midday on the 10th August the King was still hoping to return to the Tuileries in the evening. "We shall come back," the Queen had said as she left the palace ; for no one dreamt that the royal family were about to be imprisoned. But in this great catastrophe in which the two powers were foundering, the Assembly, at all events, understood that they must abstain from mortgaging the future : since the deluded King had taken refuge in the camp of the enemy it behoved the latter to see that such a precious hostage did not escape : later on they would know better what course to adopt. It was then they decided that the royal family should stay for the time in the precincts of the Assembly itself, in the Convent of Les Feuillants, whither, led by an eye-witness, we are about to follow them. In this rough, unstudied story we shall see signs of the same distraction and confusion that reigned in the Assembly. It is the deposition of a man of whom we know nothing except that his name was Dufour ; of whose profession, even, we are ignorant, as well as of the reasons that brought him to this place. His short memorandum is valuable, nevertheless, in that he records though only superficially it is true a series of facts which the witnesses who were in a better position to do so did not think of describing. 2 answered that the thing was impossible, for the doors had been barricaded on the inside ever since the arrival of the Court. We flung ourselves, a dozen at a time, against the great door : it was beginning to yield, but for want of sappers all our efforts came to nothing. " 1 See the Parliamentary Archives, vol. XL VII, p. 616-676. 2 Dufour's narrative appeared in 1814 with the following title : The Four Days of the Terror. Details of the four days passed by Louis X VI. , King of France, and his august family, in the Legislative Assembly, from the Wth August, 1792, to the 13th of the same month, when they were taken to the Tower of the Temple. 3 B 2 DUFOUR'S NARRATIVE (AUGUST 10TH-13TH, 1792) I SPENT the night between the 9th and 10th August under arms in the Place Vendome, because the company to which I was attached had declared for the King. At about three o'clock in the morning this company proceeded to the palace of the Tuileries, but being prevented from entering the building, it retired to the Place Vendome, whither I followed it. At about six o'clock in the morning everything seemed to have calmed down, and I thought the danger was over, in which belief I hastened with all possible speed to my father, who was very ill. On my return I saw no sign of the com- pany mentioned above, and when I approached the Palace everything seemed quiet, and the mob had disappeared. I reached the grand staircase undisturbed ; but what was my surprise when I saw it covered with corpses, piled one upon another. With a beating heart I paused for a moment to collect my thoughts. A thousand ideas flashed into my mind. I pictured a murdered King, and with him all his family and many another victim, among whom, perhaps, there might be some still breathing, to whom I could bring help. Inspired by this idea, I determined to go upstairs and through the rooms, which I did amid a silence that was really amazing ; and I met no one. I returned to the King's bed- room, thinking it likely that during such scenes of violence there might have been some who had hidden themselves; and since this seemed a propitious moment for them to escape, I was going to suggest that they should take advantage of it. But before doing so I took the precaution of listening at the DUFOUR'S NARRATIVE head of the grand staircase. I had not been there for two minutes when I heard a fearful clamour, and not knowing in which direction to fly, I locked myself into the King's room. The crowd soon reached the door apd knocked upon it violently, but I called out from within in a firm tone of voice : " This is not the way ; go round on the other side." The leader went through the Grand Gallery, and all the others followed him. When, as far as I could hear, they had all passed on, I came out of the room and followed them, for I feared to meet another band of them on the staircase, and wished to see what they were going to do. I saw them trampling the most valuable things under foot, and breaking mirrors and chandeliers, etc., so that in a moment these splendid rooms were a mere ruin. Some of these men had entered the King's dressing-room, where they were flinging coats and decorations on the floor, while others tried the clothes on and cursed his Majesty. Through these maniacs I learnt that the King, at nine o'clock in the morning, having come to the conclusion that he could not stay in the Palace of the Tuileries without exposing the whole royal family to the greatest danger, had determined to retire with his family to the Legislative Assembly. I did not lose a moment in following them. I forced my way through the crowd, and found myself close to the reporter's-box of the Logographe, in which I discovered that unhappy royal family delivered into the hands of their cruel enemies. All the corridors were filled with the terrorists, who were loudly demanding a mas- sacre. I retired to my own home in the Faubourg Saint Honore for a moment's breathing-space, and as I reached my door I saw three people murdered. They threw themselves at the feet of their assassins entreating for mercy ; but nothing could stay those murderous hands, and I saw the three victims expire within a few yards of me. My entreaties were dis- regarded, and perhaps I should have suffered the same fate if I had persisted any longer. I had just passed through the Garden of the Tuileries and the Champs-^lysees, where the ground was covered with dead bodies. This horrible scene had quite unnerved me, and I remained for a quarter of an hour in my own house. I then proceeded to the Garde-Meuble 5 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE of the Crown, where I found M. Sulleau, 1 and asked him if he were aware of the troubles of the royal family. " Yes, 11 he answered, sorrowfully ; " and at this moment I am having two trucks loaded with beds, for the furnishing of some little rooms that are being made ready for their Majesties. 1 ' 2 When the trucks were loaded no one dared to drag them ; for so great was the terror that prevailed that the porters who are always waiting about at the street-corners in Paris would not come into the Garde-Meuble at any price. It was, how- ever, important that the little suite of rooms should be furnished without delay, in order that the royal family might be released from their sufferings in the uncomfortable place where they then were. I succeeded, by dint of many entreaties, in persuading twelve porters whom I found at the door of Les Feuillants to drag the trucks ; but we had considerable trouble in accomplishing our end on account of the great crowds that filled the courts. I immediately had the beds taken up to the little suite of rooms in question, which comprised four cells, and two others a little further on for Madame Elizabeth. At about seven o'clock in the evening 1 Francois Suleau, editor of the Actes des Apotres and of the journal that bore his name, left his house on the 10th August at about half -past eight in the morning. Being recognised and arrested almost at once, he was taken to the guard-house in the Cour des Feuillants and murdered by the populace, together with the Abb6 Bouyou, MM. de Solminiac and du Vigier, both members of the Body Guard and five other victims. Their bodies were thrown into the Place Vend6me (see August Vitu, Francois Suleau). The above does not refer to him, then. But Suleau had two brothers, one of whom contributed later on to the Drapeau Blanc, a journal founded by Martainville. It was this ardent royalist, doubtless, who helped Dufour to furnish the rooms allotted to Louis XVI. 's family. 2 On the 10th August, during the morning sitting, Verniaud, in the name of the Commission of Twelve, brought forward a bill relating to the suspension of the Head of the Executive Power. Article 7 of this bill was as follows : " The King and his family will remain within the precincts of the Legislative Assembly until peace is restored in Paris." This measure was immediately passed ; in consequence of which the family of Louis XVI. remained during the day of the 10th and part of the following night, in the reporter's box of the Logotachygraphe, in the Riding School of the Tuileries. At ten o'clock in the evening the sitting did not close till half-past three in the morning some members commissioned by the Assembly conducted the King, the Queen, the Dauphin, Madame Royale, and Madame Elizabeth to the upper storey of the Convent of the Feuillants, the ground-floor of which was occupied by the offices and Com- mittee-rooms of the Assembly. (See Parliamentary Archives, 1st series, vol. XLVII, and the Mtmoirea de Madame de Tourzel. ) 6 DUFOUR'S NARRATIVE Madame la Comtesse de Tourzel came to inspect it, and observed that the royal family had no underlinen. I at once made it my business to procure some. It was difficult to find any little shirts for the Dauphin, but I succeeded in obtaining some. Their Majesties had been in the hall of the Assembly uninterruptedly from nine o'clock in the morning till ten o'clock at night, and had experienced the greatest suffering and every imaginable privation, for no one had given any thought to their needs. When at ten o'clock their Majesties retired to the little suite of rooms mentioned above, 1 they were overcome with fatigue after their long sitting in the Assembly. They were dying with thirst, but I had nothing but water to offer them, and they were much inconvenienced by the small size of their quarters. The royal family were accompanied by Madame la Princesse de Lamballe, Madame la Comtesse de Tourzel, Madame Auguaire and Madame d'Egremont. 2 1 In conformity with the Assembly's decree some cells in the Convent of Les Feuillants were made ready for the reception of the royal family. The King was alone in his room .... the Queen and Madame were together in the second cell, and Madame Elizabeth, Madame de Lamballe, and I were put into the third with Monseigneur le Dauphin. It is easy to imagine the kind of night we passed, distinctly hearing the noise in the Assembly, the applause and clapping in the galleries ; and excepting Monseigneur le Dauphin and Madame, who were so much overcome with fatigue that they fell asleep on the spot, not one of us closed an eye all night .... "Some commissioners came at 11 o'clock at night to see if each of us was in bed in his or her allotted cell." Madame de Tourzel's Memoires. 2 The spelling of the names so inaccurately written by Dufour can be easily rectified. Madame Daigremont was the wife of the tapissier of the Assembly. As for Madame Auguaire, she was Madame Adelaide Aughie, the daughter of M. Genet, Chief Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and the sister of Madame Campan. She had married M. Aughie, farmer-general of the duchies of Lorraine and Bar, who forsook this lucrative position later on for the less profitable office of Postmaster-General. Queen Marie Antoinette was much attached to Madame Aughie, whom she had made her first woman-of-the-bedchamber. On the 6th October, the 20th June, and the 10th August Adelaide Aughi6 bravely stood by her sovereign, whom she followed, as we see, to Les Feuillants. The Queen called her " my Lioness." When the royal family were moving from Les Feuillants to the Temple Madame Aughi6 contrived, at the moment of parting, to slip twelve hundred francs in gold, which she always carried about with her in case of accidents, into Marie Antoinette's hand. When the Queen appeared before the Revolutionary Tribunal she was asked who had given her this money. She admitted that it had been given to her by Madame Aughi6, and M. Aughie was arrested. Thanks to Madame Aughi6 her husband was 7 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE Their Majesties passed a fearful night ; for the terrorists came close to their rooms and recommenced their insults and threats. It was feared that they would overpower the sentries and come in, and that a massacre would follow. I spent the night on a bench near the King's rooms, and several times I saw that the people were trying to break in the grating that was at the end of the passage. The sentries had great difficulty in restraining these savages. I awaited the daylight with great impatience, hoping that with the dawn all these atrocities would grow less violent, but they continued just the same. When one of the ladies appeared at the door that led to the rooms she was obliged to retreat at once, being alarmed by the yells outside. Every time I looked in the direction of that grating it seemed to me that I must be in the menagerie, watching the fury that the wild beasts show when any one appears in front of their bars. 1 forgotten for several months, in the prisons of the Terror ; but all that she had been through had affected her mind, and one day she wrote a letter to the Committee of Public Safety, saying that she was about to kill herself, and entreating that in consideration of this sacrifice her husband might be spared. She accordingly threw herself out of the window and was killed, two days before the 9th Thermidor. It is said that her funeral procession was stopped by the passing of the cart in which Robespierre and his accomplices were being taken to the scaffold. M. Aughie was set free, and remained a widower with three daughters, one of whom, Aglae, married Marshal Ney. (Information supplied by M. Partiot, great-grandson of Madame Aughie. ) It was to Madame Aughi6 that Marie Antoinette gave the portrait painted by the request of the Empress Maria Theresa, by the German artist Werthmuller. It appears at the beginning of this volume. The Queen was represented in hunting-costume ; and on her head was a large felt hat adorned with a rose and draped with a veil that hung about her shoulders. This picture, so precious on many grounds, was hidden during the Revolution, and, by a superfluity of precaution, with the idea of making it unrecognisable, the hat was replaced by a large peruke, and the veil was altered into a kind of mantle covering the dress. Madame Partiot, nee de la Ville, a granddaughter of Madame Aughie, afterwards found this portrait in an attic. She entrusted it to Isabey, who undertook to restore the original picture, and did actually restore the dress. But he dared not ^ scrape off the peruke, [for fear of being obliged to touch up the face, which had remained in its original state, and was painted with marvellous delicacy of tone. It was in this condition, then, that the picture was placed in M. Partiot's gallery, and it is he who has so kindly allowed us to reproduce this hitherto unpublished portrait of the Queen. We beg him to accept our sincere gratitude. 1 At the Feuillants the King and Queen saw MM. de Choiseul, de Briges, de Breze, de Goguelat, de Nantouillet, and d'Aubier ; and the last, 8 MARIE ANTOINETTE IN HUNTING COSTUME. An unpublished portrait painted by Werthmiiller, and given by the Queen to Mme. Anghie, the sister of Mme. Campan. (M. Partiot's Collection.) DUFOUR'S NARRATIVE Yet the royal family were obliged to pass that way four times a day, and all that they heard and suffered may be imagined. At about six o'clock in the morning, remembering that their Majesties had eaten nothing throughout the preceding day, I began to devise means of procuring some breakfast for them. Being unable to apply to the King's cooks, I went to an eating-house and ordered breakfast to be prepared ; and at half-past eight I laid the table and sent to inform their Majesties that breakfast was ready. They came to the table ; but their sorrows were their only food. They raised their eyes to heaven and sighed ; and soon they rose and returned to their rooms, and thence to the Legislative Assembly. 1 The Queen was extremely ill. Indeed it was astonishing that she had the courage to remain through such long sittings in a little box where there was hardly room for her, so closely packed was it with people. Some of the gentlemen of the Court had been rash enough to make their way into the corridors, with the intention of seeing their Majesties. They had been seen as they came in, and suddenly there was a great commotion in all the passages of the building. The people shouted : " Prince so-and-so is here, and others too ! " but, just as the search for them began, the tapissier of the Legislative Assembly, with one of his friends, seized them by the arm and began to sing and dance. It was thus that they escaped the fury of the people, who would, perhaps, have murdered them. with respectful sympathy, offered the Queen 25 louis and a cambric handkerchief, " for hers was drenched with tears." Being quite penniless Marie Antoinette accepted the gift, thanking M. d'Aubier with a heart- broken smile, "which," he says, "hurt me." It was necessary to speak in undertones because of the children, who were asleep, and of the guards, who could hear what was said. In the next room, Madame Elizabeth, the Princesse de Lamballe, and Madame de Tourzel were talking of the terrible events that had succeeded each other so rapidly and had reached a climax so quickly; and the Queen's name was mentioned. "I think she is doomed," said Madame de Lamballe ; " listen." And indeed, the mob was howling under the windows, and demanding her head. De Tyre", Marie Antoinette. 1 On the llth August, at seven o'clock in the morning, and not at nine, as Dufour intimates, the King and his family resumed their places in the box that had been assigned to them on the previous day. Parliamentary Archives, vol. XLVIII. 9 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE At ten o'clock in the morning I went to the house of M. Thieri de Vildavrai, the King's first valet-de-chambre, and describing to him the deplorable state to which the royal family was reduced, I asked him if he could see to the preparation of their Majesties 1 dinner. He answered eagerly that he was ready to do anything that would tend to their comfort, but that he was doubtful as to the possibility of introducing the dinner into the building. I reassured him, promising to undertake the matter myself, and to carry it out with all possible care. On that same day M. Thieri came to see the King, which seemed to give great pleasure to his Majesty, for this was the only person he had been able to see since the beginning of this sad state of things. At two o'clock I returned to M. Thieri's house, and found the dinner ready. Four men carried it in baskets, and I walked in front to make way. Insults, and libels on the royal family, were flung at me as I passed ; and the people tried to raise the napkins, saying they felt very much inclined to eat the dinner. I told them I kept an eating-house, and it would be I that would suffer if they did so. By this means I kept them quiet, and with great difficulty reached my destination. The room in which their Majesties were to dine was an office. With great difficulty I obtained leave to lay the table, being helped by two people who had refused to desert Madame Elizabeth. I allowed them to go on with the work by themselves while I escorted their Majesties, who were obliged to walk down the whole length of a long corridor to reach the table. This corridor was crowded with people, and the terrorists were forming the most treacherous designs. The royal family were exposed to all the full fury of these men, and were subjected to a thousand insults, and even to occasional threats. I did my best to be always with their Majesties, in order to take precautions against the unpleasant- ness to which they were constantly exposed, day and night. When their Majesties had dined they returned to their rooms, and there allowed their tears to flow freely ; then they proceeded to the Assembly. The crowd very often gathered under the windows of the King's apartments, and I went 10 DUFOUR'S NARRATIVE down to listen to what they were saying about their Majesties. I noticed one man in particular who, in terrifying terms, was urging the people to go upstairs and massacre the royal family. His words made my blood boil, and, forgetting the danger to which I should expose myself in my efforts to avert a still greater peril, I scanned the faces around me, and determined to chase this dangerous man away by force. On the following day at the same hour I again found this individual making similar speeches. I was no less moved than on the previous day, and taking the same precautions I chased the monster away with greater violence than before. I saw him no more. A moment later the royal family proceeded to the Assembly as usual. M. Thieri continued to visit the King constantly, which was a great comfort to his Majesty, for they probably had many things to talk over together in connection with the melancholy state of affairs. One day the King left the gallery very hurriedly, and asked me if M. Thieri had gone. u Sire, he left a moment ago. 1 ' " I am sorry." " Sire, I will run after him." I succeeded in finding him. " Monsieur," I said, " it seems that his Majesty forgot to say something to you." He returned to speak to the King, and when I opened the door I saw gratitude plainly written on the fine face of that good King. M. Thieri, as he went out, told me he had noticed with pleasure the care with which I served their Majesties, and added, that as soon as matters were more settled I should be rewarded. On the following day his Majesty honoured me by expressing his satisfaction with the zeal I showed in serving him. The Queen had lost her locket. This seemed to distress her very much, and I promised her to look for it with the greatest care. I was fortunate enough to find it, and I had it returned to her without delay, which seemed to give her much pleasure. This locket, or medallion, contained portraits of the King, the Queen, the Dauphin, and Madame Royale. A little circlet of gold was its only ornament. All the days were full, more or less, of the same anxieties and the same miseries. On the fourth day I absented myself for an hour in order to go to my own home, having been 11 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE unable to do so since the 10th. I wished to change rny linen. On my return I saw no sentries 1 at the gate, nor any at the door of the King's rooms. The doors were open. I entered, and soon perceived that something unfortunate had occurred. I went down to see Madame d'Egremont, the wife of the tapissier of the Legislative Assembly, and she told me sorrow- fully that their Majesties had been removed to the Tower of the Temple. "Alas, alas!" I cried. "Then the doom of the best of kings is sealed ! Madame," I added, " to-day the troubles of France are beginning. 1 '' I much regretted having left the place. Nothing would have induced me to forsake that illustrious family, even though the alternative had been to die with them. I asked myself: " Who will care for their Majesties 1 comfort ? Some Jacobins before whom they will not dare to speak. 11 But when I learnt that M. Clery was with their Majesties I was partly comforted. M. Thieri de Vildavrai fell a victim to his devotion, for he was stabbed to death. 1 On Monday the 13th the King was excused from attending the sitting of the Assembly, and the morning was spent in making preparations for moving to the Temple. THE ROHAN-CHABOT INCIDENT (THE NIGHT OF THE HTH AUGUST, 1792) THE history of the four days of the imprisonment endured by the royal family in the Feuillants, from the 10th to the 13th August, 1792, has never been written. For the narrative that we have just read is merely an anecdote related by one who played a very insignificant part on the occasion, and saw only one side of the affair. There are still fewer details in the stories of those who were in more important positions. Madame de Tourzel, Goguelat, and even the Duchesse d'Angouleme herself, are dumb with regard to this first period of Louis XVI. 's imprisonment. The course of events was so rapid, the general feeling of surprise so great, the climax so sudden, that the actors in the drama were reduced to a state of coma, so to speak, by the reaction following upon their feverish time of waiting, and were really hardly con- scious of what was taking place. Nevertheless it was these eighty hours that constituted the real crisis in the affairs of the Monarchy. As long as the King's fate was uncertain, hope was still possible to those faithful followers who stood by him to the end. They were allowed to approach their master, to receive his orders, to take counsel with him ; and no doubt these last hours were occupied in trying to devise some means of duping the victorious party and robbing them of their prisoners. What mad schemes were formed in those four little rooms of the Feuillants ? What daring deeds were suggested, yet never definitely determined upon ? We do not know. But there are certain documents that testify so plainly both to the tenacious courage of the royal family's supporters, and to the fears of the Assembly that they would be robbed of their hostages, that we 13 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE are justified in believing some plan of escape did actually exist, some plan which the King, having learnt the hard lesson of Varennes, no doubt rejected. The incident initiated by the deputy of Grangeneuve during the evening sitting of August llth is rather a vague piece of evidence, but it is valuable in default of anything better : for besides being a plain indication of the anxiety of the Assembly and the determination of the royalists, it was also the first essay in the judicial methods of the revolutionaries. Later on, under the r6gime of the Law of the Suspect, Fouquier-Tinville adopted exactly the same procedure that was used when, on this occasion, the Legislative Assembly assumed the functions of a court of law. We will give the official documents verbatim. (Legislative Assembly. Sitting of the \\th August, 1792, in the evening.) M. GRANGENEUVE. I wish to inform the Assembly of an extremely important fact. As I was on my way to the Comite de Surveillance I saw, in the neighbourhood of that Committee, fifty or sixty men professing to be National Guards. I met among them a certain Prince de Poix and many people of that sort. Gentlemen, as long as such people as these are near the King we cannot answer for him. I call upon the Assembly to decree that the King and his family shall be moved without delay to some other place, for it is impossible for the Comite de Surveillance to continue their work in the present state of things. 1 I would remark, in the first place, that perhaps plots are being made at this moment to carry off the King. M. GALON, Superintendent of the Hall. It was the officer in command of the guard who gave the King a guard of twenty-five men. At the time these gentlemen noticed that there were fifty of them the guard was being relieved. M. CHOUDIEU. I wish to propose some resolutions that are of the utmost importance and should be adopted on the spot by the Assembly. The first is that the Assembly should 1 The cells in which the royal family were lodged were used as an office by the Comite de Surveillance of the Assembly. 14 THE ROHAN-CHABOT INCIDENT find out the name of the man who is at this moment in command of the guard of the National Assembly and of the King, so that he may be made responsible. The second is that the names of those who are about the King's person, as well as the names of his guard, should be made known to the Assembly, in order that we may know if they are really National Guards. The third is that the Assembly should pass sentence of death upon every man who shall be found wearing the uniform of a National Guard without being enrolled in a battalion. All these measures are indispensable, and I demand that they may be put to the vote. I believe that the safety of Paris, of the Assembly, and of the King, depends upon them. M. THumoT. 1 I should like to add to these yet another resolution : namely, that the National Assembly should decree that, until the King and his family are removed to the place where they are to reside, no person shall be admitted to his presence without special permission to that effect from the National Assembly, and that this should be considered in connection with M. Choudieu's last proposition. M. GRANGENEUVE. Let us adjourn ! M. THURIOT. But I do not wish to adjourn. I call upon the Assembly to decree on the spot that every man found wearing the uniform of a National Guard without being en- rolled shall be condemned to be three years in irons. I think that penalty is sufficiently severe. (The Assembly then adopted the two first measures proposed by M. Choudieu, referred the second resolution of M. Thuriot to the Legislative Committee, and took no action with regard to the last.) M. CHOUDIEU. I propose that the gendarmerie who form your guard and have, hitherto, shared the labours of the National Guard with so much zeal and public spirit, shall also share with that body the duty of guarding the King. 1 Thuriot had just come back from the Guildhall, whither he had hast- ened to inform the Commune " that a plot was being formed to carry off the King, and the guard was not sufficiently strong " ; and to beg that the measures necessary to meet this danger might be taken as quickly as possible (Proces-verbaux de la Commune de Paris, 11 aout). 15 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE (The Assembly passed this resolution.) M. BREARD. I propose that two members of the Comite de Surveillance should be authorised to inspect the posts of all the sentinels stationed round the Assembly, to make sure that all is well, and report upon them to the Assembly. (The Assembly passed this new resolution.) A CITIZEN appeared at the bar, introducing a man who had been loitering under the King's windows, and whose intentions seemed suspicious. M. CHOUDIEU. I propose that M. le President should be authorised to give orders that those who are with the King shall be prevented from leaving him ; I propose that the King should be requested to give the names of those who are with him ; and as soon as you know, by means of this list, that M. Narbonne, M. de Poix, and others, are with the King instead of being at their posts, I shall propose that they be brought, under a strong and reliable guard, to the bar of the Assembly, to give an account of their conduct and the motives that bring them here. 1 (Cheers.) (The Assembly passed M. Choudieu's resolution.) M. ROHAN-CHABOT, in the dress of a private individual, was conducted to the bar by the citizen mentioned above. THE PRESIDENT (Franpais de Nantes). Sir, the National Assembly will be glad to learn who you are. M. ROHAN-CHABOT. I am a grenadier in the battalion of L'Abbaye-Saint-Germain. I was on duty yesterday. When the King came from the Tuileries to the National Assembly I was one of those who accompanied him. I remained here until five o'clock in the morning, at which hour those who were not in the King's Guard were told that they might go away if they had nothing more to do. I went to change my linen and other clothes. I returned, to be with the King, for I have not left him since he has been here. I saw no 1 It is evident that the debates of the Assembly were regulated from the Guildhall, by the Comrrmne of Paris. For we see in the minutes of the municipal meeting of the llth that attention is called to " the presence of unauthorised patrols in the vicinity of Les Feuillants ; M. de Poix and de Narbonne are with the King ; some National Guards wearing white rosettes are intending to carry off the King to-night." The legislative body was on this occasion, it is plain, merely the faithful and obedient echo of the municipal body of the insurrectionists. 16 THE ROHAN-CHABOT INCIDENT one with him but those who are attached to his person, such as M. Tourzel, M. de Poix, and M. Debris, and two or three others as well. When I came here I was told that those who were with the King were to stay. I know nearly all of them, so I wished to find out about them. I asked, therefore, where the concierge lived, and made a messenger from the office take me to her house. And it was just as I was entering her house that I was stopped and brought before you by the person who told you I had been loitering for a long time under the King's windows. I defy him to prove that I remained there for longer than one minute. A messenger, as I have just said, was showing me the way when this person, who stopped me and whom I do not know, seized me by the coat and said to me : " Sir, you are prowling about in the neighbourhood of the King, and you will follow me to the Assembly." I answered : " Willingly for my conscience does not reproach me for anything, and I defy anyone to prove that I am a spy. 11 A MEMBER. This gentleman says he has been on guard near the King's person from yesterday morning until this morning. Would you be kind enough to question him as to what battalion he is serving in ? THE PRESIDENT. In what battalion are you serving ? M. ROHAN-CHABOT. I have had the honour of telling you that I am in the battalion of L'Abbaye-Saint-Germain. THE PRESIDENT. Were you ordered on duty yesterday at the palace ? M. ROHAN-CHABOT. I was about to do myself the honour of finishing what I had to say when M. le President interrupted me. I believe that my battalion was at the palace : but on the evening of the day before yesterday I was told that fears were entertained for the King's safety, and that the palace was guarded : and so I went there myself. M. HAUSSMANN. Then, as the gentleman went to the palace without orders, he should be taken to his own section and examined there. M. MARIBON-MONTAUT. I wish to observe, gentlemen, that the citizen at the bar shows an astonishing ignorance of his duty. He is a grenadier, he says,, in a battalion, and he 17 c LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE does not know that when the alarm is beaten his post is with his battalion. The citizen at the bar is guilty, in that he was with the King without orders, and that he was not with his battalion. I call upon you, then, to send the citizen to prison. (Cheers.) M. BREARD. I wish to observe that this person is said to have been an aide-de-camp to M. La Fayette and a member of the King's Guard. I beg you will ask him if it is true. THE PRESIDENT. Were you aide-de-camp to M. de la Fayette after the beginning of the Revolution ? M. ROHAN-CHABOT. Yes, Monsieur. THE PRESIDENT. And was it after that time that you served in the King's Guard ? M. ROHAN-CHABOT. Yes, Monsieur. THE PRESIDENT. Since when have you been in the National Guard ? M. ROHAN-CHABOT. Since the beginning of the Revolution, except during the time that I was aide-de-camp to M. La Fayette and serving in the King's Guard. THE PRESIDENT. What was your father's profession ? M. ROHAN-CHABOT. He had none. THE PRESIDENT. What is your name ? M. ROHAN-CHABOT. ROHAN-CHABOT ; but I may add that I only use the name of CHABOT. THE PRESIDENT. Have you always served in the same battalion since you were enrolled in the National Guard ? M. ROHAN-CHABOT. Always, Monsieur le President, except during the time when I was aide-de-camp to M. La Fayette and was serving in the King's Guard. THE PRESIDENT. When M. La Fayette came to the Na- tional Assembly did you accompany him as his aide-de-camp ? M. ROHAN-CHABOT. M. le President, it is a long time since I was M. La Fayette's aide-de-camp ; I did not accom- pany him when he appeared at this bar, and I was not within the precincts of the legislative body when he came here. M. CHOUDIEU. I beg that the gentleman may be questioned, not as to whether he accompanied M. La Fayette to the bar as his aide-de-camp, because we all know that M. La Fayette 18 THE ROHAN-CHABOT INCIDENT appeared there alone, and that the aides-de-camp were at the door of the Hall, but simply as to whether he accompanied M. La Fayette at all. Speaking for myself, I believe this gentleman was an aide-de-camp on the pccasion, and I am even prepared to assert it definitely, unless he denies the fact in so many words. M. ROHAN-CHABOT. I do not know if I shall be believed, but I give my word of honour that I was not. M. CHOUDIEU. Then I assure the National Assembly that I make no assertion to the contrary. M. MARIBON-MONTAUT. We know perfectly well who the gentleman is, and what he was doing here. I therefore beg to insist upon my first proposal ; namely, that he should be put under arrest, examined by a magistrate, and sent back to his section. I would further suggest that his papers should be sealed. He is sure to be well-informed as to the plots that were exposed yesterday, and I feel almost ready to declare with certainty that he has, at his house, papers of the highest importance. I call upon the Assembly to insist upon his giving his address before he leaves the bar, and to have his papers sealed before he is set free. (The Assembly passed this resolution.) M. ROHAN-CHABOT. I live in the Rue de Seine, in the house of my brother-in-law, M. La Rochefoucauld. M. ARCHIER. I propose that the citizen should be made to place upon the table any papers that he may have on him, to be handed over to the magistrate. (The Assembly adopted M. Archier's resolution.) A MEMBER. I propose, as an amendment, that the papers in question should be numbered and initialed by the secre- taries of the Assembly. (The Assembly adopted this amendment.) THE PRESIDENT. Sir, you have heard the terms of the decree. M. ROHAN-CHABOT. Here are two pocket-books. One of them, the smaller, contains some assignats ; the other contains various papers. I have nothing else you can search me. SEVERAL MEMBERS. No, no ! M. ARCHIER. I propose that a paper band should be put 19 c 2 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE on the pocket-book containing papers, and that the one containing assignats should be returned to Monsieur. (The Assembly decreed that the first pocket-book should be returned to M. Rohan-Chabot, and that the second, without being opened, should be sealed with the seal of the Assembly on two paper bands, upon which the Sieur Chabot and one of the secretaries should write their signatures. M. FAUCHET. I propose that M. Rohan-Chabot should be placed under arrest and taken to his section, with a sufficient guard. (The Assembly adopted M. Fauchet's resolution.) M. HAUSSMANN. I propose that the officer in charge of M. Rohan-Chabot should be entrusted with the decree enjoining upon the section to seal up his papers v and that the committee of the section should supply the legislative body with a list of the papers enclosed in the pocket-book we are sending them. (The Assembly passed M. Haussmann's resolution.) M. ROHAN-CHABOT left the Hall, accompanied by the guard. 1 M. GRANGENEUVE. Having been charged by the Assembly to visit the posts of all the sentinels round the building, I have seen them all and found everthing quiet. There are lights in the garden ; a strict watch is being kept ; and the Assembly may feel secure as to their own safety and that of those who have been entrusted to them. (Cheers.) 1 He was taken to the Abbaye prison, and died in the massacre of 2nd Sept. THE TEMPLE (AUGUST 13TH, 1792 AUGUST IST, 1793) THE Assembly,, however, did not really feel secure. They wished to keep the King imprisoned,, but at the same time feared lest their hostage should be wrested from them, and showed a feverish anxiety to be delivered from their difficult charge. On this subject the Legislative Assembly and the Commune of Paris which, we must not forget, was an insurrectionary and not an elected body engaged in a duel, of which, though a detailed account of it would be instructive in more ways than one, we will be content to note only the principal incidents. On the 10th August the Legislative Assembly had decreed that, as soon as order was restored, the royal family should be removed to the Luxembourg, since the Tuileries had been rendered uninhabitable by the depredations of the mob. On the morning of the llth August the Commune begged the Assembly to rescind their decree of the previous day, on the grounds that the Luxembourg was difficult to guard ; suggested the Temple, which contained both a sumptuous palace and a deserted tower ; and cleverly leaving it uncertain which of the two buildings was to shelter the prisoners, laid great stress upon the advantages to be derived from the large garden that surrounded the buildings. The Assembly, tired of the discussion, revoked their decree, and sent the suggestion of the Commune to the Commission of Twelve. An hour later a new deputation from the municipal body appeared at the bar, offering to lodge the prisoners in the Arch- bishop's palace. This proposition, like the first, was sent on to the Commission. On the following day, the 12th August, it was discovered that the Episcopal Palace had the same disadvantages as the Luxem- LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE bourg : there were underground passages connecting it with the river, which might make escape possible. The Assembly forth- with decreed that the King and his family should be lodged in the house of the Minister of Justice, in the Place Vendome, which was to be fitted up with furniture from the Tuileries. But the Commune still expressed dissatisfaction. The Hotel de la Chancellerie was a palace, and it was in a prison that one wished to keep one's enemies. A fresh deputation insisted upon the revocation of this second decree, and upon the imprisonment of the royal family in the Temple, " whither they should be con- ducted with all the respect due to misfortune." Once more the Assembly obediently yielded : they revoked their decree, and, tired of the struggle, decided to leave " the choice of the King's residence and the guarding of his person " in the hands of the Commune of Paris. In consequence of this, towards the evening of the 13th August, Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, Madame Royale, the Dauphin, and Madame Elizabeth were removed, under a strong guard, to the Temple. With the exception of the respect due to misfortune the affair was conducted in accordance with the decision of the Commune. The Assembly had triumphed over one master, but had found another and a far more exacting one ! The topography of the Temple during the revolutionary period has never been dealt with at all thoroughly. Many historians have gone into the subject at great length, but unfor- tunately without taking the trouble to refer to the original documents. Beauchesne, for instance, was content to base his book on Louis XVII. upon a plan of the Precincts of the Temple in 1811, which he borrowed from Barillet's Recherches sur le Temple, changing nothing except the date ! He put it before his readers, that is to say, as a plan of the Temple in 1 793. Although the entire subversion of the district makes it difficult to form a correct plan of the original building, yet perhaps it is not too late to attempt to throw light on this interesting point in the topography of Paris. This we have endeavoured to do, by constructing a plan, house by house, of the surroundings of the Temple Tower as they existed in 1792, and by following, with the help of the original documents in the Archives, the various changes that the Revolution brought about in the general arrange- ment of the buildings. THE TEMPLE Let us remember that there were within the Temple Precincts three groups of buildings destined for very different purposes : 1st : The palace and its offices, devoted until 1789 to the use of the Comte d' Artois ; 2ndly, the old Commandery l (court-house, chapter-house, priory, cloisters, church, etc.) ; and Srdly, the private buildings that had been erected one by one within the Precincts, and formed a sort of little town, with its gates, its guard, its own magistrates and its own market. This last group of houses we have omitted from our plan, as it played no part in the events of the revolution. The entrance, the only entrance to the Temple Precincts before 1789, was an enormous archway, set obliquely in a recess in the Rue du Temple. (Plan A. The surroundings of the Temple in August, 1792. No. 1.) It is true that in the same street, almost at the corner of the Rue de la Corderie, there was another door with a portico (same plan, No. 2), but this only led to the palace of the Comte d' Artois. The court (3) of this palace was huge, and the end near the street was in the form of a semicircle. It was surrounded by a path shaded by trees. Two gates (4) led to the offices ; namely the Cour des Cuisines (6), from which a covered passage (7) led into the Temple Precincts ; the Cour du Garde- Meuble (8) ; and the Cour couverte or covered court (9). The palace itself was entered by two nights of steps five steps in each (10). The usual entrance was in the south wing, where the rooms of the Comte d' Artois were situated. Near the door was a wide staircase (11) leading to the first storey; then came the first ante-room (12), the guards' room which is faithfully represented in Olivier's pretty picture in the Versailles Museum (13), and a salon, lighted by six windows overlooking the garden (14). Between this and the Rue de la Corderie were the private rooms ; the bedroom of the Comte d' Artois (15), the Turkish room (16), the library (17), a dressing-room (18), a bath- room and its heating apparatus (19 and 20). It is by the help of the architect Bellange's unpublished drawings in the Print Room that we have been able to make a detailed plan of this part of the palace. 2 1 (I.e. the Manor belonging to the Knights Templars. Translator's note). a It was in these rooms that it was at first intended to lodge the royal family. On the 13th August the Commune were not agreed on the subject : " The discussion opened, and several members combated the proposition that the King should be confined in the Temple Palace rather 23 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE The central portion of the building contained a billiard-room (21), a large salon (22), and a reception room (23), which was doubtless the room represented in Olivier's picture in the Louvre : Un the chez la princesse de Conti, au Temple. The left, or north wing, finally, comprised two salons (24 and 35) and the room of the Comte d'Artois' first valet-de-chambre (26). A flight of stairs (28) led from the large salon to the garden. Another flight of steps led from the terrace outside the prince's private rooms (29) to a small private garden. A courtyard and some offices (30 and 31) completed the palace proper. If we now return to the great gateway and enter the Precincts, the first thing we see on the right will be a mass of confused buildings forming the Court of the Indemnity (32), the word Court being used in its Parisian sense of a district or close. A passage, covered at both ends (33) separated these buildings from the offices of the palace, and was called the Passage of the Indemnity. Its eastern extremity led into the Stables (6 1), while to wards the west it ended in the Court of the Little Fortress (34). On the left of the main entrance (1) was the house of the gatekeeper of the Precincts (35), and close beside it stood that of the beadle of the church (36). The figures 37 show the positions of two sentry boxes. The Temple Precincts had, as we have said, their own court of justice ; they had also, therefore, their own prison (38), and close beside it a chapel reserved for the prisoners. It was reached by a sort of cul-de-sac (39). The centre of the Great Court of the Precincts (40) was obstructed by a group of barracks, which remained standing long after the period of the Revolution. Behind these barracks was a covered way (53) leading to the old Commandery. Another passage, a long one (41), burrowed under the conventual buildings, behind which was an alley called the Petite JRx ^56), leading, like the Rue Haute (55), to the Cour du Chameau (aC), where stood the remains of an old tower known as the Tour de Cesar (57). For the other buildings in the Precincts we refer the reader to the little plan on p. 25. The Commandery, as we have said, was reached by a covered passage (53). To right and left were two fragments of the than in the Tower ; when the discussion closed it was decreed that the resolution naming the Tower should be adhered to." (Minutes of the Commune of Paris, 13th Aug. ) GENERAL PLAN OF THE TEMPLE PRECINCTS IN 1792. The enclosure of the Temple, of which at the end of the eighteenth century the original form was still unchanged, was a huge demesne covering about 125 hectares. The territory was enclosed by walls, and was so enormous that the dependants of the Grand Priory could not make use of the whole of it. Permission was therefore given for the building of houses for artisans, who by living in this privileged enclosure were able to evade the rules and regulations of their corporations. Then, one by one, private houses were erected, and the enclosure became a veritable town, whose inhabitants, in 1789, numbered 4,000 (Mercier, Tableau de Paris). The accompanying plan will suffice to give an idea of this strange agglomeration at the beginning of the Revolution. 1 Gateway of the Temple. 2 Old building of the Commandery. 3 Buildings erected about 1750 and known as the new buildings. 4 The Baths, formerly called the Hotel Poirier. 5 Hdtel de Boisboudran. 6 Hotel de Guise. 7 Hotel de Boufflers, and its fine English garden. 8 Treasury of the Grand Priory. 9 Cour de la Corderie (this court and part of the Treasury are still in existence). 10 Rue de la Rotonde. 11 The Rotunda. 12 Caesar's Tower. 13 Remains of a Roman building. 14 Cour du Lion d'Or. 15 Cour du Chameau and alley of the same name. 16 Rue Haute. 17 A little street. 18 Barracks. 19 Hotel du Bel-Air. 20 Remains of the Cloisters. 21 The Prior's house. 22 Church. 23 Cemetery. 24 Chapter House. 25 Hotel de Rostaing. 26 Bailliage. 27 Palace of the Grand Prior. 28 Public Garden. 29 Slaughter-house. 30 Kitchen of the Palace. 31 Stables. 34 and 35 Fountains. LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE ancient cloisters (42) forming a right angle, and bordering the court that surrounded the Church (54). The church itself com- prised a porch (4-3), a rotunda (44), the nave, or main body of the building (45), the Chapel of the Holy Name of Jesus (46), the Chapel of Notre Dame de Lorette (47), a bell-tower (48), the Chapel of Saint Pantaleon (49), and a sacristy (51) opening into the little yard (50). The plan of this church has been very skilfully traced out by M. de Curzon in La Maison du Temple de Paris, so we will say no more on the subject. Suffice it to say that the Temple Church was closed in 1791, but remained standing throughout the time that Louis XVI. and his family were imprisoned in the neighbouring Tower. The State did not take possession of it till the 1 9th August, 1 796. It was bought for 187,500 livres in paper money, or 4,008 francs in gold, by a man called Carlet who lived in the Precincts and had formerly been a wig-maker. He pulled down the church and sold the materials. The Cemetery of the Precincts (52) was beyond the east end of the church. The house of the vicar-prior was quite near to it (60). The Comte d'Artois, in the character of Grand Prior, had added the offices of the old Commandery to the outbuildings of his own palace, and had made them into stables (62), for which reason the yard that they surrounded was called the Stable Court (6l). They were all insignificant buildings, or sheds, and may be seen on p. 25. This sketch was actually taken in the Stable Court, the artist being seated at the point marked A in plan A. A passage (63) led from the court surrounding the church (54) to the public gardens of the Temple (83). The archway that undermined the gallery (77) to which we will return later was at a lower level than the rest of the passage, and after passing through it, it was necessary to climb a few steps to the level of the garden, a resort very popular with the people of the neigh- bourhood (83). The Bailiff's house (65), the court-house in which he presided (64), the Hotel de Rostaing (67), and the quarters of the petty officials connected with the church (68), surrounded the Cour du Baillage, which was approached by a covered passage (66). A carriage-entrance (69) led into the Court of the Chapter- house (70), round which were grouped the Hotel de Vernicourt (78), and the buildings belonging to the Chapter (71), whose 26 THE TEMPLE backs were towards the little Tower, which contained, on its ground floor,, a chapel (74) and a room (75). Between the Court of the Chapter-house and the great Tower (76) was the Court of the Dungeon (73), which was approached by a covered passage (72). The great Tower communicated directly with the palace by means of a narrow covered passage (77) with an elbow in it at the spot where it passed above the public entrance to the garden (63). In 1787 an enormous structure called the Temple Rotunda had been built to serve as a market place, and this had somewhat altered the appearance of the Precincts. Near this rotunda, in an angle formed by the garden-walls of the Hotel Vernicourt (79) a public fountain had been raised (80); and in 1789, the means of access to the new market-place had been simplified by the cutting of a door (81) in the walls of the Precincts ; and this also enabled the inhabitants of the district to enter the garden by a second gate (82). The plans of the Manor of the Temple as it was in 1789, and various topographical drawings preserved in the National Archives, furnished us with the details of the above survey, details that may to some seem too minute, but that will by no means be without interest to those who wish to follow the various accounts of the events that took place in the Temple between the 13th August, 1792, and the 9th June, 1795. When Louis XVI. 's family were first immured there the sur- roundings of the Temple were as we have just described them (plan A). The carriage in which the prisoners were conveyed from the Riding School of the Tuileries to the Temple passed through the gateway (2), and drew up in the middle of the palace court (3), which was ablaze with lights. As the rooms in the Tower were not yet prepared for the reception of guests, the royal family remained for a few hours in the palace, where the Commune entertained them at a grand dinner arranged in the large salon (22). As the Dauphin was so sleepy that he could hardly stand, a member of the Commune took him in his arms and carried him through the rooms (23-24-25) and the covered way (77) to the Tower ; which explains why it was that Madame de Tourzel, who no doubt was in the Temple for the first time and did not know the gallery in question, spoke afterwards of tortuous and gloomy subterranean passages. The Great Tower (76) in which the Commune had determined 27 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE to confine the prisoners was in such a state of dilapidation that Louis XVI. and his family were temporarily lodged in the little Tower (74 and 75), whose rooms were hastily made ready with furniture from the Tuileries. Louis XVI. was not transferred to the Great Tower till the 30th September ; and it was not till the 26th October that Marie Antoinette, with her children and Madame Elizabeth, joined him there. Great changes, involving much labour, took place in the interval, with the object, not only of making the interior of the Tower more suitable for its purpose, but also of isolating it in such a way that it might be easily guarded. Any guard would have been useless had the prison remained enclosed as it is depicted in plan A, in a mass of buildings inhabited by private individuals. In order that all attempts at escape might be nipped in the bud it was necessary to isolate the building absolutely, and the work of doing this was begun on the 15th August, 1792. Patriot Palloy was entrusted with the undertak- ing, 1 and lost no time in starting operations. The buildings numbered 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 71, 72, 78, in plan A, were taken down in a few days, (there is a plan of the demolished houses in the National Archives) and their place filled by a sort of square, surrounded by a high wall, which was supported by numerous buttresses on the inner side. (See plan B.) Outside this new enclosure the public passage leading to the garden was left as it was (plan B, 63) ; and near this passage a guard-house was placed, in the old buildings of the Baillage. (See the drawing facing p. 94.) Palloy's wall had only one door, open- ing into the Temple Garden and facing the south front of the Great Tower ; and at this door a guard-house was placed without delay. But soon, with a view to communicating more easily with the outside world, another door was made in the wall on the western side of the square, facing the palace steps ; and here a second guard-house was established, and a man named Mancel, formerly a servant of the Comte D'Artois, placed in it in the capacity of turnkey. It was while these alterations were being carried out that one of the National Guards on duty at the Temple took the interest- ing sketch facing page 124. This National Guard was called Le Queux, and was by profession an architect. In the fore- ground of his picture he placed the whole family of Louis XVI. 1 Minutes of the Commune of Paris; sittings of the llth and 13th August, 1792. 28 Rtffc PLAN A. THE SURROUNDINGS OF THE TEMPLE TOWER IN AUGUST, 1792, ACCORDING TO UNPUBLISHED DOCUMENTS. LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE taking their daily walk, and took the trouble to add the note that may still be read at the foot of the drawing, on the left : / saw them there. As for the curious sketch reproduced between pp. 122 and 123 it was drawn from nature with the most careful accuracy in the autumn of 1793. We see the Dauphin walking about in charge of Simon, who is wearing the bonnet rouge. This drawing, which has never been published before, is among the valuable relics of the royal family collected by M. Otto Friedrichs. We here express our gratitude to him for his kindness in authorising us to publish it. In addition to the sentinels posted on the ground floor of the two towers, there was the main guard in the Temple Palace. This consisted of an officer in command, a chef de legion, a sous- adjutant-major, a colour-bearer, twenty gunners with guns mounted in the court of the palace and between two hundred and two hundred and fifty men. A man called Gachet, who had formerly been the gate-keeper of the palace, had opened a canteen for the National Guards in his lodge. (Plan B, 5.) The kitchen (6), formerly devoted to the use of the palace, still supplied the tables of all who were employed on the premises, all the municipal officers and guards, as well as the family of Louis XVI. Gagnie was the head of this department, and had under his orders Meunier who kept a cook-shop Marchand, Turgy, Chretien, and others. We shall find all these names in the narratives we are about to read. These domestics lived in the outbuildings of the palace (30 and 31). One can easily understand that so large a population entailed constant communication between the Temple and the town. It is true that the Tower, isolated behind Palloy's wall, was cut off entirely from the outer world ; but it was otherwise with the palace, teeming as it was with a multitude of servants and officials, and soldiers who were also citizens, all of whom had interests and business beyond the Precincts. It therefore became the custom to leave the palace, not by the main entrance (2) where it was necessary to show a ticket, but by a circuitous way. On the 30th Prairial, year II., various people were formally accused before the Council of leaving the Temple by the door near the stables ; and it was stated that tf to enter by this door it was only necessary to knock with a piece of sandstone kept for the purpose on one of the projecting hinges of the door, on the left, at the sound of which Citizen Piquet, the 30 PLAN B. THE SURROUNDINGS OF THE TEMPLE TOWER IN JANUARY, 1793, ACCORDING TO UNPUBLISHED DOCUMENTS. 31 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE porter, came at once to answer the summons. And the Members of the Council observed it to be perfectly true that there was a door on the left opening into the Temple Precincts, through which the mother or mother-in-law of Citizen Gagnie, as well as Simon's wife 1 and other persons residing in the same vicinity were allowed to pass." (See Plan B, 7.) A mere glance at Plan B will suffice to show that it was easy to drive into the court of the palace (3), but impossible to go any further except on foot. It follows that all the modern stories that represent Louis XVI. as driving from the foot of the Tower either to the Convention or to the scaffold, are incorrect in this particular. The mistake would not have been made if the authors of the stories in question had read the contemporary narratives with the help of an accurate plan. Every one who left the Tower was obliged to walk across the square enclosed by Palloy's wall, and through the Temple Garden and the rooms of the palace, and could only get into a carriage at the steps (10). Moelle, an eye-witness, relates that on the 26th December, 1792, Louis XVI., on his return from the Con- vention, left the carriage at the door of the principal Pavilion (the palace) and walked, with the Mayor on his right hand, from the Pavilion to the Tower. A few days later Goret, who escorted Malesherbes when he came to tell Louis XVI. the news of his condemnation, says : " We crossed the great Court to the gate of the Temple, where his carriage was waiting for him." Thus it was on the 21st January. The prisoner left Palloy's enclosure by the first guard-house (we believe, though we cannot positively assert, that the second guard-house had not yet been built at this time) turned to the right, crossed the greater part of the Temple Garden (we know that he twice turned to look at the Tower, which he could not have done if he had driven away from the very door of the prison) ascended the steps (28), and by way of the rooms (22, 21, 12) occupied by the guard, reached the great court of the palace, where the Mayor's carriage awaited him. It is unnecessary to go into further details. This example will serve to show that the accompanying plans may assist very effectually in the study of the various authentic accounts of the imprisonment of Louis XVI. 's family. 1 Simon's wife can only have come here at this time as a visitor. She had given up her official position at the Temple in January, 1794. 32, THE NARRATIVE OF DAUJON COMMISSIONER OF THE COMMUNE (AUGUST, 1792 OCTOBER, 1793) THE following valuable document, now for the first time published in its entirety, is preserved in M. Victorien Sardou's collection of autographs. In the library of Saint-Germain-en-Laye there is a collection of unconnected documents bound together in one volume, with the title : Louis XFI.'s Defence : the Queen s copy. It is so called, no doubt, because the first of these documents is a printed copy of de Size's defence of the King before the Convention, and bears the words Opportet unum mori pro populo, in Marie Antoinette's handwriting. This pamphlet was given to her in the Temple. This volume also contains a written copy, obviously modern, of an Account of all that took place in the Temple during the 2nd and 3rd September, 1792, by a municipal officer of the Commune. According to M. Georges Bertin this copy was written by M. A. T. Barbier, once the Secretary of the Imperial Libraries, who died in Paris on the 7th November, 1859. It was he who presented this book to the library of Saint-Germain. Now, who was the municipal officer who wrote this narrative ? Danjou they say. This, at least, is the opinion of Beauchesne, who quotes a portion of it ; of the editors of the Revue Retrospec- tive, who published extracts from it ; and of M. Georges Bertin himself, who went fully into it afresh in his book on Madame de Lamballe. There was, it is true, on the General Council of the Commune, a certain Jean Pierre Andre Danjou, a schoolmaster and un- frocked priest, living in the Rue de Coq-Saint-Jean (see the National Almanach for the year 1793). He sat among the most 33 I) LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE fanatical members of the municipal body, and we shall presently see the terms in which his colleague Goret spoke of him. Well, although the manuscript is unsigned, it is proved by the internal evidence of the narrative itself that its author was not Danjou, but the municipal officer, Daujoii. The confusion arose, no doubt, from the similarity of the names, but the mistake would never have been made if Beauchesne, who was the first to publish a few pages of the story, had studied the manuscript in its entirety and had closely examined its contents. It is Danjou, then, who is praised by every historian for the courage with which the perpetrators of the Septem- ber Massacres, on arriving at the Temple with the remains of Madame de Lamballe, were repulsed by the municipal officers on duty. But the man who, for more than an hour, restrained this horde of maniacs, was none other than Daujon ; and the following note by Goret, the municipal officer, leaves no possible doubt on the subject. "The news came that the Princesse de Lamballe had just fallen a victim, and that some madmen were on their way to the Temple carrying the Princess's head at the end of a pike. The Council shuddered, but were silent. One of their members, an artist called Daujon, was at the Temple, and saw this frantic mob approaching. He went to meet them, but could not prevent them from approaching the building beside the Tower, where the King and his family were confined. The windows of this building were not barred, and were only fifteen or sixteen feet above the ground. The crowd were shouting at the top of their voices Daujon, wearing his scarf, quickly jumped upon a heap of stones that happened to be below the window, and began to harangue the crowd in such a way that he managed to restrain them Daujon followed them to the door leading out of the Temple, and having hastily procured a tricoloured ribbon he hung it, as soon as they had passed through, before the door of the Temple, which he left open. " Cross that barrier if you dare ! " he said to the retreating mob. " When Daujon next went on duty as the King's warder, the latter said to him : ' You saved our lives, and we thank you. You said nothing more than was necessary in such circumstances.' " .... I heard this story from Daujon himself. I believe C16ry speaks of Daujon. in his History of the Temple, but in such 34 THE NARRATIVE OF DAUJON terms that he appears not to be a partisan of the King, or at least not to care for him " If any further proof were required to establish the true authorship of the Account of' the 2nd and 3rd September, wrongly attributed to Danjou, we might find it in this passage from the MS. itself: "I heard this son accuse his mother and his aunt .... I heard it, / wrote it This refers to the Dauphin and the horrible deposition wrung from the child by Hebert. Now on that occasion the registrar's pen was in the hand of Daujon ; it was he who recorded the answers of Marie Antoinette's son ; it was he who signed the report of that hateful inquiry. Goret indeed is very explicit on this point. He adds : " It was this same Daujon who was acting as secretary when the young prince was subjected, in the Temple, to an examina- tion on the subject of the slanderous and infamous statements that had been circulated with regard to the Queen. Here, word for word, is what Daujon told me on the subject of that examination, and I may say that I considered him a man worthy of belief. " The young prince," he told me, " was seated in an armchair, swinging his little legs ; for his feet did not reach the ground. He was examined as to the statements in question, and was asked if they were true : he answered in the affirmative. Instantly Madame Elizabeth, who was present, cried out, f Oh, the monster ! ' ' As for me,' added Daujon, ' I could not regard this answer as coming from the child himself, for his air of uneasiness and his general bearing inclined me to believe that it was a suggestion emanating from some one else, the effect of his fear of punishment or ill treatment, with which he may have been threatened if he failed to comply. I fancy that Madame Elizabeth cannot really have been deceived either, but that her surprise at the child's answer wrung that exclamation from her.' " And what sort of man was this Daujon who lent himself to such repulsive tasks ? In the General List of Commissioners from the Forty-eight Sections who composed the General Council of the Commune of the 10th August he is mentioned, without any reference to his profession, as living at No. 40 in the Faubourg Saint Martin. Goret, who seems to have known him fairly intimately, describes him as a painter; though further on, it 35 i> 2 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE is true, he speaks of his talent as a sculptor. It is thus, too, that the General Dictionary of French Artists describes him ; and as a matter of fact Daujon's work was not without merit. There is a Head of Medusa by him in the Louvre, a bas-relief in bronze. "Daujon" to accept Goret's evidence once more "was a man of extraordinary energy ; but I never saw him," he adds, "show any inclination for the iniquitous deeds that were so common during the stormy times of the Revolution ; on the contrary, he was merely what was then called an ardent patriot, without any feelings of hatred or revenge ; and I knew him well enough to have perfect confidence in the statements he made to me with regard to certain events that I did not see myself. . . . "Daujon died several years ago, 1 after having for some time filled the office under Bonaparte, whom he did not like, of national commissioner in the municipality of Paris. He told me that, being a sculptor, he had some knowledge of physiog- nomy, and that he observed in Bonaparte's features the characteristics of a despotic tyrant. Daujon, who was no longer a member of the General Council, escaped on the 9th Thermidor. At that time he was in prison as a ' suspect/ having been sent thither by Robespierre ; which is not sur- prising, for that monster feared every man who showed any energy and did not bend beneath his yoke." Energetic, a revolutionary by conviction, hating tyranny deeply, but neither wicked nor cruel : such is the man whom we shall see depicted in the following pages. We have copied them word for word from Daujon's original MS., which M. Victorien Sardou was kind enough to place at our disposal. We beg him to accept our respectful gratitude. THE NARRATIVE OF DAUJON If there be one thing more than another calculated to increase our scepticism with regard to any story tinged with the marvellous, it is the obvious discrepancy that exists between different contemporary accounts of events actually witnessed by the narrators; events in which we ourselves were actors, and yet should not recognise if the scene were placed elsewhere and the names of the persons concerned were changed. We are all secretly inclined to emphasise 1 Goret wrote these words in 1814. 36 THE NARRATIVE OF DAUJON the dark side of a story or to show the bright side in the best light, according to the special bearing of the events upon our own life and standpoint, and according to the sentiments that affect us individually, and that we therefore desire to affect others. Every story-teller believes himself to be one of the heroes of the events he records, and is there- fore interested in making the most of it : he invests the subject with the charm of his particular genius, and according to the nature of his own inspiration creates a monster or an angel. Creations such as these, the chimerical offspring of vanity or self-interest, are often laid before the student as true pictures of human action. They are seized by ready credulity, propagated by greed, and accepted forthwith by history. The place called the Temple, to which Capet and his family were taken as prisoners on the 16th August, 1792, is an unprepossessing building in Paris, situated in the Rue du Temple and near the boulevard of the same name. In the middle of the garden there is a very high tower, very solid, and flanked by four turrets, in one of which is a little spiral staircase that leads to the upper part of the tower. The walls of the Great Tower are about seven feet thick, which gives the embrasures of the windows the appearance of little rooms. These windows were afterwards darkened by screens on the outside, so that no light entered except from the top, and it was impossible to see anything but the sky. At the time of which I am about to speak certain external alterations were being made for the sake of greater security ; such as the demolition of some houses near the Tower ; the digging of a fosse to isolate it but this scheme was never carried out ; the placing of several doors upon the staircase ; and various changes in the interior arrangements for the prisoners' accommodation : and this increased the vigilance of the Council of the Temple, which must not be confused with the General Council of the Commune. The latter, which was especially charged with the custody of the prisoners, delegated the actual guardianship of the latter to eight members chosen from among themselves, who 37 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE were renewed, four at a time, according to the following system. Every evening the General Council chose 1 four commis- sioners to relieve the four who had been longest on duty. 2 Each man was on duty for forty-eight consecutive hours. During the day there were always two with the prisoners ; the six others, who remained on the ground floor and were responsible for the efficiency of the whole guard, composed the Council of the Temple. They gave orders to the soldiers on the premises, decided on any step that seemed good to them, and informed the General Council of their intentions whenever they thought the matter so important that they ought to secure the Council's approval before taking action. During the night the work was divided as follows. The four fresh commissioners drew lots among themselves as to which should be the two to spend the night with the prisoners, together with two of the four men already on duty, chosen by lot the evening before. And as the prisoners were separated during the night these four again drew lots among themselves to decide who was to be with Capet and who with the women and children. Those who were to be with him remained in his room, for it was there that they all sat together during the day. The others took the women and children to their rooms and stayed with them. The relieved commissioners, after handing over the orders to the others, locked not only all the doors of the rooms, but also the seven doors on the staircase of the tower. The keys of all these, as well as those of the great outer door, were deposited in 1 Afterwards they were chosen by drawing lots. (Note by Daujon.) 2 It was so unpleasant being on duty in the Temple, and the responsi- bility was so great that members fled from the Council Room when they saw the urn being brought in which led to the issue of an order enjoining upon the commandant of the guard of the Commune to bring to the Temple by force any of the members chosen by lot who had not arrived there by nine in the evening at latest. Several of them were taken to the Temple in this way. This order is a sufficient answer to the calumnies directed against the Council to the effect that the members wrangled in their eagerness to go to the Temple, on account of the good cheer. At first the food was so unwholesome that one always suffered from colic after it ; it was not till several months later that it was the same as the prisoners' food ; and moreover, it was at this time that the order was issued. (Note by Daujon. ) 38 THE NARRATIVE OF DAUJON the Council Room in a cupboard cut in the masonry of the wall. The oldest of the commissioners kept the key. The commissioners slept on folding beds set up in the Council Room and in the prisoners'* ante-room. This arrange- ment lasted till about the time of Capet's death, and as long as the prisoners had valets to wait on them. Afterwards they slept alone ; that is to say they were no longer watched at night. In their rooms there were bells that rang in the Council Room, and the commissioners never failed, night or day, to attend the summons if the bells were rung. No one was allowed to visit the prisoners without producing a decree issued by the Assembly or the National Convention ; or an order from the Committee of Surveillance, the Com- mittee of Public Safety, the Committee of General Security, or the General Council of the Commune. This rule was very rarely broken only now and then in the case of the chief magistrates of the Commune, and then only in the presence of the commissioners on duty, who were personally responsible. The National Guard was alone allowed to serve in the Temple. There were only a few mounted orderlies on duty outside. When the prisoners went to their meals one of their valets de chambre unfolded the napkins, broke open the rolls, and tasted every dish before they ate any of it themselves. This was done in the presence of the commissioners, with the object of preventing any correspondence on the one side or any foul play on the other. Later on the dishes were tasted in the kitchen by the cook, always in the presence of the commissioners, and accompanied by the latter to the prisoners 1 table. The same routine was followed in the case of medicines, which, after being tasted by the apothecary, were sealed by him with his own seal and delivered thus to the prisoners. Every kind of article that came in or went out, whatever its nature, book, linen, or other garment, was examined very carefully. The prisoners were not allowed the indul- gence of paper, ink, or pencils. On the 2nd September, 1792, I was with Capet at one of 39 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE the windows of his room, 1 watching the demolition of a house not far from the Tower. He called my attention to the pieces of stone and wood that were on the point of falling ; and as each piece fell he broke out into a roar of the hearty laughter that indicates simple, good-humoured enjoyment. His pleasure was brief. The loud report of a gun checked it; a second report quenched it; a third replaced it with terror. It was the alarm- gun. Their ignorance of the events that led to the adoption of this unusual measure, the sound of the tocsin and drums, the clamour and songs of the labourers leaving their work to take their share in the common danger, and no doubt too, the voice of a guilty conscience, all combined to give apparent justifi- cation to the alarm of the prisoners. Capet asked us if he were in any danger. We did not know ; but we told him that if any danger were to arise it was our duty to see that it was removed, and that therefore we should not calmly submit to it whatever happened. Our confidence seemed to reassure him. A moment later Manuel, the procureur of the Commune, came to ask for news of the prisoners. I brought him into the room, and Capet asked him what had occurred. " Verdun is taken and Longwy is blockaded." "And what is the National Assembly doing? 1 ' " They have just decided that Verdun is to be razed to the ground."" Louis, with a gesture of surprise, said smilingly : " That is a great stroke of poli- tics, and rather a bold one, but the example may restrain other towns." Manuel added that the General Council of the Commune had just decreed that the tocsin should be instantly rung, the alarm-gun fired, and the call to arms beaten, as a means of summoning every citizen to fly to the defence of the frontiers and prevent the enemy from reaching Paris. Capet smiled and answered that there was no danger ; for the enemy had established no means of obtaining supplies 1 I said above that the windows were darkened by screens. To explain this apparent contradiction I must mention that at the time of which I speak the rooms to which they were removed, the rooms with the screens, were being repaired. At this time the prisoners were on the first floor of a kind of building that adjoined the Tower, but was not really an essential part of it, so to speak. (Note by Daujon. ) 40 THE NARRATIVE OF DAUJON suitable for such a purpose, and would find the retreat a much harder matter than the invasion, etc., etc. It was about two o'clock ; the new guard came in ; Manuel left us, and we went down to the Council Room. Between four and five o'clock two commissioners presented themselves before the Council, bearing an Order conceived in these terms : " It is decreed by the General Council that the man Hue, Capet's valet de chambre^ shall be forthwith arrested and removed to the Conciergerie : the commissioners M. 1 and are charged with the execution of this decree.'" Hue was in the Tower. Capet and his family were walking in the garden, accompanied by two commissioners and the chiefs of the Staff of the National Guard on duty. Every day after dinner the Council permitted them to do this, unless there appeared to be some reason against it, which rarely happened. As it devolved upon me to inform the prisoners of the com- missioners' purpose, I summoned them upstairs. When they were in their own room the decree of the General Council was read aloud to them. Capet complained bitterly of this severe measure, saying that the legislative body would be far from approving of it if they knew of it. The women far surpassed him in acrimony ; especially Elizabeth, who strode up and down the room, giving vent to her anger in a loud voice, and darting menacing glances at us all. 2 Marie Antoinette seemed deeply affected by this separation. " It was plain," she said, "that the object was to part them from all the people who were most attached to them, and in whom they had placed their confidence," etc. 3 1 Mathieu, ex-capuchin. (See the Journal de CUry. ) 3 1 always observed in her a great deal of a very deliberate and consistent kind of pride that seemed to have neither end nor object, that was roused without cause and that nothing could conciliate. A good many people, and perhaps she herself, took it for dignity. (Note by Daujon. ) 3 I do not know to what degree the prisoners confided in this valet de chambre, but I was extremely surprised at the civility and kindness at the little attentions even shown him by Mary Antoinette. They never had anything especially nice to eat without sharing it with M. Hue. "You like this: I have kept some for you," they would say. Absent or present, he was in their thoughts. ' ' He takes so much trouble. He 41 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE In the meantime one of the commissioners charged with executing the decree of the General Council seemed to be listening very impatiently to the complaints of the prisoners. Addressing himself to Capet, he said in a very loud voice : " The alarm-gun has been fired, the tocsin is ringing, and the call to arms is still being beaten ; the enemy is at our doors ; they are asking for blood ; they are demanding heads. Well, it will be yours that they take first ! " At these words a cry broke from them all. " Save my hus- band ! Have pity on my brother ! " said the women, running up to us. The girl, as was natural at her age, appeared sensitive and timid ; the son alone showed much more surprise than emotion. 1 Capet's physical condition really inspired the pity that his sister was invoking on his behalf ; not the natural emotion that misfortune excites so inevitably and wrings from one^s heart whether one will or no, but the kind of pity that one yields to the distressed for the sake of one's own self-respect. /rale and trembling, with his eyes swollen with tears, he seemed / touched by nothing but concern for his own safety. Far from remembering that he had been a King, he forgot that he was a man ; he had all the cowardice of a disarmed tyrant, and all \ the servility of a convicted criminal. I put an end to this exhibition of baseness on one side and vanity on the other by begging the commissioner to confine himself to the object of his mission. He went off with the valet de chambre? and I is so obliging ! " I think the Queen would have waited on him if she had dared. (Note by Daujon.) 1 Elsewhere I shall have some remarks to make on the subject of this child. Here I will merely describe, without comment, an incident that made me observe him a little more closely than before. One day I was having a little game of bowls with him : (it was after his father's death, and he was separated from his mother and aunt by order of the Committee of Public Safety). The room we were in was beneath one of those occupied by his family, and we heard sounds as though someone were jumping and dragging chairs about, which made a con- siderable amount of noise over our heads. The child said, with an impatient gesture : " Are not those sacrees p -s guillotined yet ? " Not caring to hear any more, I left off playing and; went away. (Note by Daujon. ) 2 I cannot help observing that it was probably to the vanity of the commissioner that this valet de chambre owed his life. The order was that he was to be taken to the Conciergerie. His office was enough to doom him to the fate of the rest. But the man entrusted with the arrest THE NARRATIVE OF DAUJON left the room to escape the gratitude l that I saw the pri- soners were preparing to express. I returned to the Council Room meditating on the strange fate that had made me the mediator between a powerful monarch . and a wretched capuchin. On the following day, the 3rd September, we learnt that there had been a riot in the prisons. Shortly afterwards we heard that some people connected with the Court had been massacred. Finally, at about one o'clock we were informed of the death of the Princesse de Lamballe, whose head, it was said, was being brought to the Temple, that Marie Antoinette might be made to kiss it. Afterwards they were both to be dragged through the streets of Paris. In the name of the Council of the Temple I wrote both to the General Council of the Commune and to the president of the Legislative Assembly, to inform them of the danger threatening the hostages confided to our care. We begged each of these two bodies to send us six commissioners chosen from those of their own members who were most popular with he was an ex-capuchin took him to the General Council of the Commune, boasted of his own behaviour, repeated his harangue, and produced his prisoner. The Council, having questioned the latter, appeared satisfied with his answers and ordered him merely to be confined in the gaol, a kind of lock-up connected with the Commune, where he was kept only a short time. This saved him. It is possible that both the Commissioners and the Council already had misgivings with regard to the prisons. (Note Inj Daujon.) 1 On this occasion I succeeded in escaping the prisoners' expressions of gratitude ; but about a month later, on my return from the country whither I had gone on a mission from the provincial executive power I was again on duty in the Temple, and the moment the prisoners saw me they said countless kind things to me. " In whatever circumstances fate ~ ipet, ' ' I shall never forget how you risk* present I can do nothing," he added ; " bul fy my heartfelt desire to assure you may place me," said Capet, " I shall never forget how you risked your life to save ours. At present I can do nothing," he added ; "but I have been longing to satisfy my heartfelt desire to assure you of our gratitude." I answered that any of my colleagues would have done as much as I, with no object but to do their duty. " You have been deceived as to the character of true patriots ; it is thus that they answer their detractors." These last words seemed to impress him deeply. He slowly turned his head, and looked at his wife with an expression of some feeling, as though consulting her. They seemed to be ashamed of being beaten in generosity by men whom they generally regarded as cannibals. I turned away, so as not to add to the painfulness of their position. (Note by Daujon.) LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE the mob, assuring them, in any event, of our entire devotion to our duty. In the meantime a mounted orderly, despatched to recon- noitre, informed us that an immense crowd was approaching the Temple, carrying the Lamballe's head and dragging her body with them ; that they were demanding Marie Antoinette, and that in less than five minutes they would reach the Temple. Two commissioners were instantly despatched to meet them, to find out their intentions, and to fraternise with them ostensibly if circumstances demanded it. Above all they were to secure the man who was carrying the head, for it was certain that he would lead the mob, and if he could be guided according to our wishes the crowd would be more easily restrained. Two other commissioners were despatched into the neigh- bouring districts, to impress upon those who seemed most excited that if they were to commit so abominable and use- less a crime, Paris could never be cleansed from the stain of it. These commissioners were reinforced by several good citizens, who promised us to employ every effort to bring the most obstinate to reason. The clamour increased, and our difficulties with it. The officer on duty asked us for orders, adding that he had four hundred well-armed men for whom he could answer, but that he would take no responsibility. We told him that our intention was to employ force only as a last resource for the protection of life ; that it was our duty first to make use of persuasion ; and that his business, therefore, was to see to the security of his arms, etc. He made his arrangements accordingly. In the street the throng was already prodigious. We had both sides of the great gate opened, in order that those out- side might be pacified by seeing our peaceable intentions, of which further evidence was supplied by a portion of the National Guard, who stood unarmed in a double line from the outside entrance to the inner door. None the less, all the arms, doors, and passages were well guarded in case of a surprise. We heard prolonged and violent shouting, and then at last 44 THE PRINCESS DE LAMBALLE. THE NARRATIVE OF DAUJON they came ! A tricoloured sash, hastily hung in front of the main entrance, was the only rampart that the magistrate con- sented to raise in opposition to the torrent, which seemed really uncontrollable. A chair was placed behind the tri- colour ; I climbed upon it, and waited. Soon the bloodthirsty horde appeared. At the sight of the honoured symbol the murderous frenzy in the heart of these men, drunk with blood and wine, seemed to yield to a feeling of respect for the national badge. Everyone tried with all his strength to prevent the violation of the sacred barrier ; to touch it would have seemed to them a crime. They were anxious to appear right-minded, and actually believed themselves to be so ; for public opinion, which constitutes the moral law of the people, has an unbounded influence over such men as these, who bow down before it even while they are outraging it. Two men were dragging along a naked, headless corpse by the legs. The back was on the ground ; in front the body was ripped open from end to end. They came to a standstill before my tottering rostrum, at the foot of which they laid out this corpse in state, arranging the limbs with great par- ticularity, and with a degree of cold-blooded callousness that might give a thoughtful man food for much meditation. On my right, at the end of a pike, was a head that frequently touched my face, owing to the gesticulations of the man that carried it. On my left a still more horrible wretch was with one hand holding the entrails of the victim against my breast, while he grasped a great knife with the other. Behind them a huge coal-heaver held suspended at the end of a pike, just above my forehead, a fragment of linen drenched with blood and mire. As they appeared on the scene I extended my right arm, and there I stood, absolutely motionless, waiting for silence. I obtained it. I told them that the municipal body chosen by themselves had been entrusted by the National Assembly with a charge for which they, the Commune, were responsible not only to the Assembly but also to the whole of France, having sworn to deliver it up in the state in which they had received it. 45 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE I told them that when we heard the people had designs on the life of the prisoners we refused to oppose them by force of arms ; we had rejected the idea with horror, being per- suaded that if just arguments were once laid before a Frenchman he would not fail to listen to them. I made them see how impolitic it would be to deprive ourselves of such valuable hostages at the very moment when the enemy was in possession of our frontiers. And on the other hand, would it not be a proof of the prisoners 1 innocence if we did not dare to bring them to trial ? How much more worthy is it of a great people, I added, to condemn a King, guilty of treason, to death upon the scaffold ! This salutary example, while it strikes well-justified terror into the hearts of tyrants, will inspire the peoples of the world with a devout respect for our nation, etc. ... I ended by entreating them to resist the counsels of a few ill-disposed persons who wished to drive the men of Paris into behaving with violence in order afterwards to poison the minds of their provincial brethren against them ; and then, to show them the confidence of the Council in their good intentions, I told them it had been decreed that six of them should be admitted to march round the garden, with the com- missioners at their head. Instantly the barrier was removed and about a dozen men entered, bearing their spoils. These we led towards the Tower, and were able to keep them fairly in check till they were joined by the workmen, after which it was more difficult to restrain them. Some voices demanded that Marie Antoinette should come to the window, whereupon others declared that if she did not show herself we must go upstairs, and make her kiss the head. We flung ourselves before these maniacs, swearing they should only carry out their horrible design after passing over the bodies of their municipal officers. One of the wretches declared I was taking the part of the tyrant, and turned upon me with his pike so furiously that I should certainly have fallen under his blows if I had shown any weakness, or if another man had not opposed him, pointing out that in my place he would be obliged to act as I did. My air of unconcern impressed him, 46 THE NARRATIVE OF DAUJON and when we went out he was the first to embrace me, and call me a fine fellow. In the meantime, two commissioners had thrown themselves in front of the first inner door of the Tower, and prepared to defend the approaches with devoted courage ; whereupon the others, seeing that they could not win us over, broke into horrible imprecations, pouring out the most disgusting obscenities, mingled with fearful yells. This was the final gust of the storm, and we waited for it to blow over. Fear- ing, however, lest the scene should lead to some climax worthy of the actors, I decided to make them another speech. 1 But what could I say ? How could I find the way to such degraded hearts ? I attracted their attention by gestures ; they looked at me, and listened. I praised their courage and their exploits, and made heroes of them ; then, seeing they were calming down, I gradually mingled reproach with praise. I told them the trophies they were carrying were common property. "By what right," I added, "do you alone enjoy the fruits of your victory ? Do they not belong to the whole of Paris ? Night is coming on. Do not delay, then, to leave these precincts, which are so much too narrow for your glory. It is in the Palais Royal, or in the garden of the Tuileries, where the sovereignty of the people has so often been trodden under foot, that you should plant this trophy as an everlasting memorial of the victory you have just won." " To the Palais Royal ! " they cried ; and I knew my ridiculous harangue had won their approval. They left the place ; but first nauseated us with their horrible embraces, redolent of blood and wine. 2 1 This seemed to me the last gentle means that remained to us ; and 1 am convinced, by the effect I saw produced upon my barbarous audience as I went on, that I only gained my end by the big words I used, words that in such a context were an insult to reason and humanity. If I had failed I should have seized the sabre of a National Guard and killed the first man who had dared to come forward. When a man loves every thing connected with the glory of his country, and is deeply sensible of the duty it entails, there is nothing that he will not attempt, and I would almost say, attempt successfully. (Note l>y Daujon.) 2 We have translated into Latin several lines that cannot be quoted in Daujon's words. (Authors' Note.) One of these men, after embracing me, thrust in my face totam cunni 47 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE In the meantime the Legislative Assembly sent us the six commissioners for whom we asked. They learnt with pleasure that the rumours that had been already spread were exteriorem partem quam ipse a cadavere exciderat: "moecham, aiebat, nemo jamfutuet!" Quam partem dum pilis tenebat, beseemed as proud as the leader of the Argonauts. On this subject I think I ought to repeat what Bazire told to a friend of his and mine, in whom I have every confidence. Bazire was then during that September a member of the Comite" de Surveillance of the legislative body. Several men came to the Committee to hand over the Lamballe's pockets, in which there were some valuable articles. One of them told me in a sort of transport se, postquam huic mulieri exanimi vestem detraxisset, non potuisse sibi temperare quin, libidine incensus ad conspectum tarn eximii corporis, earn futuerat ; that having next torn her heart out he ate it on the spot, and he assured me he had never tasted anything so delicious. He even drew my attention to the blood with which his lips weie still stained. Then he pulled from his pocket carnis lacerat frustum pilis obductum, which he said he had cut off the Lamballe. "After placing on the table the gold and jewels they had found on her, they asked us for a reward, and their manners and gestures forbade all idea of a refusal. We told them to take what they wanted. They were satisfied with a coin of twenty-four livres ; but if they had taken everything we should have been very glad to be rid of them so cheaply." I prefer to believe that most of the facts in this story are greatly exaggerated, not to say untrue. I will support this opinion. 1st. The man from whom Bazire says he received this horrible con- fidence seems to have been the same who spoke to me at the Temple, and showed me what Bazire refers to ; yet this man said nothing to me beyond what I have repeated, although it would have been more natural and less dangerous to speak openly at that time, since the moment of action, if I may so describe it, is most likely to be also the moment of expansion. 2ndly. The massacres of the prisoners took place in public ; and this particular murder in such broad daylight that the outrage is in- conceivable. 3rdly. Several individuals boasted of having torn out the heart to which Bazire alludes ; several others of having eaten it ; others again said they saw it on the end of a pike, etc. 4thly. I found my opinion, moreover, on the fact that it is impossible for the most diseased imaginations, even though mastered by the blindest passion, to dwell for a moment without horror on some parts of this atrocious picture. But finally, I found it on the fact that Bazire, when I put forward some of these objections, merely answered : "That was what he told me, but I don't believe a word of it." And I, too, did I not hear that son accuse his mother and his aunt of things that could hardly take place between self-respecting lovers ? I heard it I wrote it down and I, too, said : I cannot believe a word of it. Ah ! if we honour humanity, if we respect morality, let us believe that the intoxication in which these wretches were wallowing, which had perhaps been increased by a certain amount of applause, due, no doubt, to the dangers that threatened the country, had driven them to desecrate all 48 THE NARRATIVE OF DAUJON false, and in the name of the legislative body expressed their satisfaction with the way we had behaved. Hardly had the commissioners departed when Petion, the mayor, arrived. He appeared to be in a desperate state because we had allowed Marie Antoinette to be made to kiss the Lamballe's head. " No magistrate," he said, " should have permitted anything so horrible." He was delighted to hear, not only that no one had entered the Tower, but that the commissioners who were with the prisoners had not even allowed them to approach the windows to find out the cause of the noise in the garden, but had made them go at once into another room at the back. Santerre, the commandant-general, also came to the Temple. We did not wish to interrupt Daujon's narrative by notes of our own, hut a short postscript is necessary. The passage in which the municipal officer describes the moral collapse and unreasoning fear of Louis XVI. at the ap- proach of the septembriseurs is calculated, no doubt, to give a shock to many of our readers ; and no one can fail to be surprised, since in many other circumstances of greater and more imminent danger the King showed so much courage, so much resignation so much insensibility, if the word is pre- ferred that it is very astonishing to hear of his trembling at the news that a band of murderers was approaching. They had been nearer him on the 6th October, and at Varennes, and on the 20th June, and he had remained unmoved. When that is most sacred. But let us beware of adding anything to what is already only too horrible. I will end this deplorable tale with a fact that shows how cautious one must be in believing anything that is contrary to nature. A father and mother, very worthy people, both moral and humane, who had trained their children on the same lines, assured me that one of them had boasted of taking part in the massacres of September : and that it was only a few hours before his death, after a long illness, that he confessed to them that he had not even been in the prisons, but had said he had been there to avoid looking like a coward, and because he heard others saying the same. Yet he had covered his sword with blood ; he had put blood upon his clothes ; he had accused himself of a crime he had not committed. The fact that he had not committed it was a crime against the public opinion of the moment ; and how many, perhaps, were guilty of no other. (Note by Daujon.) 49 E \ LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE he crossed the garden of the Tuileries on the morning of the 10th August he had been for a quarter of an hour in the very midst of an uncontrolled mob, whose appetite had been whetted by the blood of the newly-murdered Suleau and Vigier. But his disconcerting indifference did not forsake him for an instant. " How early the leaves are falling this year ! " was his only reflection on the events of the day. And afterwards, on the 21st January, was his attitude that of a coward ? The only two witnesses who were able to watch him closely on the scaffold his confessor and his executioner both testified that he died with heroic resignation. I do not think, then, that these few lines by Daujon need do any real injury to the memory of Louis XVI. Not that I doubt the truth of the story, but it is very probable that this man who, without being bad, was rough and rather uncivilised, may in his hatred for the tyrant have branded as cowardice a mere momentary weakness excusable enough, one must admit, after so many weeks and months and years spent in agony and disillusionment. And if it is true that the King's habitual calmness forsook him, and his nerves for once obtained the upper hand, we can only assume that as a rule he controlled them, and that the insensi- bility usually attributed to his callous nature should really be ascribed to the unsuspected force of his character. One would certainly not have expected a conclusion so nattering to the King to be drawn from Daujon's narrative. Louis XVI. 's one exhibition of fear reminds us that the blood of Henri IV. flowed in his veins. On all the other occasions, no doubt, he was afraid, but afraid after the same fashion as his ancestor, who as he flung himself into the thick of the battle was wont to grind his teeth and say : " You are trembling, are you, you carcase ? If you only knew where I was taking you ! " It is with the greatest repugnance that we approach another subject : the Dauphin's horrible words in connection with his mother, his sister, and his aunt. Here we are dealing with the greatest crime of the Revolution, and the most atrocious plot, surely, that was ever formed in a human brain. It was very probably Hebert, the infamous Pere Duchesne, who conceived the shameful idea of making the son give evidence against his mother and in such terms ! (We refer those of our readers who wish to know what those terms were to M. Campardon's History of the Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris, vol. I. page 129). 50 THE NARRATIVE OF DAUJON We will make a contribution to this heartbreaking story in the form of another document, a document even more terrible perhaps than the official minutes that were read aloud in court in the presence of the wretched and indignant mother. We know that on the 19th January, 1794-, Simon's functions as the Dauphin's tutor came to an end. An English agent, in regular correspondence with Lord Granville, 1 wished to learn, from Simon himself, the exact condition of Louis XVI. 's son at the time. This agent twice succeeded in meeting the too notorious cobbler. The latter did not deny that he had left his post from sheer disgust ; he was horrified by what he had seen. The English spy reported these interviews to his Govern- ment in the following words : " Simon admits that the King (Louis XVII.) has been taught the habit of drinking strong liquors, and that he has no sort of education ; that Hebert and the soldiers with whom he is thrown teach him nothing but foul and blasphemous language. He declares that more than once he wished to counteract these lessons, and incurred very great danger on account of the child's indiscretions. Those who give me this information add that they do not believe a word of this. Simon thinks that the measures taken at that time to make him (Louis XVII.) give evidence against his mother, and to prove by his condition that the evidence was true, were enough to injure him, body and soul. He has no hesitation in saying that there is something the matter with the boy and that nothing is being done to cure him. He is given nothing to amuse him but the most obscene books, and in fact, since the King's death, everything possible has been done to deprave him. He says that now and then the boy feels his position, and cries, and becomes desperate ; and then the commissioners divert him with brandy and billiards : and that several times Hebert has threatened him that he will have him guillotined, and that this terrifies him so horribly that he (Simon) has often seen the child faint away at the threat." 2 The threat was by no means an empty one ; for the frenzied brains of the politicians of the day were haunted by the idea of 1 Probably Lord Grenville. In some of the later notes the name is so spelt. ( Translator. ) * Francis Drake to Lord Granville. Schedule No. 2 (Feb. 12th, 1794). Historical Manuscripts Commission. The manuscripts of J. B. Fortescue, Esq. , preserved at Dropmore, vol. II. , p. 529. 51 E 2 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE sending this child of nine years old to the scaffold. Did not Billaut-Varenne say ? " Let the allied powers understand plainly that the blade above the head of the tyrant's son is hanging by a single thread, and that if they advance one step nearer he will be the first victim of the people. It is by vigorous measures of this kind that a new government gains self-confidence." x We must complete Daujon's narrative with two other docu- ments. We must follow the murderers as they carry Madame de Lamballe's remains away from the Temple, and must learn the end of the repulsive incident. The Due de Penthievre, being warned of the dangers that threatened the Princesse de Lamballe, had charged M. de to keep his eye upon her, and "supposing any harm should happen to her to have her body followed wherever it was carried and have it buried in the nearest cemetery till it could be taken to Dreux." This, it must be admitted, was a very strange precaution. So clear a premonition of the horrible scene that followed the princess's death would seem to show, not merely that the murderers acted with premeditation but even, incredible as it appears, that the Due de Penthievre had received notice of their intentions. Be that as it may, M. de ordered three devoted servants to disguise themselves so that they could not possibly be recog- nised, gave them a fairly large sum in small assignats, and enjoined upon them to spare nothing in their efforts to fulfil the duke's behests, if by any unhappy chance the princess could not be saved. Weber, in a note in his Memoirs, describes the strange peregrinations of these emissaries. " The Princess de Lamballe," he says, " had escaped on the 2nd, and they were beginning to hope, when on the 3rd they were informed that the massacres were being renewed. Finally M. de was told that the villains had put an end to the life of the Queen's friend and seemed resolved to glut their infernal rage upon her still quivering remains. "It was then that these three faithful servants, over- coming the horror with which the cannibals inspired them, joined them in the hope of securing the unhappy woman's 1 H. Wallon, Histoire du Tribunal R6volutionnaire de Paris, vol. I. p. 285. 52 THE NARRATIVE OF DAUJON body. The cannibals wished first to carry it to the Hotel de Toulouse. 1 Someone warned the prince's retainers, who shuddered at the bare idea, but nevertheless, did not wish to oppose it. They opened all the entrances, and tremblingly awaited the horrible procession. They were already in the Rue de Clery when a man, touched by the horror that the prince's household must surely feel if this dreadful spectacle were thrust upon them, went up to Charlat, who was carrying the head, and asked him where he was going. " ' To make this kiss her fine furniture."* " ' But you are making a mistake. This is not her house : she does not live here any longer, but at the Hotel de Louvois or the Tuileries.' " And it was quite true that the princess had some stables in the Rue de Richelieu, and some rooms in the palace, though this did not alter the fact that her real home was in the Hotel de Toulouse. But happily the brigands believed this good-hearted man, who thus saved the prince's faithful servants from a deeply painful experience. The horde of savages, then, did not stop at the hotel, but went to the Tuileries. They were not allowed to enter the palace, however. Then they returned to the corner of the Rue des Ballets, in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, 2 opposite the notary's house, and went into a tavern, where there seemed some hope of robbing them of the mutilated body ; but they seized it again and flung it on a heap of corpses near the Chatelet. The emissaries of M. le Due de Penthievre imagined that they could easily find it there again, and turned all their attention to securing the head. "It was still adorned by her beautiful hair, when the monsters came to a fresh decision : namely, to make the wretched woman look once more upon the scenes in which she would no longer move 3 for in their horrible delirium they 1 Where the Due de Penthievre usually lived. It is now the Bank of France. It seems evident that the murderers, before going to the Hotel de Toulouse, had gone to the Temple ; for, as we have seen, it was by Daujon's advice that they went back to the heart of the town. 2 (Sic) Here we should read Rue Saint-Antoine. The end of the Rue des Ballets was opposite to La Force, where the Rue Malher is now. 3 All these allusions enable us to form an idea of the route followed by those who were carrying Madame de Lamballe's remains. From La Force 53 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE thought the senseless remains of their victim were still conscious of their outrages. At the very moment that the head passed under the door of La Force, a hairdresser sprang forward and, with the most astonishing dexterity, cut off the hair. " The emissaries of M. le Due de Penthievre were much distressed by this, for they knew the prince would have especially desired to keep the princess's hair; but they became only the more anxious to get possession of what was left, and after having reduced Charlat's mind to a state of complete confusion they persuaded him to leave the pike at the door of a tavern, into which two of them accompanied him. It is said that the man P. 1 took advantage of that moment to drag the head from the iron that pierced it and to wrap it in a napkin with which he had provided himself on purpose. He summoned his comrades and went with them to the Popincourt section, where he declared that he had, wrapped in the napkin, a head that he wished to deposit in the cemetery of the Quinze-Vingts, and that he would come next day with two others of his comrades to take it away, and would give a hundred crowns in silver to the poor of the section. "They reported to M. de what they had done, and he advised them to go to the section very early the next morning, and made arrangements elsewhere for the recovery of the body. It was in a half-ruined house that the remains of the unhappy victims had been laid. M. de spared they proceeded first to the Temple by the Rue des Franc-Bourgeois, Rue du Chaume, and Rue de la Corderie. To reach the Hotel de Toulouse (Bank of France) they certainly followed the boulevards as far as the Porte Saint- Denis, since they went through the Rue de Clery. Moreover, we know that at the Temple they expressed their intention of going to the Palais Royal ; they must therefore have approached the Tuileries by way of the Passage du Perron, the garden of the Palais Royal, and the Carrousel. The main artery of Paris, the streets of Saint-Honore, La Ferronnerie, La Verrerie and Le Roi de Sicile, led them to the Rue des Ballets opposite to La Force. Then, by the streets of Saint- An toine, La Tixeranderie and La Coutellerie, they went to the Chatelet, in the intention, probably, of ridding themselves of the corpse by depositing it in the Morgue. But the Morgue was closed and they threw the body into a building-yard. Finally they returned with the head to La Force, where the Due de Penthievre's emissaries succeeded in wresting this last trophy from them. 1 Pointel (Jacques), residing at No. 69, Rue des Petits-Champs. 54 THE NARRATIVE OF DAUJON neither trouble nor money in his efforts to find those of Madame de Lamballe, but without success. In the meantime M. de , seeing that his emissaries had not returned, was beginning to suspect their good faith, for he had handed over to them all the money they asked for, when he was told that the three men had been arrested on the charge of murdering Madame de Lamballe. "M. de hastened to the section without delay and testified to the truth so persistently that the commissioners of the section not only set the princess servants at liberty, but authorised M. de to take away Madame de Lamballe's head. He went to the cemetery at Quinze-Vingts with a plumber, placed in a leaden box all of the precious remains that had been rescued, and despatched them to Dreux, where they were deposited in the same vault that was to receive the body of M. de Penthievre." One cannot fail to be touched by the unemotional terms of the official report drawn up at-the section of the Quinze-Vingts, in the very hour that the Due de Penthievre's envoys arrived with the desecrated remains of the Queen's friend. Whatever Weber may say, the prisoner's body was found, as the following document shows. The original of this document is preserved in the Carnavalet Museum, and is one of the various relics that were formerly in the Ledru-Rollin Collection. The text has already been published by M. Bertin. Extract from the Original Minutes of the Quinze- Vingts Section. " In the year 1792, the first of liberty and equality, on the 3rd of September, there came before the Permanent Com- mittee of the Section of the Quinze-Vingts the Sieurs Jacques- Charles Hervelin, drummer of the gunners of the Section des Halles, formerly the battalion of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie, residing at No. 3, Rue de la Savonnerie, opposite the little Rue d" Avignon, at the sign of the Cadran Bleu ; Jean-Gabriel Queruelle, cabinet-maker in the Rue du Faubourg Saint- 55 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE Antoine, at the corner of the Rue Saint-Nicolas, in Bouneau's house ; Antoine Pouqiiet, gunner in the Montreuil Section, living at No. 25, Rue de Charonne, in the house of Sieur Vicq ; Pierre Ferric, stationer at No. 39, Rue Popincourt ; bearers of the body of the ci-devant Princess Lamballe, who had just been killed in the Hotel de la Force and whose head had been carried by some other persons through the open streets at the end of a pike. They informed us that they had found the following articles in her garments : A small book with gilt-edged pages, bound in red morocco and entitled The Imitation of Jesns Christ , a pocket-book of red morocco, a case containing eighteen national assignats of five livres each, a gold ring set with a moveable blue stone, beneath which was some fair hair tied in a true-lover's knot, with these words above it : It was blanched by sorrow ; a piece of the root called racine d'Angleterre, a little ivory penholder with a gold pen and two little circles of gold, a little knife with two blades and a tortoiseshell-and-silver handle ; a corkscrew of English steel, a little pair of pincers in English steel for pulling out hairs, a small sheet of ordinary cardboard with a picture bearing some indecipherable words, a list of linen and other garments on a piece of paper, two little glass bottles with gold tops, one containing ink and the other some wafers of various colours, and a sort of picture with a design on both sides of it, representing on one side a flaming heart wreathed with thorns and pierced with a dagger, with this legend below : Cor Jesu, salva nos, perimus, and on the other a flaming heart pierced with a dagger, embroidered all round with blue silk all of which we examined in the presence of the above-named and undersigned, to whom we returned all the articles as they desired, to be taken by them and delivered over to the National Assembly, in accordance with their promise and assurance ; in acknowledgment of which they gave us a receipt and signed their names together with us, commissioners and registrar, Caumont, Borie, Savard, com- missioners ; Renet, registrar. "And on the same day, at seven o'clock in the evening, Citizen Jacques Pointel, residing in the section of the Haymarket, No. 69, Rue des Petits-Champs, appeared before 56 THE NARRATIVE OF DAUJON the Committee of the Quinze-Vingts section, asking us to use our authority in the matter of burying the ci-devant Princesse de Lamballe's head, which he had just succeeded in securing. Since we could but applaud the patriotism and humanity of the said citizen, we, the undersigned commissioners, instantly proceeded to the Foundlings' Cemetery, and there had the head buried, and drew up the present report of the said burial, in order to promote the truth and make sure of the facts at the time. " Delesquelle and Savard^ commissioners; Pointel, Renet, secretaries." Finally, without wishing to spread the rumour that Madame de Lamballe was the mistress of Philippe Egalite, Due d'Orleans, we will quote the following extract from the report of an English agent employed in Paris at the beginning of September, 1792. It is a finished picture of theTabsolute indifference with which people who prided themselves on being philosophers acquiesced in tragedies that did not affect their personal safety. " Madame de Lamballe was literally cut to pieces in the most cruel and the most indecent way. Her head and her heart were carried on pikes through the streets When this murder took place on Monday, Lindsay and some other Englishmen were at the Palais Royal with the Due d'Orleans. While they were waiting for dinner they heard a large crowd making a great noise, and going to the window they saw Madame de Lamballe's head, which was being taken to the Temple, 1 where it was shown to the Queen. " Overcome with horror at the sight, they drew back into the further end of the room, where the Due d'Orleans was sitting. He asked what was going on. They answered that the mob was carrying a head on the end of a pike. < Oh,' he said, ' is that all ? Well, let us go to dinner ! ' " While they were at dinner he asked if the women in the prisons had been massacred, and having received the answer that several of them had suffered this sad fate, he said : ' Tell me, pray, what has become of Madame 1 Or, no doubt, to be more exact, which they were bringing back from the Temple and taking to the Tuileries. 57 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE de Lamballe. > M. Walkiers, who was seated beside him, intimated, by a movement of his hand round his neck, that she had been killed. ' I understand you, 1 said the duke, and immediately began to speak of something else."" l 1 Letters from, Mr. Burger to Lord Granville ; under date of September 8, 1792. Historical Manuscripts Commission. The Manuscripts of J. B. ForUscw, Esq., preserved at Dropmore. (VoL H. ) 58 THE NARRATIVE OF TURGY A MAHSERVANT EMPLOYED IN THE TEMPLE (lOrn AUGUST, 1792 l&ra OCTOBER, 1793) Louis FRANCOIS TURGY wasborn in Paris on the 18th July, 1763, and at the age of twenty-one entered the King's service. He filled a very modest post in the royal kitchens, and it was his devotion to his employers, and nothing else, that won him fame. We are about to read of the manner and circumstances in which he showed this devotion. From July to October, 1793, he was the sole remaining link that connected the prisoners of the Temple with the outer world. After leaving the Temple, Turgy joined his family at Tournan- en-Brie; later on he accompanied Louis XVI/s daughter to Vienna ; in 1799 he was at Mittau, at the Court of the exiled Louis XVI 1 1., and it was there that he met dery, who, at the instigation of the Princess of Hohenlohe, was putting together his recollections and writing an account of the imprisonment in the Temple. He begged Turgy to show him the letters of the Queen and Madame Elizabeth, but these precious documents had been left at Tournan, and Turgy's father destroyed them at the time of the Consulate, lest, if the relics were found, he should be suspected of royalist tendencies. It was those who had been readiest to stake their lives during the Terror who were seized in this way with a sort of reactionary fear when the danger was over. For many of them the nightmare did not begin till the day dawned. Turgy then, at the time of the Restoration, possessed nothing but his very accurate recollection of all that had occurred, and the contents of a few undated notes. It was with the help of these documents that his narrative was written. It was 59 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE published in 1818, among the documentary authorities for the Histoire de Louis XVII. by Eckard, who undertook to revise it. As early as 1 799, at Mittau, the Duchesse d' Angouleme had shown her gratitude to Turgy by prompting Louis XVIII. to write the following testimonial : "I have the greatest satisfaction in stating that during the imprisonment of the late King my brother in the Temple, and after his death, as long as it was possible to serve the late King my nephew, the late Queen, his mother and my sister-in-law, the late Madame Elizabeth my sister, and Madame la Duchesse d' Angouleme my niece, the Sieur Turgy served them with un- failing courage, fidelity, zeal, and intelligence. And since I cannot at this moment reward him as I should wish, I desire at least that this testimonial should be for him a certificate of merit for ever, and for his children and descendants an incentive to effort, that they may in future years imitate the example he has given them : In witness whereof I have written and signed this testimonial with my own hand, and have had my seal affixed to it. At the Castle of Mittau this 1 7th December, 1799- Signed: Louis." The King kept his promise. In 1814 Turgy was nominated an officer of the Legion of Honour and received a patent ot nobility. When he died in Paris, on the 4th June, 1823, he was first valet de chambre and usher-of-the-closet to Her Royal Highness Madame la Duchesse d' Angouleme. On the 10th August, 1792, 1 found it impossible to obtain admission to the Tuileries. On the two following days my attempts to get into Les Feuillants were equally useless. The royal family ate nothing there but the food brought to them from various places by the people who had remained with their Majesties. Having heard that Louis XVI. was to be removed to the Temple, I hurried off to M. Menard de Chousy, Commissary-general of the King's Household, to secure the favour of being employed there. He promised me that, wherever the royal family were lodged, if a single manservant of any kind were needed, he would name no one but myself for the post, because he knew that this would please the Queen. He at once despatched M. Rothe, Comptroller of the Buttery, to ask at the town hall for tickets of admission ; but he came back at five o'clock and 60 THE UNFORTUNATE LOUIS XVI. In the dress he wore while confined in the Temple THE NARRATIVE OF TURGY said that the officials would only promise the tickets for the next day, the 14th. I foresaw that once the King were in the Temple it would be impossible to gain admission without an inquiry and various formalities that would frustrate my end : for, since I had never been concerned with anything but my duties, I had nothing to recommend me to the enemies of the royal family. Without speaking of it to anyone else, I said to my comrades, Chretien and Marchand : " Let us simply go to the Temple ; perhaps if we show a bold front they will let us in." They followed me. We arrived at the main entrance at the very moment when one of the officers of the guard was allowing a man to pass in. This man was supplied with a ticket, and I recognised him as^ being in the King's employ. I begged the officer to let me speak to this man, and told the latter that I and my companions also belonged to the House- hold. At first he hesitated ; then he answered : " Take my arm, and make your companions take yours, and I will get you in." Which he did. We were taken to the kitchen, where I found no supplies of any kind. Three times I was obliged to go out to procure what was necessary. I decided to go out by the door called the Porte du Baillage, 1 and took the precaution of making the porter and the guards look at me well, so that I should be able to get in again. We laid the King's supper in the same room of the palace that H.S.H. Madame la Princesse Louise Adelaide de Bourbon-Conde has now made into her chapel. 2 The royal family continued to have their meals in this room until the Great Tower became their only lodging. 3 The royal family, after being confined for three days 1 See page 29, Plan A, No. 63. 2 That is to say in the large salon of the Temple, Plan A, No. 22. 3 The Great Tower only became their lodgings on the 26th October ; and although it is quite certain that Turgy was well-informed, especially with regard to everything concerned with the domestic arrangements of the royal family, it seems astonishing that the prisoners should have been taken to eat their meals in the rooms of the Temple Palace. To reach them it was necessary to go out of Palloy's enclosure, and, as the passage 77 had been cut short (see plan B), to cross the entire garden from end to end. That they did this is hard to accept. Madame de Tourzel, on the contrary, says they went down, at the hours of their meals, to a little room that was below that of the Queen and served as a dining-room. 61 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE in the tiny cells of the Feuillants, would have thought them- selves comparatively fortunate if they had been left in the palace. But after supper the King was informed that, in order to ensure his safety and that of his family, they were to occupy the Tower during the night. The sentries who had been posted on every landing of the Tower were all Marseillais, who never ceased singing while the Queen was passing up to her rooms, as well as throughout the night : " Madame monte a sa tour, Ne salt qiuand descendra." Two days after our arrival the commissioners of the Commune wished to know who had admitted us to the Temple. I answered that the Committees of the Assembly, after having enquiries made in our sections, had authorised us to take up our duties here : whereupon they retired. The next day Chabot, a deputy, Santerre, the Commandant- general, and Billaud-Varennes, at that time acting as procureur-general to the Commune, came to identify all the people who had remained with the royal family, and to make a list of their names. They asked us if we had been in the King's employ, and I answered in the affirmative. "But who can have let you come in here ? " cried Chabot. I told him that Petion and Manuel, after making enquiries in our section, had allowed us to come in. "In that case," said Chabot, " it must be because you are good citizens. Remain at your posts, and the nation will take better care of you than the tyrant ever did." When we were alone my comrades, who were much alarmed, said to me : " Do you want to be the death of us all ? You tell the town councillors that we were sent here by the Assembly, and you tell the deputies that we were sent by the Commune : we wish we were well out of it ! " Nevertheless, they remained in the Temple and were faithful to their duty, leaving the place only when I left it myself, as I shall presently relate. As soon as the King was removed to the Temple the most minute precautions were prescribed. This was the routine in my own special department. Before dinner or any other 62 THE NARRATIVE OF TURGY meal someone went to the Council Room to summon two of the municipal officers. They came to the serving-room, where the dishes were prepared and tasted before them, so that they might see there was nothing concealed in them, nor anything suspicious about them. In their presence the decanters and coffee-pots were filled. The covers for the decanters of almond-milk were torn, according to their directions, by any person and from any piece of paper they chose. Then we all proceeded to the dining-room, but we did not lay the table till we had shown \it, above and below, to the officers ; we unfolded the tablecloths and napkins before them ; they tore the rolls in halves and probed the crumb with forks, or even with their fingers. Nevertheless, I was often able, in a passage or the corner of a staircase, 1 to replace the paper stopper of a decanter by another, upon which some warning or news had been written, either with lemon -juice or with extract of gall-nut. Some- times I rolled a note round a little pellet of lead, covered it with another piece of stronger paper, and threw it into the decanter of almond-milk. I indicated what I had done by a sign upon which we had agreed. When the paper stoppers had no writing already upon them they were used by the Queen and Madame Elizabeth for giving me orders or information to transmit to someone else. Some of the means we employed for communicating with each other are described in M. Hue's book and in Clery's journal : but as it was necessary for these means to be varied, they demanded the greatest caution, and often involved delays in transmitting news to the royal family. To obviate all these inconveniences the Queen and Madame Elizabeth devised a way of corresponding directly with me by signs. 1 The kitchens and offices of the Temple were a long way from the Tower (see Plan A). We shall see, in Moelle's narrative, how the dishes for the prisoners' table were carried through the Grand Prior's Palace and the immense garden of the Temple the whole length of the existing square. There was nothing unusual, moreover, about this journey ; at the Tuileries till 1830, the King's meals were carried in this way through the whole series of rooms. Even at Versailles the strange procession was daily to be met with in the courts of the palace, escorted by an armed guard. 63 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE The following is a list of the signals suggested to me one by one by the princesses, in connection with the events of September, 1792, with a view to their being kept informed both of the progress of the foreign armies and of the transactions of the Convention, in spite of the increased vigilance of the municipal officers. They are in Madame Elizabeth's handwriting. For the English : place the right thumb upon the right eye ; if they are landing near Nantes, place it on the right ear ; if near Calais, on the left ear. If the Austrians are successful on the Belgian frontier^ place the second finger of the right hand on the right eye. If they are entering the country by way of Lille or from the Mayence direction, use the third finger as above. For the troops of the King of Sardinia, use the fourth finger in the same way. N.B. Be careful to keep thejinger stationary for a longer or shorter time according to the importance of the battle. When they are within fifteen leagues of Paris follow the same order for the fingers but be careful to place them on the mouth. If the Powers should be concerning themselves with the royal family, touch the hair with the fingers of the right hand. If the Convention should pay any attention to them, use the left hand ; but should that body go on to the order of the day, use the right. If the Convention should withdraw, pass the whole hand over the head. Should the troops advance and be successful, touch the nose with one finger of the right hand, and use the whole hand when they are within fifteen leagues of Paris The left side is only to be used to indicate the successes of the Convention. In answering any question the right hand is to be used and not the left. These signals, as is evident, as well as the questions in various notes, refer to the hopes and fears of the princesses or to information, true or false, received by them. 64 THE NARRATIVE OF TURGY The written correspondence went more fully into the subjects that I could only vaguely indicate by signals. For in spite of the vigilance of eight or ten persons hardly a day passed during the fourteen months that I was in the Temple, without my delivering some notes or other to the royal family, either by means of the devices already mentioned, or while I was giving them the objects connected with my duties, or receiving them from their hands. Or else I would put the note in a ball of thread or cotton, and hide it in a corner of a^cupboard, or under the marble table, or in the hot-air holes of the stove, or even in the basket that the sweepings were carried away in. A movement of my hand or eyes indicated the spot where I had succeeded in hiding the ball. In this way the King and the princesses were nearly always kept informed of the progress of events. The facilities that I had for going out two or three times a week to fetch provisions enabled me to be the bearer of any instructions that the King or Queen wished to send to anyone, and to bring back any notes or news that were given to me for their Majesties. I also kept the frequent trysts that M. Hue made with me, sometimes in the most lonely parts of Paris and sometimes out of town, when he would give me letters for the King or answers to his Majesty's orders. Neither persecutions nor imprisonment nor, in a word, any fear for his own safety, ever affected his devoted courage. It was Madame la Marquise (now Duchesse) de Serent with whom the Queen and Madame Elizabeth most often corresponded. Her household supposed me to be her man of business, and had orders to let me in at any hour of the day or night. Everyone has heard of the fine spirit and noble devotion shown by this lady throughout the trials of the royal family, on a great many occasions that were full of danger to herself. Who is there that has given greater proof than Madame la Duchesse de Serent that loyalty to the King, to a soul of true nobility, is a real religion ? Her historic name is prominent in many literary works. It was only rarely that I was searched on entering or 65 F LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE leaving the Temple, because I was very careful to supply the warders with everything they asked for when they visited the kitchens. This made them more amenable. But as soon as I approached the Tower or any room occupied by one of the royal family all my movements were observed. I was forbidden to speak to any person whatever, except in a loud voice, when it was necessary in the exercise of my duties. I was even, on account of my relations with the outer world, the object of particular vigilance. And the royal family themselves, to avoid drawing suspicion upon me, were cautious to such a degree that on one occasion the King, having given me a knife with a broken handle that I might have it mended, and remembering that he had not shown it to the municipal officers, asked me to return it to him at once, and gave it to them, saying : " You see, gentlemen, there is nothing inside/ 1 Then the King returned the knife to me, impressing upon me not to have a new handle put to it, for, he added : " I value it very much as it is, because it was given to me by my father." I was above all charged to discover the fate of those whose zeal and fidelity had been proved by the royal family. The greater number of them had been forced to leave France in the service of their noble cause, and the laws against the emigres, which became more and more severe, were consequently a matter of special interest to the _. princesses, as we may see by this note from Madame Elizabeth written about the end of October. "A note for Madame de S. (Serent). When the laws against the emigres are quite completed, let us know, and go on giving us news on the subject" I have not yet mentioned Toulan. His behaviour and violent way of speaking during the first days he was in the Temple made us dread the return of his period of service. However, the sight of the misfortunes of Louis XVI., and the princesses, and the royal children, combined with their generosity and gentleness, had from the very first made an unexpected impression upon the ardent, sensitive heart of this young man, an impression of such strength that he 66 THE NARRATIVE OF TURGY resolved to employ every means to alleviate the fate of the royal family. I do not know how he contrived to inform the princesses of his fortunate conversion ; but it was thought he could serve them best by doing nothing to alter the other commissioners 1 opinion of him, and by keeping up his revolu- tionary tone and behaviour towards the King and his family. Having been assured by Madame Elizabeth that I might be perfectly open in my dealings with Toulan, I had several meetings with him in different places, where we talked over the various commissions that the princesses confided to him. He fulfilled them with so much zeal and ability that at the end of November Madame Elizabeth informed me, in the note that I give below, of the distinguishing name by which the royal family would in future allude to him. " You will give this (note) to Toulan, whom in future we shall call Fidele. If you cannot deliver it at dinner-time, go to-morrow, so as to be able to give him an answer to what we should receive from him to-day. Tell us the bad news as well as the good, when there is any? But while those who were the enemies of the royal family only because they had not known them were moved to pity by their misfortunes, the prisoners were subjected to the most atrocious treatment by others : others who had had the honour of seeing them when they were in the height of their prosperity, or who, perhaps, owed everything to them. One day the Queen said to me : " Turgy, I have broken my comb : please buy me another " ; whereupon the poet D C ,* 1 Dorat-Palemezeaux, Chevalier de Cubieres, born at Roquemaure on the 27th September, 1752. This personage, who was despised by all alike, both by the terrorists he flattered and by the royalists whom every day he doomed to the scaffold in verses that were as dull as they were sanguinary, composed a number of revolutionary poems. He wrote odes in honour of Carrier, Robespierre, and Marat. Everyone knows how Chaumette answered him when he wished to dedicate a volume of verses to Madame Chaumette : " My wife," said the procureur of the Commune, " is a woman of letters ; her works are in my chest of drawers." Opening a drawer, he showed the poet a pile of old stockings which the Citoyenne Chaumette had mended and marked with his initials. Cubieres was a member of the insurrectionary Commune of the 10th August. On this subject Prud'homme relates that in order to be made a member of the electoral body on that occasion he declared that his mother 67 F 2 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE who was a municipal officer, cried : " Buy one of horn : wood is too good for her." The Queen went on giving me her orders, as if she had not heard the insult. I replaced the comb, which was of tortoiseshell, by a similar one. When she saw it the Queen said : " So you have disregarded the orders of I> C , for he declared that wood would be too good for us ; he who, but for the kindness of the King " Her Majesty paused. I ventured to say : " Madame, there were many who seemed to be paying court to the royal family, but it was only because of the Treasury." The Queen was good enough to say to me : " You are quite right, Turgy." On the 2nd December the municipal body of the 10th of August was replaced by the body known as the provisional municipality. They doubled the number of commissioners guarding the King and the royal family : and the following incident showed us the kind of men we had to deal with. The Queen, having been ill all the next day, had taken no food, and told me to bring her some broth for supper. As I was actually handing it to her she learnt that the woman Tison was unwell, whereupon she ordered the broth to be taken to her. This was done. I then begged one of the commissioners to go with me to the kitchens to fetch another had committed a crime in making him noble when his father was not so. Being on a visit of inspection at the Temple, and noticing the particularity with which Louis XVI. fasted in the Ember Days and read his prayers, he reported it to the Commune, arguing that the King, being pious, must necessarily be a monster, since Louis XL and Philip II. of Spain had been both pious and tyrannical. He had taken the name of Dorat from vanity, thinking in this way to create some confusion between his heavy verses and the charming work of the poet of the Baisers. We know what Madame Roland thought of the Chevalier de Cubieres : " Faithful to his two characteristics of insolence and cowardice, which were plainly written for all to see upon his repulsive face, he preached sans-culottism as he had once done honour to the graces, and composed verses to Marat as formerly to Iris. As he had been amorous without tenderness, so he was blood- thirsty without passion ; he knelt humbly before the idol of the day, whether it were Tantalus or Venus, for it mattered little to him provided he could rant, and earn enough to eat. ... A shallow courtier, an insipid flatterer, at once idiotically conceited and servilely polite, he was more surprising to people of sense arid more unpleasing to people of judgment than any being that has ever been seen." By way of a finishing touch to this portrait we will add that Dorat-Cubieres rewrote the Phedre of Racine, and tried to make the world believe that one of his works was a newly discovered tragedy by Corneille ! 68 THE NARRATIVE OF TURGY bowl of broth. Not one of them would accompany me, and her Majesty was obliged to do without the broth. Toulan, who had been elected to sit in this new town- council, constantly gave me information with regard to the character and sentiments of his^eplleagues ; which information was very useful to me in my dealings with them. It was M. Parisot who gave me the decree prescribing that the King should be brought to the bar of the Convention to answer certain questions. I placed it under Clery's bed, and his Majesty read it at once. That zealous royalist, Parisot, often gave me writings and notes of very great importance ; while Toulan, for his part, supplied the princesses with reliable information as to all that was being hatched in the Jacobin Club and the Committees of the Convention. He contrived, too, to be often on duty during this terrible time. His devotion and the eager marks of sympathy shown by several of the commissioners, whose names, I regret to say, I have forgotten, gave some consolation and even some hope to the Queen and the royal family. Clery has told how we devised a means of correspondence between the King and the princesses, from the moment that all communication between them was forbidden. While he, Clery, was a witness of the sorrows and sublime courage of Louis XVI. it was my part to watch the fears, the gleams of hope, and the anguish of the Queen, M. le Dauphin, and the princesses. The accursed 21st of January dawned. At about ten o'clock in the morning the Queen tried to persuade her children to take some food, but they refused. Soon we heard the report of firearms. Madame Elizabeth, raising her eyes to heaven, cried : " The monsters now they are con- tent ! " The Queen was speechless with grief ; the young prince burst into tears ; Madame Royale shrieked aloud. Picture the scene ! And all the time the drums were rolling and the maniacs who guarded the Temple were shouting their applause. Clery remained in the Temple for more than a month longer, but was unable to communicate with us. When I saw him after his release I received from his hands, with LAST [DAYS OF MAEIE ANTOINETTE feelings of sorrow and veneration beyond all words, the following note, which the King in his infinite kindness had left for me. Note from Louis XVI. to CLERY. %\st January, 1793, a quarter to 8 in the morning. " / charge you to tell Turgy how greatly I have been pleased with his faithful attachment to me, and with his zeal in fulfilling his duties. I give him my blessing, and beg him to continue caring, with equal devotion, for my family, to whom I commend him.' 1 '' The fury of the regicides being assuaged for the moment, the municipal officers who had so greatly tormented Louis XVI. and his family came more rarely to the Temple. The princesses were watched less closely, and were able to talk to each other and give me their orders. When Toulan, Michonis, and one or two others were on duty, the royal prisoners enjoyed a semblance of liberty. The only note of this period that I still possess is from Madame Elizabeth. " Thank Hue for us. Find out from him whether he took the hair himself, or bought it ; l and whether he could not, through some private source of information, Jind out what the Committee of General Security means to do with us" It was during this period that Toulan conceived the rash idea of helping Louis XVII. and the royal family to escape from the Temple. According to my notes, the plan was to be executed as follows. I was to carry away the young King in a basket covered with napkins : the Queen, disguised as a municipal officer, was to come to the door on the staircase to ensure my being allowed to pass : her Majesty was to go out a few moments afterwards : Madame Roy ale, dressed like the lamplighter's son, and accompanied by M. Ricard 2 dis- 1 The hair of Louis XVI. no doubt. 2 At that time Inspector of National Property, and a zealous royalist. At the restoration he was appointed to a post in the office of the Royal Lottery. It was Ricard who wrote the notes that Turgy and Toulan delivered to the prisoners. His thin, neat handwriting, Turgy said, was of the greatest use. 70 THE NARRATIVE OF TURGY guised as the lamplighter, and carrying his box, was to pass out at the same time as Madame Elizabeth, who was to go before them dressed, like the Queen, as a commissioner. I know nothing more of the measures that were to be adopted in the escape from the Tower. I believe it was owing only to the hesitation of the municipal officers (I am not speaking of the intrepid Toulan) that the plan was never executed. When the royal family were not too closely watched by their warders, the princesses liked to remind each other of various services that had been rendered to them by the loyal during the horrible scenes of the Revolution. The Queen condescended one day to recall the first occasion on which I was fortunate enough to be observed by herself and the King, on the unhappy morning of the 6th October. She repeated several times, in the presence of Louis XVII. and Madame Royale, that I had saved her life that day by opening for her the secret door between her private apartments and the room called the (Ell de Bceuf, through which she ran to take refuge with the King, shutting the door in the face of the murderers who were pursuing her. 1 The most remarkable fact on these occasions was that the Queen never spoke of those who had given her such cruel cause for complaint, and while she enjoined upon her august children to remember good actions, she set them an example in the forgetting of injuries. Towards the end of March the unfavourable reports that reached the General Council with regard to Toulan and several of his colleagues made the commissioners on duty more suspicious than before. We were obliged to resort to notes once more. Madame Elizabeth wrote : " M?s words gave us much pleasure. (Monsieur, the King's brother, had declared himself Regent of the kingdom.) 1 There were, in the palace of Versailles, two ways of communicating between the King's rooms and those of the Queen : one was a secret way, a narrow and winding passage, built at the same height as an entresol, which traversed the whole ground floor of the palace ; the other was public, and in a certain sense official, and consisted of three little rooms, over- looking a back yard, and dividing the Queen's large room from the (Eil de Bceiif. This whole labyrinth of little rooms and secret staircases and hidden doors is still existing, though closed to the public, and there on the actual spot one may recall the events of the night between the 5th and 6th October, which are described with so much confusion and inconsistency by those who saw them. 71 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE " As it is most important that our secret should be known by no one, do not speak of our method of correspondance. " Give this (a note) to the person at whose house you were on Saturday, and with it give something to make the writing visible. Above all do not answer me till Tuesday, so as not to have more letters to deliver than necessary. Did they seem anxious tojind out who gave us news, and do you think they spoke of it to the General Council ? I have found the book." (This was a Holy Week that Madame Elizabeth had asked me for.) Various accusations, notably those brought by Tison and his wife against the Queen, the princesses, and many others, were the reason that Toulan^s name and those of some other municipal officers were erased from the list of those appointed to serve in the Temple. The men who replaced them received such stringent orders, and were, moreover, so devoted to the enemies of the royal family, that correspondence again became extremely difficult. In the meantime the progress of events, not only in France but also beyond the frontier, was greatly disturbing the princesses. ^ They were obliged to resort to signals again. Madame Elizabeth gave me the following code, partly at the end of April and partly in May. " In the case of a truce, putt up your collar. If we are being demanded at the frontier, put your right hand in your coat-pocket. If Paris is being provisioned, lay your hand on your chin. " Touch your forehead if General Lamarliere is gone. If the Spaniards are trying to join the troops from Nantes, rub your eyebrows. If it is thought likely that we shall still be here in the month of August, blow your nose without turning round. " After supper go to Fidele (Toulan) and ask him if he lias any news of Produse (the Prince de Conde) , if he has good news, put the napkin under your right arm ; if he has none, put it under the left. Tell him tliat we fear the information given against him must have caused him some annoyance. Beg him, as soon as he has news of Produse, to tell you ; and THE NARRATIVE OF TURGY hand the information on to us by means of the signs we agreed upon. " Could you not, vf anything fresh were to arise, tell it to us by writing with lemon juice on the paper stopper of the bottle that holds the cream, or else wrap it up in a pellet and throw it to my sister one day when you are alone with her ? " Take possession of the paper stoppers in the bottles whenever I blow my nose as I come out of my room : and if you have got them lean back against the wall as I pass, lowering your napkin at the same time. If what I ask should be dangerous for you, let me know by passing your napkin from one hand to the other. " If they think we shall still be here in the month of August hold the napkin in your hand. We hope the people will not worry you any more. Do not be afraid to use your left hand ; we prefer to knozv everything: " If the Szviss declare war, the signal is to be one Jinger under tlw chin. If the troops from Nantes reach Orleans, use two fingers when tliey are there." During the month of June the woman Tison gave signs of mental derangement. She was always sad, and sighed like a person suffering from remorse. Her husband, who was a brutal man, for some reason obliged her to bring fresh charges against the Queen and Madame Elizabeth, and she accused them of carrying on a daily correspondence with me. To prove her statements she carried down to the Council Room a candlestick that she had taken from Madame Elizabeth's room, and showed the commissioners a drop of sealing wax that had fallen on the socket. It was quite true that on that very morning the princess had given me a sealed note for the Abbe Edgeworth de Firmont, and I had lost no time in taking it to Madame la Duchesse de Serent. Her Royal Highness sealed no notes but those for this venerable divine, who was her confessor. 1 On returning from the Council the woman Tison entered the princesses 1 room. At the sight of the Queen she became 1 See the Mdmoires of the Abbe E. de Firmont, 3rd edition," pages 121-127. 73 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE greatly agitated, and flinging herself at her Majesty 's feet, under the very eyes of the commissioners, whose presence she entirely disregarded, she cried: "Madame, I entreat your Majesty to forgive me" (those were the words she used). " I am a miserable woman ; I am responsible for your death and for Madame Elizabeth's."" The princesses kindly raised her from the ground and tried to calm her. A moment later I and my two fellow-servants, Chretien and Marchand, brought in the dinner for the royal family, accom- panied by the four commissioners on duty. The woman Tison threw herself on her knees before me, saying : " M. Turgy, I ask your forgiveness. I am a miserable woman. I have been the cause of the Queen's death and of yours." Madame Elizabeth quickly raised her, and said : u Turgy, forgive her." I had the honour of telling her Royal Highness " that the woman Tison had done nothing to offend me; but even if she had I would forgive her with all my heart." The woman then fell into fearful convulsions ; she was carried into a room in the Palace, and it took eight men to hold her. Two days later she was removed to the Hotel-Dieu, and she appeared no more at the Temple. 1 M. Follope, the municipal officer to whom the woman Tison had made her statement, had told me of everything that she had laid before the Council, and had advised me not to be with the princesses so much, so as not to confirm the suspicions of the other commissioners and warders. In the evening he fortunately succeeded in persuading his colleagues that Madame Tison's accusation and the scene that had just taken place were both the effect of the unhappy woman's madness. He threw her deposition into the fire. That was certainly one of the days when I was most afraid 1 This tragic scene must have taken place on the 6th July, for under date of the 8th, tivo days later, we find recorded in the registers of the Hotel-Dieu the admittance of " Anne Victoire Baudet, wife of Tison, born in Paris in the Parish of St. Etienne-du-Mont." She left the hospital on the 6th Ventose, year III. (24th February, 1795), and was still alive at the end of the year VI. Her husband, Pierre Joseph Tison, born at Valenciennes in 1734, remained at the Temple after the Queen's death. He was still there in July, 1795, and was kept there almost like a prisoner. He left only on the death of the " child of the Temple." His own death is recorded as taking place on the 3rd Nivose, year VI. (23rd December, 1797), at No. 36, Rue de Limoges, Paris. 74 THE NARRATIVE OF TURGY of being arrested : afraid, not on my own account, for I was resigned, but because my arrest would have deprived the royal family of every means of correspondence, and of their only solace in the weariness and torture of their horrible imprisonment. On several occasions the commissioners had detected the signals and glances that were exchanged between the princesses and myself, and had tried to guess their meaning, making desperate efforts to find out to what they referred. This caused us the most painful anxiety, but their attempts were always in vain. One day Tison made off with the paper stopper of a bottle ; examined it carefully ; held it up to the light ; then, finding nothing on it, put it in his pocket. The princesses grew pale from fear : their anxiety may be imagined ! But either because Tison lost the paper, or because he did not know how to make the writing visible, this was a false alarm. Strange to say, not one of our notes was ever discovered ! Every day I thank Heaven for it. The warning of the worthy M. Follope 1 made us more cautious than ever. It was not till two days later that the Queen, when returning her napkin to me, succeeded in slipping into my hand a paper on which her Majesty had written these questions : " What are they shouting under our windows ? (Here there are some words that have become illegible.) Perhaps my sister will ask for some almond milk. Has the Commune been reconstituted ? Is the woman Tison as mad as they say ? Do they mean to replace her here ? Is she well cared for? Who could read these last words without being touched ? It was at this time that I informed the Queen of my inten- tion of begging the General Council of the Commune to allow me to be shut up in the Tower, so that I might devote myself entirely to the personal service of the princesses and spare them many very irksome cares. Her Majesty answered : " What you suggest would give us great pleasure ; but it is through you that all our information comes, and if you were shut up, we should in future be entirely in the dark. If 1 He was indicted in the same bill as Madame Elizabeth, and died with her on the 9th May, 1794. (Note by Turgy.) 75 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE anyone should come to take us away, and you are unable to accompany us, come and join us wherever we may be, with your wife, your son, and your whole family." The circumstances connected with Madame Tison's insanity had greatly impressed her husband. The kindness shown by the Queen and the princesses to this woman who had given them so many reasons for complaint, touched the gaoler to such a degree that he told me he repented of his conduct in the past, and desired to give some proof of his sorrow. This he did on the first opportunity. When the young King came to the dinner-table he was given a higher seat than the others, a seat with a cushion on it. One day, this seat being occupied by a commissioner called Bernard, who had been a priest at the Hospice de la Pitie, the little King was seated on an ordinary chair. He was so low that he could hardly reach the food on his plate ; but no one dared to disturb Bernard, who was noted for his boorishness. Tison came into the room ; I made a sign to him ; he understood it. Bringing forward another chair, he asked the commissioner to give the child the seat he generally used. Bernard roughly refused, saying, in the hearing of the Queen and the princesses, " I never saw a table or chair given to prisoners ; straw is good enough for them." x Tison offered to give me information and to provide me with newspapers. I told Madame Elizabeth of all this, and she soon answered as follows : " Be very cautious in regard to Tison's suggestion, and do not let your zeal lead you into any course that might be dangerous to you ; and if you agree, let it be only after making him promise the most absolute secrecy. Have you not been forbidden to speak to Tison ? Think over that, too. Try to find out whether the movements of the enemy are to be directed against my companion (the Queen) ; and if they are not going to remove her property to some greater distance than two leagues. (There was some question of taking Louis XVII. and Madame Royale to the Chateau of Choisy-le-Roi.) This 1 Bernard was proscribed as an accomplice of Robespierre, and executed on the 29th July, 1794 (llth Thermidor, year II.). (Note by Turgy.) 76 THE NARRATIVE OF TURGY question is not urgent. It was Toulan who gave us the news- paper of which I spoke yesterday. The way you serve us is our one comfort. Ask Madame S. (Serent) for an answer about Miranda? I will give several other letters written by Madame Elizabeth between the early days of July and the end of September. " Yesterday we saw a newspaper that spoke of Saumur and Angers as though the R. (Republic) were still in possession of them : what does that mean ? Is Marat really dead ? Is there much excitement about it ? " Give Fidele this note from us. Tell him and my sister wishes you to know that we see the child (Louis XVII.) every day from the staircase window : but that need not prevent you from giving us news of him. " Why do they begin beating the drums at six o^clock in the morning? Answer this. If you can, without compromising Madame Serent and yourself, write to her for me, and say I beg her not to stay in Paris on my account. The resolution passed by the Cordeliers against the nobles makes me miserable on her account. If anything happens at the Federation Festival, do not forget to tell me about it." " Here is a note for Fidele. Where is that gentleman's command ? When you mention a fresh name to me tell me where the person lives, for I do not know any of those gentle- men. I have nothing left now but the gall-nut, so they can search if they like. I have gradually got rid of all you have given me. I asked you if you had taken the same precautions ; if not, do so ; I insist upon it : it is necessary for the safety of that person (the Queen) and for yours." " Is there any truth in the story of all the victories they have been crying in the streets during the last three days ? " " Tell Fidele how much his last note touched us. We did not need his assurance to make us trust him completely and for ever. His signals are good. (He had taken a room in a house near the Temple where he played on a horn various airs that 77 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE conveyed the ideas to be signalled.) We will simply say : Aux armes, citoyens, in the case of there being any idea of' reuniting us, but we much fear there is no need to prepare for that contingency? " If you wish me to ask for some almond milk, hold your napkin low down as I pass. What has become of the English Fleet ? (several illegible words) and of my Brothers ? Have we a fleet in any sea ? What do you mean when you say that all is going well ? Do you mean that there is hope of the end coming soon, of a change of popular feeling, or that everij- thing is going smoothly ? Have there been any executions of people who are well known in our sense of the word ? How are Madame S. (Serent) and my abbe (M. Edgeworth) ? Has he by any chance heard anything of Madame de Bombelles, who is near Saint-Gall, in Switzerland ? What has happened to the people at Saint-Cyr ? Tell me if you have been able to read all this, and cover the bottle with paper that will be usefid to us. As to Fidele, ask him if Michonis sees my sister and if there is no one but Michonis to guard her" " What you tell me about the person (the Queen) gives me much pleasure. Is it the gendarme or the woman who sleeps in her room ? Would it be possible to hear from the woman that Constant (M. Hue) saw anything besides news of what she loves ? If you cannot be useful to her here, go to some safe place where you will not be obliged to serve ; l but tell me where, in case we have need of you. As regards myself I do not believe I shall be exiled ; but if I am, come and join me, unless you are necessary to the person (the Queen). / cannot believe yet that you are going. Try to let me know what is decided ; and if you should remain, and the woman Tison should come, could you throw a piece of paper into the basket or else put it into a piece of bread ? Tell me if it is through Madame S. (Serent) that you have news of a Being (the Abbe Edgeworth) who, like me, knows how to appreciate those wJw are faithful. It is with much regret that IJind I am to be robbed of the last person of that kind yet left to me." 1 This referred to the requisitions of troops. 78 THE NARRATIVE OF TURGY " Is your fate decided ? Answer this question. If it should be necessary for us to have your note without delay, lean against the wall and lower your napkin. Tison sometimes prevents us from taking it at once, but we watch him : so be easy. Only do this when you have some urgent information to give us. Who is the municipal officer whom they suspect of corresponding with us ; and is he suspected of writing, or only of giving us news ? Who suggested it ? Are you not sus- pected at all ? Be very carefuV In the course of September, Hebert and the commissioners on duty in the Temple came to Madame Elizabeth's rooms and notified to the princesses that since the principle of equality ought to prevail everywhere, in prisons as elsewhere, they would have no one to wait on them in future. Soon afterwards the Council drew up an order by which the royal prisoners were limited to one kind of food at each meal. I told Madame Elizabeth of this, and also of the threats to send her away, which were repeated every day. Her Royal Highness answered : "llth October, 1793, at a quarter past two. " / am deeply grieved. Preserve your life for the time when we shall be more fortunate, and able to reward you ; and take away with you the comfort of having given faithful service to your good but unhappy master and mistress. Impress upon Fidcle not to endanger his safety too much by our signals (on the horn). If by any chance you should see Madame Malle- main, give her news of me, and tell her I am thinking of her. Farewell, good man and faithful subject." " I2th October, 1793, at two o'clock. " My little girl (Madame Roy ale) declares you made me a sign yesterday morning ; relieve my anxiety, if it is still pos- sible. I could notjind anything, and if you put it under the bucket it may have been washed away with the water, and will certainly never be found. If there is any thing fresh for us, let me know if you are still able to do so. Have you been able to read the second little paper, in which I spoke to you of Madame 79 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE Mallemain, one of my women ? This (a note) is for Fidele. Tell him that I have no doubt as to his sentiments. I thank him for the news he gives me, and am much distressed at what happened to him. 1 Farewell, good man and faithful subject. I hope that the God to whom you have been faithful will support you, and will comfort you in all you have to endure" On that day, the 12th, the commissioners of the Temple made us carry up Madame Royale's dinner as usual, but they would not let us lay the table. They gave each of the pri- soners a plate, in which they put some soup and a piece of beef, with a bit of coarse bread beside it. They gave them a tin spoon, an iron fork, and a knife with a black wooden handle ; and a bottle of wine from the tavern. The commissioners then ate the dinner prepared for the royal prisoners. It was thus that the scoundrels began to carry out their odious order, and it was thus that the princesses were treated throughout the rest of their imprisonment. On the following day, the 13th October, at six o'clock in the morning, the municipal officers notified to me that I was to leave the Temple instantly. I and my good comrades, Chretien and Marchand. went away heart-broken by what we had seen, and full of fears for the future of our august and unhappy employers. I joined my family at Tournan-en-Brie. At first I suffered a good deal of persecution, but little by little it ceased, and I was allowed to live in peace. 1 He had been arrested, but had escaped. (Note by Turgy.) 80 PRINCESS MARIA CHARLOTTE THERESA. From a miniature made at Basle in 1795. THE NARRATIVE OF TOWN-COUNCILLOR GORET "Charles Goret, formerly Inspector of Market Supplies, municipal officer, residing at No. 25, Rue de Bievre." Such is the information supplied by the National Almanach of 1793, and it is nearly all we know about this individual. We will only add that at the time of the 9th Thermidor Goret had a post as agent to the Minister of the Interior, and to the Com- mission for Supplying the Town of Paris with Provisions. His narrative appeared during the early months of the Restoration, and was entitled : My testimony with regard to the confinement of Louis X VI. and his family in the Temple Tower. I was a member of the famous Commune of August 10th, 1792. It may seem strange that I owed my appointment to this post, which was fraught with so much danger, to the famous Abbe Delille and several of his colleagues, professors at the College de France, to whom I had the honour of being known. They sent for me to my own house on the morning of August 10th, and on my joining them employed all their influence to persuade me to fill this post in the place of their colleague the Abbe Cournaud, who had been nominated during the preceding night by the Section of Sainte-Gene- vieve, now the Section of the Pantheon. In vain I resisted : I was obliged to yield ; and those same gentlemen, who were not without influence in the section, immediately saw that my name was substituted for that of M. Cournaud. When they gave me the nomination paper, they said to me : " We know you, and we hope you will fulfil the duties of this office in accordance with our wishes." I do not think I betrayed their hopes. 81 G LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE About nine or ten o'clock in the morning of the 10th August, then, I found myself on a bench of the General Council of the Commune. It is needless to record here what took place during the most stormy moments of that body's existence : there were witnesses enough. It was thence that I was sent, as a member of the General Council, to guard the royal prisoners, a few days after their arrival at the Temple. They were then in the building adjoining the Tower, 1 and had a staircase connected with the staircase of the Tower. There were four or five little rooms, which were not very habitable, for they contained no furniture that was not strictly necessary. They were only about fifteen or sixteen feet above the ground, and the windows were not barred. Later on I will return to this subject. I entered the room in which the royal family were all sitting together. My orders were to keep my hat on my head when I went in, but I began by disobeying that order. I was also told to address the King simply as Monsieur, and I had heard that this did not disturb him in the least, but that he was obviously annoyed when addressed as Capet. This name, therefore, never once left my lips in his presence. At this time he was still wearing his orders, of which he was deprived later on. When I entered he was playing chess with his sister Madame Elizabeth, and I sat down at the back of the room, the ceiling of which was nearly as low as that of an entresol. This made the room rather dark. To save myself from embarrassment I had taken a book from a little bookcase 2 that was there, as though I intended to read ; and a moment later the Queen, who was near the window, watching the game with her children, spoke to me very pleasantly. " Come over here, monsieur," she said ; " where we are you will see better to read." I thanked her, observing that I cared little about the book, without saying more ; but 1 That is to say, in the Little Tower. (See plan A. ) 2 At the very beginning of his confinement the King had asked for books. He read a great deal to himself and a little to his son, whose education he undertook. It has been calculated that between the 13th August, 1792, and the 21st January, 1793, he read 257 volumes. The ladies had also asked for books : the Thousand and One Nights, the romances of Cecilia, Evelina, etc. (See Papiers du Temple, by M. la Morinerie, Nouvelle Revue of April 1st, 1884.) THE NARRATIVE OF GORET the truth is that I should have been afraid to be seen accepting the Queen's suggestion, for I knew that the National Guards on watch at the door could look through the key-hole and see all that went on in the room. Various people had already been seriously compromised with the General Council by reports from that quarter. Madame Elizabeth, though engaged in her game with the King, seemed amused at my embarrassment, which was after all very natural in any novice who was at all capable of reflecting on the vicissitudes of life. " There," I said to myself, " is a family whom I have seen at the very zenith of power and splendour and honour, confined now in this humble, gloomy lodging, while I am not even allowed to show them the least attention ; whereas formerly I should have considered myself greatly honoured and very fortunate if they had graciously accepted my homage." It seemed to me that Madame Elizabeth read my thoughts, especially when she said : " Come, your Majesty, be off ! " allud- ing to the chessman known as the king. Soon the King rose from his seat, and came over to tell me that they were in the habit of going out to walk about in the shade of the garden, and that it was necessary to obtain permission from the Council in residence at the Temple. I instantly sent to ask for this permission from my colleagues of the Council ; and as soon as it was secured we prepared to go out. Madame Elizabeth came up to me, saying : " As this is the first time you have been here, monsieur, perhaps you do not know the correct rules of precedence. I will teach them to you. You lead the way, and we will follow you." I obeyed the instructions of the august mistress of the ceremonies, and we set off. When we reached the foot of the staircase the sentry who was on guard there asked me if he should present arms. I answered simply: "You ought to know what your orders are," and as I passed on at once I could not see what he decided to do. As soon as we were in the shade the King and Clery, the valet de chambre, amused themselves by giving the young prince some exercise with a little ball. 1 The Queen sat down 1 In the Daily Record of Demands made on behalf of the King and His Family\in the Temple, after the 5th September, 1792, by Cttry, valet de chambre LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE on a bench, with the princesses, her daughter and Madame Elizabeth, on her right hand. I was on the left. She opened the conversation by pointing to the Tower, 1 which faced us, and asking me what I thought of it. " Alas, of the Prince Royal in the King's Employ ', we find this entry : " For the Prince Royal, two rather large balls. " (See Papier s du Temple , by M. la Morinerie, Nouvelle Revue of April 1st, 1884.) 1 In La Maison du Temple de Paris, by Henri de Curzon, we may read the following detailed account of the four-hundred-year-old dungeon that served as a prison for the royal family. " There is every reason to believe that this formidable witness to the greatness of the Templars remained absolutely unchanged from the time of its foundation to the day it was destroyed, and that it might yet have stood against the assaults of several centuries. It was, indeed, so solidly built that no record of any restoration or repairs, except of the roof, was ever entered in the account books. " A fortress such as this, one would think, was destined to repel many a violent assault, for the Templars built it with as much care as they had expended on any of their castles in the East, which were so often besieged. In France, however, their castle was never to be more than a witness, a symbol, a guarantee of the feudal power and authority of their Order ; for the Temple Prison had no history ; it was never put to the test, so to speak, till the day when it was demolished by the workman's hammer. ' ' We should be wrong, however, to pass it by without a close inspection, for it is of a rare type ; unique, perhaps, in its simplicity, and at the same time both robust and graceful. We will try to depict it as completely as possible, with the help of original documents. " The materials had been very carefully chosen. The Report of the Official Inspection of Ancient Buildings, drawn up by Colbert's orders in 1678, describes it as being : ' du haut ban franc et liais du faubourg Saint Jacques et du Mont Sourish " The Visitation of 1495 describes it thus. ' C'est une grosse tour de pierre taillee qarte, et a chascun quanton une tourelle de mesmes, prime de pie jusques au feste. Et toutes cincq sont convertez de plombz et vousteez de quatre estaiges; et dedans icelle a puys, cave, four, mollin et chappelle, le tout lien entretenu. Lesquettes tours souloyent estre environneez de fossez a fons de cuve, plains d'eauive, et a pons-levis, qui estait forte chose; mais on a este contrainct, du temps des Templiers, de les combler, et a present, n'y a point.' This description, the oldest we have been able to find, was still accurate at the beginning of this century. We will add the correct figures, and make them more complete by giving some account of the interior. " The height of the Great Tower included four storeys and a loft under the roof, without counting the cellar, which, with the well, seems to have been no longer in existence at the time of the Revolution. "At that time the total height was about 50 metres; of which 7 metres were occupied by the first storey (which had become the ground floor by the gradual rising of the soil) ; 6m. 50 by the second storey ; 6 metres by the third ; 4m. 50 by the fourth ; and 15 metres by the pyramidal roof. The turrets only measured 45 metres. " The openings for the well and for the cellar- stairs built in the thick- ness of the walls were on the first floor, as was the case in most mediaeval dungeons. The Tower was mentioned again in the Visitation of 1662, as well as in that of 1756." 84 THE TEMPLE TOWER IN SEPTEMBER, 1792. From an original sketch by Lequeux, National Guard. (Bibliotheque Nationale.) THE NARRATIVE OF GORET madame," I answered, " there is no such thing as a beautiful prison ! This one reminds me of another that I saw when I was young, the one in which Gabrielle de Vergy was im- prisoned." " What ! " replied the Queen, " you have seen that other prison ? " " Yes, madame," I answered. " It is a still larger tower than this one that we are looking at, and it is situated at Couci-le-Chateau, where I lived when I was young." The Queen immediately called her husband, who joined us, and when she had told him what I had just said the King asked me for various details about the tower in question. I told him what I had noticed there, and he seemed satisfied, giving us at the same time a geographical description of Couci-le-Chateau, as though he were an expert in geo- graphy ; and indeed it is well known that his knowledge of that science was profound. We remained out of doors for an hour or two, after which the royal family expressed a wish to go in, whereupon followed the same ceremonial as before. The King retired to his own room, and the princesses with the children to theirs, and I remained alone in the outer room, which served as a little salon where the family might meet for conver- sation or games. Madame Elizabeth was the first to enter. She came and leant against the back of my seat, and began to sing a little song ; and on her niece entering the room almost immediately afterwards she asked her to sing too. The young princess refused obstinately, with childish airs and graces, which I attributed to her sense of dignity or to her incomplete realisation of the position she was in, of which her aunt was more conscious. The Queen entered at this moment, and Madame Elizabeth told her of the rebuff she had received at the hands of the young princess. " Your daughter Hvill be obstinate," she said, " very obstinate indeed, I assure you, sister." It seemed to me that Madame Elizabeth was rather nettled by this refusal from her niece, with whom she then went out of the room. The Queen was left alone with me. She took from a little cabinet a handful of twists of paper, which she came and unfolded before me, saying, "This is my children's hair at such-and-such an age." I noticed that all the pieces of hair were more or less 85 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE fair. The Queen returned them to the place she had taken them from, and then came back to me, rubbing her hands with scent and waving them near my face so that I might smell the scent, which was very sweet. 1 The King had remained in his room. The valet de chambre came to announce that dinner was ready, and we all proceeded to the room that served as a dining-room. The meal was, I might almost say, sumptuous. The King sat in the middle, with the princesses and the children at each side ; while I sat at a little distance from the table, still disobeying the order that bade me keep my head covered. I simply wore my scarf. The whole family struck me as eating heartily, with the same air of serenity that they wore at Versailles during a public dinner, when they were surrounded by everything that could enhance their dignity and ensure their safety. Their conversation during this meal was confined to indifferent subjects. The reader must not be too much surprised at my saying that the meal was sumptuous : 2 it is but the truth ; and all 1 " Bought for Louis XVI." at the Tower, some tea, some eau de Cologne and some eau de milice (sic). (Papiers du Temple, by M. la Morinerie, Nouvelle Revue of April 1st, 1884.) 2 The following note, dating from the early days of September, will not be without interest. "According to the report drawn up, and heard with much interest by the Commune, Louis XVI. and his family have in the Temple twelve domestics connected with the culinary department : a head cook, a plain cook, an assistant cook, a scullion, a turnspit, a steward, an assistant, a boy, a keeper-of-the-plate, and three waiters. " Breakfast. In the morning the steward provides for breakfast seven cups of coffee, six of chocolate, a coffee-pot of double cream, a decanter of cold syrup, another of barley water, three pats of butter, a plate of fruit, six rolls, three loaves, a sugar basin of powdered sugar, another of loaf sugar, a salt cellar. ' ' Not all of this is consumed by the prisoners. The remains are devoted to the use of three persons who wait upon them in the Tower, and of the twelve domestics mentioned above. "Dinner. For dinner the head cook provides three soups and two courses, consisting, on days that are not fast-days, of four entrees, two dishes of roast meat, each containing three joints, and four entremets ; and on fast-days, of four entrees, at least three of them, and perhaps all, being of meat, two roasts, four or five entremets. Dessert. The steward generally adds by way of dessert a plate of pears, three compotes, three plates of fruit, three pats of butter, two kinds of sugar, a bottle of oil, a bottle of Champagne, a little decanter of Bordeaux, another of Malvoisie, another of Madeira, and seven rolls. " For those who dine on what is left, a two-pound loaf and two bottles of vin ordinaire are added. 86 THE NARRATIVE OF GORET the meals were equally so throughout the time that I was fulfilling my painful functions at the Temple, that is to say, till about the month of April, 1793. This is not so surpris- ing when one learns that the heads of the kitchen department " Supper consists of three soups and three courses. On days that are not fast-days they are composed of two entrees, two roasts, and four or five entremets ; on fast-days of four entries not made of meat, two or three of meat, two roasts, and four entremets. Dessert, the same as for dinner, except as regards coffee. " Louis XVI. 's son generally has a little supper separately. " The increase of the number of dishes at dinner and supper on fast- days arises from the fact that Louis XVI. fasts regularly on the days prescribed by the Church, while his companions do not. He alone drinks wine ; the others only drink water. " What is left over is first given to the three servants in the Tower, who hand on the remainder to the servants in the kitchen and pantry. One or two dishes are added, with bread and wine. " During the first twenty days the baker supplied bread to the value of 100 livres, at 4 or 5 sous a pound. The butcher furnished about 100 Ibs. of meat a day, at 13 sous a pound. The pork-butcher supplied about 25 Ibs. of bacon a day at 16 sous a pound. Between the 16th August and the 9th September fowls to the value of 1,544 livres, 15 sous were sup- plied, that is to say, 56 Ibs. weight a day. The consumption of fish includ- ing both sea and river fish varied from 9 to 10 Ibs. a day. At the same period a fruiterer sent in a bill for vegetables which only amounted to 4 livres ; but at that time and till the end of October a messenger from Versailles was bringing vegetables from the palace gardens to the amount of 15 Ibs. a load. The same fruiterer supplied, between the 13th and the 31st August, fruit to the value of 1,000 livres, including 83 baskets of peaches for 425 livres. " Of butter, eggs, and milk the quantity used was about 40 Ibs. a day : and, during the first 27 days, 428 Ibs. of butter, 160 small pats of butter, 2, 152 eggs, some absolutely new-laid and some laid any time within the week, 111 pints of cream, both double and single, 41 pints of milk, 228 bottles of Champagne and vin ordinaire. Several bottles of it came from the cellars of the ci-devant King. A water-carrier supplied water to the value of 4 livres a day. "During the same period 1,516 livres' worth of wood, 245wes' worth of coal, and 400 livres' worth of candles were supplied." This report to the Commune was printed in the form of a placard, and sold in Paris, with the following sensational heading : A very strange Report, laid before the Commune of Paris, on the enormous expenses of the prisoners in the Temple. Do not be surprised, Citizens, if food becomes dearer. The cannibals of the Temple Toiver, whom you imagine are being treated like prisoners, only consume about one hundred pounds of beef and twenty-Jive pounds of bacon a day, and during twenty-five days have only eaten fowls to the value of one thousand five hundred and forty -four livres, fifteen sous. See the following Report to the Commune. The enemies of royalty still contrived to make the prisoners of the Temple responsible for the general famine ! We will add, quoting M. de Vyre's Histoire de Marie Antoinette, that the plate of the prisoners comprised one silver soup-tureen, eighteen spoons and forks, one gravy-spoon, one soup-ladle, eight coffee -spoons, two coffee- pots, and twelve knives. 87 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE at the Temple had formerly been employed at Versailles in the same capacity ; and the Committee formed by the General Council took care that nothing was wanting in this connec- tion so much so, indeed, that the expenses of the depart- ment amounted to more than 80,000 francs a month. 1 These expenses, it is true, included those of all the people officially employed in the Temple, who had their meals there. There was also a special table for those members of the General Council who were on duty, usually amounting to twelve or fifteen, and for some of the officers on the staff* of the National Guard. The morning and evening meals were no less unexceptionable. When it was time to retire to rest the princesses and the children went to their room, after first showing their affec- tion for the King, with every mark of tenderness and respect. The King, accompanied by Clery, entered his bedroom, whither I followed them. While Clery was making every- thing ready for his master, the latter went into a little turret that adjoined his room, to say his prayers. I accompanied him, but as the place measured about four feet in diameter it was too small to hold two people without inconvenience. The King drew my attention to this fact, and then proceeded to read his prayers from a breviary, having placed in my hands a book that I recognised as the Imitation of Jesus Christ. I saw that this constraint disturbed the King, for he added : " I shall not run away : do not be afraid,"" and I therefore retired to the other room, whither his Majesty returned when he had finished saying his prayers. He undressed with Clery's help, and went to bed. I remained in this room alone with the King. I threw myself, without undressing, upon a sofa, in the hope of obtaining a little rest ; but this I found impossible, for no sooner did the King lie down than he fell into a sleep that not only appeared to be profound, but was accompanied by continuous and truly remarkable snoring. 1 At the Sitting of the 12th August the Legislative Assembly had decreed that a sum of 500,000 livres should be granted to the King for the expenses of his household until the meeting of the National Convention. This sum was to be paid in amounts of one-eighth of the total. Apparently only the first eighth was paid to Louis XVI. 88 J. B. CLERY. THE NARRATIVE OF GORET In the morning when the King rose I was relieved from my guard by one of my colleagues. He, and those who came after him, no doubt saw the same things that I had seen, or things very similar. An account of one of these days, therefore, that were so painful to me, may serve as an example of all the days that my colleagues spent in this place, which the royal family only occupied while prepara- tions were being made in the Tower, whither, as soon as it was ready, they were removed. But I am not prepared to say that all those of my colleagues who filled this office behaved exactly as I did. The General Council of the Commune, as everyone knows, was composed of a great number of men of all classes. There were men of science in it, men of letters, artists and men of business, merchants and artisans, from the shoemaker to the stone-cutter ; and among these it was very natural that there should be some whose want of education made them little suited to fill this office worthily, though they filled it, nevertheless, whenever their turn came or the lot fell on them. No doubt the royal family could detect at a glance whether those who came among them were capable of being moved by the feelings that their presence and situation ought to have inspired, and regulated their conduct accordingly. I will now describe what I saw and heard in the Tower, after the royal family had been removed thither. 1 There is no need for me to say that there was someting sinister about the appearance of this place, for there are various histories of Paris that describe it. It was, in a word, a monument to the power and despotism of the Templars, such power and despotism as the Jesuits may have exercised in Paraguay when they ruled there. The storey on which the royal family were lodged was raised very high above the ground, beyond the reach of any escalade : the first door, on the ground floor, was of oak, about six or eight inches in thickness, and was strengthened with strong iron bands, iron locks, and enormous bolts on the inside. The staircase was narrow, and upon it several other doors had been put up, of which 1 The 26th October, 1792. 89 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE the last was the entrance door to the rooms in which the royal family were confined. This last door was of massive iron, and was furnished with strong locks and with very strong bolts on the inside : it was about an inch thick. Outside it there was a landing so small that it would not have given any foothold for an attack on the door. The first time I went into this new prison the Queen, recognising me, came up to me and said, " We are very glad to see you." This place had been newly decorated, if one may use such an expression in regard to a prison. The outer room, in which my colleagues and I sat for at that time there were often at least two of us on guard was hung with a paper intended to represent architecture. It opened into a little dining-room and into the room occupied by the King, where we did not remain during the night. Next to the latter was the room occupied by the princesses and the children, beyond which was Clery's room. All these places were nicely decorated and furnished. The windows, whose embrasures measured about six feet in depth, were furnished with strong iron bars, and had screens outside them, so that it was impossible to see the interior of the prison from any of the high buildings outside. The King and his family had lost much of the serenity that I had formerly observed in them : the King walked to and fro, and wandered from his own room into the outer one where we were sitting. Some- times he glanced at the upper part of the window, and asked what the weather was like ; I have seen him, too, looking at a large board that hung on the wall of this same room with the Rights of Man inscribed upon it. The King, having read what was on the board, said : " That would be very fine if it were practicable." The Queen sat in her room more quietly, but Madame Elizabeth walked to and fro like the King, and often had a book in her hand. The children came and went in the same way ; and the appearance and behaviour of the whole family was very different from what I had observed before they were moved to their present quarters. Every- thing seemed to foretell the still greater misfortunes that we witnessed later on. The father, wife, and sister were much seldomer together, and conversed much less frequently. It 90 THE NARRATIVE OF GORET ^^ seemed as though they feared to aggravate their ills by speaking of them ; and this is the saddest of all states, to be beyond the reach of consolation. The children had lost the playfulness they had hitherto preserved. In a word, everything reflected the gloom that had been cast over this place by preventing the light from entering except through the top of the windows. Who was it that prompted all these precautions, of which some were probably unnecessary ? I do not know. I heard no discussion on the subject in the General Council, and I have always believed that some secret and powerful faction carried out these measures in spite of the Council, and even of the Mayor who presided over it. The Queen and Madame Elizabeth occupied themselves with various little pieces of work in their room, 1 and with the education of the young princess, while the King, in his, was teaching his son. Neither did the Queen neglect the education of the latter, for one day, when the young prince came out of her room into the one that I had just entered, and as he passed looked at me without any kind of greeting, the Queen, having seen it, called him and said to him severely : " My boy, come back, and say Good morning to the gentleman as you pass him " ; which he did. This incident may seem insignificant, but it is not so, for it shows at least that the teachings of this child's mother were very different from those that slander imputed to her after wards, to which subject I shall have occasion to return before I have done. After a time the kind of affinity that had seemed to exist between the royal prisoners and some of their warders became less marked ; but as several of us were then on guard together never less than two it is possible that they may have noted the character of each, and have thought it best to show more reserve. Once, however, when I was alone, Madame Elizabeth came and asked me if I had no news- papers I could lend them. I answered that I had none, which was true. She remarked that some of my colleagues some- times lent them papers, but she hoped their doing so would 1 In M. de Reiset's Madame Eloff interesting details will be found con- cerning the Queen's needlework during her imprisonment. 91 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE not compromise them. I think it was then that I told her, as the latest news, that the department had just suspended Petion from his functions as Mayor, of which fact she at once informed the King and Queen. These little details, which if they are minute are also accurate, may give some idea of the daily existence of the royal prisoners. I will add a few finishing touches to this picture of their circumstances. Some historians have mentioned two or three of my colleagues as having shown great zeal in making themselves useful to the royal prisoners. No doubt this zeal was very praiseworthy, but as I sometimes witnessed it myself I am in a position to say that it was often indiscreet or ill-advised, and that these men setting aside the motive that prompted their action nearly always did more harm than good to the august family : for reports of their zeal, which was sometimes imprudently shown, hardly ever failed to reach the ears of the General Council, and resulted in measures of increased rigour being taken for the security of the royal prisoners, for whose custody this Council had been made responsible by a special law. Indeed, some of the mem- bers to whom I refer were even forbidden to enter the Temple. But I promised to give some more details. One day when I was alone on guard the King came up to me and asked if I had seen and known him before the circumstances arose that brought me so closely in contact with him. I answered that I never had that honour, although I had very often been at Versailles and even in the Palace. " But how was it then that you did not see me ? " " The reason of it," I answered, " is that I am short-sighted, and have never been able to distinguish one person from another, even at a short distance." " What brought you so often to Versailles ? " " I was watching the course of a certain law- suit in the Cornell des Depeches" " What was the lawsuit ? That was the Council in which I generally presided person- ally." "It concerned a demand on the part of several communes of the province of Artois, who were protesting against the execution of certain letters patent obtained by the States of that province, authorising the division 92 = LAMOIGNON DE MALESHERBES. THE NARRATIVE OF GORET of common lands." "I remember the affair very well," said the King, "and I remember too that the people won their case." At this point in the conversation M. de Malesherbes came in, and on the King telling him what we were speaking of, he too seemed to recall the lawsuit in question. M. de Malesherbes said to me : " As the people won their case they must have been greatly pleased." " Yes, monsieur," I answered, " but their pleasure was rather damped by the still recent memory of all they had suffered in the seven or eight years for which the case had been going on, during which time their adversaries, the States of the province, had subjected the inhabitants to outrageous persecutions." " How was that ? " asked M. de Malesherbes. " I am speaking the exact truth," I answered. " One commune, that of Heninlietard, was subjected to a sort of siege because it had joined the protesting party. Its municipal officers and those of other communes, together with whole families, both men and women, were thrown into prison : and when the people, by dint of repeated prayers, had obtained some hope of relief, some ministerial letters, intercepted by the deputies who went to Court, reduced the matter to the same unhappy state as before." The King then spoke and I give his exact words : " It was M. Deconzie," x he said, " the Bishop of Arras, who dragged that affair out to such a length." I could not help answering the King in a way I afterwards regretted, because my words seemed to affect him disagree- ably. This was what I said : " Alas ! how much harm the clergy and the nobles have done you ! " The conver- sation ended there. The King at once returned to his room with M. de Malesherbes. It may be that the reason the King was affected by this was that, the province of Artois being on the frontier, he thought it would be to his advantage that it should be favourable to him. He spoke to me sometimes after this, but he never mentioned this subject again. 1 Louis Francois Marc Hilaire de Conzi6. This was the prelate who had been Robespierre's patron. He gave him the post of judge in his episcopal court on 9th March, 1782. LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE I will now describe another and more agreeable visit paid to us by the King. We sometimes amused ourselves, my colleagues and I, by playing dominoes with Clery. On one occasion the King came to us, took possession of the dominoes, and built little houses with them so skilfully that it was plain he understood the principles of architecture and knew the laws of equilibrium. Of course it is well known that he was always interested in mechanics, and especially in the art of making locks, which did not prevent him from being also interested in science and literature. He was able to expound Latin authors, and after his death there was found on his chimney-piece a volume of Tacitus that had often been in his hand. In it he had written comments that were extremely applicable to his situation. To him might be applied the words: Mem sana in corpore sano. He had the strongest constitution possible: I never heard him complain of the least indisposition during the whole time that I was in the habit of seeing him. M. de Malesherbes, his sagacious counsel, was frequently with him, especially towards the end. One day I was escorting that excellent man away from the King^s room. When we reached the foot of the staircase we were about to pass through the door, though the orders were to go into the room at the bottom of the stairs for M. de Malesherbes to be identified ; to which order he had conformed as he came in. The venerable lawyer paused, and said : " I must go in here to be identified."" " It is not necessary, monsieur, 11 I said, holding him back by the arm, " since you are with me. 11 " What does that matter ? " he answered. " One should never disobey an order " ; and he went into the room. A man of this kind was well suited to be a legislator, since he knew so well how to give an example of submission to the law. After this incident we crossed the great court to the main entrance of the Temple, 1 where his carriage was waiting for him ; and as we went we spoke of Louis XVI/s position, for it was but a few days before the end. Of this conversation the following words have always remained in my memory. " I cannot," said M. de Malesherbes, " make 1 In the Rue du Temple. (See plan B, 2.) 94 THE NARRATIVE OF GORET the King pay any attention to his affairs, or give his mind to them. Gra\e as his position is, he shows the greatest indifference to it." Here we see the impassibility of which I have already spoken. This was the last time I was in the Temple before the King's death. On that day of tragic memory I remained at home till it was nearly evening, and then repaired to the General Council, where I found only a few of my colleagues, sitting in melan- choly silence. This was broken at last by Jacques Roux, an infamous priest who had been present at the execution, and had drawn up the official report of the King's death, which he proceeded to read in a tone of real ferocity. He had been accompanied by another priest called Danjou, 1 also a member of the Council. Two priests were found willing to be present at this horrible execution. Ah, do not let us dwell upon it ! It ought to be known how these two priests, on the day before the execution, were chosen by the General Council to be present on the occasion. Chaumette was presiding, and he called on the Council to elect two of its members as com- missioners to be present at the execution, and to draw up a formal report of the King's death, because the custody of his person had been entrusted, by a special law, to the Council. Not one of the members seemed disposed to accept the office. The nomination was about to be made by casting lots, when the two priests mentioned above spontaneously offered them- selves for this horrible mission, which probably no other member of the Council would have been found willing to undertake ; for I may say with perfect truth that, with the exception of such men as Chaumette and Hebert, we were all bewailing this terrible disaster, and asking : " Why put him to death ? Why not send him away to Austria ? He would do no more harm there than those of his family who are there already." We were all in favour of the latter course, and again I can say with absolute truth, without attempting to justify the mistakes the Council may have made on some occasions, that in this matter we showed very 1 Goret is wrong. Danjou was not present in any official capacity at all events at the King's execution. Jacques Roux and Jacques Claude Bernard were the two who signed the Report of the Execution as com- missioners of the Commune. 95 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE plainly that at the bottom of our hearts we loved the King. This love for the King was shared by the majority of the people : and was shown, too, by that sentry of whom I spoke, who at the entrance to the Temple Tower asked me if he should present arms, thus proving the respect he still felt for the King in spite of the turmoil of the times, when none were posted as sentries at the Temple but those who had shown the greatest devotion to the principles of the Revo- lution. You who emigrated, you who think yourselves the only ones whose hearts beat for the King whom you forsook at the moment of danger, what answer can you give to this ? Why did you not rather remain in your own country to support the wishes of the majority of the people ? But I am forgetting that I am at the meeting of the General Council immediately after the King^s death. 1 I had 1 One might bring forward a hundred instances of the annoyances of the cruelties even to which the General Council perpetually subjected the prisoners. One day it was the 25th March the Queen's chimney caught fire. "In the evening," says Madame Royale, "Chaumette, the procureur of the Commune, came for the first time to see my mother and ask her if she wanted anything. My mother only asked for a means of communicating with my aunt's room ; for during the two terrible nights that we had passed with her, my aunt and I had lain upon a mattress on the floor. The commissioners opposed this request, but Chaumette said that in my mother's state of prostration it might be necessary for her health, and he would mention it to the General Council. On the following day he came back at ten o'clock in the morning with Pache, the Mayor, and that fearful Santerre, the Commandant-general of the National Guard. Chaumette told my mother that he had mentioned her request for a door to the General Council and that it had been refused. She made no answer. Pache asked her if she had no complaint to make. My mother said, No ; and paid no more attention to what he said." Fresh precautions were taken : a wall was built in the garden, lattices were put up at the top of the Tower, and every hole was carefully stopped up. On the 1st April the Commune decided " that no person on guard at the Temple should make any drawing of any kind whatever, that the commissioners on duty should have no communication with the prisoners nor undertake any commission for them, that Tison and his wife should not leave the Tower nor communicate with any person whatever outside its walls." But this last prohibition, hard as it was on the prisoners, was also hard on the Tisons : they could no longer see anyone, not even their relations. One day when their daughter had been refused admission it was the 19th April Tison flew into a violent rage, and, not knowing upon whom to vent his fury, naturally attacked the prisoners and those who seemed to take some interest in them. He declared to Pache, who happened to be in the Tower, that certain commissioners spoke in lowered voices to the Queen and Madame Elizabeth. On their names being demanded he mentioned Toulan, Lepitre, Brunot, Moelle, Vincent, and 96 THE NARRATIVE OF GORET taken the precaution of bringing my nightcap with me, in the hope of being able to get myself sent to the Temple that day, to be with the Queen and her family ; and I succeeded in being chosen. I arrived at my post, on the storey above the one that the King had occupied till his death, and that his family had occupied with him till they were separated from him. I had not witnessed the parting, because I was not at the Temple at the time, but the first time I went there afterwards I remarked how greatly it had affected the whole family, and especially the Queen, who had become extremely emaciated and was quite unrecognisable. Like her, Madame Elizabeth preserved a melancholy silence ; the children, too, were speech- less, and the King seemed much more crushed since the separation. But, alas ! at the time of which I am speaking he was no more. As soon as the Queen saw me from the room where she was sitting with her family, she asked me to come in, sending a message by Tison, the valet de chambre she had then, for Clery had not been allowed to go to her after the King's death. The widow, as I say, asked me to go to her, which I did at once. She, with Madame Elizabeth and the children, was sitting at a table. They all burst into tears. "Madame," I said in a trembling voice to the Queen, " you must take care of yourself for your children's sake." This was all I was able to say to her. Then, amid her sobs, she spoke to me. " We know of the sorrow that has befallen us," she said ; " we heard all the preparations this morning, the movements of the men and horses. Our loss is an accomplished fact, and we wish to be provided with mourning." Being unable to hide my feelings, I said nothing but a few broken words : " Alas, madame ! alas, madame ! " I then went out, assuring Dr. Brunier, and added that the prisoners had some means of communi- cating with the outside world. As a proof he related that one day after supper the Queen, in taking out her handkerchief, had dropped a pencil, and that in Madame Elizabeth's room there were wafers, sealing-wax, and pens in a box. His wife, on being questioned, said the same. The denunciation was signed b} ? the two spies and sent to the Commune, who after having placed seals on the possessions of the suspected municipal officers, decided that a minute investigation should be made at the Temple. 97 H LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE the Queen that I would see about the mourning she wished for. " The simplest things," she added. Returning to the room in which I usually sat, I set to work to lay this request before the Council in writing. The Queen came to me and told me she would like the mourning to be made by a certain sempstress, whose name and address she gave me ; and the very next day her request was granted. 1 Towards evening I went away, leaving no one with the royal family but the valet de chambre and his wife. 2 I at once went to Clery, who had moved into one of the rooms in the build- ing adjoining the Tower of which I have already spoken. He had been placed there, more or less as a prisoner, 3 when he parted from the King. Him, too, I found weeping bitterly, and mourning the loss of his good master. What was I to say in such circumstances ? Greatly embarrassed, I proffered Clery a few words of consolation and condolence. Presently someone came to fetch me to supper, and, not wishing to leave Clery alone, I begged him to come with me, and persuaded him with much difficulty to do so. He sat down opposite me at the table and would hardly eat anything. General Santerre and some of the officers of his staff arrived, and also came to the table. Santerre began, with unequalled callousness, to give a detailed account of the execution, without omitting a single circumstance, not even the fact that he had ordered the drums to be beaten when the King wished to speak to the people. He added that as the executioner seemed to hesitate, he had said to him firmly : " Do your This conversation, which was certainly calculated to distress anyone of the least sensitiveness who heard it, affected Clery very considerably. I, therefore, made a sign to him to leave the table, and he returned at once to his room, whither I followed him ; and I spent the night with him. Several times he nearly fainted, and to revive him I employed some spirits that were there. The only thing I heard him say was this : " Alas ! my dear, good master might have saved himself 1 See the note on p. 1 15. 2 That is to say, Tison and his wife. 3 In the rooms of the Little Tower. 98 THE NARRATIVE OF GORET if he had wished, for in this place the windows are only fifteen or sixteen feet above the ground. Everything had been prepared for his escape while he was still here, but he refused because his family could not be saved with him. 1 " There," he added, showing me the book, " is his breviary. He left it to me, with his watch and several little things." But Clery seemed to attach the greatest value to the breviary, which he said he intended to present to the Pope. I do not know if he carried out this intention. I left Clery in the morning when I came off guard. A short time afterwards I returned to the Temple to the princesses, whom I found still in a state of the deepest sorrow. They declined to go out into the fresh air, as was proposed to them. I represented to the Queen that this was necessary for her health and for that of her family, and especially of the young princess, who had been unwell for some time. " We do not wish," answered the Queen, " to pass the door of the place which my husband left only to die." Then I suggested to her that they should go up to the top of the Tower, where there was a circular gallery, and I persuaded her to do this. I had some seats taken there, and we went up. The gallery was surrounded by a parapet of about four feet in height, but barely two feet wide : at the four corners were little turrets in which the seats had been placed. As soon as the people of the neighbourhood saw us they collected in the places whence we could be seen most easily. The young prince expressed a desire to look over the parapet, and the Queen begged me to take him in my arms. " Mon Dieu, madame," I said, " I should be delighted to do as you ask, 1 It is not known to what attempt at escape Clery here alludes. No historian has mentioned the existence of any plot for carrying off the royal family before the 21st January, 1793. Nevertheless, the following is a somewhat curious passage from a letter written on the llth February, 1816, to the Marechal de Richelieu by 1'Hoste de Beaulieu de Versigny, formerly a councillor in the Chambrc des Comptes of Paris. ' ' Hearing a rumour that the King was to be tried, I went to Paris ; I employed the tactics agreed upon with our chiefs, fifty of us proceeded to the Temple disguised as a patrol, being provided with the watchword and also the password into the Tower ; but the lack of numbers obliged us to yield to other patrolling parties. The attempt failed irretrievably." This abortive attempt, which must not be confused with the much earlier one by Batz and de Cortey, was doubtless the plot to which Clery referred when speaking to Goret. 99 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE but the people can see us, and if they were to observe what I was doing they might make a disturbance." " I did not think of that," said the Queen ; " you are perfectly right." The princesses remained on this narrow promenade as long as they wished, and returned to it every day when the weather was fine enough. After this I was less often at the Temple, because many of my friends asked to be sent thither, and so my turn came round less frequently ; moreover, I was obliged fairly often to attend the meetings of a Commission concerned with matters of police and surveillance, of which I was a member. One thing I noticed up to the very last time I was with the princesses that their meals were perhaps less sumptuous than in the King's time, though there was nothing lacking. They gave to the young prince the same position and precedence that they had given to the King. Every- thing they wanted was procured for them by the man Simon, of whom several historians of the period have spoken. This man was a member of the General Council of the Commune, who had established him permanently in the Temple to fulfil the functions, more or less, of a factotum. He was a wretched shoemaker, uneducated and ignorant, but apparently not so ill-disposed as other historians have made him appear. The princesses summoned him fairly often to bring them anything they might require. His manner in their presence was rather free and easy. " What do you wish for, ladies ? " he would say, and he would then try to do as they desired. If they asked for something that was not in the stores of the Temple, he would run out to the shops. I have heard the Queen say : " We are very fortunate in having that good M. Simon, who gets us everything we ask for." l 1 Truly this is an unexpected testimonial to the famous cobbler. We will add to it a note found among the Papers seized in Chaumette's House, preserved in the National Archives. A certain man, who had been wounded on the 10th August and nursed in the infirmary of the School of Medicine near the Cordeliers, where Simon's wife is known to have worked as a nurse, wrote to Chaumette to complain of the surgeon Lafiteau. The following passage is an extract from his letter : " There may be some members of this Assembly who know Citoyenne Simon. The woman, I mean, whose patriotic zeal and surgical knowledge have enabled her to cure a number of our brothers in arms, the brave Marseillais, who were wounded in the affair of the 10th August. Well, this 100 THE NARRATIVE OF GORET One day, when he had said his wife was ill in the Hotel- Dieu, the Queen asked for news of her. "She is better, thank God," he answered, and then added : " It is a pleasure to see the ladies of the Hotel-Dieu now ; they take great care of the patients ; I wish you could see them : they are dressed like my wife now or like you, ladies, neither more nor less/'* The princesses seemed to be amused by the naivete of this man, whom Robespierre, it is said, after he had become paramount in the government of the Temple, made to behave abominably towards the young prince. 1 Of this I saw nothing, for by then I had for some time been no longer a member of the General Council. worthy woman has done for humanity what we all ought to do. I was present when she came, about a month ago, to beg the Sieur Lafiteau's services for one of our companions in arms who was lying in his bed a few yards away from the College of Surgery, and only required to be bled. The case was very urgent, but Citizen Lafiteau persistently refused to go with her, though Citoyenne Simon offered him a suitable fee. Citoyenne Simon was quite embarrassed by this reception of her request, and, loaded with insults, went off for another surgeon." (National Archives, T. 604-5.) 1 See page 49. 101 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF JACQUES FRANCOIS LEPITRE (DECEMBER, 1792 OCTOBER, 1793) Lepitre was born in Paris on the 6th January, 1764-. At the age of twenty he was a professor of rhetoric at the University and founded a school in the Rue Saint-Jacques. He was popular with his neighbours, and it was owing to their good opinion of him that his name was inscribed among the members of the Commune of 1789- After the first federation he gave up this post. He had just been appointed Professor of Literature in one of the Parisian colleges, and was still working at his school. These occupations were enough for him ; he was unable to take part in matters of public interest. He was, then, unconcerned with the affairs of the nation till December 2nd, 1792, 1 on which date he was made a member of the provisional Commune. Eight days later he was chosen by lot to serve in the Temple in the capacity of warder. From Lepitre's narrative we may derive a very distinct idea of himself. He was pretentious, with a weakness for fine words ; and he despised his colleagues in the Commune, who did not, like himself, speak Latin in season and out. In a word, he was an unattractive individual. Physically he was fat, short, lame, and ugly. And what part did he play in the plots for the royal family's escape in which he was concerned? None but Jarjayes, the Queen, or Toulan, could have told. We rather think that Lepitre was one of those who keep on good terms with all parties and take care to have friends in every camp. He agreed to plot for 1 Paul Gaulot, Un complot sous la Terreur. 102 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF LEPITRE the escape of the prisoners, but he would risk nothing ; and we may be almost absolutely sure that his vacillation was the undoing of a scheme that had in it many elements of success. He played his double game successfully to the end, and kept his head on his shoulders. While conspiring in this prudent way he was also interested in theatrical affairs, and in 1793 his republican play in one act, La Premiere Requisition, was brought out in the City Theatre. In 1797 he moved his school from the Rue Saint- Jacques to the Rue de Saint-Louis (de Turenne) in the Marais. We hear of him again as a professor of rhetoric in the college at Rouen in 181 6; and he afterwards occupied the same post in the College of Versailles, where he died on the 18th January, 1821. He was a Knight of the Legion of Honour. A provisional municipality was established on the 2nd December, 1792. For more than three months the royal family had been confined in the Temple ; and it was well known that they had suffered much at the hands of most of the members of the Commune, who were charged with their custody. The worthy citizens of my section induced me to become a member of this new town-council. They knew my sentiments, and I willingly consented to fill a post in which I might be of some use. My nomination was not contested. I was associated with two colleagues l whose probity was well known, and I am pleased to do them the justice of saying so. On arriving at the Council of the Commune my first care was to scrutinise each one of its component members, some of whom had succeeded in being re-elected, while others were attending their first sitting. My scrutiny did not influence me in their favour. I saw that most of them were place- hunters, who made no effort to hide their aims when the forty-eight members of the municipal body were being chosen. Never was such impudence shown in soliciting votes. As my only object was to go to the Temple, and as the functions of the municipal officers entailed fairly frequent absences, I declined duties that were by no means to my taste, and 1 One of these was Jacquotot, who under the Restoration became a barrister of the Royal Court of Paris. 103 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE remained unnoticed in the crowd. What a spectacle that assembly presented! Men without talent or education, unable or hardly able to sign their names, came in their shirt-sleeves and workmen's aprons to don the municipal scarf and sit in the president's chair. There they regulated the affairs of a whole nation, for this Commune of Paris soon placed itself on a level with the Convention, to which it often dictated laws. It had been decreed that every evening the members who were to serve as warders in the Temple should be chosen by lot. They repaired to their post at once and relieved those who had preceded them two days previously. On the 9th December M. Jacquotot and I were elected to go to the Temple. I cannot possibly describe my emotion as I entered the Tower. For a long time I had been haunted by a vision of this august family, the victims of the most horrible conspir- acies, bereft of liberty and exposed to every kind of insult. And now I was about to see a prince whose virtues made him worthy to be numbered among the best of kings ; his wife, once the nation's idol ; his pious, tender-hearted sister, the very model of sisterly heroism ; his son, once the heir- apparent of a throne that seemed to be immovably fixed, but now the heir of nothing but his royal parents'* misfortunes ; and finally a young princess who was sharing the sorrows of her family, without any hope of their coming to an end. < My heart stood still and I could hardly breathe when, at the drawing of the lots, I found it was my fate to guard the Queen and the princesses. It is here necessary to give some details as to the construc- tion of the Tower, and the duties performed there by the Commissioners of the Commune. The Great Tower, into which the royal family had been removed some time before I came to the Temple, may be about a hundred and fifty feet high, and is composed of four storeys, on each of which is a very large room. On the second and third floors this had been divided into four rooms, separated by thin partitions. The great walls are about seven or eight feet thick. 104 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF LEPITRE A certain number of the commissioners were quartered on the ground floor. On the first floor was a guard-room ; and the King occupied the second. His room was at the back, and was the only one with a fireplace ; the furniture was simple and consisted only of the barest necessaries. The outer room was devoted to the use of the commis- sioners on duty, and of the two rooms at the side, one was used as a dining-room and the other was occupied by Clery, his Majesty's valet de chambre. The third floor was arranged like the second : the outer room, in which the commissioners sat, did duty as a dining- room. The room at the back was the Queen's, and in it Monseigneur le Dauphin and Madame Royale also slept. At the side were the rooms of Madame Elizabeth and of Tison and his wife, who were both employed in waiting on the princesses. At the corners of the Tower on each floor there was a turret, in one of which was the staircase, the others being used for various purposes. The commissioners were on duty for forty-eight hours ; they arrived at nine o'clock ; then they had their supper, and decided who was to be on the second or the third floor by drawing lots. Twenty-four hours were spent with the prisoners, and twenty-four in the Council Room. Those who were on duty for the night went upstairs after supper and remained on guard near the King or the Queen until the next day at eleven o'clock. After their dinner they again repaired to their posts till the arrival of the new commissioners. On the second day they were again on duty for some hours. It was nearly midnight when my colleague Jacquotot and I went upstairs to the Queen's rooms. All was quiet ; even Tison and his wife were sleeping profoundly. We threw our- selves on two uncomfortable folding bedsteads, scantily covered by a mattress that measured about three fingers' width in thickness. We had nothing to protect us from the cold but one thin coverlet : we complained bitterly of this next day, and at least secured the addition of sheets, a great source of satisfaction to such as cared at all for cleanliness. We were astir before daybreak. Tison was the first person 105 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE we saw. This crafty, cruel man was able to assume any expression he chose, and he always tried to win the favour of any commissioners he met for the first time. Abominable as his conversation was with those of whose evil disposition he was assured, he affected a certain amount of kind-heartedness when speaking to men who seemed to him honest and sympathetic, and I have myself heard him going into ecstasies over the charms of the young prince. But, having been warned as to his character, I hardened my heart against his insinuating ways ; though, none the less, I fell a victim to him. His wife modelled herself upon the same pattern, but the fear her husband inspired in her had more to do with this than had her natural inclinations. Her depositions against me and some of my colleagues, however, were no less disastrous for us on that account. The functions of these two individuals entailed more or less discomfort on the royal family according to the character of the members of the Commune on duty. And yet the gentle- ness and courtesy with which the Queen and the princesses asked them for the least thing can hardly be imagined. At eight o^clock the Queen opened her door and went into Madame Elizabeth's room. Her keen glance dwelt upon us for a moment, and it was easy to see that she was trying to discover the nature of our feelings with regard to her. We were decently dressed ; indeed, our appearance was a contrast to that of most of the Commissioners. The respect that misfortune claims from us all was plainly written upon our faces. Madame stood at the door of her room and scrutinised us for some time, and then both she and Madame Elizabeth came out to us and asked the name of our section, observing that this was the first time we had visited the Temple. During breakfast, at which another commissioner appeared (for no meal was served except in the presence of a member of the Council), we remained in the outer room, for we dared not place any confidence in our colleague. This was Toulan, 1 one of those who showed the greatest 1 Francois Adrien Toulan, born at Toulouse in 1761, was married in July, 1787, to Francoise Germaine Dumasbon. Toulan went to Paris after his marriage and opened a book -shop. Being an enthusiastic supporter of 106 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF LEPITRE zeal in the service of the royal family while they were in the Temple. I did not know him then, and was far from appreciating all his merits. Indeed, I had heard him, in the Commune, indulging in remarks on the prisoners that were, to say the least, inconsiderate, if not actually disrespectful. Being a native of Gascony, he had all the natural vivacity of that part of the country, combined with a great deal of shrewdness, and as he was entirely fearless he was ready to brave anything for the sake of being of use ; but he was clever enough to assume a mask of republicanism, and was able to serve the royal family all the better for this since he was not suspected of being attached to them. When he was gone, I ventured to ask the Queen if she were really sure of the man with whom I had seen her conversing, and repeated to her some words of his that had shocked me. " You need not be anxious," she answered : " I know why he behaves like that. He is an excellent man." A few days later Toulan told me the princesses had advised him to find out what kind of man I was, and to talk matters over with me if he could do so safely. When breakfast was over my colleague, seeing a harpsichord at the entrance to Madame Elizabeth's room, tried to play a few notes upon it, but it was in such a bad condition that he was unable to do so. The Queen at once came foward and said : " I should have been glad to use that instrument, so as the Revolution, he took part in the events of July 14th and October 6th, 1789, and on the 10th August appeared among the assailants of the palace. His conduct resulted in his being nominated a member of the Commune ; and being known for his ardent patriotism and the purity of his republican principles, he was sent to the Temple as a commissioner. Two days spent in the company of the prisoners were enough to make him one of their most devoted partisans ; and indeed, his devotion was to the death. But how did he make the prisoners aware of his sudden conversion ? How could he do so without attracting the attention of his colleagues ? This we do not know and never shall know. But it is certain that the princesses very soon put the most entire confidence in him. By some means he con- vinced them so thoroughly of his sincerity and loyalty that they had no fear of any trap or treason. Madame Elizabeth at once informed Turgy of these facts, and in a note that the latter preserved she told him of the name the Queen and she had given Toulan : Give this to Toulan, whom henceforth we shall call Fidele, M. Paul Gaulot, in his Complot sous la Terreur, has devoted a number of pages to a very complete study of this interesting character. We refer our readers to it. Here it must suffice us to say that Toulan paid for his devotion with his head. He was guillotined on the 30th June, 1794. 107 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE to go on with my daughter's lessons, but it is impossible to use it in its present state, and I have not yet succeeded in getting it tuned." We promised that on that very day we would send for the person whose name she gave us. We sent an express messenger, and in the evening the harpsichord was tuned. 1 As we were looking through the small collection of music that lay upon the instrument we found a piece called La Reine de France. " Times are changed ! " said her Majesty, and we could not restrain our tears. On the llth December M. le Dauphin was moved upstairs to his mother's rooms, but the King was not informed of the reason for this separation. The Mayor of Paris soon arrived, with Chaumette, Colombeau the registrar, and some municipal officers preceded by Santerre and his aides-de-camp. They had come to take the King before the Convention. Toulan informed the Queen and her family of his Majesty's departure and return. I went up to the King's room at eight o'clock in the evening, when he was having dinner. He was calm, and conversed for a few minutes with one of the commissioners whom he knew to be a geographer. It is well known that Louis XVI. knew more of the science of geography than many a professor. I left the Temple on the same day and returned thither on the 15th, when I was on duty in the King's room from eleven o'clock in the morn- ing until the evening. Not knowing how to occupy my time with a colleague who was sullen and taciturn, and was nick- named the Pagoda by the Queen because he never gave any answer but a movement of his head, I went into his Majesty's room and asked his permission to take the works of Virgil from the chimney-piece. " So you read Latin ? " said the King. " Yes, Sire," I answered in a low voice, " Non ego cum Danais Trojanam exscindere gentem Aulide juravi." An expressive glance showed me that I had been understood ; and his Majesty afterwards spoke of me to Clery, who con- firmed him in the good opinion he had formed of me. 1 " Memorandum of expenses incurred for Louis XVI. in December, 1792. Supplied : quill-pens, cut ready for use ; ink ; a red morocco portfolio ; some almond paste ; some darning-cotton. Paid to the pianoforte maker . . . 106 livres 4 sols." (Papiers du Temple, by M. de la Morinerie.) 108 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF LEP1TRE While I was reading, a deputation from the Convention brought the papers containing the so-called evidence in the trial. 1 was not present throughout the whole inquiry. I went up several times to the Queen's room, and succeeded in giving her some details of what was taking place. On the following day I saw the man Mercereau there, a stone-cutter who, dressed in extremely dirty garments, stretched himself on the damask sofa generally occupied by the Queen, and justified his free-and-easy behaviour on the grounds that all men were equal. One might possibly forgive this person, who was silly enough and ignorant enough to believe what he professed ; but when men who boasted of their intelligence and excellent education were insolent enough to take an arm- chair before the fire and put their feet upon the fire-dogs in such a way that it was impossible for the princesses to warm themselves, who could avoid calling their conduct atrocious, especially when it was plainly the result of an underhand combination, formed with the obvious intention of insulting the unfortunate ? The disturbed state of the Temple during these two days prevented me from being with the royal family as long as I wished, but I knew that at least they were not without means of acquiring a certain amount of information as to passing events ; for notes skilfully delivered either by Toulan or by a faithful servant 1 whose zeal never failed passed between the illustrious prisoners and told them all that it was important for them to know. 2 Ever since they had been entirely deprived of newspapers a street-crier had been hired to shout the head- lines of his journal in a stentorian voice under the walls of the Temple. 3 He acquitted himself of this duty wonderfully 1 M. Turgis (sic), now first huissier de la chambre to Madame la Duchesse d'Angouleme. (Note by Lepitre.) 2 Sometimes during the night notes were lowered or drawn up by a thread through the windows of the second and third floors. (Note by Lepitre. ) 3 These methods of communicating with the outer world were supple- mented by another, a more curious and more dangerous method. The friends of the royal family had secured the co-operation of a certain Madame Launoy, whose little flat was on the third floor of a house in the Rue de la Corderie. During the night a magic lantern was set up in this flat, and on a sheet stretched at the back of the room certain signs were projected. These no doubt were letters of the alphabet, by means of 109 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE well, but his information was necessarily vague, and often excited the most acute anxiety. It was imperative to find some means that should be certain and constant, and this we succeeded in doing by making our visits more frequent. Among the members of the Commune there were many who were not in the least anxious to go to the Temple on Friday or Saturday evening to spend Sunday there, for to men who were busy all the week the pleasure or rest on that day seemed too valuable to be sacrificed to the duty of guarding the royal family in a state of confinement. Toulan and I were lucky enough to inspire our colleagues with the idea of entrusting to us, on those days, the duty they found so unpleasant. I, being a professor in the University of Paris, was free on Saturday evening and Sunday, and Toulan, who was the senior clerk in an office, was able to find a substitute without any difficulty. In spite of the objections we brought forward for the look of the thing, we were chosen nearly every Friday, and with the greatest satisfaction we submitted. On Christmas Eve, 1792, it was decreed, owing to Chau- mette, that the midnight mass should not be celebrated. In vain it was put before him that this step might give rise to a riot ; that the people were not so philosophical as he, and still clung to their ancient customs. It was decreed that municipal officers or members of the Council were to repair to the various parish churches and suppress any attempt to open the doors. The result of this was that the members of the Commune were subjected to insults and blows, the mass was sung, and Chaumette became more virulent than ever against religion and the clergy. On the 25th December, when I went into the Queen's room I had told her of this decree of the Commune, though I knew nothing of its consequences. In the evening a colleague of mine, a master builder called Beugneou, arrived on the scene with a slight wound on his face, and described to us how the market women had received him at Saint-Eustache. He laughed over his misadventure. which words and sentences were formed. From the third floor of the Temple Tower it was possible to see into Madame Launoy's room, and so the prisoners were able to benefit by this method of signalling. This, at least, is what Madame Launoy in her old age recounted to a person who handed the story on to us. 110 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF LEPITRE He was a good honest fellow, with no idea in his head but blind obedience, and on this occasion his obedience had been unfortunate for him. I had, in accordance with the Queen's orders, supplied her with two kinds of journals : one being of sound principles and the other less moderate. As I always wore a large pelisse over my coat I found it quite easy to take into the Tower anything for which I was asked, or to bring away anything that required to be carefully concealed. Every Friday I^took the newspapers in this way to the Queen and Madame Eliza- beth. They retired into one of the turrets to read them, and returned them to me a moment before my departure. I also obtained various books that I thought might interest them, especially L'Ami des Lois, which was at that time creating a great sensation, and had been the cause of more than one stormy scene. While the princesses were reading, and when her Majesty was writing her letters, I remained with Madame and the Dauphin, which Tison noticed to his great indignation, and reported more than once to the Commissioners of the Commune. It was the time I had to spend in the Council Room that I found the most disagreeable. I often had to endure the silly jokes of my colleagues on the subject of what they were pleased to call the friendship of the prisoners for their obliging guardian. Indeed, I eagerly took upon myself every duty that gave me a reason for absenting myself. It was my office to receive the various supplies and the wine that was brought every day to the Temple. It was necessary to give a receipt, and there were several honourable members whom it would have puzzled to write it. I also accompanied those who carried the meals into the Tower. At that time the table of the royal family was very well cared for, a sufficient number of persons being employed in the pantry and kitchen, most of whom were old servants from the palace who had begged for their places here. They also pre- pared the dinner and supper of the commissioners sent by the Commune. At first these meals were supplied from an eat- ing-house outside the walls, but they were so bad and at the same time so expensive that it was decided to secure the 111 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE services of those who were paid to cook for the royal family ; and no one ever had any reason to repent of this step. It was, indeed, a stroke of good luck for certain individuals who were unaccustomed to such good cheer. In order to avoid any possible injury to the dignity of the municipal office, only half a bottle of wine was supplied for ten or twelve persons at the end of each meal ; but the abstinence of some formed the gain of others, and one evening I saw a tailor called Lechenard empty the half-bottle at a gulp before going upstairs to the Queen. His colleague was obliged to put him to bed, and the next day the state of his bed and of the floor of his room bore witness to his intemperance. When the Queen left her room at eight o'clock he was stretched upon his pallet in a state of semi-unconsciousness, and her Majesty barely had time to retreat, calling to Madame Elizabeth, as she did so : " Do not come out of your room, sister. 1 ' I heard these details from herself, when I succeeded this worthy man. We remonstrated with him on his con- duct ; and later on he took his revenge. Toulan returned to the Temple alone on the first day of the year 1793. He it was who acted as a messenger between Louis XVI. and his wife, sister, and children. About this ime I applied in vain to the President of the Convention, the late M. Treilhard, to obtain leave, if possible, for the King and his family to be reunited. I went to M. Tronchet, but he was so much occupied with Louis XVI.'s defence that he would see no one. I then wrote him a letter, putting before him in the Queen's name how ardently this unhappy family desired to be sometimes with its august head ; but the request was refused. As long as the trial went on, whenever I was on duty at the Temple, it was I who escorted M. de Malesherbes into the Tower. The second time he came I went to meet him in the outer court. 1 He seemed to be somewhat ill at ease, for on the previous day he had suffered from the boorish manners of the commissioner deputed to take him to his Majesty. He looked at me : I ventured to take his hand, and say to 1 The principal court of the Grand Prior's palace, beyond which car- riages were unable to pass. (See plan A. ) THE RECOLLECTIONS OF LEPITRE him : " Do not be uneasy, monsieur ; non sum unus e multis " (I am not one of the majority). " It does me good to hear you say so," answered this estimable old man. " I beg you will come to meet me whenever you are here." I only once received the brave Tronchet : on the day that the Commune sent us a decree to the effect that Louis XVI.'s counsel were to be stripped and searched from head to foot with the minutest care, to make sure that they were not carrying any kind of instruments that might be put to a wrong use. The purport of this decree made us all very indignant, for the Council that day was composed of right- thinking men. We rejected this unseemly measure, to which M. Tronchet would certainly never have submitted. He merely emptied his pockets. The decree of the Commune was repealed. In the first week of January, Toulan and I had made no secret to the Queen of all the intrigues that were being set on foot by various scoundrels nor of the power of the party that supported them. She could not altogether abandon hope, for she refused to believe that either the French nation or the foreign Kings would look on at so atrocious a crime without any attempt to prevent it. She did not know all that a bold minority was capable of, when it well knew there was no safety for it save in the death of the King, and when, having bribed a number of men whose crimes made them reckless, it was able to overpower a well-intentioned but timid majority, who had no leaders, no real resources, and not even a rallying point. I am able to assert positively, without fear of contradiction, that the day on which Louis XVI. lost his life was a day of mourning for the majority of the French nation. But people shed their tears within their own four walls. They wept over the fate, not only of an illustrious family, but of the whole of France, and called down the vengeance of Heaven upon the monsters who had been the cause of all the trouble ; but out of doors they did not dare to let their faces reveal their real feelings. It was feared that a sad, gloomy expression of countenance might shock the distrustful eye of the villainous party in power, and that any feeling of regret that was allowed to appear might become a death-warrant. I was at the meeting of the Com- 113 i LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE mtme on the 20th January when there was a demand for commissioners to accompany the King on the following tragic- day. All the members showed how revolting the idea was to them. Only two rose eagerly and volunteered for this appalling duty. These horrible to relate were two priests : Jacques Roux and Pierre Bernard. 1 But what priests ! One of them, who was for ever preaching murder and pillage, would have drunk blood with delight : the other, who was equally cruel and more immoral, was living with a woman who was not his wife, by whom he had several children. Both these men perished miserably : the first died bathed in blood from head to foot ; the other wounded himself with knives in five places to save himself from death upon the scaffold. Bernard took real pleasure in flouting the sorrows of the royal family ; and one evening his remarks were so outrageous that the princesses, almost immediately after they had come to the table, were obliged to leave it, to escape from the horrible conversation of this savage. Jacques Roux employed another method of disturbing their rest. He sang all night ; and even Tison's entreaties could not keep him quiet. 2 We were sent to the Temple a few days after the 21st January. To ensure our not being separated, Toulan had devised the following ruse. There were three of us ; and, as a rule, we drew lots with three pieces of paper, on one of which was written the word day, while on two others was the word night. Toulan wrote day on all three ; and made our colleague draw his lot ; then, when the latter, being the first to open his paper, had read the word day, we threw our papers into the fire without looking at them, and went off together to our post. As we hardly ever came twice with the same man this device was always successful. We found the royal family plunged in the deepest grief. As soon as they saw us the Queen, her sister, and her children burst into tears. We dared not advance till the Queen signed to us to go into the room. " You did not 1 See note on p. 95. 2 It was Jacques Roux, too, who refused to take charge of Louis XVI. 's will, saying with horrible callousness : "I am here to take you to the scaffold." (Note by Lepitre.) 114 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF LEPITRE deceive me," she said. " They have allowed the best of kings to die." We gave them various papers and journals that we had brought with us, and they were read with the utmost eagerness, and often watered with tears. We were closely questioned, and our answers did but increase the pain and sorrow of the prisoners. On the following day it was our task to introduce into the Temple the sempstress employed to make the mourning garments, 1 although the Commune wished her to do her work after a simple pattern without taking any measurements. But we had already shown in a more important matter that we were not without courage. Madame Royale had for some time had a sore foot, which had given the Queen a certain amount of anxiety. Her request that a medical man might be summoned was acceded to, but this man was to be none other than the prison surgeon. The Queen refused the offer, and waited till we came. She told us about the sore foot, which demanded prompt treatment, and told us, too, of her extreme repugnance to the idea of consulting the surgeon whose services were offered to her. Finally, she told us of her wish to consult M. Brunier, physician to the " Children of France," and M. La Tasse, 2 formerly surgeon to Monseigneur le Comte d'Artois and the Swiss Guards. She had their address in a memorandum -book ; we gave it forthwith to a certain intelligent boy ; and two hours later M. Brunier and La Tasse arrived. 3 We had been obliged to secure the sanction of the other commissioners ; but the exercise of a little tact was all that was required in dealing with any of them who happened to be good fellows. Now, among the 1 " Items asked for by the Queen on the 21st January : A mantle of black taffetas, a black fichu and petticoat, a pair of black silk gloves, two pairs of kid gloves, two black taffetas nightcaps, a pair of sheets (refused), a quilted coverlet (refused)." (De Vyre, Histoire de Marie Antoinette.) La Gaze. 3 Report of the commissioners on duty at the Temple, January 26th, year II. (1793.) Many people made the mistake of dating "year II." from the 1st January, 1793.) "Visit from Brunier. Prompt treatment required by Marie Antoinette's daughter, on one of whose legs a sore place has appeared. Necessary to call in La Gaze, the surgeon. He was summoned by order. At half-past seven Brunier came again with La Gaze. The other leg is also threatened. Prescriptions sent to Robert, the prisoners' chemist." (Papiers du Temple.) 115 i 2 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE members of the Commune there were several good fellows, and we made it our business to see that they joined us in our duties at the Temple. For several months the custom of drawing lots had been abandoned. M. Brunier's emotion, on seeing those who were so dear to him, was very great. It was all he could do to speak. The sore foot was examined without delay, and a course of treat- ment prescribed that was carefully carried out. I remember a particular kind of viper broth that was brought in every evening by a nice civil lad called Robert. The physician and surgeon continued their visits without being interfered with, but they made a rule of preserving absolute silence when they were not sure of the commissioners who were watching their proceedings. Clery, who was still in the Temple, 1 gave me the table- cloth that had been used for Louis XVI/s Communion on the morning of the 21st January. I took it to Juvisy, and gave it into the charge of Clery's wife, whom I had met sometimes in the town when she came to see her husband and bring him news. She was always accompanied by a friend, who shared her devotion for the royal family, and more than once ran into danger in trying to be useful to them. In the meantime Toulan's mind was not inactive. He conceived the idea of helping the royal family to escape from the Temple, and kept me informed of his schemes from the very first. We met at my house, and with us were M. le Chevalier de Jar 2 and a clerk from Toulan's office, whose name, I think, was Guy , 3 a zealous royalist, whose help was necessary to us, and upon whose fidelity we could rely. 1 Cle"ry only left the Tower in February. 2 Francois Augustin Remi Pelisson de Jarjayes, born at Grenoble on the 24th October, 1745, had been a colonel on the general staff since 1779. He had married one of the twelve first women-of-the-bedchamber of the Queen, Emilie de Laborde. Louis XVI. in 1791 made him a brigadier- general. On the 10th August Jarjayes stood by the King, whom he followed to the Feuillants, and it was there that he received a definite order from the royal family not to leave Paris. (See Un Complot sous la Terreur, by Paul Gaulot. ) 3 M. Paul Gaulot thinks that Guy was none other than a man called Ricard, the husband of a cousin of Lepitre. In Un Complot sous la Terreur there are some interesting details about these minor characters in the tragedy of the Temple. 116 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF LEPITRE This was the plan we fixed upon for the escape : a plan whose execution would have been dangerous, but none the less quite possible. We had procured some men's clothes for the Queen and Madame Elizabeth, and we brought them in one by one, either in our pockets or on our persons, concealed under our pelisses. We also obtained two wadded cloaks, to hide their figures from too close a scrutiny, and to make their gait less noticeable. Moreover, we provided them with two hats made on purpose for them, and added to them the scarves and tickets of admission that were used by commissioners of the Commune. The difficulties in the way of removing Madame Royale and her brother from the Tower seemed to be greater. But we thought of a way of doing so. Every evening the man whose office it was to clean the lamps within the building, as well as those outside, came to light up the Tower, accompanied by two children who helped him in his work. He came in at half-past five, and long before seven o'clock he had left the Temple. We examined the clothes of the two children with great care, and saw that similar ones were prepared for the young King and his sister. Above a light undergarment were the dirty trousers and the coarse jacket called a carmagnole ; thick shoes were added, with an old peruke and a shabby hat to hide the hair ; while the hands and face were to be in a proper state to complete the illusion. This disguise was to be donned in the turret next the Queen's room, which Tison and his wife never entered, and we meant to leave the Tower in the following way. It was arranged that Toulan was to take advantage of the Tisons' weakness for Spanish snuff, which he had lavished upon them while he was in the Temple, and was to give them some of it at a quarter to seven, mixed with so strong a nar- cotic that they would instantly fall into a profound sleep, from which they would not be awakened till seven or eight hours later, though they would not be in the least injured by it. This plan, innocent as it was, did not please any of us, but we had no choice : we should have been obliged to adopt it. 117 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE The Queen was to leave a note behind her, exonerating these two people ; and then, dressed like a man, with the municipal scarf round her, was to pass out of the building escorted by myself. We had nothing to fear from the Temple guard ; for if we had shown our cards of admission, even from a distance, the sentries would have been quite satisfied, and the sight of our scarves would obviate any suspicion. When we were out of the Temple we should have gone to the Rue de la Corderie, where M. de Jarj was to wait for us. A few minutes after seven, when the sentries at the Tower had been relieved, Guy, the clerk I mentioned before, armed with a card of admission such as was used by the workmen employed in the Tower, was to knock at the Queen's door with his tin box under his arm, and Toulan, scolding him for not seeing to the lamps himself, was to hand the children over to him. He would have taken them out with him, and on the way to the trysting-place would have rid them of their clumsy garments. Soon, Madame Elizabeth, in a similar disguise to the Queen's, would have joined us with Toulan, and we should instantly have started away. Our arrangements were such that no one could have started to pursue us until five hours after our departure. We had made most careful calculations. In the first place, no one in the Tower ever went upstairs till nine o'clock in the evening, when the table was laid and the supper served. The Queen would have asked that supper might be at half-past nine that evening. To knock repeatedly, feeling more and more sur- prised that the door was not opened ; to question the sentinel, who, having been relieved at nine o'clock, would know nothing of what had occurred ; to go down to the Council Room and inform the other members of the strange circumstances ; to go upstairs again with them and knock anew, and summon the sentries who had gone off guard and obtain vague information from them ; to send for a locksmith to open the doors, the keys of which we should have left inside ; to get them opened at last with the greatest difficulty, for one of these doors was of oak and was covered with large nails, and the other was of iron, and both of them had locks that entailed considerable excavations in the solid wall if they were not turned in the 118 THE RECOLLECTIONS OP LEPITRE usual way ; to look into all the rooms and turrets ; to shake Tison and his wife violently without succeeding in waking them ; to go down again to the Council Room ; to draw up a report and take it to the Council of the Commune, which, even if it had not broken up, would have lost time in fruitless discussions ; to send messengers to the police and the Mayor, and to the committees of the Convention, asking what mea- sures should be taken : all these things would have caused so much delay as to give us a chance of escaping successfully. Our passports would have been perfectly correct, for I was then president of the committee, and should have drawn them up myself. We should therefore have had no anxiety on the journey as long as the distance between us and our pursuers remained undiminished. 1 We had discussed this project on several occasions. On one essential point opinions were divided. The Queen wished us to travel separately, but at a short distance from each other. She wished us to have three cabriolets, in one of which she would have been with her son and M. de Jar , while Toulan was with Madame Elizabeth, and I with Madame Royale. I combated this idea for a long time, pointing out that three carriages would be more noticeable than one in the little towns or villages through which we passed, and that if an accident should happen to one of them the two others would be obliged to wait and would rouse suspicion. If on the other hand they continued their journey there might be some fear of their losing the way, or the delay might lead one party into danger and expose the others to regrets that would be more terrible even than the danger. But the Queen met this by saying that a berline laden with six people (for Toulan would have hurried forward on horseback), and drawn by six 1 It was in 1817 that Lepitre wrote so enthusiastically of the details in the plan of escape : but he omits to say that in 1793 he was much colder and more calculating in his view of the affair. It was his pusillanimity that wrecked the plot : he refused to supply passports, although he was the president of the commission that provided them. We must add, too, that Lepitre, who poses here as a hero, had insisted that the Queen should secure him against the material loss that would result to him from the escape of the prisoners. In a word, he expected to be paid, and Jarjayes undertook to satisfy him out of the remnants of his own fortune, which was already much impaired. 119 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE horses, would be no less noticeable ; and that, since we should be obliged to change horses at every posting-house, we should be exposed to the curiosity of the inhabitants and still more to the indiscretion of the postillions. She pointed to the unlucky expedition to Varennes undertaken in very different circumstances. Three light carriages would only require one horse apiece, and we should surely be able to find suitable relays at various points of our journey without having recourse to posting-houses. In this way we should secure better horses, and should have to change them less often. Every- thing economy of time, greater security, and the possibility of our all travelling in two carriages in case of an accident seemed to point to the adoption of the plan proposed by the Queen. Being alone in my opinion, I yielded to the majority ; but I confess it was with much trepidation that I thought of the moment when the sacred charge for which I was to be responsible should be confided to my care. I should have been almost ready to say, like ^Eneas when he fled from Troy: " Et moi qui tant de fois avait vu sans terreur Et les bataillons grecs et le glaive homicide, Une ombre m'epouvante, un souffle m'intimide ; Je n'ose respirer, je tremble au moindre bruit, Et pour ce que je porte et pour ce qui me suit." (Delille's translation of Virgil.) It was not till the end of February that the goal of our journey was determined upon. La Vendee was now in revolt, and we might have found a refuge there. This was thought of at first, but the distance seemed too great and the difficulties too numerous. It seemed easier to reach the coast of Normandy, and to secure some means of crossing to England. M. Jarj undertook to provide for everything. We could count entirely upon his ability and his unwearied zeal ; he had money enough for the journey ; and in whatever direction the royal family had chosen to travel they would have found the love and courage of more than one faithful subject ready to facilitate their escape by every necessary means. It may easily be imagined that this scheme demanded 120 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF LEPITRE various modifications. But nevertheless it was sufficiently well thought out to give rise to hopes of success. All was arranged for the carrying out of this plan in the early days of March, when a rising, purposely organised, resulted in the Parisian merchants being robbed of their sugar and coffee, and led to the passing of a motiveless decree, to the effect that the barriers were to be closed and passports were to be suspended. 1 We returned to the Temple dismayed by this measure, but quite resolved to take advan- tage of the first favourable moment. I have said nothing of the song composed for the young King, after the death of his august father. Madame Clery, who was a skilful performer on the harpsichord and harp, wrote the music for it. I took it to the Temple and pre- sented it to the Queen ; and when I ^returned a week later her Majesty took me into Madame Elizabeth's room, where the young prince sang the song to Madame Royale's accom- paniment. Our eyes filled with tears, and for a long time we stood there sadly, without speaking. Here are the verses but the scene is indescribable. The daughter of Louis XVI. sat at the harpsichord, and beside her was her mother with her son in her arms, trying, in spite of the tears that streamed from her eyes, to direct her children's playing and singing. Madame Elizabeth stood beside her sister and mingled her sighs with the sad tones of her royal nephew's voice. Never will this picture be effaced from my memory. LA PlETE FlLIALE. Et quoi ! tu pleures, 6 ma mere ! Dans tea regards fixes sur moi Se peignent 1'amour et 1'effroi ; J'y vois ton ame tout entiere. Des maux que ton fils & soufferts, Pourquoi te retracer 1' image ? Lorsque ma mere les partage, Puis-je me plaindre de mes fers ? 1 This is not true. The barriers were not closed, and the commission that provided passports was merely warned to be circumspect in supplying them. A few lines further back Lepitre makes another mistake. It was not at the end of February, but only on the 10th March that the first out- breaks occurred in Brittany and La Vendee, and the news only reached Paris about the 17th. LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE Des fers ! 6 Louis, ton courage Les ennoblit en les portant. Ton fils n'a plus, en cet instant, Que tes vertus pour heritage. Trone, palais, pouvoir, grandeur, Tout a f ui pour moi sur la terre ; Mais je suis aupres de ma mere, Je connais encore le bonheur. Un jour, peut-etre .... 1'esperance Doit etre permise au malheur ; Un jour, en faisant son bonheur, Je me vengerai de la France. Un Dieu favorable & ton fils Bientot calmera la tempete ; L'Orage qui courbe leur tete Ne detruira jamais les Lys. Helas ! si du poids de nos chaines Le ciel daigne nous affranchir, Nos coeurs doubleront leur plaisir Par le souvenir de nos peines. Ton fils, plus heureux qu'aujourd'hui, Saura, dissipant tes alarmes, Effacer la trace des larmes Qu'en ces lieux tu versas pour lui. A MADAME ELIZABETH. Et toi, dont les soins, la tendresse Ont adouci tant de malheurs, Ta recompense est dans les coeurs Que tu formas & la Sagesse. Ah ! Souviens-toi des derniers voeux Qu'en mourant exprima ton frere ! Reste toujours pres de ma mere, Et ses enfants en auront deux. 1 It was on the 7th March that I received from the royal family a most precious reward for my zeal and devotion. The Queen and Madame Elizabeth were good enough to cut off little locks of their hair, which they gave me, together with some of Madame's and of the young prince's. The same favour had been granted to Toulan, who had the hair arranged 1 Another royalist song, composed before Louis XVI. 's death, had an enormous success, "a European vogue," during the early days of 1793. Everyone knows the verses : " mon peuple . . . que vous ai-je done fait?" that were sung to the air of Pauvre Jacques. This song was seen by the King, who derived some temporary consolation from it during his last days, and perhaps some encouragement in his last illusions. For a long time it was attributed to Ulpien Hennet, son of the last provost of Maubeuge, but it was really by his brother, a captain in the Engineers and an emigre. (Z. Pierart, Eecherches historiques sur Maubeuge, 1851.) 122 MADAME ELIZABETH. THE RECOLLECTIONS OF LEPITRE in a device of sheaves, upon a box. One of the sheaves was reversed, the four others upright, and with them was this motto : Tutto per loro " All for them." I had a ring made for myself, in which the hair of each person was arranged separately. It has upon it this motto, which was suggested to me by her Majesty : Poco ama ctiil morir teme " He loves little who fears to die. 1 ' At the back are these words : The hair enclosed in this ring was given on the 7th March, '93, to J.-Fr. Lepitre by the wife, the children, and the sister of Louis de Bourbon, King of France. 1 A gold plate, which may be raised at will, covers the inscrip- tion. I have worn this ring constantly, and it is the only ornament that has ever been upon my finger. What diamond could be so precious ? I had already received from Madame Elizabeth another present, which I have always kept religiously. With a view to facilitating the interchange of messages, and at the same time supplying them with some occupation, the princesses had asked us for knitting-needles and balls of cotton. The latter might serve as hiding-places for notes, as similar balls had served previously, when the princesses were in the habit of doing embroidery. The latter kind of needlework had been forbidden to them, on the ground that their embroidery designs concealed a correspon- dence in hieroglyphics. Follies of this kind provoke a pitying smile. We had faithfully promised to grant this request for cotton and needles, but that evening our minds were full of many important matters of various kinds, and our conversa- tion had been so interesting, that in our elation and happiness at having spent more than five hours with the princesses without being interrupted by any intruders, and at being granted, when we left them, the honour of kissing the young King, we entirely forgot our promises, and left the Temple without mentioning the subject to those of our colleagues who were remaining there. 1 The actual inscription was as follows : Les cheveux renfermts dans cette bague out ete donnts, le 7 m. 93, a J.-Fr. Lep. par F6p. lea enf. et la S. de L. de ., Roi de Fr. (Translator's note.) LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE When, in the course of the following week, we went up to the Queen's room, what was our surprise when the princesses came forward to greet us with a stiff kind of manner that we had never seen in them before, and thanked us ironically for having been so energetic in keeping our word to them ! We were racking our brains to understand them, when they held out their hands, which they had been hiding behind their backs, and showed us the knitting on which they were employed. " Ah, messieurs," said Madame Elizabeth, " so you really wish to condemn us to miserable inactivity ! But everyone is not like you, and worthy M. Paffe (a hosier and municipal officer) has been more obliging than you."" And it was true that this good fellow, in accordance with the princesses'* request, had sent to his shop for knitting materials, and we found the cotton and needles figuring in the Temple registers. We were profuse in our excuses and were forgiven. Madame Elizabeth had begun to knit what she called a stocking : but when she asked my advice about her work I could not suppress a smile in view of the size of this so-called stocking. I told her it was probably a cap that she had meant to make. " Very well, then, a cap it is ! " she answered, " and it shall be for you."" She finished it the same day and gave it to me just as we were going away, with strict injunc- tions to give to the poor the sum that a cap would be likely to cost at that time. I obeyed scrupulously, and it cost me the modest sum of 10 francs in assignats. This shows how the princess, even in her jokes, found a means of influencing others to do good. I have never seen a character in which the highest degree of genuine piety was combined with so much gentleness. Her tenderness for the children of her august brother was the tenderness of a mother. What efforts she made to help the Queen in educating the young prince and Madame ! For in spite of the lack of necessary aids, their education was not neglected and the resources of the two princesses were such that they were able to a great extent to supply the lack of external means. Not a moment was ever wasted : even games were turned to good account. It was impossible not to be touched by the THE RECOLLECTIONS OF LEPITRE sight of the young King barely eight years old bending over his little table, reading the History of France with the greatest attention, then repeating what he had read, and listening eagerly to the observations of his mother or aunt. The most savage among the commissioners could not alto- gether restrain their emotion, though it is true they reproached themselves for it later on. The month of March was slipping by, and yet we had not been sent to the Temple. We noticed in the Council that we were regarded with ill-concealed distrust ; and it was made plain to us by half-uttered rumours and vague suggestions that we had better be on our guard. Toulan's imprudence had roused suspicion. He had shown to two clerks in his office a gold box, which he said had been given to him by the Queen. I do not know if he had actually been given a gold box : I never saw it ; and he only once mentioned it to me ; but what is quite certain is this : that the two clerks denounced him to Hebert, and that the latter took no notice of the denunciation at the time, but that it ultimately led to Toulan being condemned to death. I, too, had drawn suspicion upon myself by a word that I had let drop, and that one of my colleagues had observed. I was with the royal family on the roof of the Tower, where they were sometimes allowed to sit. I had lifted the young prince in my arms that he might see the streets in the neigh- bourhood of the Temple, where a number of people had collected and were gazing at the Tower. In the garden were the sentries, whose outward appearance gave every indication of misery and destitution. It was very cold, and I could not help saying : " How can they allow the poor sansculottes to be exposed like that to the inclemencies of the weather ? " Sansculottes was at that time the popular name for such people, but I was accused of using it disdainfully, though I can swear I had merely given expression to a feeling of genuine pity. It was said that the Queen, grasping my meaning, had looked at them contemptuously and vindic- tively. Finally, I was threatened with a denunciation to the Commune. I was not, however, publicly accused, for the Sieur Landr did not carry out his threat; but I saw 125 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE very plainly that the story was known and I was looked at askance. Well, on the 16th March we returned to the Temple. We made nearly all the necessary arrangements, but we adjourned the execution of our project till our next visit, though we had no idea when that might occur. Suddenly, on the 26th, when the commissioners to the Temple were about to be chosen, a man called Arthur rose to speak, and demanded that, in accordance with the old regulation, certain members whom he would name should be dealt with by the scrutin epuratoire. 1 " This measure, 11 he cried, " is all the more necessary because you have in your midst members who are betraying you. I denounce in particular L. and Toulan : no sooner do these commissioners arrive at the Tower than, without caring to sup with their colleagues, they hurry up to Marie Antoin- ette. I have seen L. conversing mysteriously with her ; and when he saw me he betrayed himself by the flush that over- spread his face. Yes, L. is a false friend," went on Lechenard, the tailor of whom I have spoken before ; " he is the favourite of the prisoners ; whereas they smile at him and make him civil speeches, they hardly look at me, the poor republican." As for Toulan, he was chiefly accused of taking pains to make the Queen and her family laugh, by jokes that were degrad- ing to the dignity of a magistrate who represented the people. I was much afraid there might be some allusion to the gold box, and to my reflection on the Temple sentries ; but nothing was said on the subject, and our courage rose. Toulan defended himself by joking about his jokes, and ended by saying resolutely that he was not the judge of the prisoners confided to his care, and that his business was merely to do his duty to the best of his ability, without trying to torment them. I confined myself to denying the truth of the alleged facts, adding that I was far from deserving the smile and civilities that Citizen Lechenard took so greatly to heart, but that nevertheless I did not think it necessary, 1 The procedure for getting rid of undesirable members. (Translator's note.) 126 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF LEPITRE in the fulfilment of my duties, to exhibit a repulsive coarse- ness that was foreign to my habits and to my character. Hebert, while admitting the futility of these denunciations, complained of the indiscretion of the members who were unable to defend themselves against the arts of " that family," and gave them information that they ought not to have. He demanded the scrutin epuratoire, and asked that our names might be struck off the list of those who were to be sent to the Temple. The day after I was thus denounced for the first time I went to see La Chaste Suzanne at the Vaudeville Theatre. It is well known that this play gave rise to various scenes of violence, by its thinly-veiled allusions, and that, though it was approved of by people of sound views, it was furiously attacked by the Jacobins. 1 In this play occurred the words that had already been uttered in the rostrum of the Con- vention : 2 " You are the prosecutors ; you cannot be the judge." Everyone wanted to see La Chaste Suzanne, and I had great difficulty in securing a place in the pit-boxes. In front of me were two well-dressed ladies, with their husbands sitting behind them. They paid no attention to me, and expressed their opinion without restraint during the performance of the new play. All went well until the interval between the acts ; but then a man in the pit looked into the box and said, in a fairly loud voice : " There is a municipal officer in that box." I saw the four people in front of me grow pale. The women, especially, seemed on the point of fainting. It was impossible for them to leave the box. As they recalled their conversation they had visions of themselves being arrested, imprisoned, and perhaps denounced. 1 La Chaste Suzanne was not the only play that created scenes of this kind. In the Theatre du Lycee the story of Marie Antoinette and her son, and their imprisonment in the Temple, was put on the boards as a drama entitled Adele de Sacy. The Temple Tower was represented in such a way that no one could fail to recognise it, and the climax of the play was not merely the escape of the prisoners, but their victory over their enemies. (See Louis Blanc, Histoire de la Evolution, Book X., chap, vii.) 2 By M. Lanjuinais. (Note by Lepitre.) 127 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE I hastened to calm their fears. " Do not disturb yourselves, mesdames," I said to them ; " there are men in the municipal body who think as you do, and I am of their number. Have you read the paper this morning ?" " Yes, monsieur." "Well, I am one of the two members of the Commune who were denounced yesterday for their conduct at the Temple." At these words their courage partly returned ; we entered into conversation, and I found that their sentiments were abso- lutely in accord with mine. They confessed to me that they would never have expected to find a member of the Commune in a velvet coat, and that, when I was recognised, they had thought themselves in real danger. It is certain that Chau- mette, or anyone of that stamp, would not have wasted so fine an opportunity. We were waiting, Toulan and I, for the Council to forget our misadventure. On Easter Day, as there were only a few members present, and these seemed not at all anxious to be shut up in the Temple, we got one of our colleagues to propose us. We had been accepted, and were actually preparing to start, when the cruel Lechenard arrived on the scene and had our nomination rescinded. We saw that hope was entirely fled. A permanent municipality was about to be established. Toulan had not been re-elected; and although I had been nominated, it was decided that my election was to depend on the scrutin epuratoire of the forty-eight sections, and I was rejected by thirty-two. It was in vain that the people of my own section persisted in their choice, in vain that they posted placards in Paris to vindicate the three members they had chosen and supported ; there was nothing for it but to yield, lest we should be involved in a dangerous struggle that would only end upon the scaffold. I had already resolved to quit my useless office when a fresh storm broke over Toulan's head and mine. There were indeed three or four municipal officers involved in the affair. Some commissioners from the Commune had gone to the Temple and instituted a minute inquiry there. By their threats they had frightened Tison's wife into confirming her husband's depositions, and she declared us to be agents of the royal family. " Through us they were informed of all that 128 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF LEPITRE took place ; we supplied them with newspapers ; we facilitated their correspondence by bringing them letters and taking charge of the answers ; we were constantly in the Queen's room, sitting with the prisoners and conversing freely with them." In short she told everything she could possibly have seen, and everything she suspected. I was not present when the depositions were read aloud to the Commune. 1 On the following day at ten o'clock, when I was going out with my pupils, a woman stopped me, stared at me in surprise, and seemed hardly to believe her eyes. " What ! " she said, " you are still at liberty ! But yes- terday evening, at eleven o'clock, an order was made out to arrest you and put seals on your property. I was present when you were denounced to the Commune. Take advantage of my warning, and see to your affairs." I returned home at once and burnt my notes, and more particularly my song, for I was sure I should be arrested very shortly. At midday the commissioner of police arrived at my house, sealed up my papers, and retired without ordering me to follow him, or mentioning the warrant for my arrest. The next day I heard the street-criers shouting out that I was confined in the Abbaye with my accomplices, and that we were soon to be tried. One of these criers, whose news- paper I bought, had the effrontery to maintain to my face 1 Sitting of the Commune of April 20, 1793. "Louis Roux read a document which had been drawn up in the Temple in the presence of the Mayor, the Procureur of the Commune, and the commissioners on duty, and contained two depositions, one by Tison, employed in the Temple, and the other by Anne Victoire Baudet, wife of Tison, also employed in the Temple. It follows from these two depositions that certain members of the Council, Toulan, Lepitre, Brunod, Moelle, and Vincent, the doctor, and the building contractor at the Temple, are suspected of having had secret conferences with the prisoners of the Temple, of supplying them with sealing-wax, wafers, pencils, and paper, and finally of having assisted in the carrying-on of secret correspondence." (Moniteur of April 23, 1793.) Another report, of the 29th April, mentions that "sealing-wax, wafers, and a pencil were discovered on the 20th in the possession of the prisoners : an indication that they were carrying on correspondence with the outer world. Property of the accused, and of Brunier, Temple physician, placed under seal. Warrant issued against Citoyenne Serent, formerly lady of the bedchamber to Elizabeth. Elizabeth's room searched. The officer charged with the carrying-out of criminal judgments, and the hatter Dumont, questioned with regard to a hat found in a box belonging to Louis Capet's sister." (See Papiers du Temple, by M. de la Morinerie ; Nouvelle Revue, 1st April, 1884.) 129 K LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE that this was true, and that the L. in question must be in prison, since the fact was stated in black and white. I wrote to the Procureur of the Commune, begging him to forbid the journalists to incarcerate people on their own authority. A short time after denouncing us the woman Tison went off her head. She went into the Queen's room, they say, and, kneeling before her, implored her forgiveness for having basely slandered her and for having caused the downfall of blameless men, whom she, Madame Tison, had been forced to denounce. The Queen in vain sought to calm her ; the wretched woman was quite mad, and was removed to an asylum, where she shortly afterwards died. 1 It was at this time that the Commune of Paris, prompted by the Committee of the Convention, drew up an address demanding the trial of the deputies from the Gironde and of several others. This address was drawn up in secret, and, without any notice being given, the attendance-sheet was replaced on the table by another sheet of paper with the following heading: Names of those who subscribe to the Address against the Girondists, etc. Being rather late in arriving at the Council, I wrote my signature on this sheet of paper without looking at the heading ; but being told of the facts by my neighbour I left my seat at once and scratched out my signature. On the following day the list was read, and an erased name was found. After a long examination it was discovered to be mine. Great excitement and much abuse followed. Having been told of the affair, I wrote on the following day to the Council to state my reasons, saying that it was against my principles to subscribe to addresses of that kind, especially when I knew nothing about them. This letter gave rise to the most violent discussions, and one of the substitutes of the Procureur of the Commune, who quite recently played rather an important role? censured me as a coward and a liar. Yet it must be confessed that it required some courage to stand alone, and refuse to behave like everyone else ; and I had told the exact truth. 1 She did not die there (see note, p. 74). 2 Pierre Fra^ois Real. 130 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF LEPITRE From that moment I returned no more to the Council. The seals were removed from my papers, and I was given a certificate to the effect that nothing suspicious had been found in my house. I lived quietly enough till the time when the Queen was removed from the Temple. I foresaw the fresh crime that the scoundrels were meditating, and did not hide from myself that I had good reason to fear on my own account. I knew too how great was the difference between the way the Temple prisoners were treated now and the way they had been treated in our time ; the coarse food that had replaced their former meals ; the condition to which they were reduced, having no one to wait upon them ! Everything I heard made my heart ache, and I was destined to suffer worse things yet. On the 7th October, while I was having supper with my wife, I said to her : " If I were to be put in prison I should try to be taken to Sainte Pelagic, for there at all events I should find people I knew, and should be less bored than in any other prison." What was my surprise when at six o'clock on the morning of the 8th I heard a knock at my door, and a member of the revolutionary committee informed me that his orders were to take me to Sainte Pelagic, where I was to be in close confinement ! The last clause was not at all to my taste. All my possessions were sealed up and then I was taken off to my destination in a carriage. I was to be cut off from everyone both within and without the prison : and to be allowed neither letters nor papers. What a situation to be placed in ! But it is not every gaoler who is incorruptible, when it is possible to yield without any real failure in duty ; and mine looked as if he would be quite willing to be bribed, for I have a shewd suspicion, judging from the sequel, that his orders were not as severe as they seemed, and that my worthy friend, while boasting of his good nature, knew very well that it would do him no harm. I occupied a cell that measured six feet in width, by seven in length, for which I paid twenty-five francs a month. My furniture comprised my bed, which had been brought here by my orders, a table and a chair. I gave ten francs a month to the man who looked after my room. Not even the 131 K 2 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE smallest service was gratuitous. My breakfast and dinner were brought to me from my own house. My servant bribed the gaoler downstairs, and I bribed him upstairs. The excellent creature was thus paid twice over. In return, he saw that I received everything that was sent to me ; newspapers, under the vine leaves that covered my basket ; letters, in the body of a cold chicken, or in a pie, or in my linen. From time to time I wrung some information out of him. He was especially communicative under the influence of my wine. He told me which were the best-known prisoners, and which were the spies I ought to distrust. Sometimes he let me out for five or six minutes into the corridors, where I met old friends imprisoned as "suspects." Indeed, I owed him an endless number of small obligations, which mitigated the discomforts of my position. From my narrow window I could see Mesdames Rancourt, Fleury, Joly, Petit, Lachas- saigne, Suin, and Devienne, actresses from the Theatre Francais, who were allowed the precious privilege of walking about in the garden. On the 14th October I was summoned as a witness in the Queen's trial. Verily that was a day of mourning, and a day of iniquity ! I was present during that horrible enquiry, or rather that scene of perfidy and villainy. With what grand dignity, and with what an air of calm nobility, the wife of Louis XVI. gave her answers ! The faces of all the spectators who had any good feeling were full of sadness, but there was fury in the eyes of a crowd of men and women who had been brought to the hall purposely ; though more than once this fury yielded for the moment to pity and admiration. The prosecutors and judges did not at all succeed in hiding the rage that inspired them, and the irrepressible confusion with which the Queen's noble firmness covered them. The indictment was a mere tissue of absurdities and calumnies. Hebert's horrible imputation made me shudder. Everyone was scandalised by this monster's effrontery ; and everyone's heart was profoundly touched by those sublime words of the insulted mother : " I appeal to every mother here : is there one of them who believes in the possibility of such a crime ? " 132 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF LEPITRE There was absolutely nothing in the depositions of the witnesses, who were called in great numbers with a view to concealing their futility. We figured in the affair as having been corrupted by the Queen's promises, and having conspired with her against the security of the State. We were in- formed that we should shortly suffer the same fate. This noble Princess must have died in the sad certainty that we should not survive her. When the court temporarily rose we went down to the porter's lodge. I found M. Bailly there, in a state of great depression. We spoke little, for we were observed. In a corner of the office sat Manuel, with a pale face and a gloomy expression, saying nothing to anyone. He was evidently a prey to remorse. I was confronted with the Queen somewhat late, and the questions put to me were insignificant. I confined myself to negatives, and the Queen did the same. I was shown some coins, and the portraits in miniature of two princesses who had been friends of the Queen. I professed not to recognise them though her Majesty had shown them to me several times. Great stress was laid upon our secret conferences, and upon the fact that a man had been hired to cry the news in the streets. I denied everything, and this interrogatory, which lasted for twelve minutes, was deemed sufficient. I was taken back to Sainte Pelagie, to wait till the evidence for our trial was prepared. The end of Lepitre's Recollections has no relation to the imprisonment of Marie Antoinette. On the 8th November he was tried, together with eight other municipal officers who were all accused of having an understanding with the Widow Capet. But the man who was most guilty, Rougeville, had fled. Toulan also had escaped and was living at Bordeaux under a false name ; it was not till later that he was taken and condemned to death. As a matter of fact the Commune of Paris did not at all like the probity and civic virtue of its members to be called in question before the revolutionary tribunal: and for these reasons, combined with others, perhaps, the accused were acquitted, with the exception of Michonis, who was condemned to remain in prison till the peace, and was executed later. 133 EXTRACTS FROM THE NARRATIVE OF MOELLE 1 MEMBER OF THE COMMUNE IT was on the 5th December, 1792, that I went to the Temple for the first time, as a commissioner from the Com- mune. I had just been nominated a member of the provi- sional municipality, which replaced that of August 10th. I arrived at the Temple with three other commissioners a little after ten o'clock in the evening, and was to be relieved, with them, two days later, at the same hour. The General Council of the Commune nominated, during its evening sitting, the members upon whom this duty was to devolve, and renewed them every evening, four at a time. At this time they were eight in number, of whom two, chosen by lot, were attached, one to the King's room and one to that of the princesses. They remained there for twenty-four hours, beginning from the day of their arrival. A few days later their number in each room was doubled. 2 On the following day they formed part of the Temple Council, which was composed of the surplus of the commissioners on duty. This Council was responsible for all active measures that were adopted, as well as for the custody of the prisoners. 1 Moelle (Claud Antoine Francois) was a clerk in the Caisse d'Escompte, No. 498, Rue de Buffaut. (National Almanack, 1793.) He was arrested at the same time as Lepitre, Michonis, Dange, &c., and accused, as they were, of having an understanding with the Widow Capet. Moelle was acquitted on the 19th November, 1793. 2 It is quite true that the new municipality doubled the prisoners' guard on December llth. The Council Room of the Temple was at the same time transferred to the ground floor of the Tower, and many additional precautions were taken. These measures were on account of the King's trial. (See Papiers du Temple.) 134 THE NARRATIVE OF MOELLE These measures were entered daily in a register, in the form of resolutions, and the entries signed by all the commissioners. Everything connected with the requests of the royal family, which were always made in writing, was also signed by Clery. With this same Council were deposited the keys of the seven barriers between the foot of the stairs of the Great Tower and the platform at the top, as well as those of the outer doors of the various rooms, which were never opened for the convenience of the prisoners or their servants, except when the commissioners on duty gave a signal by means of a bell that rang in the Council Room. Members of this Council, moreover, entered the dining- room with every meal. The meals were prepared in the old kitchens of the Grand Priory, 1 and all their ingredients were subjected to the most rigorous tests. Three men-servants, called Turgy, Chretien and Marchand, were charged with carrying the food to the Tower, and they waited in the outer room till the end of the meal, the remains of which were appropriated by Clery, and by a man and his wife called Tison, who ate together after the King's death. Before that Clery had shared the meals of the commissioners. Everything was taken back to the kitchens with similar precautions, after having being examined by the commissioners, who were particularly careful in scrutinising the table-linen, and every- thing that had been used by the royal family. The men- servants were also expected, under the supervision of the commissioners, to carry the wood for the King's fire and those of the princesses from the left-hand turret where it was stored, which opened into the dining-room, to the room occupied by Tison and his wife. These two were employed in waiting on the princesses; but at the same time they spied upon everyone that approached the royal family, even upon the commissioners, some of whom they denounced, as will be seen in the course of this narrative. 2 1 (See Plan A. 6.) 2 Having been on guard at the Temple at the beginning of September, 1792, and posted as a sentry in the little Tower, on the storey occupied by the King, I had been able, prompted by my desire to be useful to the royal family, to notice the arrangements of the place very carefully, and even to ask Tison a few questions. He remembered this when he saw me appear at the Temple as a municipal officer. Since then I have learnt from Clery, 135 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE Such was the established routine while I was at the Temple. When I arrived there on the 5th December, the Commune had not as yet decreed that two commissioners should be on guard on each floor, and I was chosen by lot to be attached to His Majesty. The King had gone to bed, and a folding- bed was arranged for me across the door of his room. I spent the night in a state of the liveliest agitation, due to mingled sensations of alarm, sympathy, and respect ; and so, when Clery came in at about half-past six in the morning to go to His Majesty 's room he found me ready to follow him. Beside the King's bed was the uncurtained one of M. le Dauphin, whom our entrance did not awake. The King drew his curtain, and his first glance rested on me. As this was the first time he had seen me, and as, moreover, the Commune had just been re-constituted, it was natural that I should be of some interest to His Majesty. While this silent by-play was going on Clery lit the fire. When the King rose he threw a dressing-gown round him ; he sat on the edge of the bed while his shoes and stockings were put on ; and he shaved himself. Clery completed his toilet for him, 1 and then dressed M. le Dauphin, who from the moment he awoke and throughout the process of dressing was full of the gaiety and playfulness that is so charming in children, which he possessed to a special degree. The King smiled sadly, and looked at his son with all the tenderness of a in whom he confided at the time, that he wished to denounce me on account of those early suspicions of his, but Clery succeeded in dissuading him from doing so. 1 Louis XVI. 's wardrobe in the Temple was composed of two coats that were exactly alike, which he wore alternately. They were of a pale reddish mixture, lined with fine unbleached linen ; the buttons were of filigree work in gilt metal. Some waistcoats of white pique, some breeches of black silky material, and a greatcoat of the colour known as cheveux de la Heine, constituted the rest of this wardrobe. (Note by Moelle.) Louis XVI. 's wardrobe, composed of a hat, a broken tortoise-shell box, a little bundle of list and white ribbon, six coats two of cloth, two of silk, and two of velveteen a cloth overcoat, eight waistcoats two of cloth, two of velveteen, two of silk, and two of linen ten pair of breeches to match, two white dressing-gowns, a quilted satin dressing-jacket, five pairs of drawers, and nineteen white waistcoats, were burnt on a pile in the Place deGreve on Sunday, September 29th, 1793. (General Council of the Com- mune of Paris, sitting of September 30th.) 136 THE NARRATIVE OF MOELLE loving father. Then, when M. le Dauphin was dressed, he said his prayers in the presence of his august father, who immediately afterwards retired, according to his custom, to meditate in the little turret-room that served him for an oratory. I then opened a book that the King had been reading while his hair was being dressed, and saw it was a volume of Vise's Mercure, a set of which formed part of the small collection of books that had been brought here 1 from time to time in accordance with His Majesty's request. / The whole of this opening scene made a vivid impression ( upon me. It shows how simple the King was in his private life, how susceptible he was to natural affection, and how carefully he fulfilled his personal duties. It is impossible that so pure a life should have been the outcome of any but the most virtuous character ; and who can doubt that such was the character of Louis XVI. ? Breakfast- time arrived. This meal was usually served in the princesses' room, whither the King went with his son. For His Majesty this was merely an opportunity of being with his family : he stood by without eating anything. All the commissioners were present at this meal, at which Clery waited. Tison and his wife were in their own room, separated from the outer room in which the royal family were assembled, by a glazed partition, which enabled them to watch everything that went on. The Queen, Madame Elizabeth, and the young princess were in their ordinary morning dress, which consisted of a gown of white dimity. A simple cap of lawn was their usual headgear. 2 1 With regard to Louis XVI.'s Library in the Temple, see the note on p. 137. 2 In the Register of requests made on behalf of the King and his family there are some rather interesting details in connection with the dress of the ladies. The following requests are made in Marie Antoinette's name : a bodice of Jouy linen ; some cambric bodices in pink and white, and blue and white ; a wrapper of thin Florentine taffetas with a coat-collar, of the grey known as boue de Paris, [tied in front, with a watch-pocket ; some white silk stockings ; a taffetas fichu to tie at the back ; a black beaver riding hat ; some strong shoes, either blue or grey, &c. Under Madame Elizabeth's name we find linen caps trimmed with narrow lace ; cuffs and bands of linen for cambric wrappers ; silk stock- 137 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE They changed their morning dress for a garment of dark brown cloth with a pattern of little flowers, which was their only costume for the day, until the King's death, when the whole family went into mourning. Immediately after breakfast the King went downstairs with M. le Dauphin, accompanied by Clery, who retired to his own room, and by myself. I remained in the outer room where I had passed the night. His Majesty's door was open. Until the hour for going out the King spent his time in giving a lesson in geography to M. le Dauphin, and in reading to himself. While he was reading the young prince left his august father's room, and came into the one where my feelings of respect had prompted me to remain. I was sitting near a faience stove, which was still slightly warm from the fire that had been lit there in the morning but had been allowed to die down, as had the King's fire also, although it was fairly cold, because this was part of His Majesty's regime. Seated thus, I was looking at a volume of Tacitus that I had taken from a cupboard in the anteroom, where some books were kept for the King's use. The young Prince came to see what I was reading, and I heard him say, when he returned to His Majesty, " Papa, that gentleman is reading Tacitus." The King, about a quarter of an hour afterwards, took the opportunity of speaking to me on the subject of my reading, and was kind enough to approve of certain remarks I made as to my interpretation of the author's meaning. In the course of this first day every incident that occurred was a fresh interest to me, and of these the daily walk was ings, some white and some grey ; some grey shoes ; one pair of them to be Chinese sabots ; a hat like the Queen's. (Papiers du Temple.) There is also in existence a List of memoranda of articles supplied to Louis Seize and his family between the 10th August and the 6th October, 1792, year I. of the French Republic. In the Tower of the Temple. This list shows the bills of those who supplied the linen, cloth, silk, and stockings, and those of the milliner, hatter, and draper, the tailors, the dressmakers, the sempstress, various men and women employed in making dresses and underlinen, the bootmakers, and perfumers, the cutler, book- seller, stationer, laundresses, and messengers, &c. The total outlay comes to 25,318 livres 15 sols 1 denier. (Papiers du Temple, 1st April, 1884, loc. cit.) 138 LOUIS XVf. TEACHING HIS SON GEOGRAPHY IN THE TEMPLE. THE NARRATIVE OF MOELLE not the least pleasurable. It still took place in the Temple garden, in an avenue of chestnut trees that had not been destroyed. On the occasion of this mild amusement the royal family were accompanied by all the commissioners, the greater number of whom walked in a line with them. 1 Clery amused the young prince apart from the others, and made him run about for the sake of exercise. Meanwhile I stood by and, as I watched him, meditated on the thought- lessness of his age, which seemed to me to contrast so strikingly with the anxieties of his royal parents, and the demeanour they were obliged to preserve in this cruel situation of theirs. Madame Elizabeth, who noticed the sad absorption with which I followed the movements of the young Prince, and read my thoughts, condescended to tell me so on the first opportunity, and was kind enough to thank me. The tender affection of this good princess for her imprisoned relatives, whose misfortunes she had determined to share, made her very observant and acute, so that she learnt to judge of the commissioners' humanity by their looks and conduct, and she was not too proud to encourage it in them by expressing her gratitude. At dinner, which was served in the King's room, I again saw the whole royal family, but under a new aspect. Their food was still excellent, and carefully prepared. The royal prisoners were most abstemious, the princesses and M. le Dauphin drinking nothing but water, of which the King mixed a great deal with his wine. At dessert he indulged in a single glass of sweet wine. His skill in carving meat was remarkable ; and he showed this skill in various kinds of manual work, with which he had been in the habit of amusing himself in happier times. The royal family spoke little, for reserve was forced upon them by the presence of the com- 1 It was during one of these walks that Lequeux, an architect of some repute, took the very interesting sketch that faces p. 84. It may be assumed to date from the early days of September, 1792, since the work of isolating the Tower is not yet completed. On the right we see the avenue of chestnuts to which Moe'lle refers. In the foreground, counting from right to left, are three commissioners of the Commune, the King, the Queen, the Dauphin, Madame Royale, Clery, Madame Elizabeth, the porter Mathey, carrying his keys ; and no doubt Tison and his wife are the figures above the note written by the artist : / saw them there. L. Q. 139 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE missioners. As for me, the part I had undertaken to play was torture to me, for I reflected bitterly that I too was contributing to the restraint to which this august family was subjected even at their meals. About twelve days after the King's death I went on duty in the Temple for the last time. During the two days I passed there very little occurred. It was almost always impos- sible to communicate with the princesses in their room, on account of Tison's anxious vigilance ; and I was reduced to expressing my feelings almost entirely by mute but respectful glances. This prompted me, on my last day, to suggest to the royal family that they should seek some fresh air on the roof of the Tower, where I hoped to find it easier to converse with the princesses. The suggestion was accepted, and the Queen as she left the room to climb the stairs gave her hand to a municipal officer called Minier, a jeweller on the Quai des Orfevres. This august princess, thinking in her great goodness that my feelings might have been hurt by her choosing his assistance rather than mine, was kind enough to tell me as soon as she was at liberty to speak, that she had acted in this way for fear of compromising me. This favour was a thousand times greater than the other; and far greater than anything I deserved. All the commissioners were present during this sadly circumscribed walk. When we reached the platform the Queen and Madame Royale leant upon the parapet at one side, ostensibly to enjoy the view from this great height. The Queen was between Madame and me. After I had told her all I knew of public affairs in answer to her questions, she asked me what measures I thought the Convention would take with regard to herself and the fate of the royal family. I answered that she would probably be claimed by the Emperor, her nephew ; that any fresh excess would be a gratuitous, and, moreover, an impolitic outrage; and that the King's death must surely be the final crime of the Con- vention, who had, indeed, when answering the King's request for a respite, undertaken to provide for his family in some 140 THE NARRATIVE OF MOELLE suitable way. 1 This answer, which was the only one I could make in the circumstances, seemed to allay the Queen's anxiety to a certain extent ; but her hopes were chiefly for ] her children and Madame Elizabeth, whose future concerned/ Jier much more than her own. No one who never heard the Queen give free and confidential expression to her goodness of heart can have any idea of her true feelings or of her beautiful nature. The royal family were too generous not to be touched by the behaviour of those commissioners who tried to lessen the hardships of their imprisonment, and showed respect for their misfortunes. There is nothing surprising,^ then, in the confidence that the Queen and Madame Elizabeth showed in some of these commissioners ; it was the only reward they had to offer in their state of extreme destitution. It is worthy of note that their confi- dence was never betrayed by any of those who were honoured by it in a greater or less degree. This is as great a proof of the princesses' discernment as of the sincere devotion that they inspired and deserved. Madame Royale, as I said, was present during the conversa- tion, which now turned on various people ; among others on Barnave, for whom the Queen inquired. I told her of his death, which I had seen announced in several papers, though it did not actually occur till the following year, when^ he was executed with Duport-du-Tertre and Rabaut-Saint-Etienne. On the subject of Lafayette, the Queen said he was one of the chief causes of the sorrows that had befallen the King and herself. Finally, when speaking of all that had combined to bring Louis XVI. and his family to such depths of misery, the Queen said she had not had the influence in public affairs that had been attributed to her ; but on this subject she expressed herself very cautiously. However that may be, the Queen shared her husband's fate with absolute devotion. She endured a thousand dangers, a thousand insults, a long imprisonment, and death at last ! 1 M. Montjoie mentions this fact in his Histoire de la Reine, and in his second edition adds a note in which he refers to me. I repeat this part of the conversation exactly as it took place in Madame Roy ale's presence. (Note by Moelle.) 141 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE And she might have escaped ! It is impossible to lay too much stress on the fact that her courage and devotion, which have been so cruelly misrepresented, are unique in history, and that Madame Elizabeth, too, deserves her meed of honour. 1 I took this opportunity of begging the Queen to tell me whether the Chevalier de Labrousse, who, to the anxiety of his family, had disappeared on the 10th of August, had been seen at the palace. Her Majesty, being unable to give me any information on the subject, asked Madame if she knew anything. The princess answered that she remembered having seen the Chevalier de Labrousse at the palace between eight and nine o'clock on the morning of the 10th August, and that she feared he must have fallen a victim on that day. The Queen was able to talk thus to me, because Madame Elizabeth, who probably was doing all she could to make our conversation possible, was holding the attention of the other commissioners, who were also engaged with the young Prince and Clery. Moreover, as our walk was limited by the four sides of the parapet, and the sloping roof that surmounted the Tower filled up all the centre of the platform, the side on which the Queen was standing was hidden from the commissioners, who were walking with Madame Elizabeth along the other three sides of the parapet. Therefore her Majesty had been able to talk to me in comparative safety. I must not forget to say that, having seen the young prince going alone into the loft formed by the roof of the Tower, the opening of which was on the side where I happened to be, I had taken the opportunity of following him, and taking him in my arms and kissing him. I could not resist my desire for this last satisfaction. This royal child had the noblest and most lovable face. His figure was perfect, and at that time he enjoyed the most 1 Margaret of Anjou did not share Henry VI. 's imprisonment, but she was able to fight for him. Henrietta of France, Charles I.'s wife, took refuge in France ; and James II. 's Queen preceded him to the same country. (Noteby,Moi>lle.) THE NARRATIVE OF MOELLE excellent health. His bright, intelligent remarks, and his habitual merriment, bore witness to a charming character. The injury done by his persecutors to his fine natural disposition is, perhaps, the most terrible of their crimes ! And I must not omit to mention that in my desire to keep something that had been used by one of the princesses, I took possession of a glove belonging to Madame Royale, which I found on a seat. It was a kid glove of a yellowish colour, and it was taken at the time of my arrest from my writing- table, where I had put it with my most precious possessions. 143 THE CONCIERGERIE (AUGUST SND OCTOBER 16, 1793) AT midday on the 1st August, 1793, Hanriot, Commander-in- chief of the Parisian forces, repaired to the Temple, where he inspected all the gates, as well as the quarters of the prisoners. He noted the "lack of artillery," took fresh measures for the guarding of the place, ordered the officers in command at the different guard-houses to supply themselves with ammunition, and in short put the Temple more or less into a state of siege. At eight o'clock in the evening matches were distributed in the artillery-park that occupied the court of the Grand Prior's palace ; and the troops were astir throughout the night. At a quarter past one in the morning Michonis, Froidure, Marino, and Michel, commissioners of police, arrived on the scene, armed with the Order which the General Council had drawn up on the previous day for the execution of the decree passed by the Convention, to the effect that Marie Antoinette should appear before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and should immediately be transferred to the Conciergerie. Twenty gendarmes waited in the yard to escort the prisoner. 1 She was awakened if indeed she slept. She embraced her daughter and her sister-in-law her son had been taken from her a month before and then she passed down the stairs of the Tower and out into the stifling, oppressive night. Surrounded by com- missioners and soldiers she crossed the silent garden of the Temple ; not, we may well believe, without turning, as Louis XVI. had turned on the 21st January, to look her last at the Tower that loomed, huge and sinister, in the darkness. A cab awaited her at the steps of the palace ; the great gate opened to let 1 Papiers du Temple, loc. cit, 144 THE CONCIERGERIE her pass : she and her guard briskly crossed the sleeping town ; through the streets of Le Temple, La Tixeranderie, La Coutellerie, and Planche-Mibray, and over the bridge of Notre- Dame ; then plunged into the Rue de la Lanterne, and through the Rue de la Vieille-Draperie reached the yard of the Law Courts at last. The gates were opened ; turnkeys surrounded the prisoner ; she was hurried down the steps and through the flagged corridors ; finally she reached a little cell with an arched ceiling. It was now nearly three o'clock in the morning. To this place we shall return presently, to find Maria Theresa's daughter. It must not be imagined that the decree of the Convention, summoning Marie Antoinette before the tribunal, determined the fate of the Queen. The revolutionary politicians acted by fits and starts, prompted by fury or fear ; their resolutions were regulated by no plan and showed no attempt at logical sequence. A month after the Convention had passed its decree the Queen's fate was still undecided. It was hoped that she might be useful . as a hostage, as a means of prevailing on Austria to end the war ; * for tentative negotiations had been opened with Brussels and Vienna, and it was thought that the head of the unhappy Queen might command a high price. It seems certain that her transference from the Temple to the Conciergerie was effected with the sole object of making the world believe that the prisoner was shortly to be tried ; and indeed from this moment every effort was made to spread a rumour that her execution was imminent. It was thought that by this means the foreign Powers might be roused from their indifference, and to save Marie Antoinette from the scaffold might perhaps be persuaded to make the advances that had been expected in vain for the last three months. The Committee of Public Safety for the mass of the Convention did not count and had no opinion regarded both the decree and the Queen's transference as a mere threat and nothing more. As for delivering her into the hands of Fouquier- Tinville, no one dared to take the responsibility. This sinister farce was wonderfully successful : not with the foreign Powers, who seemed to be in no way agitated ; but with the few active royalists in Paris who were still struggling to save the lives of their dead master's family. No sooner was Marie Antoinette removed to the Conciergerie, no sooner did it 145 L LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE appear plain that the fatal climax was drawing near, than a fresh series of courageous efforts was made on the prisoner's behalf. It was at this time that the adventurous, complicated Carnation Conspiracy was formed ; a subject into which we will not enter, having tried elsewhere to unravel the more complex parts of the story. 1 But this abortive effort only increased the perplexity of the Committee of Public Safety. The problem remained unchanged. What was to be done with this embarrassing hostage, since Austria did not seem inclined to redeem her? What would happen if some plot, better organised than the others, were to succeed in rescuing the prisoner ? The authorities knew very well they had cause to know that there was at that time a more powerful influence in France than all the committees put together : namely, money. A fearless man with large sums at his disposal might any day make himself the deus ex machind of the Revolution. Everything was sold to the highest bidder : from Gobel's abjuration, which was at this very moment being bargained for and finally cost 300,000 livres, 2 to the votes of the Convention, which Chabot undertook to secure if the funds were sufficient, and even to the re-capture of Toulon, which was valued at ten millions, but eventually cost only four. 3 These being the conditions, there was a great risk that the hostage that seemed so valuable might be lost, and nothing gained. But what was to be done ? It was during this period that the Committee of Public Safety held a secret sitting. It took place on the 2nd September, at eleven o'clock at night, and was held, not in the ordinary meeting-place in the Tuileries, but at the house of Pache, the Mayor of Paris. At this time, there was residing at Genoa, an Englishman called Francis Drake, through whom the British Government was kept informed almost daily of the state of public sentiment in France. This Drake forwarded to Lord Grenville the reports he received from Paris, reports that were actually indited, he declared, by a secretary of the Committee of Public Safety. 1 Perhaps we may be allowed to refer the reader to the authentic docu- ments connected with the plot, the examinations, inquiries, &c. , published in Le Vrai Chevalier de Maison Rouge, A. D. J. Gonzze de Rougeville, 1761-1814. 2 Historical Manuscripts Commission. The MSS. of J. B. Fortescue, Esq. , preserved at Dropmore. (Vol. II. , p. 463. ) 3 Ibid. (Vol. II., p. 487.) 146 THE CONCIERGERIE This tale of an English spy, living in constant correspondence with the members of the revolutionary government, would seem almost incredible if the documents were not there to bear evidence to the truth of the amazing melodrama. Now this spy was, so to speak, present during the following savage and horrible scene ; the souls of the men of the Terror were laid bare before him ; he heard them trafficking in heads and trading upon the fury of the Parisian mob ; and alas ! thanks to this informer the shameful spectacle was witnessed also in a foreign land, where those who saw it rejoiced that France had fallen so low. We will only quote from the minutes of this long sitting, which lasted throughout the night, such passages as bear directly on the subject with which we are concerned. " The insurrection of the 4th and 5th was resolved upon in its entirety. The arrest of 2,250 citizens at Paris was decided upon : the arrests to be carried out by the revolutionary army immediately on its formation : and it was decreed that Chantilly and Lisle- Adam should be filled with prisoners because it would be easy to get rid of them there quietly. "It was resolved to levy a hundred millions in cash and a list was given of those who could provide the money. " It was resolved that the Queen should die, as well as the followers of Brissot, and everyone who was arrested on the 31st May. " With regard to the Queen, Cambon remarked that Forgues said negotiations relating to her were going on with Brussels, Vienna, and Prussia, and that perhaps it might be possible by threatening, but postponing the trial, to derive considerable advantage from the affair. "Herault, Barrere, Jean Bon, Saint Andre, and Hebert rose in a fury to oppose this proposition : declaring that Louis XVII.'s life fulfilled this object in every particular ; that the Queen's blood was necessary as a means of associating the Revolutional Tribunal with the Convention, and making the town of Paris a partner in the destinies of the Convention, that the death of Capet was more particularly the act of the Convention, but that of the Queen would be the act of Paris and of the Revolutionary Tribunal and army. 147 L 2 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE " Hebert spoke still more strongly. " He said : ' I have promised Antoinette's head, and I shall go and cut it off myself if there is any delay about giving it to me. I have promised it in your name to the sansculottes who demand it, to those without whom you would cease to exist. The republican instinct prompts this wish of theirs to make themselves one with us by means of this expiatory sacrifice ; and yet you hesitate. But here am I, and I will make you decide. " ' I cannot see light where there is darkness, nor find roses where there are only daggers. " ' I do not know if you still have any hope of a Republic, or a Constitution, or of safety for yourselves ; but I do know that if you still have any such hope you are greatly deceived. You will all die ; it cannot be otherwise. " ' I do not know whether it was right or wrong to bring things to this pass ; but that is how things are. All your generals are betraying you, and they will all go on betraying you, and I should be the first to do so if I were your general and a man of less mark, and saw a good treaty to be made that would save my life ; but be sure that neither Pache nor I, nor any of the King's judges, will be able to save our lives. That could only be done by changing the face of Europe. It cannot be done now. " ' The Kings will injure themselves in their desire to crush us who shall crush them in twenty years' time. But none the less we shall die. France will be conquered. . . We shall all die, and so will all those who, like us, have played a pro- minent part. " ' If we were promised an amnesty it would be broken, simply because nothing else would be possible ; you would merely be stabbed or poisoned instead of being quartered. This being our position, then, we have nothing to live for but revenge. Our revenge may be immense. When we die let us leave the germs of death in our enemies, and in France such devastation that the mark of it will never be obliterated. To effect this you must satisfy the sansculottes ; they will kill all your enemies, but you must keep up their excitement by the death of Antoinette that is for them ; the death of the 148 THE CONCIERGEKIE Brissotins is for us and by pillaging the treasuries of our enemies. " ' Remember that the way to make them dare everything is to persuade them of the truth that I din into their ears every day : that in this crisis, whatever the event may be, their obscurity is their safeguard, and that we a.j responsible for everything. Thus they will help us heartily, for all the profits will be theirs and all the dangers ours. " ' That is all I need say to you to let you know what I think. 1 " Having said this, he went out, without a moment's delay. "After he left, 500,000 francs were given to Pache for the insurrection of the 4th, in assignats. " The public prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal was sent for, to be asked what he intended to do with regard to the Queen. " He said the jury must be renewed, for five jurymen were resolved to support her ; that a certain amount of riot would be necessary to overcome the fear of the Tribunal; that Dobsent was nervous, and had said that the poisoning of the Queen was the only way to be rid of that thorn in the side : and that he, the public prosecutor, would draw up the indictment with the Committee in any terms they chose." 1 This time the Queen's fate was fixed ; and all the more that, in the very hour that this discussion took place, the Carnation Conspiracy was discovered in the Conciergerie. The merest chance had prevented the escape of the prisoner, who had actually left her cell and was awaited in the Cour du Mai by a fictitious patrolling-party. And now we will return to the registrar's office in the prison of the Law Courts, and to the hour when Marie Antoinette arrived there in the night of the 2nd August, 1793. 1 Francis Drake to Lord Grenville. Schedule I. Historical Manuscripts Commission. The MSS. of J. B. For tescue, Esq., preserved at Dropmore. (Vol.IL,p. 457.) 149 THE NARRATIVE OF ROSALIE LAMORLIERE SERVANT AT THE CONCIERGERIE (AUGUST OCTOBER, 1793) THERE is no need for us to introduce Rosalie Lamorliere. The poor girl has no story, or rather, her whole biography is contained in the few pages that we are about to read. We must, however, draw attention to the fact that Rosalie, being quite illiterate, did not herself write her account of the Queen's last days. It is to the investigations of Lafont d'Aussonne that we owe this interesting narrative, and we must guard ourselves from too implicit a belief in all its details. For Lafont d'Aussonne was the author of a history of Marie Antoinette ; " he had finished the siege," 1 and in editing the recollections of this servant-girl he took care to omit everything that did not concur with his own views. It is even possible that he added a few apparently insignificant details of his own, which he thought might be useful as so many points gained for his own side. We shall be obliged to return to this subject elsewhere, so we shall not interrupt Rosalie's story, except by a few short notes. We shall presently show that, even if Lafont d'Aussonne, voluntarily or otherwise, made some mistakes in his version, the fundamental part of the tale is absolutely authentic, as Rosalie herself recognised and certified later on. 1 The historian Vertot, author of UHistoire de VOrdre de Malte, on receiving certain special information with regard to the siege of Rhodes, said he was sorry he could make no use of it, as he had "finished the siege." (Translator's Note.) 150 CapUR DES PETITE COUH A n coalrefea* PLAN OF PART OF THE CONCIERGERIE IN 1793. Traced in accordance with the narratives, evi- dence, and memoirs of Beugnot, Riouffe, Rosa- lie Lamorliere, Micho- nis, Rougeville, etc., etc., the plans of the Law Courts, documents in the National Archives, etc. A. Door of a guardhouse under- neath the main entrance to the Law Courts. B. Entrance of the prison. a. First door. b. Second door. C. Room used by the Gaoler Richard. D. Spot where the hair of con- demned prisoners was cut off and sold. E. Registrar's Office. c. Glazed partition or wooden grating. d. Pigeon-holes containing the dossiers. F. The back-office. e. Bench. G. Rooms where the turnkeys slept. H. Council Room (Marie Antoinette's first cell). I. Small rooms where women condemned to death spent the night. J. Room of the gendarmes guarding the Queen. K. The Queen's second cell THE QUEEN'S TWO CELLS IN THE CONCIERGERIE. 151 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE Declaration of Rosalie Lamorliere, Native of Breteuil in Picardy, Servant in the Conciergerie during the Imprisonment of Marie Antoinette. I was employed, in the capacity of lady^s maid, by Madame Beaulieu, the mother of the celebrated actor, when King Louis XVI. was condemned to die upon the scaffold. Madame Beaulieu, who was at that time both infirm and ill, nearly died of grief when she heard he had been con- demned, and she cried out over and over again : " Unjust and barbarous people, the day will come when you shall shed tears of despair upon the grave of this good King ! " Madame Beaulieu died soon after the September massacres 1 ; and her son then confided me to the care of Madame Richard, wife of the gaoler at the Law Courts. At first I felt a great dislike to taking a situation with a gaoler ; but M. Beaulieu, who was, as is well known, a good royalist, and in his legal capacity was going to defend the victims of the Revolutionary Tribunal without any fee, begged me to accept this place because, he said, I should find opportunities of being useful to numbers of worthy people who were confined in the Conciergerie. He promised to come and see me as often as he could, for his theatre, the Theatre de la Cite, was only a few steps away. 2 My new mistress, Madame Richard, had not the education of Madame Beaulieu, but she had the same gentleness of dis- position, and as she had been a dealer in ladies 1 wardrobes she was naturally inclined to cleanliness both in her house and in her person. At this time it took a great deal of capability to manage a huge prison like the Conciergerie, yet I never saw my mistress perplexed. She answered everyone in few words ; 1 This gives us some idea of Lafont d'Aussonne's method of working. If Madame Beaulieu died soon after the massacres of September (1792) she cannot have nearly died of grief at the King's execution in January, 1793, as is said to have been the case a few lines back. The apostrophe to the unjust and barbarous people, then, was invented by Lafont d'Aussonne. 2 It is quite true that the theatre in which Beaulieu acted was at the corner formed by the Rue de la Vieille-Draperie and the Rue de la Barillerie, exactly opposite to the gate of the Law Courts. 152 NARRATIVE OF ROSALIE LAMORLIERE she gave orders with absolute clearness ; she never slept for more than a few minutes at a time, and nothing occurred within or without the prison of which she was not immediately informed. Her husband, though not so capable in business matters, was painstaking and hard- working. I gradually became attached to this family, because I saw they did not disapprove of the pity I felt for the poor prisoners of that dreadful time. After dinner on the 1st August, 1793, Madame Richard said to me in a low voice : " Rosalie, we shall not go to bed to-night. You shall sleep on a chair. The Queen is going to be moved from the Temple to this prison." Immediately afterwards I heard her giving orders for General Custine's removal from the Council Room, 1 so that the Queen might be put into it. A turnkey was despatched to the store-keeper of the prison, Bertaud, who lived in the Cour de la Sainte- Chapelle. He was asked for a folding bedstead, two mattresses, a bolster, a light coverlet, and a basin. This slight supply of furniture was placed in the damp room that M. de Custine was leaving. A common table and two prison chairs were added. Such were the preparations made to receive the Queen of France. At about three o'clock in the morning I was sitting in an arm-chair, half asleep, when Madame Richard pulled my arm and woke me suddenly, saying : " Come, Rosalie, come, wake up ! Take this candlestick they are coming ! " I went downstairs, trembling, and followed Madame Richard to M. de Custine's cell, which was at the end of a long dark passage. The Queen was already there. A number of gendarmes stood before her door on the outside. Several officers and prison officials were inside the room, and were 1 Historians have not been able to agree as to the situation of this Council Room, and have given up trying to determine where it was. The enigma seems fairly easy to solve, however. According to the descriptions of Rosalie Lamorliere and other eye-witnesses the entrance to this room was at the end of a passage, and was lighted by a low window almost on a level with the Cour des Femmes. Well, there is but one, and judging by the old plans there never has been more than one, room in the Conciergerie that answers to this description. It is now the canteen of the prison. The Queen was there from the morning of the 3rd August till the 13th or 14th September, that is to say for forty days. 153 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE talking together in low voices. The day was beginning to dawn. Instead of registering the Queen's name in the office with the glass partition, to the left of the entrance-hall, 1 they registered it in her cell. This formality being completed, everyone went out except Madame Richard and myself, who remained alone with the Queen. The weather was hot. I remarked the drops of perspiration that ran down the Queen's face, which she wiped two or three times with her handkerchief. She looked round with astonished eyes at the horrible emptiness of the room, and with a certain amount of interest at the gaoler's wife and myself. Then, standing on a cloth-covered stool that I had brought her from my room, the Queen hung her watch upon a nail that she saw in the wall, and began to undress to go to bed. I went forward respectfully and offered her my assistance. " No, thank you, my good girl," she answered, without a sign of sullenness or pride ; " since I have been without anyone to help me I have done everything for myself." The daylight was growing. We took away our candles, and the Queen lay down in a bed that was certainly very unfit for her, though we had at least provided her with very fine linen and a pillow. When morning came two gendarmes were posted in the Queen's room, and she was also provided with a servant in the person of a woman of nearly eighty years old, who was, as I have learnt since, at one time the concierge of the Admiralty Court in this very building of the Law Courts. Her son, who was about twenty-four or twenty-five years of age, was one of the turnkeys of our prison. (Her name was Lariviere.) 2 During the first forty days 3 I had nothing to do in the Queen's room. I only went there with Madame Richard or her husband to carry in the breakfast at nine o'clock, and the dinner, which was generally at two o'clock or half-past. Madame Richard laid the table, and I, to show my respect, 1 See the plan, p. 151. 2 See page 238, the narrative of the turnkey, this woman's son. 3 That is to say, until the 13th September when the Queen was moved to another cell. 154 PASSAGE LEADING TO THE QUEEN'S FIRST CELL IN THE CONCIERGERIE.- ACTUAL CONDITION. DRAWN ON THE SPOT BY GERARDIN. 155 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE stood near the door. But Her Majesty deigned to notice this, and did me the honour of saying : " Come nearer, Rosalie ; do not be afraid." Old Madame Lariviere, after having patched and mended the Queen's black dress very neatly, was considered unfit for her post. She returned to her home near the old Admiralty Court, and was at once replaced by a young woman called Harel, whose husband was employed in the police depart- ment. 1 The Queen had shown confidence in the old woman, and evidently had some regard for her. She did not think so well of her successor, and hardly ever spoke a word to her. The two gendarmes (who were always the same 2 ) were 1 To these details we may add the following sketch, drawn by another witness. "During the early days of the month of August, 1793, a turnkey from the Conciergerie came to fetch me, for I was the glazier employed in the prison and the Law Courts. He told me, in the gaoler's name, to bring two panes of glass of a medium size, and to follow him without delay. " When I entered the large vestibule, where I heard I was to be taken to the Queen's cell, I was seized by a sudden feeling of pity, and I left my hat there, so as to appear more respectful. * ' When I went into her cell, which was a little low room of about fourteen feet square, I saw the Queen sitting in front of her bed, with her eyes fixed upon her work. Two gendarmes, armed with swords and muskets, were in the opposite corner, with their faces towards the Queen ; and a woman of the people, seated between the Queen's chair and the door, fixed her eyes upon me attentively. ' ' While I was putting my first pane into one of the window-frames the sound of a harp came from the upper floors of the prison. Her Majesty laid down her work and listened to the music, which seemed to please her, I thought. Then this great princess said to me : ' Monsieur le vitrier, do you think that the harp we hear is being played by some woman in the prison ? ' " ' Madame,' I answered her at once, ' the person who is playing that instrument does not belong to the prison. She is the daughter of one of the registrars ' I was about to add ' of one of the tribunals of the Seine,' but the woman Arel, with a look of great irritation, signed to me in an imperious way that reduced me to silence. " The Queen saw by my face that an order of this kind had been con- veyed to me. She did not say another word, and lowered her eyes." (Deposition of the Sieur Orens. Memoire au Roi, by Lafont d'Aussonne, 1825.) 2 This parenthesis is certainly interpolated by Lafont d'Aussonne. We shall see how important it was for him that these gendarmes should have been always the same. As Rosalie had given their names as Dufrene and Gilbert he hoped to be able to refute the believers in The Queen's Communion at the Conciergerie, who affirmed, with the Abbe Mangnin as their authority, that these men were called Prud'homme and Lamarche. It is quite certain, on the contrary, that the gendarmes who guarded the 156 NARRATIVE OF ROSALIE LAMORLIERE called Dufrene and Gilbert. The latter seemed rougher than his companion the corporal. Sometimes Her Majesty, in her intense weariness of doing nothing, would go up to them while we were laying the table, and would watch them playing cards for a few moments, while Madame Richard or the gaoler was present. One day Madame Richard brought into the cell her youngest child, who had fair hair, very pretty blue eyes, and a charming face that was much more refined than is common in his class of life. He was known as Fan/an. When the Queen saw this fine little boy she was obviously greatly moved. She took him in her arms, covered him with kisses and caresses, and bursting into tears began to talk to us about M. le Dauphin, who was of about the same age. She thought of him night and day. This incident was most painful to her, and after we had gone upstairs again Madame Richard told me nothing would induce her to take her little boy into the cell again. About the middle of September a most unfortunate thing happened, which did the Queen a great deal of harm. An officer in the army called M. de Rougeville was brought into her cell in disguise by a municipal officer named Michonis. The former (who was known to the Queen) dropped a carnation on the hem of her skirt, and I have heard it said that the flower concealed a paper on which were written the details of a conspiracy. The woman Harel saw everything, and reported the matter to Fouquier-Tinville, who came into the prison every night before twelve o'clock. The two gendarmes were also questioned. The Government thought there was a wide- spread plot in Paris for helping the Queen to escape, and immediately issued orders that were more severe and a hundred times more terrible than any previous ones. M. Richard, his wife, and their eldest son were confined in the prisons of Sainte-Pelagie and the Madelonnettes. The woman Harel prisoner were not always the same. We shall see presently that Rosalie speaks of an officer being on guard in the Queen's room. This officer was not Gilbert, who was an ordinary gendarme, nor yet Dufrene, whose functions were those of a corporal. Nor were Gilbert and Dufrene on duty on the morning of the 16th October. Moreover Rosalie says later on : The two gendarmes were removed from the Queen's cell. 157 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE disappeared. The two gendarmes were removed from the Queen's cell, and a man called Lebeau, 1 the head gaoler at La Force, was appointed to be the new gaoler at the Law Courts. At first sight Lebeau seemed hard and stern, but he was not a bad man at heart. The directors of the prison told him I was to remain there in his employ as cook, because they had no reason to distrust me, and I meddled with nothing in the house but my own business. They added, however, that I was no longer to go to market as in Madame Richard's time, and was to be kept within the confines of the Con- ciergerie, like the gaoler and his young daughter Victoire (now Madame Colson, living at Montfort 1'Amaury). It was decided that Lebeau was to be answerable with his life for the Queen's person, and that he alone was to have the use of the key of her cell. He was never to enter it except when absolutely necessary, and then was always to be accom- panied by the officer of constabulary on duty, or by the corporal. A sentinel was posted in the little Cour des Femmes^ which the Queen's room overlooked, and as her two little windows were nearly on a level with the pavement the sentinel, as he passed to and fro, could easily see everything that took place inside the room. Although Her Majesty had no communication with anyone in the Conciergerie, she was not in ignorance of the misfortune that had befallen her first gaoler and his family. Some members of the Committee of General Security had paid her a visit, and had questioned her with regard to Michonis and 1 Lafont d'Aussonne always persisted in calling Richard's successor Lebeau. His name was Bault. At least, he signed himself so. It was on the 1 1th September that Richard and his family were lodged in the Madelonnettes. It seems certain that they showed great devotion to the Queen. Montjoye writes as follows : "I was entirely successful in gaining over Richard, whom from the first I found to be influenced by sentiments superior to his condition in life. I persuaded him to consent to every- thing I could desire for the well-being of the Queen. I began by appointing myself librarian to the Queen, who, as I shall always remember, declared that she enjoyed reading the most appalling adventures. . . . The Queen began by reading Un Voyage a Venise, which seemed to please her because she found people mentioned in it whom she had known in her childhood at the Court of Vienna. After this she embarked upon L'Histoire des Nauf rages fameux." 158 NARRATIVE OF ROSALIE LAMORLI&RE the carnation, 1 and I heard that she had answered all the questions with the greatest caution. When Lebeau entered the Queen's room for the first time, I went with him, carrying the soup that Madame usually had for breakfast. She looked at Lebeau, who, in accordance with the fashion of the day, was dressed in the garment called a Carmagnole. The collar of his shirt was open and turned back, but his head was bare. Holding his keys in his hand, he stood close to the wall near the door. The Queen removed her night-cap, took a chair, and said to me pleasantly : " Rosalie, you must put up my chignon for me to-day." On hearing these words the gaoler ran forward, seized the comb, and, pushing me aside, said in a loud voice : " Leave it alone, leave it alone ; that is my business." The Queen, greatly surprised, looked at Lebeau with an air of indescribable majesty. " I thank you, no," she said to him. Then, rising from her chair, she arranged her hair herself, and put on her cap. Ever since she had been in the Conciergerie her hair had been dressed in the simplest way. She parted it on her fore- head after sprinkling it with a little scented powder. Madame Harel bound the hair at the end with a piece of white ribbon about a yard in length, knotted the ribbon tightly and gave the two ends of it to Madame, who crossed them herself, and by fastening them on the top of her head gave her hair the shape of a loose chignon. Her hair was fair, not red. On the day that she declined Lebeau's help, and resolved in future to arrange her hair herself, Her Majesty took from the table the roll of white ribbon that was left over, and said to me, with an expression of melancholy friendliness that went to my heart : " Rosalie, take this ribbon, and keep it always in memory of me." The tears came to my eyes, and as I thanked Madame I made her a curtsey. When the gaoler and I were in the passage he took posses- sion of my ribbon, and when we reached his room upstairs he said : " I am very sorry to have annoyed that poor woman, 1 We have quoted the text of this examination in Le Vrai Chevalier de Maison-Rouge A. D. J. Gonzze de Rougeville. We venture to refer the reader to that work. 159 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE but my position is so difficult that the least thing is enough to frighten me. I cannot forget that my comrade Richard and his wife are in a prison cell. In heaven's name, Rosalie, do nothing imprudent, or I am lost." When, during the night of the 2nd August, the Queen arrived from the Temple, I noticed that no kind of under- clothes nor other garments had been brought with her. On the morrow, and on every following day, this unfortunate princess asked for some linen, but Madame Richard, fearing to compromise herself, did not dare to lend her any, or procure any for her. At last the municipal officer, Michonis, who was a good fellow at heart, went to the Temple, and on the tenth day a parcel was brought from the Tower. The Queen opened it without delay. It contained some beautiful cambric chemises, some pocket-handkerchiefs, some fichus, some stockings of black silk or filoselle, a white wrapper to wear in the morning, some night-caps, and several pieces of ribbon of various widths. Madame was quite touched at the sight of this linen, and turning to Madame Richard and me she said : " From the careful way in which all these things are arranged, I can recognise the though tfulness and the hand of my poor sister Elizabeth." When Her Majesty came to the prison she was wearing her large mourning-cap, her widow's headdress. One day she said to Madame Richard, in my presence : " Madame, I should be glad, if it were possible, to have two caps instead of one, so as to be able to change. Would you have the kindness to give my headdress to the sempstress you employ ? There is, I think, enough lawn in it to make two simple caps." Madame Richard carried out the Queen's commission with- out any difficulty ; and when we brought her the two perfectly simple new caps she seemed satisfied with them, and turning to me was good enough to say : " Rosalie, I have nothing now that I can give away ; but I should like, child, to give you this wire frame and this piece of lawn that the sempstress has returned." I curtsied humbly as I thanked Madame ; and I still have the piece of lawn that she did me the honour of giving me. I showed it, twenty-nine or thirty years ago, to the Boze 160 NARRATIVE OF ROSALIE LAMORLIERE ladies when they came to see their prisoner 1 at the Con- ciergerie ; and they covered these remnants of material with tears and kisses. The Queen suffered from one great privation. She was not allowed to have any kind of needle, and she particularly liked occupation and work. I noticed that from time to time she pulled out the coarse threads of the canvas that served as a wall-paper and was nailed along the walls on wooden frames ; and with these threads, which she .polished with her hand, she made a kind of braid, and made it very evenly too, using her knee for a cushion and some pins for needles. Her taste for flowers had been, by her own confession, a veritable passion. At first we used now and then to put a bouquet on her little oak table, but M. Lebeau did not dare to countenance this indulgence. He was so much afraid of me for the first few days after he arrived that he had a large screen made, seven feet high, with a view to hiding the prisoner from me while I was bringing in the meals or clean- ing the room. I saw this screen, but it was never used for this purpose. Lebeau contented himself with the one we gave the Queen in Madame Richard's time, which was only four feet high. This was used as a kind of curtain beside the Queen's bed, and separated her in some degree from the gendarmes while she was occupied with her toilet, which the barbarity of those in authority forbade her to perform in private ! A convict called Barassin 2 was employed for part of the menial work in her room. . . . When she rose in the morning she put on some little low slippers, and every second day I brushed her pretty black prunella shoes, whose heels were made a la Saint-Huberty, about two inches high. Sometimes the gaoler was called away to see about something urgent and indispensable in con- nection with the prison, and at such times he left me in the constabulary officer's charge. One day, to my astonishment, 1 Boze was a painter of some repute. The Boze ladies kept up their relations with Rosalie Lamorliere until after the Revolution of 1830. (Seepage 177.) 2 I believe that this convict, who is supposed to have been one of the moutons of the Conciergerie, that is to say one of the spies charged with denouncing the prisoners, was a relation of Madame Richard. For her maiden name was M. A. Barassin. 161 M LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE this officer took up one of the Queen's shoes himself, and using the point of his sword, scratched off the mildew that came from the damp bricks, as I was myself doing with my knife. The imprisoned priests and nobles watched our pro- ceedings from the yard, through the grating that divided us from them. Seeing that this officer of constabulary was a good fellow, they implored me to come close to them, so that they might see the Queen's shoe near at hand. They took it from me, and passing it from hand to hand, they covered it with kisses. Madame Richard, on account of a law that had just been passed, had hidden all her plate. On the Queen's table, therefore, the plates and dishes were of tin, 1 which I kept as clean and well-polished as I possibly could. Her Majesty had a fairly good appetite. She cut her chicken in two : that is to say, it sufficed her for two days. She stripped the bones with incredible ease and care. She never left any of the vegetables that composed her second course. 1 Dossier F76711 in the National Archives contains a curious letter, written in 1816 by the Sieur Dufengray, private secretary to the Prefect of the Somme. "In 1793," he says, "three or four days after the Queen's death, the too-famous Chaumette, Procureur of the Commune of Paris, brought to Mdme. Cornu, a woman who dealt in toys and turnery in the Rue Saint-Barthelemy, at the sign of the Main cTOr, a tin plate which the Queen had used at her meals throughout her imprisonment in the Conciergerie, and on which she had written in circles, from the centre to the circumference, on the inside in Italian and on the outside in German. The reason Chaumette took this plate to Mme. Cornu was that he wished her to have a sort of tripod made to hold this trophy, which was then to be put under glass. The plate was with Mme. Cornu for an hour, at the end of which time Chaumette came to fetch it again, saying that he had changed his mind." On receiving this letter Louis XVIII. ordered a search to be made. The police made inquiries, and at No. 34 Rue des Bernardins found Mme. Cornu, extremely old, infirm and decrepit, living with her daughter. They both remembered the tin plate, which was, they declared, covered with Greek characters traced in circles, with several French words, notably these : Aux meres malheureuses. Chaumette had brought it, and had said to them : " It is the plate used by the Queen in the Conciergerie ; I wish to keep it ; make a stand for it so that it can be seen on both sides." And at the same time he ordered a vase, in which, he declared, the ashes of a great man (?) were to be kept. The plate re- mained for three or four months with Mme. Cornu and her daughter without their taking the work in hand. One of their workmen wished to copy the characters traced by the Queen, but was forbidden to do so. Chaumette came back about a week before his death, and took away this precious relic. No one knows v. ho became possessed of it. 162 NARRATIVE OF ROSALIE LAMORLIERE When she had finished she said grace in a very low voice ; then rose, and began to walk about. This was the signal for our departure. After the affair of the carnation I was for- bidden to leave so much as a glass at her disposal. One day M. de Saint-Leger, the American, who was coming from the registrar's office and was on his way to the yard with his companions, noticed that I was carrying a glass half filled with water. The Creole said to me : " Did the Queen drink the water that has gone from this glass ? " I answered that she did. With a quick gesture M. de Saint-Leger uncovered his head and drank the water that remained, with every indication of respect and pleasure. Her Majesty, as I have said already, had neither chest of drawers nor cupboard in her room. When her little stock of linen arrived from the Temple she asked for a box to put it in, to keep it from the dust. Madame Richard did not dare to repeat this request to the prison authorities, but she per- mitted me to lend a cardboard box to the Queen, who welcomed it with as much pleasure as if she had been given the most beautiful piece of furniture in the world. The prison system at that time did not allow looking- glasses to be supplied, and every morning Madame repeated her request for one. Madame Richard permitted me to lend my little glass to the Queen. To offer it to her made me blush, for the mirror had been bought on the quays, and had cost me no more than twenty-five sous in assignats. I seem to see it still. It was edged with red, and had Chinese faces painted on each side of it. The Queen accepted this little glass as though it were quite an important affair, and Her Majesty used it till the last day of her life. As long as Madame Richard was there the Queen's meals were prepared with care, and indeed I might say with refine- ment. Everything that was bought for her was the best of its kind, and in the market there were three or four women who knew the gaoler well by sight, and gave him their tenderest chickens and their finest fruit. " For our Queen, 1 ' they said with tears. After Richard and his family were sent to prison we no longer went to market ourselves, but the tradespeople came 163 M 2 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE to the Law Courts and spread out the articles of food, one by one, in the presence of the police and the corporal. The Queen, when she saw the new kind of dinner that was prepared for her, perceived at once that the affair of the car- nation had changed everything. But she never allowed a word of complaint to escape her. I brought her nothing but her soup and two other dishes. (Every day there was a dish of vegetables, and this was followed by chicken and veal alternately.) But I prepared these things to the best of my ability. Madame, whose love of cleanliness and daintiness was excessive, looked at my table-linen, which was always spotless, and seemed to be thanking me mutely for my con- sideration for her. Sometimes she gave me her glass to fill. She drank nothing but water, and had drunk nothing else at Versailles, as she sometimes recalled in talking to us. I admired the beauty of her hands, whose charm and whiteness were indescribable. Without moving the table she took up her position between it and the bed. I was then able to see the delicacy of all her features, which were clearly visible in the light from the window ; and one day I noticed here and there a few very slight marks of small-pox so slight that they were imper- ceptible at a distance of four or five yards. In Lebeau's time Madame did her hair every day in his presence and mine, while I was making her bed and spreading out her dress on a chair. I noticed patches of white hair on her temples. There was none on the top of her head nor in the rest of her hair. Her Majesty told us that this was due to her distress on the 6th October. Madame de Lamarliere, who is still alive and residing in Paris, begged me more than once in Madame Richard's time to procure some of the Queen's hair for her to put in a locket. I might easily have done this, for Her Majesty cut her hair from time to time. After the affair of the carnation Madame de Lamarliere was unable for a long time to obtain permission to see her husband, who was a prisoner. Before the disgrace of Richard's family the Queen's washing had been done by Madame Saulieu, our ordinary laundress, 164 NARRATIVE OF ROSALIE LAMORLIERE whose house was a few yards from the Archbishop's palace. After the unlucky business of the carnation our laundress did not come any more. The registrar of the Revolutionary Tribunal took away the Queen's personal linen, except her caps and fichus, and it seems that her chemises were only doled out to her one by one at long intervals. . . She asked me privately for some underlinen, and I at once put some of my chemises under her bolster. On the fourth day after her arrival at the Conciergerie the prison authorities took away her watch, which she had brought from Germany when she came here to be Dauphine. I was not with her when this unpleasant incident took place, but Madame Richard spoke of it in our room, and said the Queen had wept bitterly when she was made to give up this gold watch. Fortunately the commissioners did not know that she wore a very valuable oval locket, hung round her neck, by a thin black cord. This locket contained some of the young King's curly hair, and a portrait of him. It was wrapped in a little yellow kid glove, which had been worn by M. le Dauphin. The Queen, when she came from the Temple, had still two pretty diamond rings and her wedding-ring. The two diamond rings, though she was unconscious of the fact, formed a sort of plaything for her. As she sat dreaming, she would take them off and put them on again, and slip them from one hand to the other several times in a minute. After the affair of the carnation her little room was in- spected several times : her drawer was opened, her person searched, and her chairs and table overturned. The wretches who did this saw the glitter of the diamonds in her two rings, and took them away from her, telling her they would be returned to her when everything was over. After this she was liable to receive unexpected visits of this kind in her cell at any hour of the day or night : and the architects and the prison authorities were perpetually coming to make sure that the iron bars and the walls were perfectly secure. I could see that they were constantly in a state of perplexity. They said to each other : u Could 165 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE she not escape this way, or escape that way?" They allowed neither us nor themselves a single moment of relaxation. Their fear of treachery within or of some surprise from without kept them constantly about us in the Conciergerie. They ate their meals unceremoniously at the gaoler's table, and every day I was obliged to prepare a large supply of food for fifteen or eighteen of these people. I once heard Madame Richard say : " The Queen does not expect to be tried. She still hopes her relations will insist on her being given up to them : she told me so with the most charming candour. If she leaves us, Rosalie, you will be her lady's maid ; she will take you with her." After the affair of the carnation the Queen seemed to me to be anxious, and much more alarmed than before. She thought deeply, and sighed, as she walked to and fro in the cell. One day she noticed, in a room barred with iron opposite to her own windows, a prisoner, a woman, praying with clasped hands and eyes raised to heaven. " Rosalie," said this noble, good princess to me, " look up there at that poor nun : how earnestly she is praying to God!" No doubt the nun was praying for the Queen. The ladies in the prison spent all their time in this way. My father came from the country to see me. As no one had been allowed to enter the prison since the Carnation Conspiracy he had the greatest difficulty in obtaining leave to see me, and was escorted to my very room. M. Lebeau said to him : " I am forbidden to receive visits or allow others to receive them. My own family does not come in here. Do not be more than four or five minutes with your daughter, and, my good fellow, do not come again." I was not even able to offer my father any refreshment. Showing him a fowl that was on the spit I said to him in a low voice : "That is for the poor Queen, whom we have here." My father sighed ; and we parted. One day while I was making the Queen's bed I dropped the day's paper, which I had tucked under my fichu ; and I discovered what I had done when we were upstairs again 166 NARRATIVE OF ROSALIE LAMORLIERE in our rooms. I was greatly troubled, and confessed to M. Lebeau what had happened. He was much more disturbed than I, for he was naturally timid. " Come quickly," he said, " come back to the cell. Take that bottle of fresh water, which we will change for the other. T see no way out of this!" We had to apply to the gendarmes again : then we went into the Queen's room, and I found my newspaper, which she had not noticed. The Queen, who had suffered much discomfort from the heat of the month of August, suffered equally from the cold 1 and damp of the first fifteen days of October. She complained of it in her gentle way ; and as for me, I was mortally distressed that I could do nothing to lessen her suffering. I never failed in the evening to take her night-dress from under the bolster, and run up to our own room to warm it well. Then I replaced it under the bolster, together with the large fichu that the Queen wore at night. She noticed these little attentions, which were the natural outcome of my loyalty and respect, and she thanked me for them with a glance as full of friendliness as if I had done more than my simple duty. She had never been allowed any lamp or candle, and I prolonged as much as possible the various little preparations for the night, so that my revered mistress might not be left in solitude and darkness until the latest moment possible. As a rule she had no light by which to go to bed except the feeble glimmer of the distant lamp in the Cour des Femmes. On the 12th October, about two hours after she had gone to bed, the judges of the Tribunal came to subject her to a strict examination ; and the next morning, when I went to make her bed, I found her walking rapidly to and fro in her wretched cell. I felt as though my heart would break, and dared not let my eyes dwell on her. 1 When Girard, the constitutional curt of Saint- Landry, went into the Queen's cell on the 16th October, to accompany her to the scaffold, he found her quite numb, and complaining "that her feet were deadly cold." Girard advised her to lay her pillow upon her feet, and the Queen took his advice. 167 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE For several days previous to this she had no longer been alone. 1 An officer had been put into her cell to watch her. At last that terrible day, the 15th October, dawned. By eight o'clock in the morning she had gone up into the Court to suffer the ordeal of her trial, and as I do not remember taking any sort of food to her on that day it would seem that she was made to go up there fasting. During the morning I heard some people discussing the trial. " Marie Antoinette will get out of it," they said ; " she answered like an angel : she will only be banished." At about four o'clock in the afternoon the gaoler said to me : " The proceedings are suspended for three-quarters of an hour, but the prisoner will not come down. Go up there quickly : they are asking for some broth." I instantly took up some excellent soup that I was keeping in reserve on my range, and went up to find the Queen. As I was on the point of entering the room where she was a superintendent of police called Labuzire, a little man with a broken nose, snatched the bowl of soup from my hands and gave it to his mistress, a young woman who was greatly over-dressed. " This young woman," he said to me, u is extremely anxious to see the Widow Capet, and this is a grand opportunity for her to do so." Whereupon the woman went off carrying the soup, half of which was spilt. It was in vain that I begged and implored Labuziere : he was all-powerful and I was obliged to submit. What must the Queen have thought when she received her bowl of soup from the hands of a stranger ! At a few minutes past four on the morning of the 16th October we were told that the Queen of France was con- demned. I felt as though a sword had pierced my heart, and I went to cry in my own room, smothering my groans and sobs. The gaoler was grieved to hear of the sentence, but he was more accustomed to such things than I, and he affected to be unconcerned. At about seven o'clock in the morning he told me to go down 1 This tends to prove that since she had been moved into her new cell, that is to say, since the 13th September, the Queen had no longer been watched by gendarmes. 168 NARRATIVE OF ROSALIE LAMORLIERE to the Queen and ask her if she required anything to eat. As I entered the cell, where two lights were burning, I perceived an officer of constabulary sitting in the left-hand corner, and as I drew near to Madame I saw she was stretched upon her bed, dressed all in black. Her face was turned towards the window, and she was supporting her head with her hand. " Madame," I said to her tremblingly, "you ate nothing yesterday evening, and hardly anything during the day. What would you like to have this morning?" The Queen was weeping bitterly. She answered : "I shall never need anything again, my girl : everything is over for me." I took the liberty of persisting. " Madame," I said, " I have kept some broth and some vermicelli on the range : you require support : let me bring you something." The Queen, weeping still more bitterly than before, said to me : " Rosalie, bring me some broth." I went to fetch it. She sat up, but could hardly swallow a mouthful or two. I declare before Heaven that she took no more nourishment than that A little time before it was broad daylight a priest came to the Queen, with the sanction of the Government, and offered to hear her confession. Her Majesty, hearing from himself that he had a cure in Paris, understood that he had taken the oath, and refused his ministrations. The incident was discussed in the prison. When it was daylight, that is to say at about eight o'clock in the morning, I went back to Madame to help her to dress, as she had told me to do when she took the drop of broth sitting on her bed. Her Majesty went into the little space that I usually left between the folding bed and the wall. She herself unfolded a chemise that had probably been brought to her in my absence, and having signed to me to stand in front of her bed so as to hide her from the gendarme, she stooped down behind the bed, and slipped off her dress in order to change her underlinen for the last time. The officer of gendarmerie came forward instantly, and standing by the head of the bed watched the Queen's proceedings. Her Majesty quickly threw her fichu over her shoulders, and 169 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE with the greatest gentleness said to the young man : " In the name of decency, monsieur, let me change my linen without being watched." " It is impossible for me to allow it," answered the gen- darme roughly ; " my orders are to keep my eye on you, whatever you are doing." The Queen sighed, slipped her chemise over her head for the last time as cautiously and modestly as possible, and then dressed herself, not in the long black dress that she wore before her judges, but in the loose white gown that she usually wore in the morning. Then, unfolding her large muslin fichu, she crossed it under her chin. I was so much disturbed by the gendarme's brutality that I did not notice whether the Queen still had M. le Dauphin's portrait, but I was glad to see that she carefully rolled up her soiled chemise, slipping it into one of her sleeves as though into a sheath, and then squeezing it into a space that caught her eye, between the old canvas on the wall and the wall itself. On the previous day, knowing that she was going to appear in public and before her judges, she had raised her hair a little, for the sake of appearances. She had also fastened to her lawn cap, with its little plaited trimming at the edge, the two hanging lappets that she kept in the cardboard box ; and under these mourning lappets she had neatly fastened a piece of black crape, which made her a pretty widow's head-dress. To go to the scaffold she wore only the simple lawn cap, with no lappets nor other sign of mourning; but having only one pair of shoes 1 she kept on her black stockings and prunella shoes, which were neither out of shape nor spoilt, though she had worn them for the seventy-six days that she had been with us. I left her without daring to say a word of farewell, or make a single curtsey to her, for I feared to compromise or distress her. I went away to my own room to cry, and to pray for her. 1 M. Campardon observes that Rosalie was mistaken, for the inventory taken after Marie Antoinette's death mentions one pair of new shoes and two pairs of old ones. 170 NARRATIVE OF ROSALIE LAMORLIERE When she had left this hateful building, the chief usher of the Tribunal, accompanied by three or four men employed, like himself, in the Courts, came to the gaoler and asked for me. He told me to follow him to the Queen's cell, where he allowed me to take possession of my looking-glass and my cardboard box. As for the other things that had belonged to Her Majesty, he told me to wrap them up in a sheet. The men made me put everything into the bundle, even a straw that had been dropped, I do not know how, on the floor of the room ; and they carried off these wretched spoils of the best and most unhappy princess that ever lived ! P.S. About ten or eleven days before the trial, a certain constabulary officer, in whom she seemed to have great con- fidence, had been placed on guard in her cell. His name was de Bune, and it was he who, during the trial, took her a glass of water, which drew down upon him a great deal of persecution. He was arrested and tried. I was shown a portrait of him a little time ago, in a room at the Quatre-Nations. It is very good I recognised it instantly. 171 NOTES BY MONSEIGNEUR DE SALAMON (1796) IN the Souvenirs de I' Internonce a Paris pendant la Revolution 1 there are to be found a few details that complete the story of Rosalie Lamorliere. Monseigneur de Salamon, being confined in the Conciergerie in 1796, renewed there his acquaintance with the gaoler Richard, whom he had known in the days of the old regime, when he was in the habit of inspecting prisons as a Commissioner of the Court. " I shall have to make you sleep under lock and key,"" said this good fellow to me ; " but during the day you can be in my rooms, you can have your meals with me, and you can see anyone you like, as long as you tell people to apply to me. . . . And you shall have a stove in your room, and you shall sleep on the two mattresses of that poor woman " he meant the Queen " who died on the scaffold. . . . They cost me a great deal," he added ; " it was for having bought them that I had six months 1 imprisonment in the Madelonnettes." Richard's cook was a woman who deserved to live in a better place ; ... it was she who brushed Her Majesty's boots every morning. " And they were so dirty," she said, " because of the dampness of the prison, that one would have thought the Queen had just been walking in the Rue Saint-Honore." She also described to me how the nobles who were at that time imprisoned in the Conciergerie came every morning, 1 Published by Plon. 172 NOTES BY MONSEIGNEUR DE SALAMON during their daily walk, to kiss the shoes of that unhappy princess. This was the same servant who, when she saw that the Queen was going to the scaffold without either cap or fichu, placed on her head a cotton cap that was quite new for she had herself put it on for the first time that morning, and threw her own handkerchief round the Queen's shoulders. 1 . . . I secretly confided to this servant how much I recoiled from the idea of going into my prison, and above all from being left in there under lock and key. She lost no time in repeating this to her master, and persuaded him to have the door opened at daybreak. On the first morning that I benefited from this measure a pug dog came into the room as the door opened, and after jumping on my bed and exploring it all over, ran out again. This was the Queen's pug, which Richard had obtained pos- session of, and treated with the greatest care. The dog's object in coming in like that was to smell his mistress's mat- tresses. I saw him behave in this way every morning at the same hour, for three whole months, and in spite of all my efforts I was never able to catch him. I continued to spend the evenings with Richard, and we prolonged our conversa- tions until far on into the night. He told me a number of very interesting anecdotes about the victims he had seen go to the scaffold. It would take too long to repeat them here ; and moreover I have forgotten many of them. I remember, however, having heard him say that every evening the gendarmes had a game of piquet in the Queen's presence. Leaning on the back of a chair she would watch them play, or else would spend this time in mending her pelisse of black taffetas. Richard often went to see the Queen and ask her if there were nothing she required. She never failed to express her thanks ; only, according to Richard, she was a little too solemn over it. One day she asked him if he had ever kept a hotel. 1 This excellent woman was afterwards employed as cook by the Marquise de Crequi. (Note by Mgr. de Salamon.) 173 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE " Oh dear, no, Madame ! " he answered. " I have been in prisons almost ever since I was born. 1 '' " I asked because everything you give me to eat is excel- lent." " I admit," replied Richard, " that I go to market myself, and buy everything of the best that I can find there." " Oh," answered the Queen, u how kind you are, Monsieur Richard ! " And Richard added that the Queen's favourite dish was duck. 174 THE INQUIRY OF MADAME SIMON-VOUET (1836) WE have called attention to the fact that we owe the narrative of Rosalie Lamorliere to the pen of Lafont d'Aussonne, the too- imaginative biographer of Marie Antoinette. Our distrust of that writer is so great that we should have hesitated to accept Rosalie's story if we had not been in a position to prove its authenticity. From this point of view the following pages are doubly interesting ; for they satisfy us as to the truth of Rosalie Lamorliere's preceding narrative, while at the same time they give us a glimpse of her old age. It will, no doubt, surprise the reader to learn that Marie Antoinette's daughter allowed the servant who helped her mother during her last days to die in a hospital. Much has been said of the proverbial ingratitude of the Bourbons. Perhaps Rosalie Lamorliere may be regarded as exemplifying it and being its victim. And yet it is possible that we ought to look at these things from a wider standpoint, and refrain from judging the past in the positive, practical spirit of our own time. In those days men devoted themselves to their King as we devote ourselves now to our country ; loyalty and duty were words endowed with a definite meaning, which admitted of no discussion. It may be that these gratuitous sacrifices aroused nobler feelings than the desire for promotion, or a pension, or for some empty honour. In the history of the Revolution we find many examples of these fine social virtues. How many royalists died for the Monarchy which took little interest in them and from which they had nothing to expect with a calmness that was not 175 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE entirely free from a sort of fanaticism, suggestive of the faith of the early martyrs ! Rosalie Lamorliere, in the heart of a servant, had something of that rare disinterestedness that was the glory of ancient France. Those who devoted themselves without any thought of payment were the best of all ; and such was this poor girl. Her memory is less injured by her having died in the hospital than it would have been had her last years been spent in the managing of some big lottery-office, post-office, or tobacco- shop. None the less I should have preferred, on other grounds, that the servant who shared her chemises with Marie Antoinette had not been reduced, after the return of the Bourbons, to living alone in a state that bordered on destitution. I cannot help thinking of that good girl sewing into her shroud her last remaining relics of the prisoner of the Temple, while Lepitre who, as early as 1793, had been generously paid for a devotion he had not shown, was parading his pseudo-loyalty and his imaginary courage, and receiving, as a reward for the grand deeds he had not accomplished, the ribbon of the Legion of Honour. It was in connection with a book that appeared in 1838 with the title : Marie Antoinette devant le XIX e siecle that Madame Simon- Vouet undertook, about the year 1835, the inquiry of which we are about to read an account. The incompatibility of the various descriptions of Marie Antoinette's imprisonment in the Conciergerie, and the incredibility of the romantic episodes narrated by most of the writers on the subject, decided me to confine myself to the facts that came out in the trial, and to the incomplete but truthful revelations of the counsel for the Queen. To do this was to leave an immense gap in my work ; but nevertheless I was determined not to fill it up with the fictitious or forged papers that had appeared in connection with this interesting period in Marie Antoinette's life. At this time I had not seen the documents supplied to M. Lafont d'Aussonne by Rosalie and Lariviere the turnkey. While, in my perplexity, I was recalling the memories of my youth, it occurred to me that when I was a schoolgirl at Dijon with Madame le Jolivet, whose husband had died on the scafibld and had been confined in the Conciergerie at the 176 INQUIRY OF MADAME SIMON-VOUET same time as the Queen, I had heard that lady speak warmly of the humane way in which Richard the gaoler and his wife treated the prisoners confided to their care. ... I used to delight in questioning Madame le Jolivet about the Con- ciergerie, and I learnt from her that Madame Richard often allowed the prisoners to meet their relations and have meals with them in a little back-room in her own quarters ; and it was to the kindness of this excellent woman that Madame le Jolivet owed the sad comfort of seeing her husband up to the very last. In the course of these frequent visits she had been struck with the faultless beauty of Madame Richard's young cook, and the former had told her in confidence that, as the Queen had been greatly attracted by this poor village girl whose attentions were so delicately shown, she had kept her to wait on the royal prisoner, for whom Rosalie was always able to devise some slight diversion. These recollections prompted me to make repeated inquiries, both in Paris and Versailles, with regard to the Richard family ; but all I learnt was that Madame Richard had been murdered by a prisoner whose life had just been saved by her exertions, and that after her death the beautiful cook had left the Conciergerie. However, I heard by chance from a man who was employed in the palace of Versailles that Madame Boze, who had lived in the palace till the revolution of July, 1 was in the habit of speaking admiringly of the way the cook at the Conciergerie had behaved to the Queen, and said this girl was the only creature whose heroic devotion had at all alleviated the Queen's sufferings during the seventy-five days that she spent in the Conciergerie. Madame Boze had known the Richard family and Rosalie during the time of her husband's con- finement in the prison ; she had kept in touch with them 1 "The palace of Versailles contained (under the Restoration) an entire population. The King granted rooms there to his old servants, and to people with good recommendations. In addition to the Governor, who naturally had his own quarters, there was a large number of families, and one could easily pay twenty visits within the walls of the building. These rooms were a little douceur presented to people who were ruined by the Revolution. They lived there in peace, and were protected by the majesty of the place. ... I knew many of these worthy people, and remember them perfectly." (Mdmoires des autres, by the Comtesse Dash.) 177 N LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE after the country had become more settled ; but she had left Versailles, and my informant did not know where she and her two daughters had gone. With nothing more definite than these vague clues I applied to the mairie of Versailles, and two days later, owing to the prompt and obliging inquiries of M. Varinot, the assistant-secretary, I learnt that Madame Boze lived in the village of Auteuil. I repaired thither on the following day. No sooner did Madame Boze and her excellent daughters understand the object of my visit than they began to talk to me with the confidence of old friends, and gave me several details of the Queen^s first years at Versailles. . . . As for the Conciergerie, Madame Boze told me that the cook, Rosalie Lamorliere, was living in the Hospital for Incurables, in the Rue de Sevres, where I could question her myself. . . . One might find materials for an extremely interesting work in the details that Madame Boze gave me with regard to this heroic girl Rosalie, who had neither education nor money, nor interest, and yet exhibited the noblest virtues in spite of her obscurity. Leaving Madame Boze and her daughters at Auteuil, I proceeded at once to the Hospital for Incurables. 1 The porter, whom I asked for Rosalie Lamorliere, told me that she went out every morning and did not return till the hour at which the provisions were served out. He added that Rosalie had no intercourse with the people in the house, never spoke to anyone, did not even respond to the civilities of her companions, and would probably refuse to enter into conversation with me. This information was anything but encouraging; but nevertheless, as it was past eleven o'clock, I determined to wait for the first distribution of food, which was to take place at twelve, and meanwhile to walk to and fro before the main entrance of the hospital. Soon I noticed a number of good old dames walking as fast as their crutches would carry them, and showing by their haste and their 1 Madame Simon-Vouet's visit to the Hospital for Incurables took place on the 1st December, 1836. 178 INQUIRY OF MADAME SIMON- VOUET anxious faces that they were afraid of being late ; but not one of these could possibly be Rosalie. At last, at five minutes to twelve, I saw a woman come out of the little Rue Saint-Romain and walk towards the hospital. She was as poorly clad as those who had come before her, but her fastidious neatness was singularly striking. In figure she was slight and tall ; her steps were smooth and regular, and com- bined with her air of serenity gave a touch of solemnity to her gait. As she drew near to me her thoughtful expression, which indicated an abstraction so profound that no external emotion could touch her, made me very sure that this was Rosalie ; so I went forward, and begged her to grant me a few minutes 1 conversation in the hospital on a matter of important business. I hoped that this might rouse her curiosity, and I felt almost humiliated when, after glancing at me indifferently, she said coldly, without even condescend- ing to stand still : " You are mistaken, madame : / have no business." " Oh, no," I cried, holding her back, " your name is Rosalie Lamorliere ; it is not of you that I wish to speak ; for pity's sake do not refuse what I ask ! " I do not know what significance I put into these words, but Rosalie faltered, and turned upon me a look so piercing that I should have been disconcerted if my actions had been prompted by mere curiosity. "Very well, come with me, madame," she said, allowing me to keep her hand, which I had seized lest she should escape me. When I entered her tiny room I recognised the same neatness and care that had struck me so much in Rosalie's person. She gave me a chair, and remained standing before me as though waiting for my questions ; but I was entirely occupied in scrutinising her striking and still beautiful features, which were so little altered by time that I should have guessed her to be barely fifty years old. Rosalie evidently was conscious that for the moment my attention was fixed upon her, for my silent scrutiny seemed to cause her some embarrassment. She recovered herself, however, and said to me, with an air of indescribable gentleness and emotion : " It is about the Conciergerie, is it not, madame, that you wish to speak to me ? " I was delighted that she 179 N 2 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE had divined my object, and described to her my interview with the Boze ladies, who had known her at the Conciergerie ; and I expressed my desire to hear from her own mouth the details of all she had actually seen in that prison, my sole aim being the Queen's vindication, which I was at that time making my business. " I shall be happy," she answered, " to do as you wish ; but I warn you that I can add nothing to the statements I have already made to M. Lafont d'Aussonne, one of the Queen's biographers, who recorded my story with the greatest accuracy, though I can neither read nor write." As it was from this statement that we derived most of the details concerning the Conciergerie, we will omit from ou** dialogue with Rosalie everything that has already been recorded elsewhere. MYSELF. ... It must have been with the greatest interest that the august daughter of Marie Antoinette listened at the Tuileries to what you had to tell her, for had it not been foi you she would never have known of the strength and heroism with which those seventy-five days of martyrdom were endured. ROSALIE. I am still enjoying the bounty of Madame la Duchesse d'Angouleme, though I have never been able to thank her for it ; and I would gladly have renounced all the benefits that have been heaped upon me for the sake of one sight of Madame* s daughter. I noticed that Rosalie, in referring to Marie Antoinette, never called her anything but Madame, and I asked her whether, while she was waiting on the Queen, she had not addressed her otherwise. " No," she answered. " And yet, as I was often alone with Her Majesty, I might have addressed her as my sovereign ; but I shrank from everything that could recall her vanished greatness. I even always concealed, in her presence, the admiration with which her sublime courage inspired me. Alas ! I would gladly have served her on my knees, and yet I made a point of being no more outwardly respectful to her than to my mistress, Madame Richard." 180 INQUIRY OF MADAME SIMON- VOUET MYSELF. I have been told that the benefits heaped upon you by Madame la Duchesse d'Angouleme were limited to your admission into this institution, and a pension of two hundred francs which you lost at the revolution of July. ROSALIE. True : but as I have done nothing to merit it I consider myself very fortunate to be here for life, and beyond the reach of want. MYSELF. You have not the least notion of how heroic your devotion was. This does not surprise me, as I had been told it was the case ; but tell me, Rosalie, did not the friends who appealed to Madame la Dauphine on your behalf try to recover your little pension for you, by interesting the prin- cesses of the present royal family in you ? ROSALIE. Such an idea would not have occurred to them any more than to me, for I have no claim to so remarkable a favour as that. MYSELF. Queen Marie Antoinette was described to the people as a violent, vindictive woman. Did you observe any signs of the character that was attributed to her, during the cruel treat- ment to which she was subjected in the Conciergerie ? Did she seem inspired, as many of her enemies have written that she was, by any thought or desire of revenge upon her persecutors ? ROSALIE. I never heard her complain either of her fate or of her enemies, and the calmness of her words was always consistent with that of her appearance. There was, however, in this calmness of deportment something so deeply impressive that Madame Richard, and the gaoler Lebeau, and I, whenever we entered her room, stood awe-struck at the door, and dared not approach her till she begged us to do so in her gentle voice and gracious manner. 181 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE MYSELF. Did she speak of Louis XVI.'s death, and did she seem to fear the same fate ? ROSALIE. She said she was fortunate, but I had reason to think she imagined that she and her children would be sent to Austria. MYSELF. This persistent calmness of which you speak did it not arise from a sort of moral collapse or insensibility, the effect of her sufferings and long imprisonment ? ROSALIE. She was extremely sensitive, and never failed to notice our most insignificant attentions. She carried, concealed beneath her stays, a portrait of the young King and a curl of his hair, wrapped up in a little yellow kid glove that the child had worn ; and I noticed that she often hid herself behind her wretched truckle-bed to kiss these things and weep over them. One could speak to her of her misfortunes and circumstances without her showing any emotion or depression, but she wept continually at the thought of her deserted children. During the ill-health that arose from the critical state of her nerves, and ended only with her life, she begged us not to apply for any medical aid for her, since no doctor could remove the cause of her illness. She was searched several times at the Conciergerie, and the watch she wore on a very beautiful chain round her neck was cruelly taken from her. Only a few days before her death, however, she was still in possession of the locket containing the young King^s portrait. I do not know what became of it. MYSELF. Is it true, as certain authors of repute have declared in writing, that the Queen washed and mended her own linen in the Conciergerie ? ROSALIE. She would have thanked Heaven if such a favour had been granted her. But she was condemned to the most complete 182 INQUIRY OF MADAME SIMON-VOUET inactivity, and though she never complained I saw that she suffered a great deal from this state of idleness. MYSELF. Several people have boasted of having corrupted the gaoler and carried in various kinds of comforts to the Queen during her last hours. May one put any faith in their assertions ? ROSALIE. No; for even if they could have won over the gaoler Lebeau, the most timid and nervous of men, the courts and passages were filled with guards. Fouquier-Tinville and his agents, moreover, entered the Queen's cell at any hour of the day or night, and relentlessly made her rise on the pretext of searching her bed, and upset all her things. MYSELF. Did you see Marie Antoinette again after she was con- demned to death ? ROSALIE. I went down to her cell by Lebeau's orders at about seven o'clock. Two candles, still alight but nearly burnt out, were on her little table : I presume they had been left there for her all night. The Queen was lying on her bed in her clothes; she was still wearing her long black dress. A constabulary officer was seated in the farthest corner of the room, and seemed to be asleep. I approached Madame tremblingly, and begged her to take some broth that was quite ready on my range. She raised her head, looked at me with her customary gentleness, and answered with a sigh : " No, thank you, my girl : I need nothing more." And then as I turned away crying, either because she was afraid she had distressed me, or because she wished to see me again for the last time, she called me back to say : " Very well, then, Rosalie, bring me your broth ! " MYSELF. And did she take the broth when you brought it ? 183 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE ROSALIE. Only a spoonful or two. Then she begged me to help her to dress. She had been told not to wear her mourning, because it might excite the people and make them insult her ; but we in the prison thought the real reason was that it was feared her position as the King's widow might excite interest. The Queen made no objection, and prepared her white morning wrapper. She had also contrived to have a clean chemise to die in, and I saw she meant to appear, as she had appeared on the day of her trial, as decently dressed as was possible in her state of complete destitution. When she was about to undress she slipped into the space between the wall and the truckle-bed, so as to be out of the officer's sight ; but that young man came forward insolently, and leant his elbows on the pillow in order to look at her. The Queen blushed deeply, and hastily covered herself with her large fichu ; then, clasping her hands, she turned beseech- ingly to the officer. " Monsieur," she cried, " in the name of decency let me change my linen without being watched ! " MYSELF. The man must have felt very much ashamed of his behaviour ? ROSALIE. On the contrary, he answered roughly that his orders were not to lose sight of the prisoner for an instant. The Queen raised her eyes to heaven, and then looked at me without uttering a word, for I was accustomed to understand her every glance, and I took up my position so as to hide her as much as possible from the eyes of the officer. Then, kneeling behind her bed, with every precaution that her modesty could suggest, her Majesty succeeded in changing her clothes with- out even uncovering her shoulders or arms. When she was completely dressed she glanced round her room with an expression of great anxiety, as though seeking something that she feared she would not find. I was trying in vain to guess the cause of her anxiety when I saw her carefully fold up the soiled chemise she had just taken off, 184 INQUIRY OF MADAME SIMON-VOUET wrap it closely in one of her sleeves, and then with a look of intense satisfaction slip the little bundle into a hollow space that she had caught sight of in the wall, behind a strip of the canvas. - Rosalie showed me the shroud into which she had sewn the scraps of lawn given her by Marie Antoinette ; and when I had touched these sacred relics with my lips, and clasped in my arms the poor creature whose strong soul and heroic spirit were dimly visible through the obscurity of her position, I left the hospital, with a heart full of admiration and sadness. As I left Versailles at the beginning of 1838, and retired to a place in the country a hundred leagues from Paris, it was impossible for me to see Rosalie again, as I had hoped and intended ; but before I went away my husband was able to ascertain that she was still alive, and enjoying perfect health in the Hospital for Incurables. 185 THE NARRATIVE OF MADAME BAULT WIDOW OF THE GAOLER AT THE CONCIEBGERIE PRISON (SEPTEMBER HTH OCTOBER 16, 1793) WHEN the Revolution broke out my husband was the gaoler of the prison of La Force. I shared his labours and brought up my children at his side. We witnessed the massacres of September 2nd and 3rd. He was fortunate enough to be the means of saving nearly two hundred prisoners, and he escaped with them. But to our sorrow we were unable to prevent the death of the most illustrious of the victims who perished on those fatal days. 1 The murderers took possession of our house, our furniture, and our provisions, and as our object was to avoid seeing the horrors by which they disgraced themselves in our presence we abandoned to them everything that belonged to us. At last, when nothing was left for them to destroy, they went away. My husband returned to his post, and soon the prison was filled with all the faithful subjects of the King and the legitimate Monarchy, whose opinions made them suspicious characters in the eyes of the revolutionary tyrants. We determined to deceive the tyrants and alleviate the lot of the unfortunate prisoners, and sometimes our efforts were not in vain. At the time when the Queen was removed from the Temple to the Conciergerie, a lady who came to La Force to bring little comforts to one of the prisoners knew that we were acquainted with Michonis, one of the inspectors of police at 1 Madame de Lamballe. 186 NARRATIVE OF MADAME BAULT that time. She confided to my husband her intention of persuading the inspector to introduce into the Queen's cell a certain Chevalier of Saint-Louis who wished to offer her his services. Michonis was a man of honour and was full of enthusiasm, and received the suggestion favourably. The lady asked us to dine at her country-house at Vaugirard. 1 The brave Chevalier was present, and all the preparations were made to carry out the scheme. Michonis undertook to secure Richard's consent. The interview took place as it was described at the time, and I shall not repeat the details, which neither I nor my husband witnessed, and which, more- over, have been recorded in hundreds of other writings. To our great distress this self-sacrificing and courageous deed failed in its object. I never saw the lady again, nor the Knight of Saint-Louis, and in the course of the twenty-four years that have passed since we parted I have forgotten their names. I have reason to believe they are no longer alive, for it seems likely that they would have lost no time in coming forward, now that heaven has granted us happier times at last. Michonis was discharged from his post and put into prison. We were very anxious, my husband and I, on account of the revelations he might have made ; but his loyalty and dis- cretion were unfailing, and it is only right to pay this tribute to his memory. Some time afterwards he died on the scaffold, not ostensibly on account of this affair, but in connection with an alleged conspiracy in the prison, in which he was accused of being concerned. It was not long before Richard's dismissal followed. We were told of it by another inspector of police called Dangers, who was equally our friend. He added that there was some talk of replacing Richard by the horrible man Simon. My husband shuddered at the bare idea, and determined, on the spot, to propose himself for the post of the Queen's gaoler. We had the honour at that time of knowing M. Hue and M. Clery, and we informed them, separately, of our design, in which they encouraged us. Dangers undertook to see that our request was granted, and my husband was installed in the Conciergerie on the llth September, 1793. 1 It was a girl called Dutilleul, Rougeville's mistress. 187 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE When he entered the Queen's room she said to him, with the graciousness that never forsook her to the hour of her death : u Ah, here you are, M. Bault ! I am delighted that it is you who have come here." My husband had never had the honour of being in Her Majesty's presence, and could not conceive by what miracle she could have heard of a trans- action that had been so promptly and secretly carried out. We regarded the whole series of circumstances as a boon especially ordained by Providence. It made me happy to know that our attentions would be favourably received, and we redoubled our efforts to make them also useful. We asked no greater reward. If there were others who did not shrink from putting a price on their services, it was well known that my husband's devotion was inspired by motives too lofty to be affected by mercenary aims. It may easily be imagined that the adventure of Michonis and Richard had caused the prison rules to be carried out much more strictly than before. My husband was told that the accused, like the other prisoners, was to be supplied with the coarsest prison fare. " I can't allow that," he answered ; " she is my prisoner, and I am answerable for her with my life ; some attempt might be made to poison her, and no one but myself must arrange about her meals. Not a drop of water shall come in here without my permission." This was considered reasonable, and thenceforward I and my daughter were responsible for the meals. They were nothing re- markable, but they were, at least, wholesome and decent. The Queen was no longer given dirty water in an unwashed glass, as had hitherto been the brutal and insolent custom. We gave especial attention to this point, with regard to which she was extremely fastidious. There were still some kind hearts left that were not insensible to pity. A market-woman came one day to bring my husband a melon for her good Queen. Another offered some peaches. Everything reached its proper destination, but to avoid being blamed it was necessary to be very cautious. Similar incidents had already taken place in Richard's time, according to M. Hue. 188 189 NARRATIVE [OF MADAME BAULT I never entered the Queen's room throughout the whole time that my husband was in charge of her. In order to appear more particular} he had made a rule that I was not to go in, and had reserved to himself alone the right of doing so. Moreover, he was always accompanied by two gendarmes, who watched his every movement. The worst kind of men were always carefully chosen to escort him. 1 Often the inspectors of police, or the public prosecutor, or even some of the members of the Comitc de Surete Generate would come themselves on a visit of inspection. It was then that the most odious searches took place. One day they caught sight of an old piece of carpet that had been fastened, by my husband's orders, along the Queen's bed to keep out the dampness of the wall, and they expressed their dissatisfaction. "But don't you see," said my husband, "that its object is to deaden the sound, and prevent anything from being heard in the next room ? " They were greatly struck by his intelligence. " Quite right," they said ; " you did well." To deceive these wretches it was necessary to talk as they did. The unhealthiness of the room was such that Her Majesty's black dress, the only one she had as a change from the white dress she brought from the Temple, fell to pieces. My eldest daughter, whom I lost five years ago, put a new hem to it. I gathered up the old scraps and gave them away to several people who eagerly begged me for them. My daughter was kept constantly employed in mending linen and other garments, stockings, and shoes, which wore out completely. The care of the room, and everything to do with it, was entrusted to her ; she alone was allowed to enter for this purpose ; and it was also her office to arrange the Queen's simple coiffure every day a duty from which she was not exempted even in the very hour of the final martyr- dom. I remember all these details as though the objects connected with them were still before me. The Queen had only three fairly fine chemises, of which one was trimmed with very beautiful Mechlin lace. They were given to her, one at a time, every ten days. This matter was attended to by the registrar's office of the 1 They were not, then, always the same, as Lafont d'Aussonne declared. 190 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE Revolutionary Tribunal. No one would have dared to increase the precise number of her garments by so much as a handkerchief. The Queen occupied herself in writing out a list of her linen on the wall with the point of a pin. She also wrote other things there, but immediately after her departure a thick coat of paint was put over everything, and so it was all effaced. I have laid stress on these details which may seem too minute in order to show how useless and insane it would have been to attempt to supply the Queen openly with the least thing in addition to what was provided by the odious prison rules. That people who were brave and charitable, but also retiring and unknown, may have succeeded in taking her some object of the first importance, especially if it were inconspicuous, I am as ready to believe as though I had seen it although it was before we went to the Conciergerie because not only is the story quite credible, but it is founded on unexceptionable evidence. But that anyone should have succeeded in supplying her with a large quantity of luxuries, or even of ordinary comforts, it is impossible to imagine. The articles would not have reached their destination ; they would have vanished in the office of the Revolutionary Tribunal. The gaoler himself would not have been able, with- out the greatest danger, to secure the smallest portion for his prisoner. A single incident will suffice to show how com- pletely it would have been beyond his power. The Queen had wished to have an English cotton counter- pane. My husband undertook to speak to Fouquier-Tinville about it. " How dare you ask for such a thing ? " cried the monster, foaming at the mouth with rage. " You deserve to be sent to the guillotine. 11 We were filled with consternation. We provided the best substitute we could for the coverlet, and I had a mattress made of the best wool I could find, and replaced the prison mattress with it. It would be impossible to me to be false to the truth, or to boast of what I did not do, or rather of what I was not able to do. It has been my lot to see pious resignation and heroic constancy carried to the pitch of perfection, but there is no disguising the fact that it was Heaven's will that the Queen 191 /* /b NARRATIVE OF MADAME BAULT of France should drink the cup of sorrow to the dregs, and I shall never cease to regret that I did so little to temper its bitterness. Alas ! we could not save her life, but we at least endeavoured that her last moments might be undisturbed, and her royal person safe from every insult. In the meantime my husband was trying, with the most eager solicitude, to divine the Queen's smallest wishes. He devised various pretexts for visiting her more frequently. She had entrusted him with the care of her hair, and he arranged it every morning as best he could. If the most respectful care could have taken the place of skill the Queen would have been satisfied, and as it was she was good enough to appear so. She took this opportunity to say a few of those kind things that none could express more gracefully than she. One day she said to him, in allusion to his name : " I am going to call you bon, because that is what you are, and it is worth even more than being beau (Bault)." Another time, as she thanked him, she added : " I shall never be fortunate enough to reward you for what you do for me."" She never failed to ask him for news of her children and of Madame Elizabeth. Sometimes my husband was able to answer her when he had news through M. Hue, who had kept up a correspondence with the Temple, and had the courage, too, to make his way into the Conciergerie rom time to time. Her goodness, her sweetness, her sensi- bility, combined with so much courage, moved us to tears. We were glad when we were able to weep in the solitude of our own rooms, for it would have been imprudent to show any emotion before the savage satellites of the Commune, who haunted us throughout the day. The Queen, surrounded as she was by many dangers, was always afraid of compromising the people who seemed to take an interest in her fate. She was obliged to control her features, her words, and even her slightest gestures. A glance, a word, a sign, would have sufficed to make her suspected of an understanding with her faithful guardian, and all would have been lost. But one day she thought she had sufficient mastery over her own movements to slip into my husband's hand, without being seen, something that she had secretly 192 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE prepared. The action, however, was either not prompt enough or not sufficiently concealed, and the two gendarmes, perceiving it, sprang upon my husband, crying in a fury : " What has she just given you ?" He was obliged to open his hand and show what had just been put into it. It was a pair of gloves and a lock of hair, 1 which were instantly seized and taken to Fouquier's office. We did not doubt that the Queen intended these things to be given to her children, and we shared to the full her disappointment on this occasion. But the Queen was not discouraged, for a mother's heart is ingenious and its strength is increased by sorrow. The idea came to her to draw out some of the threads of the carpet attached to her bed, and with them to plait a kind of garter with the help of two tooth-picks, the only implements that her wretched persecutors had left to her, for they had refused to allow her knitting-needles. When the work was done she let it drop one day at her feet, as my husband was entering her room. He instantly divined the Queen's intention, and as he went quickly towards her pulled out his handkerchief, which seemed to slip from his hand. It covered the garter, and he picked up both together. We kept this precious plait religiously, till I gave it to M. Hue when he was about to accompany Her Royal Highness Madame to Vienna. He gave it to her when he joined her at Huningue, as he was good enough to record in his work entitled: Dernieres annees du regne et de la vie de Louis XVI, page 352. In order that the gendarmes might no longer stay in the Queen's room, where they spent the day drinking and playing cards and smoking, with nothing between her and them but a screen that divided the room into two parts, my husband, 1 As early as March 22nd, 1814, the Gazette de France recorded this incident, which I had described long before to the writer of the article. In 1816 the gloves and the lock of hair were discovered in Courtois' house with the Queen's letter, and thus Providence allowed the truth of my assertions to be verified by events. These two articles had passed from Fouquier's hands into those of Robespierre, and Courtois had found them, together with the letter, in Robespierre's house when his papers were searched. Courtois did not mention this discovery in his report ; he held back the information, as he confessed himself, for a more favourable occasion. (Note by Madame Bault. ) 193 o NARRATIVE OF MADAME BAULT pleading his responsibility, had put the key in his own pocket. Thenceforward the two soldiers sat at the outer door, and their oaths and curses and blasphemies no longer offended the ears of the august prisoner, nor interrupted her religious meditations. She could not work, as I have already said, owing to the lack of light and of means of employment. She read books, her favourite being The Voyages of Captain Cook, which my husband had procured for her. The greater part of her time was devoted to prayer. She was often seen engaged in this pious occupation, which filled nearly every moment of her life, especially after the memorable incident that occurred in Richard's time. 1 In spite of the presence of the two sentries posted under the window, the prisoners who were allowed to walk about the yard were able, by talking very loudly, to inform the Queen of anything that was likely to interest her. It was thus that she knew beforehand the day on which she was to appear before the Tribunal. I shall only say one word concerning that horrible cata- strophe. My husband's agony at that time was a thousand times more terrible than when, a few years later, the last moment of his own life was drawing near. He knew every detail, minute by minute, of that monstrous trial with its endless insults, which made the very sentence of death itself appear almost a boon. The night was far advanced when the Queen left the Tribunal. Her courage was unshaken, her bearing noble as ever, but modest and resigned. My husband was present when she returned : she asked him for writing- materials, and was instantly obeyed. He said to me that very day : " Your poor Queen wrote a letter and gave it to me, but I was not able to deliver it to the person to whom it was addressed : I was obliged to take it to Fouquier." To us, as to the whole French nation, the fate of this relic of maternal love, and piety, and courage, was long unknown. It has now been given back to us in one of those wonderful 1 I knew even then that a worthy priest, calling himself Charles, braved everything to enter the prison and give the consolations of religion to the prisoners ; but I had not the honour of knowing him. I have since learnt that this courageous apostle of the Faith was M. 1'abbe Magnin, now the Cure of Saint-Germain-rAuxerrois. (Note by Madame Bault.) 194 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE ways that are only possible to omnipotence, and are proofs of the unspeakable goodness of Heaven. 1 Such are the chief circumstances of that unhappy time, as far as I can recall them. They sank so deeply into my heart that I have hitherto refrained from recording them in writing. I have now been begged to do so, in order to supplement the deficiencies and correct the inaccuracies of certain other narratives that have been hastily published, with no foundation but vague tradition. I have obeyed with no other object than to uphold the truth. At my age and in my position one can have no other motive. This is not an account of circumstances to which I am a stranger : it is my evidence with regard to events that con- cerned me personally : it is a document wherein I have not hesitated to record the facts to which I am one of the last remaining witnesses. I do it for the satisfaction of my conscience, the honour of my husband's memory, and the honour of my children, and, above all, I do it to express the devotion and homage due to the most exalted virtue that has for many a long year done honour to the dignity of the throne and earned the rewards of Heaven. 1 See page 225. 195 THE QUEEN'S COMMUNION IN THE CONCIERGERIE THERE were many faithful royalists whose minds were greatly exercised with regard to the Queen's fate while she was imprisoned in the Conciergerie, and there can be no doubt that attempts were made to rescue her. The Basset trial, of which the original documents have been published by M. Campardon ; the affair of the carnation ; the million promised by Batz ; and the evidence of Madame la Duchesse d'Angouleme herself, are incontrovertible proofs of the existence of various plots whose details we do not know, but whose reality we cannot deny. It is equally certain that several people succeeded, by means of bribes or otherwise, in making their way either into the Temple or into the prison of the Law Courts ; such as Jarjaye, Mrs. Atkins, Rouge ville, Michonis who, it is true, was obliged by his office to visit the Conciergerie the painters Prieur and Kocharsky, Hue, the Citoyenne Laboullee, 1 and perhaps others. 2 1 " The wife of the hair-dresser Laboullee, 83 Rue de Richelieu, whom the Queen to the day of her death called the little Laboullee, often succeeded in visiting Marie Antoinette when she was in prison." A. CHALLAMEL. Clubs contre-revolutionnaires. 2 In a little volume published in 1815 and probably quite forgotten. Marie Antoinette d'Autriche, reine de France, by L. de Saint-Hugues, we find this strange anecdote : " Mme. Guyot, head nurse of the Hospice de 1'Archeveche, had formed a project for rescuing Marie Antoinette. To this end she had caused a request to be made, on the pretext of illness, for the removal of Her Majesty to the hospital established in the Archbishop's Palace, where M. Ray, with the help of M. Giraud, the surgeon at the H6tel-Dieu, had already broken and wrenched away the bar of a window opening into a covered way that led to the Seine, in the direction of the lie Saint-Louis. The barbarous Fouquier-Tinville, fearing lest his victim should escape him, would never consent to the transference. Then Mme. Guyot, in default of anything better, determined to brave every danger and take to the unhappy Queen some of those absolute necessaries of life which she 196 THE QUEEN'S COMMUNION It is therefore quite credible that if so many people were ready to risk their lives on the mere chance of effecting a rescue, there should be others whose devotion to the Queen took the form with far more likelihood of success of devising a way to provide her with the consolations of religion^ -*"*"' There is no need for us to recall how persecution had given fresh life to the piety of a large section of the population. The monastic houses had been dissolved, it is true ; but the monks, and above all the nuns, continued to live in community in little groups, hiding themselves with difficulty, contriving to attend Mass regularly, and resigning themselves to the martyrdom that they considered inevitable. These were excellent conditions for the development of heroism. The man who daily prepares him- self to die is surprised when death delays, and finally defies it. I believe that in the history of the Terror one might easily find many examples of this kind of courage. But indeed the facts as we know them do not need the support of this theory. We know that among the remnants of the religious congregations much anxiety was felt with regard to Marie Antoinette's approaching end : prayers were offered up for her : at Orleans, which was a notable centre of Catholicism during the Terror, the Church ordained nine days of prayer : and the Sisters of La Charite-Saint-Roch were tormented by the \ thought that the prisoner, who for more than a year had been / deprived of all religious aid, might any day be put to death with- /J out having received a single word of consolation. was altogether without. 1 She contrived to make the acquaintance of the gaoler's wife : and having done so begged her to accept some light refreshment, and ended by bewildering her with some sherry that was a present from a member of the Senate, who is still alive. Forgetting her responsibilities the woman fell asleep. Mme. Guyot then took to Marie Antoinette a white wrapper with trimming on it (this was the last dress worn by the Queen), and with it all the garments that were likely to be useful to her. Mme. de Blamont, the last heiress of the house of Chamboran who was nineteen or twenty years old, had been enceinte, for some months, and was condemned to death for no reason was to be rescued with the Queen. Mme. de Blamont afterwards recovered her liberty. "The most careful search was made to discover the person who had dared to take these clothes to the Queen, but happily it was in vain. The courage and loyalty to the illustrious house of Bourbon, exhibited on this occasion by Mme. Guyot, are recorded in the first edition of Les Illustres persecutes" We have not been able to discover the book to which L. de Saint-Hugues here alludes. 1 See the evidence of the widow Bault on this point, page 191 197 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE These simple, devout creatures did not know that there were those within the walls of the prison itself whose minds were full of the same pious thoughts. There was in the Conciergerie at that time an eminent priest, the Abbe Emery, the head of the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice, whose influence over most of the Parisian clergy was very great. He had been imprisoned on the 3rd August, 1 793, and continued from his cell, assisted from without by his friend M. Bechet, to carry on the functions of a director and to fulfil the duties of his ministry. 1 The thing seems incredible : no matter : it is proved by incontestable evidence. The Abbe Emery received frequent visits in the Conciergerie. The Abbe Montaigu, and other refractory priests, had devised some way of entering the prison regularly and taking to the prisoner a pyx full of wafers, wrapped in a white handkerchief ; so that from the beginning of August 1 793 until after the 9th Thermidor not a day passed without the Mass being celebrated in the Conciergerie that Conciergerie which Fouquier-Tinville imagined to be so closely guarded and so impenetrable. 2 1 "In 1794 M. Bechet, director of the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice, who in Monseigneur de Juigne's name fulfilled the functions of vicar -general, thought he ought to organise the work of ministering to the condemned prisoners, and a priest was chosen for each day of the week. The Abbe de Sambucy the elder, then living at Milhaut, took Sunday ; the Abbe Renaud, Thursday ; the Abbe Philibert, Wednesday. The names of the other priests are forgotten, but it is believed that the Abb6 Keravenan was of their number." (From the unpublished manuscript of one of these priests, the Abbe Philibert Bruyan, who died Bishop of Grenoble. Quoted by the Abbe Delarc, in L'Eofoc de Paris pendant la Revolution. ) We know that the Abbe Keravenan, who afterwards became the cure" of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, gave absolution to Danton at the last. 2 On this point we may quote the valuable testimony of one of the prisoners, the young soldier Barthelemy de la Roche, whose letters, written in the Conciergerie itself, have been preserved. "We want for nothing here," he says, "in the way of help and consolation of every description. They bring us from the town the result of the precious covenant (the Communion) ; picture our joy. " We have been expecting our trial for three months and a half, and yet it does not come. God be praised ! . . . I have not yet had five minutes of weariness in my new abode. Moreover, I and all who share my sentiments are treated here with the most absolute respect, even by those who profess to be freethinkers. Some of them keep up this character even on the scaffold. Poor souls ! they must be greatly surprised when they are suddenly cut off and find themselves in the presence of God they to whom nothing could be so unexpected as this solemn appearance on the scene. . . " . . If I go on my long journey soon I make you my sole legatee, and as one knows beforehand on what day one is to go up, I will do up a parcel and have it left in the town, and will put in it the watch (of 198 THE QUEEN'S COMMUNION Thanks to M. Emery this " service of souls/' as it has been called, was not only organised in the Conciergerie, but in all the prisons of Paris. By means of his numerous acquaintances and his influence over the scattered clergy he contrived ways of enabling priests to penetrate everywhere, and did a truly apostolic work. When condemned prisoners were unable to receive the Sacrament before setting out for the scaffold they were informed,, by some reliable means, that at a given point of the fatal journey a priest would be posted by the roadside to give them absolution from where he stood. The Abbes de Voisins, de Keravenan, de Sam- bucy, and other former students of Saint-Sulpice devoted them- selves habitually to this dangerous ministry. M. Emery had become the Chaplain-in-Chief of the prisons of the Republic. Now this saintly ecclesiastic, whose influence was so powerful, was not unaware that Marie Antoinette was imprisoned near him. He himself often described how,, being lodged above the Queen and having found a way of corresponding with her through some of the other prisoners, he succeeded in getting a note to her one day, in which he said : " Prepare to receive absolution to-night at twelve o'clock, I shall be at your door and shall pro- nounce the sacramental words over you.' And at the appointed hour he was actually outside the Queen's door ; he heard the sighs of that unhappy princess, and conversed with her for some moments before he gave her absolution." l P. d'Hervilee), with my little library, my crucifix, and my rosary. You will find in the parcel my last wishes, a little manuscript of which the original was found on a priest who was executed. I copied it for you. This writing will give you infinite satisfaction." These last wishes are worthy of being preserved. This is what B. de la Roche wrote on the eve of his condemnation : "I believe that the man who denounced us and was boarding with our ladies is in a state of destitution. I should like you to hand over a hundred livres to him. He has several children, and has probably not received that sum, which was what he hoped to get for his denunciation." (See Un Episode de la Tei~reur, by the Comte Anatole de Segur, 1864. ) 1 Vie de M.timery, by the Abb6 Gosselin. The Abbe Emery is one of the most astonishing figures of this as- tonishing epoch. He was sixty years old when he was imprisoned, and during his long confinement " he was perpetually preparing himself to die by preparing others ; and yet he did not die. Three times he touched the foot of the guillotine, so to speak, and three times he came back alive. When he was free he often stopped to look at the fatal instrument, in order to accustom his eyes and his mind to it ; and it is said that when he was in prison he had a little model of it made, with the same object." (De Segur, loc. cit.) " At the Conciergerie he carried on the life of the Seminary," says 199 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE These things, however, were not known outside the prison walls, and this explains why Marie Antoinette's unknown friends, feeling that the tragic climax was approaching, determined in spite of the apparently insurmountable obstacles to arrange an interview for her with a non-juring priest. Let us first take a cursory view of the facts : we will discuss their authenticity afterwards. A poor girl called Mademoiselle Fouche offered herself for the adventurous attempt : she obtained permission from the gaoler Richard to enter the Queen's cell : she explained to the prisoner the object of her mission, and a few days later she brought with her the Abbe Magnin, dressed as a layman. The Abbe returned to the Conciergerie several times. The affair of the carnation and the consequent arrest of Richard put an end to his visits for a time, but the new gaoler Bault was no stricter than his prede- cessor. The interviews between the Queen and the priest continued, and the latter one night brought with him the sacred objects necessary for the celebration of the Mass, in the course of which Marie Antoinette received the Communion. We know that she was watched by two gendarmes. The priest spoke to them for a moment, and the two men, whose names were Lamarche and Prud'homme, took part with their prisoner in the religious ceremony. A few days before the 1st of October the Abbe Magnin fell ill, and Mademoiselle Fouche went away to Orleans. She only returned to Paris on the evening of the veiy day of the execution. Such, in few words, is the story told by the Abbe Magnin and Mademoiselle Fouche : we shall read it presently in full, and it is therefore unnecessary to give the details here. another historian: "devoting to his prayers and meditations the usual hours of the Seminary . . . reading, writing, studying with more ardour and consistency even than he had ever shown before, and this in the midst of all the uproar ; at the hours of prayer or study stopping his ears with bread-crumb, at the recreation-hour unstopping them again, and then gentle, gay, benevolent, cultivated throwing himself into the con- versations that were sometimes so delightful in the prison. He soon acquired over everyone round him an authority to which he had never aspired. When the prisoners in the same room as himself chose a president it was he that was elected. According to his friends, who left some notes on his life, " his qualities as a Superior made themselves felt even in his state of bondage." Champagny. fitude, aur M. fimery. We may add that M. Emery, whom the gaolers themselves did not gainsay, obtained leave to pass the night with the condemned prisoners in the waiting-room, to prepare them for death. (Un Episode dt la Terreur, by the Comte Anatole de Segur. ) 200 THE QUEEN'S COMMUNION We will only attempt to answer the objections to which these narratives have given rise. In the first place it seems to us that the evidence to which we have referred above, touching the religious ceremonies performed in the prisons of the Terror, is enough to save the Abb6 Magnin's story from all appearance of incredibility. The Mass was said every day in the Conciergerie, the non-juring priests went in and out almost at will, and Fouquier-Tinville and his masters, the members of the Committees of Public Safety and General Security, were evidently not in the secret ; but Richard the gaoler, being either merciful or corruptible, tacitly authorised this infraction of the rules, for it is impossible that he could have been ignorant of it. Why should he have denied to the Queen a consolation that the other prisoners enjoyed? This man Richard was certainly not a very stern gaoler, and Mademoiselle Fouche cannot have had very much difficulty in obtaining permission for the Abbe Magnin to enter, since M. Emery was visited every day by the Abbe Montaigu, Philibert, and de Sambucy. As the introduction of a priest into the prison was not an unknown occurrence we may feel quite safe in accepting Mademoiselle Fouche's assertion on the subject. And is the celebration of the Mass in the cell any more incredible ? By no means. If it is true and on this point, as we have seen, the witnesses are many that M. Emery was allowed to console the condemned prisoners up to the very end, and even to pass the night with them, it must have been equally easy to authorise the Abbe Magnin to stay for an hour or two in the Queen's cell. The reading of an office in an isolated room from which everyone was excluded presented fewer risks than the performance of an almost public ceremony amid all the stir and movement of the prison. The two gendarmes on guard received absolution and knelt before the altar with the Queen : this seems to be the finishing- touch to the incredibility of the affair ! But may we not meet this objection by pointing out that it was to Richard's interest that night to choose warders whose republicanism was rather doubtful ? Are they more incongruous in this connection than the Knight of Saint Louis who in this same Conciergerie prayed for two hours every day, or than the young soldier who read the Combat Spirituel and the Introduction a la me devote ? l Was there 1 Un Episode de, la Terreur, by the Comte Anatole de Segur. 201 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE not an immense majority of those who, even while they welcomed the Revolution, were still in their hearts faithful to the religion of their youth ? Whatever manner of men they were, it was necessary for the gendarmes guarding the Queen to choose, in circumstances such as these, between two alternatives : either to inform their superiors of what they saw, or to take part in the moving scene that was being enacted under their eyes. One can hardly picture them talking and laughing and smoking their pipes at such a solemn moment. There was one thing that inclined us at first to reject the episode of the Communion of the gendarmes, and with it the whole of the Abbe Magnin's narrative ; and this was that the two men were said to have died on the scaffold in the course of the Revolution. Now we could find no mention of Lamarche nor of Prud'komme in any of the very complete records of the Revo- lutionary Tribunal. These two names, then, it appeared, had been invented for the requirements of the story, which in our opinion was entirely upset and demolished by the results of this inquiry. Well, these men Lamarche and Prud'homme did really exist after all ! They were in the same company of gendarmerie) and were condemned to death, but not by the Revolutionary Tribunal. We discovered the documents connected with their trial among the papers of the Military Commission appointed after the Insurrection of Prairial. 1 We have no fundamental reason, then, to disbelieve in the Queen's Communion in the cell of the Conciergerie ; but it 1 National Archives, W 2 546. Re the twenty-three gendarmes accused of deserting their post at the Arsenal. Jean-Baptiste Prud'homme, twenty-nine years of age, native of Jonquereuil, department of the Aube, gendarme of the 1st division, company of La Bille. Charles Antoine Lamarche, twenty-five years of age, native of Mire- court, department of the Marne, gendarme of the 1st division, company of La Bille. Convicted : 1st, of having basely deserted, without any kind of resistance, the important post of the Arsenal, which had been entrusted to them, and of having left there the people's representative, Dentzel, exposed to the fury of the rebels. 2ndly. Of having taken refuge in the Faubourg Antoine on the 4th of this month, and mixed with the rebels, among whom they were discovered and arrested when the Faubourg was stormed. Srdly. Of having by this conduct taken an active part in the rebellion and in the existing conspiracy, and of having exposed the lives of good citizens and endangered the public welfare. 202 THE QUEEN'S COMMUNION remains to us to inquire what degree of confidence we may place in the narratives of Mademoiselle Fouche and the Abbe Magnin. The Abbe Magnin, having been before the Revolution the director of the little Seminary of Autun, became after the Terror the priest of the parish of Saint-Roch. In the days of the Con- sulate he informed the Duchesse d'Angoule'me that the Queen, shortly before her death, had received the Sacrament. Marie Antoinette's daughter who was so cautious in regard to every- thing concerning her parents' memory, so mistrustful of the innumerable people who boasted of having alleviated the suffer- ings of the royal captives in their imprisonment, so incredulous before the outburst of "retrospective devotion" that she refused the heart of " the child of the Temple," which Dr. Pelletan had removed at the time of the autopsy Marie Antoinette's daughter must surely, in any matter that concerned her mother's last hours, have had all the evidence put before her. On the l6th October, 1814, she received the Abbe Magnin, and it is plain that she did not regard him as an impostor, since two years later she pro- cured for him the cure of Saint- Germain-l'Auxerrois, the royal parish. This excellent priest, however, never attempted to boast of his noble conduct. He had said nothing of it when the Comte de Robiano's pamphlet, of which we shall speak presently, revealed to the world the fact of the Queen's Communion, which until then had been known only to a few individuals. There was but one person who attempted a refutation. Was this person, as one would naturally suppose, a man whom circum- stances had placed in a position to know everything that went on in the Conciergerie ? Not at all. The man who flung himself so eagerly into this discussion was Lafont d'Aussonne, late cure of Drancy in the diocese of Versailles, who described himself as an ex-priest, now a manufacturer of Prussian blue. He was the author of a book on Marie Antoinette, in which among other enormities he declared, without giving any evidence or taking the trouble to support his assertion in a note, that the Queen died from a fit of apoplexy on her way from the Law Courts to the Place de la Revolution, and that the executioner had only beheaded a corpse ! Such is the historian who, with unaccountable animosity, attacked the Abbe Magnin's revelations. He published a 203 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE virulent pamphlet called: The fictitious Communion of the Queen, supported by means of a fiction, in which the cure of Saint- Germain-rAuxerrois and Mademoiselle Fouche were violently accused of imposture. 1 When the Abbe Magnin was informed by one of his friends 2 of the publication of this brochure he determined not to answer it. It required nothing less than the intervention of a high dignitary of the diocese of Paris to persuade him to make a solemn declaration of the truth of his assertions. The Abbe Desjardins, cure of Foreign Missions and afterwards vicar-general of Paris, put it before him as a positive duty to prove the authenticity of the fact contested by Lafont d'Aussonne ; and " on the following day, which was a Sunday, M. Magnin entered the pulpit between vespers and compline, and in the presence of a numerous congregation protested with charitable moderation against so revolting an imputation. He described the incident and the chief circumstances attending it. Then turning to the altar he raised his hands and declared before God that all he had just said was absolute truth." 3 Lafont d'Aussonne did not consider himself beaten. In the following year (1825), he published a Memorial to the King on the importance of the spurious matter dealing with the Conciergerie. The Abbe Magnin did not answer him, but contented himself with addressing to the King a memorial in manuscript, of which we shall presently read the entire text. In it he produced the conclusive evidence of various witnesses, among them being the 1 The first and most plausible of Lafont d'Aussonne's objections is derived from the Queen's Will itself : Not knowing whether there are any priests of this religion (Catholic) still alive, and moreover the place in which I am would be too dangerous for them. It would seem then that Marie Antoinette herself declared that she had not seen a priest in the Con- ciergerie, and that the Abbe Magnin's story is therefore nothing but an imposture. But we may meet this by saying that these words of the prisoner are completely in accord with the assertions of Mile. Fouche, who, being obliged to go away to Orleans during the first days of October, had suddenly given up her Aasits to the Conciergerie. The Queen, seeing no more of her consolers, may have thought they had been arrested and imprisoned, and did not wish to compromise those who had shown her so much devotion. And moreover we know that, when the cure Girard came on the morning of the 16th October to offer his services to the prisoner, she, knowing he had taken the oath, answered that she had no need of his assistance. Divine mercy has provided for me* she said. 2 M. Troche. 3 La Communion de la Heine Marie Antoinette a la Conciergerie. (See the journal Le Monde for March 31st, 1863.) 204 THE QUEEN'S COMMUNION widow Bault, who certified that she knew he had come to the prison during the Queen's confinement in the Conciergerie, to give the prisoner the consolations of religion. 1 1 (See p. 220.) The paper L'Ami de la Religion for December 19, 1843, contains an in- teresting study of the Abbe Magnin. We quote from it the following account of his last years. " The Abbe Magnin zealously managed his parish until 1831. The Parisian clergy were at that time surrounded by enemies who, though few in number, made up for this by their violence, and made no secret of their hostile schemes. Ever since the death of the Due de Berry it had been the constant custom to celebrate a service in his memory on the 14th February. Some royalists, who thought this pious custom should not be abolished on account of the change of Government . . . went in search of M. Magnin. The matter was urgent, for it was then Thursday, and it was wished that the service should be performed on Monday the 15th February since the 14th was a Sunday. It did not occur to the vicar of Saint-Germain-FAuxerrois to inform the ecclesiastical authorities, and he read the service on the appointed day. Everything went off quietly, and the clergy had already returned to the vestry when a young man, prompted by some unknown motive, thought of fastening a portrait of the Due de Bordeaux to the catafalque. As soon as M. Magnin had been informed of this imprudent action he hurried to remove the portrait, but it was too late. A crowd, composed of members of the lowest mob, but prompted by more important persons, rushed into the church, destroyed everything in it not even sparing the ancient tombs and in a few moments turned this holy fane into a scene of horror. They devastated the vestry in the same way, and then proceeded to the presbytery, the curs dwelling. There they spared nothing : furniture, books, linen, vestments, everything was stolen or destroyed. They looked for M. Magnin himself, intending to seize him and throw him into the river ; but he had cautiously hidden himself, and for that day was able to escape the fury of the rioters. "The authorities made M. Magnin responsible for this event, by which he had been so cruelly victimised. They issued a writ against him, and he was seized and put in prison. He was first examined before a young judge, of whose methods he could not speak too highly ; but afterwards he appeared before an older one who treated him very differently and seemed absolutely determined to prove his guilt. " The truth triumphed at last, and after nineteen days of imprisonment M. Magnin recovered his liberty ; but he had not only lost everything he possessed but was also deprived of the consolation of returning to his church, which, after having been laid waste, was closed and threatened with destruction. He and his clergy were obliged to take refuge in the church of St. Eustache, which then served two parishes. " When in 1832 there was such a violent outbreak of cholera it was thought right to ask the authorities to allow the church of Saint-Germain- 1'Auxerrois to be opened. They consented, and M. le curd, who had been given the keys of his church, was already occupied in having the most urgent repairs seen to, when the enemies of religion compassed the revocation of the authorities' permission, and had the venerable pastor ignominiously removed from the holy edifice. So the doors of Saint- Germain-1' Auxerrois were once more closed, and the iron plates with which they were fastened showed plainly that all hope of seeing them re-opened must be given up. This state of things lasted until 1837. " M. Magnin then resolved to resign. Hardly had he come to this determination when the church was restored to the uses of religion 205 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE M. Maxime de la Rocheterie (Revue des Questions historiques, 1870), in the course of a very complete study of the subject we are considering, proved that M. le Comte de Robiano's story merited as much confidence as the Abbe Magnin's official decla- ration. The Comte Fra^ois de Robiano, a scion of an ancient and noble Italian family who had settled in Belgium at the time of the Spanish rule, had during his many visits to Paris become in- timate with the vicar of Saint-Germain-l' Auxerrois, who had been brought to his notice as the last consoler of Louis XVI.'s widow. He listened eagerly to the details of that marvellous incident. He then determined to hear Mademoiselle Fouche's story also, and undertook to take down the depositions of the two eye- witnesses. The Comte de Robiano carried his zeal for historical accuracy to the utmost point of scrupulousness. Every day at the end of his interview with Mademoiselle Fouche or the Abbe Magnin he wrote down what he had heard, and on the morrow he read aloud to them the notes he had written, in order to make sure that they were quite accurate, and were in every respect consistent with the recollections of the witnesses. (Information given in 1870 to M. Maxime de la Rocheterie, by M. le Comte L. de Robiano, member of the Belgian Senate and son of Count Francois.) M. de Robiano's narrative, having been compiled in such con- ditions as these, may be regarded as absolutely reliable; and this being the case, we have thought it right to publish it with the Abbe Magnin's declaration. And now the reader must judge for himself. In spite of this long preamble the following pages will doubtless seem to him full of improbabilities, but with the exception of a few insigni- ficant details we, for our part, believe them to be a truthful record. The fact of Marie Antoinette's Communion in the Conciergerie must be classed among those astonishing circumstances which such as study it closely will find in the history of that terrible and strange Revolution, wherein so much passion, and hatred, and devotion were mingled. without the smallest disturbance. M. de Quelen blessed it on the 13th May, 1837, and on the following day, which was Whitsun Day, the Abb4 Quentin, vicar-general, celebrated High Mass within its walls. " M. Magnin, who was tall and had a good constitution, died at the age of eighty-three, without suffering any of the infirmities of age. He succumbed on the 12th January, 1843, leaving everything he possessed to the Seminary of Foreign Missions, where he had lived for nearly six months in 1791. His funeral service was performed at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois on the 15th January, in the presence of a great number of his former parishioners." 206 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF MADEMOISELLE FOUCHE RECORDED IN 1824 BY M. LE COMTE DE RoBIANO . . . DURING that terrible time so justly known as the Terror, Mademoiselle Fouche and the Abbe Magnin, who then called himself M. Charles, had the courage relying on the goodness of Providence to devote themselves to the prisoners, for whom they wished to secure, not only the kindly human comfort and help that seemed banished from the face of the earth, but also the support of religion with its invaluable examples of courage and resignation. They were known to several of the gaolers whose complaisance was seldom gratuitous and were regarded by them merely as good creatures of no importance, who followed the dictates of their kind hearts, and relieved all who were unfortunate, without distinction. This being the state of things Made- moiselle Fouche conceived the bold project of making her way into the Queen's presence. One day then, as Mademoiselle Fouche was coming away from visiting some of the other prisoners, she asked the gaoler Richard if she might not be allowed to see the Queen. For a long time he refused to listen to her request. " Impossible ! Absolutely impossible ! " he repeated. Mademoiselle Fouche thought she detected something in the tone of his voice that showed that his decision was not final, that by some means this no might perhaps become yes ; and presenting the gaoler with some pieces of gold with which 207 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE she had supplied herself for the purpose she renewed her request. "Pay attention to what I say," said Richard. " There are four gendarmes entrusted with the guarding of the prisoner ; two of them are devils, but the other two are good lads. They relieve each other at midnight. Come at half-past twelve, and we shall see." Mademoiselle Fouche, overwhelmed with delight, went to the worthy M. Magnin. " I am going to be allowed to see the Queen ! " she said. In the middle of the night, amid all the dangers that arose from the restless, active, relentless vigilance of that time, which sent men to their death on the merest suspicion, these two Christian friends repaired to a place that was absolutely the most dangerous in all Paris, a place upon which savage eyes must surely have been always fixed, had it not been that God sent them to sleep. Richard kept his word. Mademoiselle Fouche was shown, alone, into the Queen's cell. The Queen was not in bed. A wretched little low bed, an old arm-chair stuffed with straw, a little table, such was her furniture in this damp hole, which was un- papered, and was divided into two parts by a kind of curtain and a screen as well. The second division was occupied by the two gendarmes who made the Queen's martyrdom com- plete, in this melancholy abode, by watching her perpetually. Mademoiselle Fouche was struck by the majestic appear- ance of her Sovereign, but the sight of the blanched hair, and hollow cheeks, and faded colouring filled her with emotion. The Queen looked silently at this person who came into her prison at such an hour. Then Mademoiselle Fouche, whose lips knew no guile, told her story. In simple words that would have been impossible to an impostor she informed the Queen of the touching purpose that brought a Frenchwoman and a Christian into her presence. But the Queen had been for so long surrounded by snares that she could not yield her confidence so soon. Mademoiselle FouchePs heart was throb- bing with emotion and happiness and embarrassment; but she plucked up courage enough to beg the Queen to take some food she had brought her, offering, alas ! to taste it first. She received no answer. Good Mademoiselle Fouche under- 208 RECOLLECTIONS OF MLLE. FOUCHE stood the royal prisoner's caution in the most wonderful way, 1 and knew why she could win nothing from her but a look of dignity that last sublime defence of the daughter of Emperors ! She ended this first visit by asking Her Majesty if she would allow her to return. " As you will," said the Queen. Ah, will I not ! thought Mademoiselle Fouche no doubt, and, more than ever resolved to carry out her pious and devoted scheme, she went away quite satisfied. Meanwhile the Queen was thinking over this visit, for Mademoiselle Fouche's conduct had touched her, and she became convinced of the sincerity of this beautiful soul. Her excellent heart rejected every thought of suspicion, and when the second interview took place she no longer refused her confidence. This was Mademoiselle Fouche's scheme. Like a true Christian, inspired by the purest and most devoted zeal, she offered to bring a priest to see the Queen. The pious princess accepted the offer eagerly. " But," she said, " do you know one who is a non-juror ? " Being reassured on that point, to which she attached the greatest importance, she 1 The Le Monde newspaper published on the 23rd July, 1864, the following letter from the Rev. Father Fouche, which with regard to one or two points supplements the story of the Comte de Robiano. " I knew M. Charles Magnin very intimately. During the Revolution of '89 he took refuge with the Demoiselles Fouches, my father's sisters ; and from that time forward he never left them. Indeed, I had been taught, when staying with my aunts, to call him 'Uncle.' This was a stratagem intended to avert suspicion. I have several times heard Mile. Fouche, the elder of the two sisters, relate how she had managed to get into the Conciergerie. She was received by the Queen with an icy coldness that is easily accounted for. The things she had brought with her (stockings, linen, food) to give to the Queen, had no more favourable effect. She even went so far as to eat a piece of bread-and-jam in order to do away with any idea of her intentions being sinister. As all her efforts failed she felt she must adopt some more persuasive means. ' Madame,' she said to the Queen, 'the state of public opinion is such that it is impossible for you any longer to entertain the least hope. Religion alone can give you its final consolation, and it is in order to procure this for you that I have dared to come to you. If you accept my suggestion I am confident of being able to put you in touch with a non-juring catholic priest. If your Majesty will deign to answer me I will neglect nothing in my efforts to serve you. " The effect of these words was immediate. The Queen threw herself into my aunt's arms, embraced her tenderly, and expressing her gratitude declared that her one desire was to realise these promises. S. FoucHti, S. J. 209 P LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE agreed that on the occasion of the third visit M. Magnin should be brought in ; and Mademoiselle Fouche, who thought of everything, begged her Majesty, if the ecclesiastic did not suit her, merely to make a sign, upon which he would go away. If Mademoiselle Fouche had found it difficult to approach the Queen the difficulties in the case of M. Magnin were far greater. The most persistent entreaties and arguments, combined with Richard's long acquaintance with these two, who had always been careful not to compromise him, again overcame his objections. M. Magnin, who during the other visits had waited outside, was allowed to follow Mademoiselle Fouche. He inspired the Queen with so much confidence that she conversed with him for an hour and a half. Tears of joy and gratitude lay upon her cheeks, which for so long had only glistened with tears of utmost bitterness. She embraced Mademoiselle Fouche rapturously, and begged that M. Magnin might accompany her whenever she was able to enter the prison herself : which he did. Richard, somewhat reassured by the success of the experiment, promised them that they should often take advantage of the days when the well-disposed gendarmes were on guard. Her Majesty confessed herself several times ; and about fifteen days after the admission of M. Magnin, who was in the habit of carrying consecrated wafers to the prisoners in a box hung round his neck, she had the happiness of receiving the Holy Communion in the Conciergerie, with a sense of comfort and support that one may imagine but that cannot possibly be put into words. In the meantime Mademoiselle Fouche had obtained the Queen's permission to substitute some fine chemises and various other little things for the extremely coarse linen that had been unblushingly provided for her. Being obliged to take several persons into her confidence with regard to her good fortune in visiting the Queen and being of some use to her, she had spoken of it to Madame de Quelen among others, the mother of Monseigneur the Archbishop of Paris. This virtuous lady and devoted royalist, hearing that the Queen was then wearing a shabby black gown, torn, and 210 RECOLLECTIONS OF MLLE. FOUCHE coarsely mended with white cotton, eagerly offered her best dresses to Mademoiselle Fouche. But a sudden thought put an end to their pleasure. Every day the commissioners came several times to inspect the prison, and their suspicions would certainly be roused by the sight of a new dress. It was therefore necessary for the ladies to confine their attention to under-garments. The fear lest even a more suitable pair of shoes should betray the important secret prevented them from providing anything of that kind. The dampness and coldness of the prison suggested to Mademoiselle Fouche the idea of procuring some warmer stockings for the Queen. The sisters of La Charite Saint- Roch, of whom three are still alive, eagerly supplied these. Alas ! fragments of these stockings unmistakable on account of the thick lining formed by long ends of filoselle silk were found on the body of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette. Mademoiselle Fouche, having heard that the Queen liked rye-bread, made an arrangement with a baker in the neigh- bourhood of the Conciergerie, and took care that every second day Her Majesty should be supplied with this little sign of consideration and attention. The royal prisoner was much touched by these marks of devotion, and showed her gratitude for them. She showed, too, the most entire confidence, and expressed it in moving terms. She had neither pen, ink, nor paper ; but an admir- able sense of delicacy and generosity always forbade her to accept Mademoiselle Fouche's repeated offers to provide her with writing materials. " If you were surprised with a single word of mine in your possession," she said, " your death would be a certainty." One night the Queen produced a very simple little ebony box that had been left in her possession ; how, I do not know, for an oversight of this kind was very inconsistent with the minute searches and spoliation to which the royal family had been subjected. The little box contained a porcelain cup mounted in silver. The Queen confided it to Mademoiselle Fouche's care, saying : " If you possibly can, give this last souvenir to Madame Royale ; but if these p 2 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE unhappy times should prevent you from putting my daughter in possession of it, I give the cup to you. Keep it in memory of me."" It was with the greatest respect that Mademoiselle Fouche received this farewell gift, the only possession of the Queen of France ! Afterwards, she several times consulted Madame la Princesse de Chimay, Madame la Princesse de Tarente, and Madame la Comtesse de Golowkin as to the best means of conveying her precious charge to her Royal Highness Madame la Duchesse d'Angouleme. At last, in 1804, the Duchesse de Tarente, who was returning to Russia, undertook the care of it, and the Duchesse d'Angouleme, having received it at Mittau, was good enough to acknow- ledge the receipt of it in an autograph letter which Mademoiselle Fouche has carefully preserved. About this time a certain Michonis, a commissioner, took into the prison a stranger who tried to put into the Queen's hands a carnation containing a little piece of paper. The paper fell to the ground, and the commissioners took posses- sion of it instantly, and afterwards this fruitless attempt was punished with vindictive cruelty. Mademoiselle Fouche went to the Conciergerie that day and found everything changed. Without daring to ask for an explanation she went to the prison of La Force, the gaoler of which was a certain M. Bault, an honest man whose heart was not insensible to pity. A sister of the Saint-Louis Hospital, who is still living, secured an interview with Madame Bault for Mademoiselle Fouche, who then heard of the Michonis affair, of Richard's discharge, and of his being replaced at the Conciergerie by M. Bault. This incident would have alarmed anyone else, but on account of the last circumstance it only quickened Mademoiselle Fouche's ardour. She knew M. Bault, and respected him. She sought him out, told him in confidence what Richard had allowed her to do, and begged him to go and ask the Queen to confirm her statements. This message having had the result that Mademoiselle Fouche expected, her next care was to speak to M. Bault of the dampness in the cell, which was so great that on the occasion of her first visit she had felt her cuffs and coif quite wet. The gaoler hunted out a RECOLLECTIONS OF MLLE. FOUCHE piece of old carpet in the attics of La Force, and nailed it against the wall in her Majesty's room. Any less shabby or less common piece of stuff would not have been tolerated. As it was the commissioners noticed it, and spoke severely about it to M. Bault, who said to them : " Citizens, I am answerable with my head for the prisoner. It would be possible, by speaking with a loud voice, to make her hear anything that was said, and to receive answers from her. This thick carpet will prevent that." Bault's precaution was approved of, and the carpet remained where it was. Taking advantage of Bault's good-will, M. Magnin and Mademoiselle Fouche determined to give the Queen the unexpected happiness of taking part in the celebration of Holy Mass in her melancholy cell. When Mademoiselle Fouche made this further suggestion to M. Bault he was much taken aback by the request. She entreated, she insisted, and she had her way. " Do not be anxious, my dear M. Bault," she said to him ; " you need only be at the trouble of procuring two little candlesticks for me : we will see to all the rest." And they hastily set to work to obtain a chasuble of simple taffetas, some linen to cover the table that was to serve as an altar, a silver chalice that took to pieces, the consecrated stone, a little missal, the flagons, and two tapers. Such were the preparations, and such the light burdens shared by the two friends. The Queen had been apprised of their coming, and was joyfully awaiting the boon that she desired more than any- thing in the world. After the celebration of the Mass she wished, in her humility, that her warders and her guardian angel might be treated as her equals in receiving the Holy Eucharist, but the Abbe Magnin desired the Queen of France to receive it first. She obeyed; and then the consecrated wafer was presented to Mademoiselle Fouche and the two soldiers. The Queen, melting into tears at the feet of her God, confided the fate of her children to His care, and besought Him for strength to bear her present misery, and for resignation in the terrible future that awaited her on earth. About this time, near the end, M. Magnin fell seriously 213 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE ill and was confined to his bed. Her Majesty was much distressed. Mademoiselle Fouche suggested that she should see another priest, and twice succeeded in taking into the Conciergerie M. Cholet, 1 a Vendeen priest, who gave the Queen the last aids of religion two days before she was tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal. And yet the storm that never ceased to threaten that royal head did not then seem to be on the point of breaking. Mademoiselle Fouche thought she might safely go away to Orleans, whither she was summoned by urgent business that admitted of no delay. And then, suddenly, during her short absence, the Queen was dragged before the Tribunal. It was only in the course of her own trial that she learnt of the horrible terror that was reigning in France, and of the slaughter by which, day by day, all the royalism and Christianity in the country was being stamped out. Seeing that her friends of the prison did not return, she must have thought they had perished, and it is no doubt this sad belief of hers that explains these words in her letter : Not knowing whether there are any priests of this religion still alive. Mademoiselle Fouche returned to Paris hoping to see the Queen again at once. On reaching Etampes she was informed by some people who had just left Paris that on that very morning Marie Antoinette had died upon the scaffold. 1 In UHistoire de Marie Antoinette, by M. de Vyr6, the following story is told. " A disguised priest went into the Queen's cell. He was the vicar of Saint-M , who in 1791, when the royal family was imprisoned in the Tuileries after Varennes, had been consulted with regard to a new project for escape. " The vicar of Saint-M, then, went into the cell trembling like a child, and walked up and down in the space reserved for municipal officers, while the gendarmes were playing cards. The Queen did not recognise him ; but he went up to her and in one word informed her of the object of his visit. He then gave her absolution, and put into her hands a round flat silver box containing a wafer. This pyx is now in the possession of Madame Alexandre Legentil, ne'e Marcotte. " The vicar of Saint-M spoke of this visit to two persons only, his friend Royer Collard and his own niece, through whom M. de Vyre heard of it." Might not this curt of Saint-M (?) be the Abbe Cholet ? THE DECLARATION OF THE ABBE MAGNIN (1825) STATEMENT DRAWN UP BY M. MAGNIN, CURE OF THE PARISH OF SA INT-GERM AIN-L"* A UXERROIS, CONCERNING QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE'S COMMUNION IN THE CoNciERGERiE. 1 HAVING been chosen by the Lord, in spite of my un worthi- ness, to give the consolations of religion to the unfortunate Marie Antoinette of Austria, Queen of France, while confined 1 This Declaration, which the Abbe Magnin wrote and signed with his own hand, was presented in 1825 to Charles X., Madame la Dauphine, Monseigneur the Archbishop of Paris, and Monseigneur d'Hermopolis, and was published on the 23rd July, 1864, in the journal called Le Monde. The original manuscript is in the possession of Mile. Fouche's nephew. A pamphlet that is now very rare, La Communion de la reine Marie Antoin- ette a la Conciergerie, by N. M. Troche, supplies the following details. The Duchesse d'Angouleme had known of the pious deed in the Conciergerie as early as the year 1804, during her exile at Mittau in Courland, whence she sent grateful messages to Mile. Fouche. Later on, after the restora- tion of the august royal family, she sought an opportunity of showing her gratitude to\M. Magnin. This opportunity soon presented itself. Various reasons, known to the ecclesiastical authorities, necessitated the removal of the venerable M. Valayer, at that time cure of Saint-Germain-d'Auxer- rois. He was transferred to Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs, and M. Magnin succeeded him on the 5th Nov., 1816, thus becoming the vicar of the parish of the Tuileries. From 1816 to 1831 M. Magnin's ministry was entirely that of a father revered by his spiritual children. The revolution of July passed over his head without touching him. But on the 13th Feb., 1831^ on the ostensible pretext of the service he performed for the repose of Monseigneur le due de Berry's soul, his church was horribly profaned and pillaged, after which it remained closed until the 13th May, 1837. During these six years his position, with regard to his ecclesiastical status, was as deplor- able and as sad as that of Monseigneur de Quelen ; but he bore it with courage and energy, and for some time resisted all the efforts of the civil authorities to make him resign. At last, however, realising that it was 215 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE in the prison of the Conciergerie, I thought it my duty to preserve a strict silence with regard to an event that I have always attributed to the intervention of God. His merciful designs upon a soul that was dear to Him broke down all the difficulties and innumerable obstacles that I had to overcome. It was my duty to give Him all the glory and remain in the shade myself. Uncontrollable circumstances, and the advice of several people in the first ranks of society, whose intelligence equals the integrity of their hearts, now oblige me to leave the shade, to break silence and publish the truth. I am therefore going to tell this interesting story, with thejsimplicity that it demands. I shall recount to the whole French nation how in those days of cruel memory, when our august sovereign, who had been dragged from one of the grandest thrones of the world, was sighing in a prison cell, the Lord sent one of His ministers to her, to fill her soul with only at this price that his church would be re-opened in accordance with his parishioners' wishes, he begged Monseigneur the Archbishop to allow him to resign, and his resignation was sent to King Louis-Philippe. I must here draw attention to the fact that, though he was exposed to many calumnies during this six years' ordeal, M. Magnin's honesty with regard to his pious relations with the Queen in the Conciergerie was not called in question by any newspaper or publication whatever. It was well known, moreover, that the facts of the case were familiar to the Bourbon family. This is proved beyond a doubt by the following circum- stance. In the Salon of 1819 the painter Menjaud exhibited a picture representing Her Majesty Queen Marie Antoinette receiving the Communion from the hands of the Abbe Magnin, whose features are recognisable. Mile. Fouche and the two gendarmes are also present. This interesting composition aroused much admiration and emotion among the general public, while to the royal family it was a source of consolation. King Louis XVIII. examined it with the liveliest interest, and a few days after his visit to the Salon His Majesty was good enough to address a few complimentary words to the vicar of Saint-Germain-PAuxerrois. Many people who had the pleasure of seeing this touching picture, and some who knew it only through the accounts in the newspapers, expressed a wish that this memorial might be reproduced as an engraving, since the incident it represented was not only of a most consoling nature, but also did honour to religion. With a view to fulfilling this wish, MM. Bazin and Civeton, two artists well known for their good \\ork and their excellent principles, engraved with the greatest care a lithograph of M. Menjaud's picture, in order that the memory of the remarkable event it represented might be preserved. Madame la duchesse d'Angouleme having consented to accept the dedication of the lithograph, they had the honour of presenting it to her, and Her Royal Highness was kind enough to say that she was pleased at their reproducing this interesting subject, and that their work seemed to her to be skilfully done. 216 THE ABBtf MAGNIN, THE LAST CONFESSOR OF THE QUKEN. From an unpublished picture preserved in the sacristy of the Church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. OF THE UNIVERSITY DECLARATION OF THE ABBE MAGNIN all the consolation that religion offers to the unhappy. I shall dissipate the doubts and suspicions that have arisen, and I shall leave no uncertainty in the minds of the public as to the truth of this memorable circumstance, which history will not fail to transmit from age to age to our most remote descendants, with all that concerns the misfortunes of the royal family. I shall give details that will be some con- solation to the latter, and especially to the Princess whose virtues are so admirable and whose heroic courage has sup- ported her through such terrible trials. I shall give her the certain knowledge that her royal mother, the victim of man's injustice and cruelty, was com- forted, strengthened, and prepared for the final ordeal by those pious and moving ceremonies that made her forget the ingratitude of her subjects. I shall speak for the honour of religion and its ministers, and shall defend them from the impious violence of men without principle or faith, consistent foes of the throne and the altar, who have made it their business to ridicule, deny, and reject everything that could tend to the glory of God. But before beginning this story I must introduce Mademoiselle Fouche, my excellent partner in this work of Divine Providence. Mademoiselle Fouche, a member of a respectable family from Orleans, and herself deserving of much esteem on account of her piety, had, at the beginning of the schism that was so disastrous to the Church of France, become intimate with various people who were distinguished alike by their birth and their virtues. Having dedicated herself to works of charity she visited the victims of the Revolution in prison, found asylums for persecuted royalists, and facilitated the flight of those who were trying to escape the fury of their enemies. Some very distinguished people owed their peace and safety to the services she had rendered them, and were eager in their expressions of gratitude. Being suspected of receiving priests at her house, as well as emigres who had returned to France, she was arrested, but the temporary loss of her freedom did not in the least diminish her zeal. When visiting the prisoners in the Conciergerie she made the acquaintance of the Sieur 217 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE Richard, who was the gaoler there. She had the courage to this I bear witness to persuade the gaoler to admit her to the Queen's cell. Her reiterated entreaties, combined with tact and skill, had all the success that she could wish. To her great happiness she was taken to the Queen's room, and was able to offer her a few comforts to alleviate her painful and distressing privations. Inspired by Heaven, and assured of the illustrious prisoner's consent, she urgently begged that she might be allowed to take me with her into Her Majesty's cell, and secured permission to do so. I declare, then, that with the assistance of the Most High, I had the happiness of receiving the confession of the Queen of France on two occasions, and of giving her the Holy Communion, while Richard was still the gaoler of the Conciergerie. I declare further that the Sieur Bault, who succeeded Richard at the Conciergerie, and knew Mademoiselle Fouche while he was gaoler of La Force, also yielded to her entreaties ; she was again admitted to the cell. Once more the presence of this devoted creature brought a little brightness into the Queen's sad surroundings ; and I too, owing to Mademoiselle Fouche's efforts and prayers, won from the new warder the happiness of visiting Her Majesty. Remembering what had taken place when Louis XVI. was in the same circumstances in the Temple, and knowing the Queen's feelings on the subject, I suggested to her that I should celebrate Holy Mass in the dark hole in which she was imprisoned, and should give her the Holy Communion. I assured Her Majesty that we could easily bring with us all the things necessary for these solemn ceremonies. For during these dreadful times we had in our possession three little chalices that took to pieces, some small 18mo missals, and some portable altar-stones, rather longer than the foot of a little chalice. All these things fitted into a work-bag, and we could easily hide them in our pockets. The Queen gratefully accepted, and thanked us for the suggestion. Among the gendarmes who were employed to guard this particular cell we had noticed two whose respect for their sovereign and open manifestation of their religious 218 DECLARATION OF THE ABBE MAGNIN feelings had inspired us with complete confidence. As they were well known to the gaoler, I did not hesitate to inform them of the good fortune that the Queen was about to enjoy, and these men, who were good Christians as well as loyal French subjects, expressed their desire to have a share in this glorious privilege. The day of the sacred ceremony having been agreed upon, the gaoler came to meet us during the night at a particular spot, and took us into the prison. I heard the Queen's con- fession. Mademoiselle Fouche was prepared to receive her Saviour, and the two gendarmes assured me that they also were ready, and earnestly desired to communicate in these fortunate and unexpected circumstances. I celebrated Holy Mass, and gave the Communion to the Queen, who, as she fortified herself with the eucharistic bread, received from God the courage to bear uncomplainingly all the torture that awaited her. Mademoiselle Fouche and the two gendarmes were at the same time admitted to the divine banquet. Having undertaken to tell my story in few words, I cannot possibly dwell upon the emotion to which so touching a scene must give rise. It took place early in October, 1793, and as I fell ill shortly afterwards this was the last time I had the honour of seeing Her Majesty. Mademoiselle Fouche was more fortunate ; and she introduced in my place M. Cholet, a priest from La Vendee. This ecclesiastic gave the Communion to the Queen during the night of the 12th of the same month, and immediately afterwards left France to take refuge in England. There, according to information obtained by Madame la princesse de Chimay, he has since died. Such is the authentic and solemn declaration that I hereby make. Mademoiselle Fouche, whom Providence has mercifully preserved, has supported my testimony with her own irre- futable evidence. Calumny has made it a matter of duty to give publicity to this incident, a duty that I felt obliged to fulfil. The two gaolers are dead; the brave gendarmes, victims of their own imprudence, died under the executioner's knife ; and Mademoiselle Fouche and myself are the only two remaining eye-witnesses. I will add one or two facts that will 219 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE throw light on this incident which some have dared to treat as a fable and will confirm my assertion that Queen Marie Antoinette did actually receive the Communion in the Conciergerie. Although our actions demanded the greatest secrecy, various reasons determined us to confide in several people upon whose discretion we could absolutely rely. More than thirty years have passed since then, but there is still a more than sufficient number of people alive to bear witness to the truth of what I have just declared. There is, for instance, Sister Julie, the Superior of the Sisters of Charity of Saint-Roch ; and Sister Jeanne, of the same community. Charitable ladies took to these nuns the articles they had collected to alleviate the privations of the royal captive. It was from them that Mademoiselle Fouche received a pair of stockings of grey filoselle, thickly lined, and a pair of elastic garters. It was, under Providence, by means of one of these stockings, and of the preservation of the garters, that the precious remains of Marie Antoinette were identified in the cemetery of the Madeleine ! Other witnesses to whom I can appeal are Mademoiselle Trouve, Rue de Sevres, opposite to the Abbaye-aux-Bois, who was well known to the Princesse de Chimay ; and M. Blandin, vicar-general at Orleans and cure of Saint-Paterne, who was in hiding in this town at that time. In a letter that he wrote to me in the course of last December, he reminded me that he had expressed a desire to share both our happiness and our risks ; and since then he has repeated this to my senior curate. Certain other devout persons, having known of the incident that took place in the Conciergerie, gave very humble thanks to God on that account. The Princesse de Chimay, hearing on her return to France of the wonderful circumstance, told the Princesse de Tarente of it in 1803. These two ladies had several interviews with us, and Madame de Tarente, when passing through Mittau on her way to Russia in the following year, informed her Royal Highness the Duchesse d'Angouleme of all the details of the Queen's Communion details that she had heard from us and from other people who knew them already. 220 DECLARATION OF THE ABBE MAGNIN His Majesty Louis XVIII. and Monseigneur the Due d'Angouleme were afterwards informed of this consoling circumstance, and the royal family joyfully blessed the invisible hand that had made it possible, and had carried it to a successful issue. When Providence gave back to us the descendants of so many kings, for whom we had so greatly longed, they had already known of our zeal and devotion for more than ten years ; but we, satisfied with having done right, and desiring to remain unknown, did not put ourselves forward. Madame la Princesse de Chimay thwarted our intentions. She begged us to go and see her, and then questioned us with regard to the scene in the Conciergerie, making us repeat the details that she had known for a long time. We gave in to her wishes, but we earnestly entreated her not to mention our names in the story she proposed to tell Madame la Duchesse d'Angouleme, and not to make the facts public. Surprised at our resistance, she begged M. 1'AbbeDesjardins, curt of Foreign Missions, and now first vicar-general of the Archbishopric of Paris, to urge me to allow my name to be given, as a matter of conscience, with a view to making the story more authentic. M. Desjardins recently related the circumstances in the presence of Monseigneur the Archbishop of Paris and a large number of ecclesiastics, and urged me to tell the story myself. I was obliged to obey. On the 16th October, 1814, I had the honour of being received by Madame la Duchesse d'Angouleme in her private sitting-room, and by her request I gave an accurate account of all we did, and of the help that Mademoiselle Fouche and I were fortunate enough to give to her august mother, and especially of the way in which God had made it possible for us to give her the Holy Communion. The Princess listened to these sad details in reverent silence, with an expression of the liveliest emotion. In 1817 Madame Bault, the widow of the man who was gaoler at the prison of La Force, arid was afterwards at the Conciergerie while Richard and his wife were in prison, offered me a copy of some historical notes on the Queen's last days, and wrote me a letter, from which the following is an extract : an LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE " MONSIEUR, The account I have had drawn up, and have the honour of sending you, of the last hours of the Queen, cannot be dedicated to anyone more suitable than yourself, who had the courage, in spite of end- less dangers, to make your way into that august Princess's prison, in order to give her the conso- lations of religion. Signed: WIDOW BAULT." The original of this letter, the signature of which was identified by Bault fits, gaoler at Sainte-Pelagie, has been deposited with M. Champion, notary, 19 Rue de la Monnaie, Paris. If this account were to be read by none but the well- disposed, who would be likely to be convinced by the evidence I have put forward, I would stop here ; but since there are others, who are under the influence of opinions and teaching inimical to religion, and are eager to misinterpret and distort every fact that tends to the glory of God, I shall prolong my story. The fact that the Queen, in her letter to Madame Elizabeth, said nothing of her Communion, has been seized upon by these people as a proof that I wished to impose upon the public. I do not feel called upon to explain the Queen's motives : others have done so already, and have said all there was to say. As a matter of fact, the consideration of the dates alone is enough to explain and dissipate the only possible objection founded on Her Majesty's letter to Madame Elizabeth. It was during the first days of October, 1793, that M. Magnin celebrated Holy Mass in the Conciergerie, and during the night of the 13th of the same month that M. Cholet again gave the Holy Communion to the Queen : and it was on the 16th, a few hours before entering the fatal cart, that the Queen wrote her immortal letter to Madame Elizabeth. Being, therefore, at peace with God, she was able to say and to write, without the least perversion of the truth, that she was in no need of spiritual consolation, seeing that she had DECLARATION OF THE ABBE MAGNIN already received it. The need for caution, and her wish to shield both the priests who had helped her and those who had achieved bringing them to her, would be enough to suggest this or any similar expression. Be this as it may, the facts speak for themselves; and the following is a still more significant one a word spoken by the Queen herself, which leaves no doubt as to her secret. At half-past six in the morning, when she had just confided her letter to the gaoler, begging him to see that it reached its destination, M. Girard, a priest who had taken the oath and had formerly been curt of Saint-Landry, but was now vicar-general of Gobel and constitutional Bishop of Paris, came to the Queen and offered her the help of his ministrations. She declined it. " But, Madame," he said, " what will people say when they know you refused the consolations of religion at this supreme moment ? " The Queen replied : " You may tell those who speak of it to you that the mercy of God provided for me ! " M. Girard himself, who forsook the error of his ways and returned to the bosom of the Church, did not hesitate to repeat Her Majesty's answer to his representations. He told it to several people, and notably to M. de Lagny, cure of the parish of Bonne-Nouvelle, who made a point of relating the anecdote to me on more than one occasion, and more particularly during the early days of this month (January). M. Bertrand de Molleville also records the circumstance in his History of the Revolution of 1789. Assuredly, if a commission were appointed to examine into the numerous proofs that establish the fact of the Queen's Communion in the Conciergerie and some of these proofs we have passed over in silence it would be obliged to proclaim the truth of the story in the face of all the world. Naturally, then, I was surprised to see the widespread publication of a brochure whose sole motive was to discredit the truth of this incident, and to deprive the royal family, after all they have endured, of their most cherished source of comfort. But my surprise was still greater when I learnt that this composition, La fausse communion de la Reine, was the out- come of M. FAbbe Lafont d'Aussonne's remarkable imagina- tion. I should have been glad, for the honour of the priest- LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE hood, to hide the fact, but it is too well known. He has put his name to his work, and is determined not to let anyone else have the credit of it. He wrote to me on the subject himself. Nor is this all. The writing was attached, five times in succession, to the door of my church, in order that my whole parish might know about it ! It seems to me that all I have said to establish the fact of the Queen's Communion in the Conciergerie will suffice to refute the book that tries to discredit it ! Far be it from me to apply to its author the coarse terms of abuse that he so liberally bestows upon me ; but since, thanks to the Almighty, he has been snared in his own net, I need not hesitate to reveal his shameful methods, and thus, by means of his own words, to carry conviction into the most prejudiced minds. M. Lafont d'Aussonne, in his anxiety lest he should fail to win the confidence of the public, tried to beguile the widowed Madame Bault, who had settled at Charenton. He paid her a visit, and employed all the resources of his fertile imagina- tion in his efforts to persuade her to draw up a statement, denying what God had accomplished in the Conciergerie. Madame Bault, insulted by such a suggestion, rejected his request firmly and indignantly ! But this rebuff did not disconcert him at all, and thinking he might be more fortunate with her son, he visited him too, to prepare his mind for the suggestion that he, Lafont d'Aussonne, was about to make. On the following day he wrote this letter to M. Bault : Letter from M. LAFONT D'AUSSONNE to M. BAULT, Gaoler of the Prison of Sainte-Pelagie. MY DEAR MONSIEUR BAULT, I have already told you of the service your mother rendered me in April, 1794, when she said to the famous Heron, who was taking me to La Force to undergo solitary confinement : " Citizen Heron, take that poor young man somewhere else ; our cells are full of scurvy and the plague, and he will be dead in three days if he comes here." Your mother was able to recall the incident when, as I told you, my friendship and gratitude led me to visit her a few days ago at her house in DECLARATION OF THE ABBE MAGNIN the country. I take a heartfelt interest in all that concerns her good name and that of her late husband, your father ; and in the new edition of my Histoire des malheurs et de la mort de la Reine I will clear them both of the charge of venality which the Sieur Magnin has brought against them in a widely-published writing. In the meantime, in case Madame Bault should happen to die suddenly, which is a thing that may occur to any of us, I urgently beg you to ask her in my name for a formal and properly signed statement, expressed in the following terms : " I, so-and-so (her maiden name), widow of M. Bault, who was, during his lifetime, gaoler in the prison of La Force, and was appointed to the same post in the Conciergerie during the imprisonment of our august Queen Marie Antoinette of Austria, declare and attest before God, and call my soul and conscience to witness, that my late husband and my eldest daughter, who were alone entitled to approach and wait upon Her Majesty in prison, and were surrounded by warders and gendarmes, never admitted, and would indeed have found it physically impossible to admit, any person whatever into the cell of the royal prisoner. I attest and declare before God, my sovereign judge, that neither my husband nor my daughter ever received any money, or linen, or other article intended for the Queen, and that, even if they had consented to receive anything, the articles in question could never have reached their destination, since nothing was given to Her Majesty except through the office of the registrar of the Tribunal, which office was inspected and managed by Fouquier-Tinville. And, consequently, I declare a certain octodecimo publication to be false and calumnious ; which publication Lafont d'Aus- sonne, the author of a work on the death of the Queen of France, showed to me, saying that he had it from M. Tabbe Magnin, who signed it. It is said in this publication that Mademoiselle Fouche, by means of her money , won over the Queen's warders, who admitted her and M. Magnin several times to the cell of the captive Queen. My late husband was a good man : he would never have accepted a bribe in the exercise of his duties : he never received one from the Sieur Magnin or Mademoiselle Fouche or from anyone in the world ; LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE he loved and respected the Queen, and did for her the little that it was possible for him to do without looking for any reward but the satisfaction of his feelings and the fulfilment of his duty. Finally, I declare that neither my husband, nor my daughter, nor I, knew Mademoiselle Fouche and M. Magnin at the time in question : I only made their acquaintance after the return of the royal family, and my object in doing so was merely to throw light upon their alleged admission to the Conciergerie. In witness whereof, at Char en ton, on the , 1822. WIDOW BAULT." This, Monsieur, is what it would be advisable for your mother to declare formally. In any case I shall assert in my book that her conversation with me was to that effect. With kindest regards, Signed: LAFONT D'AussoNNE. I beg to call the reader's special attention to the phrase : " In any case I shall assert in my book that her conversation with me was to that effect " ; a luminous phrase when thought- fully considered, and a phrase for which M. Pabbe Lafont would have a good deal of use. It surely cannot have astonished those who had the advantage of knowing him. M. Bault Jils was much surprised at being charged with such a mission, and merely forwarded this curious letter to his mother, who for her part felt nothing but scorn for an attempt that was so insulting to all her finer feelings. She lost no time in sending the letter in question to me, at the same time expressing her indignation. M. Lafont, though he received no answer to this wonderful letter of July, 1822, which had fallen into my own hands, did not fail to fulfil his threats. " In any case I shall assert that her conversation with me was to that effect ! " He had been indignantly repulsed by the Widow Bault. but he thought proper to put into her mouth an endorsement of his senti- ments and slanders and upon this foundation he built up his worthless romance, which was compiled of statements imputed to people who had never signed them nor seen them, 226 DECLARATION OF THE ABBE MAGNIN and composed of scenes that had never taken place except in his imagination ! Madame Bault, shortly after sending me this letter from Lafont d'Aussonne, wrote to me on the 30th December, 1822, for New Year's Day. This is her letter : " HONOURED AND REVEREND SIR, I beg you to accept my very sincere wishes and prayers for your peace of mind and your most entire happiness. If my prayers are granted, the treachery and malice of jealous persons will be unable to injure you or prevail against you ; the wicked will always be confounded. I implore you to continue to give me your benevolent protection, and assure you that the sentiments will never change with which I beg you to believe me, respected and reverend Sir, your very humble servant. Please ask Mademoiselle Fouche also to accept my wishes for her happiness. Signed: WIDOW BAULT. Charenton, 30th Dec. I will make no observations on these two letters that present so great a contrast, the first of which failed to produce the effect expected of it by its disingenuous author. I submit them, with the story that precedes them, to the consideration of the impartial reader. Let him judge. I have told, in simple words, as I promised, the story of a most consoling incident : the Communion of our Queen in the Conciergerie. I have not done so as briefly as I had hoped, on account of the numerous details and documents with which my pen had to deal. I have even omitted some details recorded in certain notes that reached me lately, which are very conclusive. I have fulfilled an obligation that was laid upon me, and have witnessed to the truth ; and whatever the result may be I shall always have the support of my conscience, and that is enough for me. Executed in Paris, Jan. 26th, 1825. Signed : MAGNIN, Cure of Saint-Germain-PAuxerrois. 227 Q 2 THE TRIAL NOTES BY CHAUVEAU-LAGARDE 1 COUNSEL FOR THE QUEEN (14TH-16TH OCTOBER, 1793) THE trial began at eight o'clock in the morning. It continued without a pause until four in the afternoon ; was interrupted till five ; and then went on until four o'clock on the following morning ; so that except for one brief interval of relaxation it lasted for about twenty consecutive hours, during which a crowd of witnesses were examined in succession. Imagine, if you can, the force of will required by the Queen to bear the fatigues of a sitting as long and as horrible as this ; to endure the gaze of a whole crowd ; to pit herself against the monsters who thirsted for her blood ; to defend herself against the snares they laid for her ; to over- throw all their objections; to keep meanwhile within the bounds of decorum and moderation, and never to be unworthy of herself. Only those who witnessed every detail of this too-notorious 1 Chauveau-Lagarde was in the country on the 14th Oct., 1793, when a messenger came to inform him that he and Tromjon-Ducoudray had been chosen to defend the Queen, and that the trial was to begin on the following day at eight o'clock. He returned to Paris at once, and hastened to the Conciergerie. "I entered the Queen's presence," he says, " with feelings of the most devout respect, so that my knees were shaking under me, . . . and such was my embarrassment that it could not possibly have been equalled had I had the honour of being presented to the Queen amid the surroundings of her Court." 228 NOTES BY CHAUVEAU-LAGARDE trial can have any true idea of the nobility of character shown by the Queen on the occasion. . . . When the Court rose the first time we retired to the prison, to confer together for a moment cm the progress of the trial up to that time. We were still surrounded by gendarmes, who never left us. The Queen had seen Manuel's name on the list of witnesses who were to be heard that evening. Knowing that he had been procureur of the Commune during one of the most horrible periods of the Revolution she thought it a name of evil omen, and feared he would be unlikely to keep to the truth in his deposition. I must, however, do Manuel's memory the justice of saying that on this occasion he had the honesty to say nothing that could by any means be interpreted to the Queen's disadvantage. Meantime the Queen asked me what I thought of the evidence we had just heard. She went over the different points of it with perfect accuracy, and complained bitterly of the lies of which it was chiefly composed. I answered her perfectly truthfully that not only was there no proof which was a matter of course of all the ridiculous slanders of the witnesses, but there was not the slightest evidence to support them ; and that they as a matter of fact defeated their own object by their very scurrility, and by the baseness and degradation of those who invented them. " In that case," said the Queen, " I fear no one but Manuel." At that moment de Busne, the constabulary- officer, was relieved, and it afterwards transpired that these words of the Queen had been overheard by the gendarmes, who repeated them in the Tribunal. . . . In the course of the sitting that followed, the Queen gave a remarkable . . . proof of her presence of mind and strength of character. It was at the most painful moment of the trial, when she had just experienced a violent shock to her feelings, and one of her finest answers to an odious question from one of the jurymen 1 had produced a movement of admiration on the 1 His name is unknown. He was evidently prompted by Hebert, who was present at the trial. LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE part of the crowd, which for an instant interrupted the pro- ceedings. 1 She noticed the impression she had made, and having signed to me to go up to the steps within reach of her, Her Majesty said to me in a low voice : " Did I not put too much dignity into my answer ? " " Madame," I answered, " be yourself, and you will always do what is best. But why do you ask me ? " " Because," said the Queen, " I heard a woman of the people say to her neighbour : See how proud she is ! " This remark shows us that the Queen still hoped; and proves, too, that her blameless conscience made her alto- gether mistress of herself, since amid all this violent mental excitement she heard everything that was said by those round her, and tried, in the cause of her own innocence, to adapt both her silence and her speech to the situation. . . . When the witnesses had all been examined, my colleague and I were able to consult together, for a moment, as to the best line to take in our speeches. M. Tron9on-Ducoudray undertook to defend the prisoner against the charge of conspiracy with the people's enemies in France, while I was to deal with the charge of conspiracy with the foreign powers. Hardly had we agreed to this arrangement, and given each other all the notes that might possibly bear on our respective divisions of the subject, when at the end of a quarter of an hour we were called back into the court and obliged forthwith to speak without preparation. There can be no doubt that, however great the talent that M. Troncon-Ducoudray showed in his address, and however great the zeal I may have put into mine, our speeches for the defence were necessarily unworthy of such a cause, for which J "This was the moment when Marie Antoinette, on being questioned with regard to the well-known infamous accusation, turned indignantly towards the seats occupied by the public, and appealed to every mother. At this sublime appeal a thrill passed through the audience ; the tricoteuses were moved in spite of themselves, and it would have taken very little to make them applaud. . . . Piercing cries arose, women were carried out fainting, and the Court was obliged to call the audience to order." Information communicated to Mme. Simon-Vouet by the brothers Humbert, eye-witnesses. (Maxime de la Rocheterie, Histoire de Marie- Antoinette.) 230 NOTES BY CHAUVEAU-LAGARDE all the eloquence of a Bossuet or a Fenelon would not have sufficed, or at least would have been powerless. After pleading for two hours I was overcome with fatigu The Queen was kind enough to notice this, and said to me in the most touching way : " How tired you must be, M. Chauveau-Lagarde ! I am very grateful for all your efforts ! " These words were heard round her, and did not fail to reach her enemies. The sitting was suspended for a moment, before M. Troncon-Ducoudray began to speak. I tried to reach the Queen, but in vain, for a gendarme arrested me under her very eyes. As soon as M. Troncon-Ducoudray had finished pleading he was arrested in her presence in the same way ; and after that we were not allowed to speak to her again. 1 1 The Comte Horace de Viel-Castel, in Marie- Antoinette et la Revolution franqaise, gives a striking description of the sitting of October 15th and 16th. " At four o'clock (in the afternoon of the 15th) the sitting was suspended, the audience partially dispersed, and several royalists who were present in disguise hurried away to their friends with the good news : The Queen will be banished. Some emissaries of the Jacobin Club and the Commune slipped in among those whose anxiety or curiosity had prompted them to remain, keeping a watchful eye upon the former, and exciting the revolutionary hatred of the others. Long intervals of silence followed, interrupted spasmodically by curses directed against the accused, by complaints against the judges, and by threats to disregard the verdict of the jury if it were favourable to the Queen. "Night falls early on the 15th October; the cold and melancholy darkness gathered round the houses ; the audience, growing ever scantier, drew together ; the proceedings were resumed ; the buzz of conversation discreetly became fainter ; and by eleven o'clock there was no more conversation. Everyone was in a state of suspense. The passing and re-passing of the messengers who, every quarter of an hour, were bringing to Robespierre the minutest details of this long trial, was by midnight the only interruption to the silence of the members, who sat round anxiously watching the royal death-throes. An inspector of prisons called Ducatel, followed by four or five of his subordinates, was trying to detect conspirators, or at all events ' suspects,' in this remnant of a mob, still afoot in the middle of the night, whom he did not recognise as his comrades of the 6th October, 1789, nor yet as his comrades of September, 1792. "The presence of Ducatel, whose degraded face awakened so many horrible memories in the minds of the royalists, had the effect of chasing away such of the Queen's friends as feared to attract the attention of Mme. de Lamballe's murderer, the man who had struck down Marie Antoinette's brave and faithful companion with a hammer. " The night was slipping by and the cold growing sharper when a voice 231 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE We were kept in custody in the registrar's office while the jury were considering their verdict. It was impossible for us to go to the Queen during this interval as we had promised, and no doubt this must have made her acutely anxious as to the issue of her trial, while to us it was a source of much bitterness and sorrow. Soon the jury returned to the court to announce the unanimous result of their deliberations. Surrounded by gendarmes, among whom the Queen must have seen us under arrest, we were led back to the court, to hear, with her, the reading of that terrible decree that sentenced her to death. We could not listen to it undismayed. The Queen alone heard it calmly. All that one could see was that there took place in her soul at that moment a kind of revulsion of feeling that struck me as very remarkable. She did not give the least sign of fear, or indignation, or weakness ; but she was, rang out with the announcement that the addresses to the jury were over. Soon afterwards another voice, which seemed to come through & moment- arily opened window, flung into the hall the words : The jury are consider- ing their verdict ! " Everyone drew near the doors. For a few moments there was a sound like the dashing of waves upon a rocky shore, as the scattered groups drew together into one, with much confused rustling and the shuffling of many feet. Then silence fell again ; the supreme moment was at hand ; friends and foes alike were in suspense. Even Ducatel and his policemen stood motionless, with their eyes turned towards the doors of the Tribunal. "At last, at four o'clock in the morning, the crowd who had just heard the reading of the Queen's sentence left the court in a state of stupefaction, and published as they went the news of this sentence of death that for a moment had seemed improbable. From mouth to mouth the tidings spread that Louis' widow was to be executed that very day in the Place de la Revolution. The best-disposed people retired to their houses, and closed their shutters against the sounds that would shortly be heard in the streets ; while the most morbid repaired to the spot where the execution was to take place, and took up their position there in the best places, that is to say, the places nearest to the scaffold, which the executioner's carpenters were already putting up. " It was past four o'clock in the morning by the time the crowd, the judges, the jury, and the gendarmes had left the hall of the Revolutionary Tribunal. . . . Fouquier-Tinville had retired into a little room attached to his chambers, and had flung himself, without undressing, on a bed . . . while the jury, whose dinner had been hasty, went down to the refresh- ment-room and there awaited the daylight, seated before a supper that they had ordered beforehand. . . . And while the public prosecutor was asleep, and the jurymen were at their supper, the Queen was led back for a few hours to her cell." NOTES BY CHAUVEAU-LAGARDE as it were, stunned by surprise. She came down the steps without a word, without a gesture, and crossed the hall as though she neither saw nor heard; then, when she reached the barrier and faced the crowd, she raised her head with the utmost dignity. It is Jplain that until that terrible moment the Queen had continued to hope-; and yet, without hesitating, she displayed the finest kind of courage, for it is impossible to show any greater courage than that which survives even hope itself. In the meantime we were imprisoned in the Conciergerie, whither we were led back after the reading of the sentence. We were kept there in custody in separate places, and there we passed the night. On the following day we were examined by an emissary from the Tribunal, who was accompanied by gendarmes. We were asked if the Queen had not told us of any conspiracy or conspirator, and in spite of our resistance we were searched like criminals, to make sure that she had not entrusted us with any papers of importance. ... If the Queen had confided a secret of any kind to us nothing could have induced us to reveal it ; but in this respect our silence deserves no credit. As it happened, however, the Queen had given to M. Troncon-Ducoudray, after I was arrested, in the interval between our two speeches and just before he began to speak, a sealed paper containing a lock of hair and two gold rings which the Queen had worn as earrings ; and she had asked him to see that they reached the person for whom they were intended. He was unable to recover this packet after it had been taken from him, and its destination was easily discovered without any words of his, seeing that the name and address, which he told me afterwards he had forgotten, were on the envelope. 1 As for the question relating to possible revelations made to us by the Queen, we answered that she had made none. In my case they were very persistent. I was reminded that during the trial the Queen had signed to me to go up to her 1 It was Madame de Jarjayes, the Queen's first woman-of-the-bed- chamber, whose husband had planned the escape from the Temple, and who had herself won the Queen's confidence by her devotion. She was arrested at this time for having received this honourable mark of the Queen's remembrance. (Note by Chauveau-Lagarde. ) 233 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE near the steps, so that she might speak to me in a low voice ; and that at another time she had certainly spoken to me mysteriously about Manuel, by which I plainly saw that the latter had not been forgiven for failing to slander her. . . . I said with perfect truth that on both these occasions, as on all others, the Queen had only spoken to me on the subject of her defence. After we had been searched and examined we were left in the prison ; and when we were set at liberty the Queen was no more. 234 EXTRACT FROM THE RECOLLECTIONS OF MOELLE 1 A MEMBER OF THE COMMUNE AND A WITNESS IN THE TRIAL (15TH-16TH OCTOBER, 1793) THOSE who were implicated, as well as the witnesses, were heard in the order with which the public is already acquainted, until about two o'clock in the afternoon, when the Court rose for the first time. We were taken into the registrar's outer office, where I dined with Bailly. Beside us, at the same table, sat M. de la Tour-du-Pin, 2 formerly Minister of War, and M. de la Tour-du-Pin- Gouvernet, both of whom were implicated in the trial and were afterwards condemned to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal. The proceedings were resumed at three o'clock, and those of us who had not been confronted with the royal prisoner were taken back to the precincts of the Tribunal, to the room in which we had been during the morning. I was not called at all on the first day, and at about ten o'clock at night I was taken back to the Abbaye prison. On the following day, the 15th October, I was at last confronted with the Queen. 1 We have already given the portion of Moelle's Narrative that concerns the imprisonment in the Temple. We have given this further passage separately because it supplements Chauveau-Lagarde's notes. Later on we shall quote another extract from the same narrative, bearing more particularly on the subject of the execution. 2 M. de la Tour-du-Pin, when he appeared before the Queen in the Tribunal, made her a profound bow, which he repeated when he had finished giving his evidence. The circumstances being what they were, this act of homage to a woman in the depths of misfortune showed a very high degree of courage and determination. LAST DAYS OP MARIE ANTOINETTE I was questioned as to the understanding that I was accused of having had with the royal family in the Temple. I answered, on this count, that I had never had any relations with them but such as were entailed by the duties of my office ; and that on the part of the royal family themselves I had noticed nothing, the first time I was with them, beyond the curiosity natural to prisoners in such circumstances ; and that indeed I knew nothing whatever about the facts men- tioned in the indictment. I was on the point of mentioning a detail in the arrange- ments at the Temple, and the system of constant vigilance that obtained there, by way of trying to prove the falsity of Hebert's infamous accusation against the Queen, when Fouquier-Tinville, the public prosecutor, divining my inten- tion, interrupted me rudely with a request to answer Yes or No as to whether I had had any understanding with the accused. My answer was a decided negative, which I accompanied with a gesture to the same effect. The royal prisoner, on being questioned in her turn, answered in these precise words : / had no sort of understanding 1 with the witness. This was the end of my evidence in the Queen's trial. In the report of the trial my evidence was reduced to a single sentence, although I was speaking for more than a quarter of an hour. Finally, let me recall the parting glance with which the august princess honoured me. . . . That must always be my most cherished reward ! At that moment my dearest hope was to die for the sacred cause to which I had vowed myself, and my greatest pride was that I had earned the happiness of doing so. 1 That same evening I was taken back to the Abbaye. On the following day, the 16th October, all of us who were con- fined in that prison heard an extraordinary noise going on all round, and this, combined with the sound of the firing of guns, 1 As I crossed the space in front of the bench, which had been invaded by a large number of spectators, a man, who was standing by as I was being led out of the court by two gendarmes, pressed my left arm and said to me: "Bravo, citoyenJ" I admit that I was grateful for this sign that my behaviour in such circumstances had made a good impression on those who were able to appreciate it. (Note by Mottle.) 236 THE RECOLLECTIONS OF MOELLE inspired us with alarm which was not ill-founded as to what was going forward outside. Personally, when I heard the report of guns, I attributed it to some attempt to oppose the Queen's execution, while the trampling of the crowd that was audible round the prison- walls I took to mean a repetition of the massacres that had taken place almost exactly a year before. I vacillated between these two theories. Supposing it possible that this noise meant a successful attempt in the direction of my wishes and hopes, it was a matter for self-congratulation ; but if the other theory were the correct one I had all the horrors before me of a second storming of the prisons. This uncertainty kept me in a state alternating between terror and hope for more than two hours, at the end of which time the turnkeys came to tell me that the noises we had heard round the Abbaye were due to the efforts of the mob to secure certain Austrian prisoners who were being brought to this prison ; and that the guns were being fired to celebrate a.Jete in honour of Marat. At that very moment one of the most august and touching victims of that dreadful time was being wickedly done to death. 237 THE EXECUTION The Narratives of the Turnkey Lariviere, the Officer of Gendarmerie de Busne, the Gendarme Leger, the Vicomte Charles Desfosses, and de Rouy, author of Le Magicien Republicain. NARRATIVE OF LOUIS LARIVIERE J TURNKEY IN THE CONCIERGERIE MY father and mother, after having been for thirty years in the service of Monseigneur le Due de Penthievre, Lord High Admiral of France, were appointed by that excellent prince to be the concierges of the Admiralty Court. 2 Our powerful patron, knowing that I was anxious to learn the art of confectionery as thoroughly as possible, made interest for me with the King's steward, and thus when I was but fourteen years old I was an apprenticed pastrycook in the King's own palace of Versailles. The 6th October was an unfortunate day for me. The royal family left the palace for ever ; two-thirds of the household were discharged ; and I went off to Paris to the bosom of my family. 1 Louis Lariviere was a pastrycook at Saint-Mand6 in 1824, when he told his recollections of the Queen's last hours to Lafont d'Aussonne. His short story may be easily verified, and although it comes to us, like Rosalie Lamorliere's, through the pen of the Queen's unscrupulous biographer, we believe it may be regarded as perfectly reliable. 2 There is, in the Almanack Royal for 1780 and the following years, a reference that confirms this statement. The Admiralty Court of France, Marble table. Lariviere, concierge and keeper of the refreshment -room in the Law Courts. NARRATIVE OF LOUIS LARIVIERE My father also lost his place some time afterwards, owing to the suppression of the Admiralty Court; but as his quarters were neither convenient nor pleasant, it did not occur to anyone to deprive him of them. The windows of these rooms, which were barred with enormous gratings, were on the second floor, and looked out over the great Cour du Preau within the precincts of the Conciergerie. One day when Richard the gaoler came to see my old father he saw me in the corner of the room, where for want of something to do, I was sitting with my arms crossed. " What do you mean to do, 11 he said to my parent, " with this great lazybones, who, as far as I can see, is strong and well ? If he can write, and I don't doubt that he can, you must just hand him over to me. I am in need of a good trustworthy turnkey. I will be a good master to him, and the arrangement will enable you to see him often." We were very willing to accept Richard's suggestion, and I forthwith took up my duties in that vast Conciergerie that I had hitherto only seen through our grated windows. On the 2nd August, 1793, I was on duty at the entrance, at the first inner door of the Conciergerie, and although I was on guard I was asleep in a big leather armchair. Sud- denly I heard someone knocking on the door, not with the hammer, but heavily with the butt-end of a musket. I promptly opened the iron grating, and then the entrance- door, and saw a tall, beautiful woman, who was being brought in by several officers and directors of the prison. The moment the full light of the hall fell upon her face I re- cognised her as my former revered mistress, the widow of the King of France, who had been put to death. She was dressed in a long black garment, which enhanced the extra- ordinary whiteness of her skin. At that moment I thought her little changed, because the agitation and exertion she had just been through had revived all her natural colour. Those who had brought her to the place intended at first to confine her in the registrar's office, which opens out of the entrance-hall ; but they quickly changed their minds, and, turning to the right through the dark passage, they showed Her Majesty to her room. At about six o'clock in the morn- 239 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE ing, when it was full daylight, the gaoler took me aside and said : " Go off and find your mother, and tell her I have decided to have her as the Queen's attendant for a few days. Your mother's health is good, even if she is old. The directors have accepted her for the post on my description of her. I hope she will not distress me by refusing it." I conveyed this proposition to my mother without delay. She was greatly grieved to hear that the Queen of France was likely to be tried at no distant date ; but on every account she had no hesitation in going down to the Conciergerie. As she was admitted to the Queen's room before the ar- rival of the two gendarmes, she had time to make her personal sentiments plainly understood ; and as she was an intelligent woman, and had lived among the great ones of the earth all her life, she was able to express herself in a few tactful words, which won her the immediate approval and even the regard of the Queen. She had been handsome in her youth, and in her old age she was neither repellent nor unpleasing. She always told us that Her Majesty had treated her much better than she had any right to expect. My mother told the Queen that I had been in her own service, and that now I was reduced to accepting employment in the prison. The day after she took up her duties my mother left the Queen's cell for a moment, and commissioned me to go out and buy half a yard of voile or of some other woollen material, with which to patch Her Majesty's black dress, which was torn under both arms and frayed round the hem by the constant friction of stone floors. I was further ordered to buy some sewing-silk, some thread, and some needles, and to return quickly. When I entered the Queen's cell with the various little articles I have just mentioned, and gave them to my good mother, Her Majesty condescended to thank me with a gracious movement of her head. After four or five days the directors of the prison told my mother that this post was too arduous for her age, and replaced her by a young woman called Harel, who in the 240 NARRATIVE OF LOUIS LARIVIERE course of the following month denounced Michonis, and the stranger who brought in the carnation with the hidden paper. Before this unlucky affair of the carnation the hardships of the Conciergerie were not altogether intolerable. The eight turnkeys were on duty for seven consecutive days, and were free on the eighth. One day M. Gilbert-des-Voisins, Presi- dent of the Parkment., took me privately into a corner and spoke as follows : " Lariviere, you seem to me to be a good fellow. It depends on yourself to make your fortune and save my life. I cannot explain my meaning to you here, but the day after to-morrow is your free day, and my valet will go and see you at your own home. I implore you to listen to the suggestions I have empowered him to make to you." We separated, for fear of being observed, and two days later the president's valet came to see me as arranged, in a little room on the Quai de THorloge, which I rented for the sake of liberty. He said to me : " Lariviere, all M. Gilbert-des- Voisin's immense possessions have been seized and sequestrated ; his house is full of officials ; his enemies have sworn that he shall die, and he is a dead man if you do not help him. I was fortunate enough to save from the wreck a sum of eighteen thousand francs in gold, which I have put in a safe place. My master empowers me to offer it to you (till we can do better) on condition that you help him to escape by the dark passage to the chapel, the passage that leads down to the little spiral staircase and ends in the outer court of the Sainte-Chapelle." I answered this poor young man that all the treasures of the world could not make it possible to carry out this plan of escape, seeing that the enormous bolts of all these old doors were chained to make them immovable, and that unless the sentry on guard outside were first murdered the least noise within would betray what was going on. A few days after this the affair of the flower took place in the Queen's cell. On the very same day Fouquier heard of it, when he made his ordinary visit of inspection in the evening. On the following day all permits were cancelled ; all the turnkeys and other persons employed about the place were 24,1 E LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE forbidden to leave the building until further orders ; Richard was taken off to prison with his family, and replaced by the gaoler from La Force, whose name was Bault. In Richard's time I was sometimes employed in the kitchen, when there was too much work for Rosalie ; and feeling that this was an opportunity of being useful to Her Majesty I liked best to prepare the dishes that Rosalie intended for her. One day I was cooking some peas for the Queen when one of the directors of the prison, who knew what I was doing, came prying round the range. While I was attending to something else he took the opportunity of presuming to lift the lid of my saucepan. I happened to see it, and the moment his back was turned I took the peas and threw them into the cinders, for I feared the rascal might have poisoned them. Four or five times Madame Richard found it convenient to send me to the Queen's cell instead of Rosalie, who no doubt was otherwise employed. I carried in Her Majesty's meals on these occasions. She thanked me with a movement of her head, without speaking. While my mother was there I went into the cell one day in the uniform of the National Guard, for I was not exempted from serving in that body by my new employment. Her Majesty said to my mother : " Pray ask your son, our former servant, not to wear that uniform again in my presence, for it reminds me of the 6th October and all the misfortunes of my family." The next time I saw my mother at home she spoke to me briefly, and very sadly, on this subject ; and in obedience to Her Majesty's wishes I no longer wore my uniform in the prison. On the 16th October, at ten o'clock in the morning, the gaoler Bault told me to go and wait for him in the Queen's cell, and to take away any cups or glasses there might be on the table. He gave me this order, I fancy, so that I might see what was about to take place, and that having seen it, I might describe it to him afterwards ; which is exactly what occurred. When the Queen saw me come into her cell she said to me sadly : " Lariviere, you know that they are going to put me NARRATIVE OF LOUIS LARIVIERE to death ? . . . Tell your good mother that I thank her for her care of me, and that I entreat her to pray for me." I had hardly entered the cell (where I saw a new officer of gendarmerie), before the judges arrived with their registrar Fabricius. Her Majesty, who was on her knees beside her truckle-bed, rose to receive them. The president said : " Pay attention : your sentence is about to be read to you " ; and they all four uncovered their heads, which was never their custom on occasions of the kind. It seemed to me that they were almost startled by the Queen's air of majesty and goodness. " It is needless to read it," said the Queen in a clear voice. " I know the sentence only too well." u No matter," answered one of the men ; " it must be read to you again." Her Majesty made no answer, and the registrar began to read. Just as he had finished I saw the chief executioner, Henri Sanson, 1 come into the room. He was a young man at that time, and immensely tall. He came up to the Queen and said, " Hold out your hands." Her Majesty recoiled a step or two, and answered in a troubled voice, " Are my hands to be bound ? Louis XVI.'s were not bound." The judges said to Sanson, " Do your duty." " Oh, my God ! " cried the Queen distractedly. As she spoke Henri roughly seized her poor hands and bound them too tightly behind her back. I saw the Queen raise her eyes to heaven with a sigh, but though her tears were ready to flow she restrained them. When her hands were bound Sanson removed her cap and cut off her hair. Her Majesty perhaps thought they were going to kill her on the spot, for she turned round with a look of deep emotion, and saw the executioner taking possession of her hair and 1 The chief executioner in October, 1793, was Charles Henri Sanson, who was born in 1739 and was therefore no longer a young man. His son Henri Sanson succeeded him on the 18th Fructidor, year III., but long before this had been in the habit of taking his father's place at executions. It has been alleged that Charles Henri died of grief for having guillotined Louis XVI. ! It is hardly necessary to say that this is legendary ; but as a matter of fact he never performed the duties of his office after Jan. 21st. His son, though not officially appointed, practically replaced him. On the whole Lariviere's statements are correct. 243 R % LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE putting it in his pocket to carry away. (It was burnt in the great vestibule after the execution.) This is what I saw : this is what I would I had never seen : this is what I shall never forget as long as I live. P.S. I must not omit to say that the gendarme Gilbert, and Dufrene too, received a commission after the Queen's death. Gilbert, in spite of my parents' opposition, won the heart of my sister Julie, and married her. He made her the unhappiest woman in the world, for he was the most depraved gendarme that ever lived. One day he went off and gambled away all the funds belonging to his company, and then blew his brains out in despair. 1 1 Here Lariviere's story ceases. Lafont d'Aussonne has added a few lines on the subject of Marie Antoinette's Communion, but we will not repeat them, having already warned our readers of that historian's par- ticular bias. 244 THE NARRATIVE OF DE BUSNE Louis FRANCOIS DE BUSNE entered the Dauphin's regiment in 1757. He served under Louis XV., Louis XVI., and Napoleon, and at the time of the Restoration was serving in the Hotel des Invalides as senior adjutant. He had then seen twenty-nine years of service and seven campaigns. He was a Knight of the Legion of Honour. (Archives of the War Office.) There is in existence a letter written by him in 1816 to Madame la duchesse d'Angoulme, in which he makes the most of his considerate behaviour to the Queen. "I am," he says, " that officer whom M. de Montjoie in his immortal Histoire de Marie Antoinette, your august mother, describes as being de- nounced, arrested, and accused, because he had obeyed the dictates of his heart, and in his willingness to end his days under the knife of the revolutionaries had done his duty with respect and devotion." He then demanded the Order of Saint Louis. It is true that de Busne, whose name Rosalie Lamorli&re mentions at the end of her story, was Marie Antoinette's last "body-guard." He it was who, as officer of the Gendarmerie of the Tribunals, accompanied her to the court where she was tried, and took her back to the cell where she was to await the hour of her martyrdom. On this occasion he was guilty of an unpardonable crime. He held his hat in his hand while he was escorting the accused : he took the trouble of going to fetch her a glass of water : and finally he offered her his arm to help her down the dark stair- case of the prison. In the evening of that very day he was de- nounced ! If we reproduce here the few lines he wrote in his own defence it is not nearly so much for the sake of the details they record as to show how great must have been the terror that the Revolutionary Tribunal inspired in everyone, since an officer in 245 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE the army humiliated himself so far as to apologise, as though for serious faults, for behaving with ordinary consideration towards a woman who was about to die. What is the crime of which I am accused by this citizen l and those who share his opinions ? Of having given a glass of water to the accused, because the citizen ushers were for the moment absent on the service of the Tribunal : of having held my hat in my hand, which I did for my own convenience because the weather was hot, and not from respect for a woman who was condemned to death, as I believe, justly. That excellent citizen the public prosecutor had given us to understand that there was an officer appointed to escort the prisoner, in accordance with the usual practice in the prison. As the Widow Capet was walking along the passage on her way to the inner staircase of the Conciergerie, she said to me : "I can hardly see where I am going." I offered her my right arm, and with its help she descended the staircase. She took it again as she went down the three slippery steps of the yard. It was to prevent her from falling that I behaved in this way, and no sensible man could detect any other motive in my action ; for if she had fallen on the stairs there would have been an outcry about conspiracy, and treason, and the undoubted complicity of the gendarmerie. How is it possible to distort my motives ? The laws of nature, my mission, and the laws of the most formidable of States, all taught me that it was my duty to keep her safe for the accomplishment of her sentence. Signed: DE BUSNE. Lieutenant of gendarmerie quartered at the Courts of Law, and Member of the popular Society of French Guards. 1 Jourdeuil, gendarme of the Tribunals, who had denounced de Busne. 246 NARRATIVE OF THE GENDARME LEGER 1 (Extracts from the Recollections of Moelle, Member of the Commune) I HAVE discovered, in connection with the Queen's last moments in prison, some details that have hitherto been unknown, or have, at all events, been unpublished until now. A gendarme called Leger, formerly a grenadier in the French Guards, whom I noticed among those who were guarding the Queen while I was giving my evidence at the trial, and who, when I saw him again, was keeping a little eating-house behind the Military School, told me that he and another gendarme had been appointed to guard the royal victim after the sentence had been pronounced. According to Leger the Queen did not return to the room she had hitherto occupied in the Conciergerie. She was taken to a room that was built up in a corner of the registrar's outer office and was generally occupied by such of the condemned prisoners as could not be executed till the day after they were sentenced. It was here that the Queen spent her last night. 1 M. Campardon accepted this evidence, and in a matter of this kind the opinion of that eminent historian is of great weight. If, however, we are to believe that Marie Antoinette did not return to her ordinary cell on the 16th October, we must reject Rosalie's story as well as that of Mme. Bault. We may remark in passing that Moelle's evidence must be received cautiously in this matter, since he makes a mistake himself. " It was here," he says, "that the Queen spent her last night." The night was spent in the Tribunal : it was past four o'clock in the morning when the sentence was pronounced. 247 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE According to this same man Leger the Queen asked for some food, and a chicken was put before her, of which she ate a wing. Before going to bed she also asked if she might change her chemise The gaoler's wife procured a clean one for her. The Queen, according to this authority, slept fairly well, and rose at about five o'clock in the morning. 1 Then she asked to have some chocolate brought to her, and it was procured from the cafe near the entrance of the Conciergerie. They only brought her what is called a mignonette^ which Leger thought such an insufficient quantity that he abstained from tasting it the usual test of all the food eaten by the royal victim. When she rose she put on the white dress that she was seen wearing on the scaffold. When the time came for her final ordeal she was led from the room where she had passed the night into the registrar's office, between two rows of gen- darmes reaching from the door of the room to that of the office. In the office her hair was cut off the hair that was blanched by so many sorrows. It was in a deplorable state of disorder The Queen only left this fatal building to enter the cart, which awaited her at the door of the Conciergerie, and conveyed her to the spot where her troubles ceased for ever. 1 As we have already said, the Queen did not leave the Tribunal until shortly before five in the morning. 248 THE NARRATIVE OF DESESSARTS 1 AT five o'clock the assembly was sounded in all the Sections of Paris ; at seven all the troops were afoot, and guns were mounted at the ends of every bridge, in all the squares, and at every junction of roads that lay between the Law Courts and the Place de la Revolution ; at ten o'clock numbers of patrols scoured the streets of Paris ; the traffic was stopped in the streets through which Marie Antoinette was to pass ; at eleven o'clock she came out of the Conciergerie, dressed in a loose garment of white pique. She entered the executioner's cart, where a constitutional priest sat at her side ; and she was escorted by numerous detachments of gendarmerie, some on foot, some mounted. Marie Antoinette, as she passed by, looked indifferently at the troops that lined the streets through which she had to drive. There was no sign of dejection on her face, nor yet of pride ; she looked quite calm, and seemed hardly to notice the cries of Vive la Republique ! Down with tyranny ! that rose as she went by. It was observed that she said very little to the confessor, and that she looked with indifferent eyes at the people who were at the windows. She seemed to notice the tricoloured pennants in the Rue Saint-Honore ; and she was observed to glance at the inscriptions fixed upon the house-fronts. At twelve o'clock, when she reached the Place de la Revolution, she turned her eyes towards the Garden of the Tuileries, and at that moment she changed colour and grew much paler than before. She then ascended the scaffold, and the knife fell. 1 Published in the year VII. in Les Proc&s fameux jugds depuis la Evolution, Vol. IV., p. 176. 249 THE NARRATIVE OF THE VICOMTE CHARLES DESFOSSES 1 THE gate opened and the victim appeared, pale, but every inch a Queen. Behind her came Sanson, the executioner, holding the ends of a thick cord, which held back the elbows of the Royal prisoner. She walked the necessary yard or two to reach the step of the cart, which had been sup- plemented by a little ladder of four or five rungs. The executioner, who guided the Queen's footsteps, was followed by an assistant. Sanson supported the victim with his hand. The Queen it was indeed the Queen ! turned round gravely to climb over the seat and sit down facing the horses, but the two executioners indicated that she was to take the opposite place. Meanwhile the priest climbed into the cart. These arrangements took some time. One circumstance that struck me was that the executioner was obviously careful to allow the cords he was holding to hang loosely and freely. He stood behind the Queen, sup- porting himself against the boards of the cart ; his assistant was at the back ; they both stood and held their three- cornered hats in their hands. The cart, when it had left the court, passed slowly along through an enormous crowd of people, who thronged the streets through which it went, but neither shouted, nor muttered, nor insulted the prisoner. It was only at the entrance to the Rue Saint-Honore, after a long drive, that any disturbance arose. The priest said little or nothing. 1 Quoted by M. H. Wallon, in his Histoire du Tribunal Rdvolutioniiaire de Paris, Vol. I, p. 349. 250 THE QUEEN ON HER WAY TO THE SCAFFOLD. Sketched from nature by David, from a window in the Rue Saint-Honore, October 16, 1793. 251 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE I had time to observe the details of the Queen's appearance and of her dress. She wore a white skirt with a black petticoat under it, a kind of white dressing-jacket, some narrow silk ribbon tied at the wrists, a plain white muslin fichu, and a cap with a bit of black ribbon on it. Her hair was quite white and was cut short round her cap ; her face was pale, but there was a touch of red upon the cheek-bones ; her eyes were bloodshot and the lashes motionless and stiff. The Queen did not utter a word to the priest till they were opposite to the entrance to the Jacobin Club, which was then a passage. On the arch that surmounted the gate of this passage a large placard had been fixed, bearing this inscrip- tion : Manufactory of republican arms for the destruction of tyrants. I thought the Queen must have had some difficulty in reading it, for she suddenly turned to the priest and seemed to be asking him something, whereupon, for a moment, he held up a little ivory crucifix upon which his eyes had been fastened the whole time. At the same instant Grammont, 1 who had been escorting the cart from the first, raised his sword, brandished it about in every direction, and, standing up in his stirrups, shouted in a loud voice some words that I could not catch ; then turned towards the fatal cart with an oath : " There she is," he cried ; " there is the infamous, the accursed Antoinette, my friends ! " A few drunken shouts arose in response, and then one of my friends made a sign to me as we had arranged, and I slipped into the crowd. We were forced to give up all hope of saving the Queen. 1 Grammont had once been an actor. He took part in the massacre of the prisoners from Orleans, at Versailles, and boasted of having drunk from the skull of one of his victims. Campardon, Le Tribunal rdvolution- naire de Paris, Vol. I., p. 149. THE NARRATIVE OF ROUY 1 Author of Le Magicien Republicain THE trial was brought to a close on the 23rd, or, according to the old reckoning, on Wednesday, the 16th, at half-past four in the morning, by the reading of the sentence of the Tribunal, which condemned the prisoner to the penalty of death. She listened to it with great composure, and came down into the court with a step as light as when she entered the boudoirs of Saint-Cloud and Trianon to indulge in her voluptuous pleasures, and to make that great lout, her husband Capet, a bigger fool than he was already. She then gave a gold ring, and a packet containing some of her hair, to one of her counsel, 2 to give to a woman called Hiary, who lived at Livry with Citoyenne Laborde, and whom she declared to be her friend. Then she asked for a confessor to assist her at the last; and as, like any other criminal, she was afraid of being seen, she begged for a carriage to convey her to the scaffold, or a veil to cover her head. But as this sort of favouritism would have been an offence to the principle of equality she was refused these things, on the ground that she was required to suffer the utmost rigour of the law. At twelve or fifteen minutes past eleven she came out of the prison of the Conciergerie, and climbed into the same cart that was used when any other condemned prisoner was to be taken off to the scaffold. She was dressed in a white 1 Quoted by Dauban. 2 This is false. Tron^on-Ducoudray and Chauveau-Lagarde had been arrested, as we have seen, before the sentence was even pronounced. 253 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE morning-wrapper, and on her head was a very common cap. Her hair was cut short, and her hands were tied behind her back. Her face was pale and very languid, but this was due to her bad state of health in the prison more than to the approach of the just penalty that she was about to suffer ; for though she looked rather downcast as she got into the cart she never lost the proud, haughty expression and bearing that were so characteristic of her. Throughout the journey from the Law Courts to the foot of the scaffold she was calmly looking about her at the vast crowd, who filled the air with cries of Vive la Republique ! When she reached the Place de la Revolution she looked earnestly, with some emotion, at the palace of the Tuileries. Her confessor, who sat beside her, spoke to her, but she seemed not to be listen- ing to him, nor even to be conscious that he was speaking. The cart drew up before the scaffold, and she alighted easily and promptly, without requiring any support, though her hands were still tied. In the same way she ascended the scaffold with an air of bravado : she seemed calmer and more undisturbed even than when she left the prison. Without saying a word to the people or the executioners she submitted to the final preparations, shaking her cap from her head herself. Her execution and the horrible prelude lasted for about four minutes. At a quarter-past twelve precisely her head fell under the iron avenger of the law, and the execu- tioner showed it to the people amid repeated shouts of Vive la Republique ! Vive la liberte ! While the executioners were untying the cords that bound her body to the plank so that they might put her remains into the basket that was waiting to receive them, one of the men searched her pocket, and drew from it a little box, which he instantly opened. He took out of it the portraits of her favourite Lafayette and of her husband, and showed them to the people, who shouted louder than ever : Vive la Republique ! l 1 This last detail appears to be absolute invention. Apart from the fact that Lafayette is well known to have been, for many reasons, anything but a favourite with the Queen, we have already seen that the latter had been deprived of all her trinkets while she was in the Coneiergerie. 254 MARIE ANTOINETTE'S WILL WHEN Marie Antoinette, at half-past four in the morning, left the Tribunal where she had just been condemned to death, she\ wrote to Madame Elizabeth the letter that has so often been printed under the title of The Queen's Will. This writing is , sublime in its heartrending simplicity, but is so well known tha it is unnecessary to give the entire text of it here. We wijl merely observe that Madame Elizabeth never received this letter. No one even took the trouble to inform her of the Queen's death. When, on the 20th Floreal, year II., the Princess in her turn was brought from the Temple to the Conciergerie, she inquired eagerly after the Queen, whom she called " her sister," and asked Richard if it were long since he had seen her. He answered : " She is very well, and wants for nothing." Throughout the night Madame Elizabeth appeared uneasy. She perpetually asked Richard to tell her the time ; for he was sleeping in a dark room adjoining the recess where she herself was lying down. She rose early: Richard had already risen. She again asked the time, and Richard took out his watch to show her the hour, and made it strike. " My sister," she said, " had one rather like it ; but she never wound it up." She took nothing but a little chocolate : then, at eleven o'clock, she went out to the entrance of the prison. A number of grandes dames, who were going to the scaffold with her, 1 had already gathered at the door. Among them was Madame de Senozan, the sister of the minister Malesherbes who defended the King, and the best and most charitable of women. Madame Elizabeth begged Richard to remember her to her sister. Then one of the ladies spoke. 1 In addition to Mme. de Senozan the batch included five members of the family of Lomenie de Brienne, the widowed Mme. de Montmorin and her son, etc. 255 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE " Madame," she said, " your sister has suffered the fate that we are about to suffer ourselves." l The Queen's last letter, then, was cruelly intercepted. Bault the gaoler, to whom the condemned woman entrusted it, gave the paper to Fouquier-Tinville, who wrote his signature on it and kept it for some time. After the ninth Thermidor the commission charged with examining Robespierre's papers appointed Edme Bonaventure Courtois, deputy of the Aube and manufacturer of sabots at Arcis, to draw up a report on the subject. Courtois, who had remained almost unknown through the Terror, quickly achieved, thanks to this inquiry that had been entrusted to him, a certain amount of fame. The energy he brought to bear on his mission is well known, for an enormous number of copies were printed of his report, which filled two volumes ; but what Courtois was very careful to keep to himself was that one day, when he was alone in the house of the carpenter Duplay, where Robespierre lived, he made a very minute search in Maximilien's room, and found, in a secret recess very skilfully contrived underneath the bed of the Incorruptible, various valuable books and papers, not to mention a picture, all of which were connected with the royal family. 2 No doubt this fact may be denied, for we have no evidence on the subject but that of Courtois' son ; but it is incontestable, apparently, that Robespierre was guilty of a much more serious fault than the pilfering of a picture and a few interesting books. He had appropriated the letter in which the Queen, in the hour I / of her death, bade farewell to her children. In every country and in every age the last wishes of the dying have been con- / sidered sacred ; but this sentiment was unknown to the heartless man who personified the cold ethics of the Revolution. The Queen's letter was actually found in his room by Courtois : Robespierre had begged it of Fouquier-Tinville, who was able to refuse him nothing. What use did he mean to make of it ? 1 Souvenir de Vlntemonce a Paris pendant la Revolution. 2 " Robespierre was an unscrupulous collector. The conventionist, who was apparently interested in literature and art, took possession of books and pictures as it suited him, and in his desire to conceal how he obtained them, hid them between his mattresses ! ! ! Yes, it was actually between his mattresses that the bibliophile Robespierre hid various classics bear- ing the arms of the royal family, such as the Letters of Cicero, the Works of Seneca, etc. , of which the conventionist must undoubtedly have taken possession in the Temple, after Louis XVI. 's death." Paul Eudel, Uh6tel Drouot et la curiositt. The picture and the books in question were shown at the historical exhibition at Orleans in 1876. 256 MARIE ANTOINETTE'S WILL Why ! the same use that Courtois meant to make of it when, understanding instantly the value of his discovery, he folded up the paper that was still stained with the Queen's tears, put it in his pocket, and without saying a word to anyone took off to his own house the only legacy that the poor woman had bequeathed to her children. The years passed by. Courtois, having become a member of the Committee of General Security, afterwards joined the Council of Ancients, and made himself conspicuous by his counter-revolutionary ardour. He pursued the Jacobins with special harshness, suspecting them always of conspiracy. The coup d'Etat of the 18th Brumaire had no warmer partisan: he was elected a tribune, but at the time of the first " elimination " an accusation of embezzlement obliged him to part from his colleagues. Having assumed the name of Degon he entered into a partnership with an army contractor, and took advantage of his position as a member of the Committee of General Security to intimidate his partner into giving him profits to which he had no right. On the first occasion he extorted a hundred and twenty thousand francs from him ; then twelve thousand more ; and finally, having ruined him, he bought his bills of credit and from the remnant of the poor man's fortune made a fortune for himself, which was no doubt exaggerated by his enemies, but was certainly not acquired by selling sabots at Arcis-sur-Aube. 1 Courtois, being rejected by the parliamentary Assemblies, gave up politics. That pursuit, indeed, had already given him every advantage he could expect to gain from it. Preferring not to return to his own country, where his character was known, he bought a kind of chateau at Rambluzin, in the department of the Meuse, where he settled down comfortably and became the seigneur of the village. Those to whom his doors were opened noticed a good deal of magnificent furniture in his house the direct descendants, it would appear, of the furniture of the ancient royal palaces ; but after the Revolution, when so many people had fished in troubled waters, very little attention was paid to unedifying surprises of this kind. In any case Courtois 1 Eugene Wei vert, La saisie des papier s du conventionnel Courtois. Archives historiques, artistiques, et litteraires, 1890. We cannot do better than refer our readers, for the whole of this Courtois affair, to the remarkable and accurate study in which M. Eugene Welvert supports his statements by so many authorities. We have taken this work as our sole guide ; but our short abstract is quite insufficient to give all the aspects of this interesting story, which should be read in the original version. 257 s LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE lived peaceably at Rambluzin until January, 1816, when the Chamber of Deputies passed the so-called law of Amnesty, of which Article 7 condemned to perpetual banishment from the kingdom the regicide conventionists who had adhered to the Acte Additionnel. Courtois was of their number. But he was sixty-two years old, his health was not very good, and he was moreover very comfortable on his estate at Rambluzin. Then it was that he remembered having carefully secreted a certain talisman in a safe place, lest some crisis of this kind should occur. The Queen's Will should win a pardon for him : and he promptly addressed to M. Becquey, Councillor of State, a letter that was intended to open negotiations. RAMBLUZIN, %5th Jan. 1816. MONSIEUR, My absolute faith in your humanity and loyal principles prompts me to address you directly, rather than anyone else, with a view to entrusting you with a secret of the first importance, of which you will not, I am sure, make any unworthy use. During the time, Monsieur, that I was a member of the Commission" charged with examining the papers of Robes- pierre and other conspirators, I thought it my duty to abstract from the portfolio that contained them certain docu- ments of the greatest interest to the royal family, documents that may be regarded as real historical records. It is most fortunate that they were saved from the destruction that certainly awaited them, so greatly was their publication feared ! I append to my letter a list of the original papers and other articles. Being uncertain whether I shall still be in France when your answer reaches my house I have placed this little collec- tion of treasures in the hands of a person of known integrity, who will only give it up in obedience to a direct order from myself. No one but my wife is in the secret, and the friend who has charge of the packet does not even know what it contains ; he thinks there is nothing in it but some family papers that he will be expected to make public after I have gone away. I should also tell you that Madame the late Duchesse 258 MARIE ANTOINETTE'S WILL de Choiseul, to whom I was fortunate enough to render important services during the Revolution, and from whom I have in my possession some cherished letters relating to myself, was the only person who knew of the existence of these papers. Even she, however, did not know of the first and most important, for she would certainly have asked me for a copv of that, and I should not have known how to refuse her. But my wife went so far as to present her with a very small lock of the Queen's hair, and a little piece of plaited braid that she begged for very earnestly. I intended last year to have these sacred objects conveyed to His Majesty ; but unfortunately I could not recall where I had put them, my many changes of residence having con- fused my memory in this respect. It was only a month ago, more or less, that I found them again, and firmly determined to have them conveyed to the destination that is really theirs by right. The first document, and the most important of all, begins with these words : It is to you, sister (Madame Elizabeth no doubt), that I write my last letter ; I have just been sentenced, not to a shameful death, for it is only shameful to criminals, but to go and join your brother ; and being, like him, innocent, I hope to shozv the same firmness that he showed in those last moments, etc. It ends with these words : My good, loving sister, I trust this letter may reach you ! Think of me always : I embrace you with my whole heart, and those poor dear children too. Mon Dieu, how heart-breaking it is to leave them for ever ! Farewell, farewell ! I shall think of nothing now but my spiritual duties. As I am not a free agent they may perhaps bring me a priest, but I here protest that I shall not say a word to him and shall treat him as an absolute stranger. This letter contains two rather closely- written pages of ordinary paper of about quarto size. It may be regarded as a kind of last will and testament, corresponding to the will of his late Majesty Louis XVI. The writing is in some places blurred with tears, which shows how deeply this august Princess was moved while writing this masterpiece of pro- found feeling, which I shall always congratulate myself on having saved. This letter is not signed ; but it is impossible 259 s 2 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE to doubt its authenticity when one compares it with others that are. Moreover, its genuineness is proved by the fact that the signature of A. G. Fouquier-Tinville is written at the bottom of it, together with those of the members of the Commission : Legot, Guffroy, Massieu, and L. Le Cointre. Second letter. This seems to be addressed to Madame la Duchesse d'Angouleme, and contains only six lines as follows : " / want to write to you, my dear child, to tell you that I am well ; I am calm, and should be quite at peace if I knew that my poor child were free from anxiety. I embrace you, and your aunt too, with all my heart. Send me some silk stockings, a dimity jacket, an underskirt, and the stocking I am knitting." This letter is unsigned. The signatures of the commissioners are at the bottom of it. The third letter is addressed to the President of the Convention, and asks that the trial may be delayed for three days, in order that the counsel for the defence, Tronson and Chauveau, may have time to prepare their case, for, says the Queen, / owe it to my children to neglect nothing that is necessary for the justification of their mother. This letter is signed Marie Antoinette, and the same signatures follow that were mentioned above. Fourth letter. From a young lawyer called Marie Antoine Martin, Maison Saint-Pierre, 585 Rue des Cordiers, asking Fouquier-Tinville to propose him to the Queen as her official counsel. Fifth letter. Anonymous ; filled with threats expressed in a very unpleasant tone, and addressed to Fouquier. Sixth packet. The Examination of the Queen, after her return from Varennes, by the three commissioners of the Con- stituent Assembly : Tronchet, d 1 And re, and Adrien Duport. Seventh packet. A kid glove that belonged to Mon- seigneur the Dauphin. Eighth packet. A little piece of the Queen's hair, about as thick as one's finger, wrapped in a quarter of a sheet of the Temps newspaper. Ninth packet. A parcel of thread, netting, etc., materials for work, no doubt, by the help of which the august prisoner beguiled the weary hours of her captivity. 260 MARIE ANTOINETTE'S WILL Tenth packet. A little letter as follows, addressed to the Queen and professing to be signed by Danton : " Citoyenne, put these words om your door : Unity, indivisibility of the Republic, liberty, equality, fraternity, or death." Signed Danton, and also signed like the others. This, Monsieur, is all that I was fortunate enough to secure. You, if anyone, will understand their value. You may rest assured that no copy has ever been made of these documents, of which no one knew but the members of the Commission, who never learnt what had become of them. And the regicide ended by begging v ,his August Sovereign to grant him, if riot a complete pardon in exchange for these relics of the Queen, at least a respite of fifteen or eighteen months. By thus delaying his exile he hoped to succeed in being forgotten. The minister's answer to these advances is very pleasing : " If these letters can be had for money, money will be given for them : as for the individual, the measure applies to everyone, and no exception can be made." But before this contemptuous refusal reached him Courtois had been bereft of his talisman. The Prefect of the Meuse, having been informed that some of Courtois' furniture seemed originally to have been Crown property, despatched a Justice of the Peace and several gendarmes to his house, to make sure that he did not take abroad with him anything valuable belonging to the State. They took the opportunity of inspecting his papers, and discovered the portfolio containing the Queen's letter and the various relics of the prisoners of the Temple, enumerated by Courtois. The whole of his little scheme fell to the ground. He was not in the least discouraged, however, and tried to assume an air of virtuous dignity. Two days later he addressed to M. de Maussion, the Prefect of the Meuse, a long letter from which we will only quote the first lines, since they will show us all we need to know of the ex-conventionist's ignoble mind. 1 M. le Prefet, I cannot help congratulating myself on the fact that the letters of the august Marie Antoinette have fallen into hands so honourable as yours, and will be presented to His Majesty without delay. 1 The letter is given in full in M. Eugene Welvert's study. 261 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE My reason, M. le Prefet, for not confiding in you first of all, was that my wife had insisted on my sending the letters to M. Becquey, Councillor of State, whom she knew personally. On the very day of her death l I wrote to that gentleman with regard to the articles in my possession, and that I took this step proves, at all events, that I made a free and independent offer to the Government to hand over these important papers to them. Perhaps you would like to know how these precious objects fell into my hands. I will do myself the honour of telling you. After Robespierre's death two Commissions were success- ively appointed to examine his papers and those of his accomplices. As, owing to party spirit, the first did not win the confidence of the Assembly, they appointed a second, of which I was a member. It was in the course of drawing up a report of this inquiry a duty that devolved upon me and occupied me for five whole months, M. le Prefet that I became possessed of these precious relics, which had originally been in the hands of the Revolutionary Tribunal, 2 as is proved by the signatures of Fouquier, procureur of that infamous court, and of the four representatives of Versailles, Legot, Massieu, Guffroy, and L. Le Cointre. The times were not then sufficiently propitious for these things to be put to any use ; and such was the vertigo, so to speak, from which certain heads were then suffering, that these historical records, which posterity will place in the very first rank, were on the point of being destroyed. To save them from the flames that threatened them I secretly took possession of them, and kept them hidden with the greatest care. Madame la grande-duchesse (sic) de Choiseul, who honoured me with her regard and whose life I more than once saved, 1 Mine. Courtois died on the 25th Jan. 2 This confession on the part of Courtois seems to put it beyond a doubt that it was among Robespierre's papers that the Queen's letter was found. M. Campardon expresses a different opinion. As for M. E. Welvert, he takes up no definite position in the matter, but ' ' leaves to others the business of discussing whether it were Robespierre or Courtois who was the thief, or the receiver of these stolen goods." 262 MARIE ANTOINETTE'S WILL was the only person who knew of the little packet of hair, from which my wife removed a very small piece as an offering to her. She kept this invaluable treasure, as she called it, all her life, and begged us to add to it a bit of braid plaited by the hands of the late Queen. We were very careful not to speak to her of that touching letter, that veritable masterpiece of feeling, written at half- past four in the morning of the very day that brave and charming woman lost her life upon a scaffold that one can hardly picture in connection with her ! Otherwise it would have been impossible to avoid giving her (the Duchesse de Choiseul) a copy of it. No one in the world, M. le Prefet, except the members of the Commission, was aware that such valuable relics of the late Queen were in existence ; and thus, when they reach the hands of the august Sovereign who rules over us, they will be, as it were, still unsullied. And so, after all these vicissitudes,, at the end of twenty-two years,, after lying in the portfolios of the Tribunal and the mat- tress of Robespierre and the library of Courtois, the Queen's last letter reached not its destination, for the woman for whom it was written had long been dead but at least the hands of Marie Antoinette's daughter, who fainted away, it is said, when she received this paper, yellow with age and still blotted with her mother's last tears. The King issued an order that on the l6th October of each year it should be read aloud in the pulpit of every church in France. 1 Millions of facsimiles of it were printed. As for the original, it was deposited among the State Archives, where it lies in a special case beside the will of Louis XVI. 1 Under the Restoration the faade of the Temple was draped with black on the 21st of January, and the top storey was surmounted by a cenotaph decorated with the arms of France and surrounded by lighted tapers. Upon a black book were written the words: "Son of Saint Louis, ascend to Heaven." La Quotidienne for the year 1821. 263 THE CEMETERY OF THE MADELEINE IF the historians of Marie Antoinette are to be believed it was not until a fortnight after the Queen's death that her remains were buried. 1 What became of her body during these fifteen days ? No doubt it was thrown down upon the grass in some corner of the Cemetery of the Madeleine, to await further orders that never came ; and so it was forgotten. At last the grave-digger Joly took it upon himself to dig a hole, to place in it the remains of the victim, and to submit this bill for funeral expenses to the authorities for their approval The Widow Capet, for the coffin 6 livres. For the grave and grave-diggers 15-35. 2 And this is the only document we have relating to the Queen's burial. The first question we have to ask is this : where was the Cemetery of the Madeleine ? Louis Lazare, a Parisian journalist, has made an attempt to elucidate the mystery. According to him 3 the cemetery " ad- joined the old parish church of the Madeleine, and was entered from the Rue de la Ville 1'Eveque." This is obviously a mis- take ; for it is a well-known fact that the Expiatory Chapel was built on the very site of the trench, and that the altar of the crypt stands on the precise spot where the bones of the King and Queen were discovered in 1815. Now this spot, as we all know, is a long way from the Rue de la Ville 1'Eveque. 1 The llth Brumaire, year II., or Nov. 1st, 1793. See Histoire de Marie- Antoinette, by Maxime de la Rocheterie. 2 Memorandum in the possession of M. Fosse d'Arcosse, quoted by K and J. de Goncourt, Histoire de Marie- Antoinette. 3 Bibliotheque municipale. 264 A. Actual position of the crypt of the Expiatory Chapel, on the precise spot where the bodies of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette were buried. B. The spot, according to Desclozeaux, where Charlotte Corday was buried. C. Grave of the 133 victims of the accident that took place on the 6th June, 1770, in the Place Louis XV. D. Grave of the Due d' Orleans, according to Desclozeaux. E. Grave of the four priests and 500 Swiss killed on the 10th August, according to Des- clozeaux. F. Common trench where condemned were buried until the middle of December, 1793. G. Grave of 500 Swiss Guards killed on the 10th August, ac- cording to Des- clozeaux. THE CEMETERY OF THE MADELEINE. Bird's-eye view, based 011 original documents. Drawn by M. Joseph Beuzon. 265 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE We pursued quite a different method. We spread out before us Verniquet's great plan, showing the topography of Paris at the time of the Revolution : we then sketched from it an outline of the whole neighbourhood, with the old church of the Madeleine, the Benedictine Convent, and the huge gardens that stretched as far as the Rue de la Pepiniere and were bisected by the street called, from the bridge under which it passed, the Rue de 1' Arcade. We then called in the help of a map of modern Paris, and placing the latter on Verniquet's plan found the exact spot that was covered by the Expiatory Chapel : and in this way we acquired the absolute certainty that the Cemetery of the Madeleine, in 1 793, was a piece of ground of a somewhat irregular shape, enclosed by a wall, opening into the Rue d'Anjou, and forming the northern boundary of the immense gardens of the nuns of La Ville 1'Eveque. 1 One fact which proves beyond a doubt that the enclosure of the cemetery had no connection with the Convent gardens is that the first burials in this place were those of the hundred and thirty-three victims of the accident that occurred on the 6th June, 1770, in the Place Louis XV, on the occasion of the fetes given in honour of the Dauphin's marriage. At that time the property of religious communities was respected, and a trench would not have been dug in the middle of a garden belonging to one of the richest convents in Paris. Moreover, at the time of the Restoration a plan was published of the cemetery, which had then become M. Desclozeaux' garden ; and although the general arrangement had slightly changed since M. Verniquet depicted it in 1792, one can nevertheless recognise the shape of the plot of ground and the close proximity of the Rue d'Anjou, so that there is no doubt whatever as to the situation of the enclosure. Finally,, M. Desclozeaux, whom we have just mentioned, was living in 1815 at No. 48 Rue d'Anjou, and Jacoubet's plan (1835) places No. 48 exactly on the extension of the Rue des Mathurins which was cut short then, as in 1792, by the Rue de 1' Arcade that is to say, quite close to the plot of ground under consideration. Dull as this demonstration may be it is not without importance, for such chroniclers as have had occasion to speak of the Cemetery of the Madeleine have prudently abstained, for want of accurate documentary evidence, from making any definite 1 See the rough plan on page 265. 266 THE CEMETERY OF THE MADELEINE statement. The common trenches of the Terror fell so quickly and so thoroughly into oblivion that, when Kotzebue was travelling in France during the period of the Consulate,, he could find no one to show him the resting-place of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. In the meantime they had been followed to the little enclosure we have just described by many a victim of the scaffold in the Place de la Revolution; for the guillotine never rested, and nearly every day the cart brought to the Rue d'Anjou one or more baskets full of headless corpses. The doors opened, the cart drove into the enclosure, and there, hidden by the walls, the grave-diggers carried on their horrible work, which was not so much seen as imagined by the people of the neighbourhood. But indeed this quarter of the town was very sparsely populated till the early years of the new century. As soon as the Terror was over the owner of the house adjoining the cemetery, Pierre Louis Olivier Desclozeaux, formerly a lawyer, acquired possession of the burial-ground. He restored and raised the walls, corrected the irregularities of the enclosure, closed up the door into the Rue d'Anjou, and made a new one into his private garden, which had once formed part of the grounds belonging to the nuns of the Ville 1'Eveque. Then, aided by tradition alone, for there were no authoritative documents, he assigned graves in certain spots to the famous dead who were buried there, and marked the places with shrubs and trees and crosses. On the spot where he believed the remains of the King and Queen to have been laid he planted two weeping-willows and a hedge of hornbeam. At the time of the Bourbons' return he intimated to Louis XVIII. that he was prepared to place his piece of ground at the disposal of the royal family ; and he himself gave the King the names of those who might be able to furnish accurate informa- tion with regard to the graves. The result of this was the investigation of which we shall presently read the official account. M. Desclozeaux, however, allowed his enthusiasm to run away with him. 1 In a pamphlet entitled A List of Persons sentenced 1 M. Desclozeaux is buried in the Cemetery of Pere-Lachaise. The following lines are on his tombstone. De la cendre des rois pieux dtpositaire, Le del daigna benir ses soins religieux , II a revu Louis au tr6ne hdrdditaire Et, comme Simeon, il a fermd les yeux. 267 LAST DAYS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE to Death by the Revolutionary Tribunal between August 2,6th, 1792, and June 1 3th, 1 794, and buried in the Plot of Ground formerly the Cemetery of the Madeleine, he gives a record that includes one thousand three hundred and forty-six names, and extends, as the title indicates, to the 1 3th June, 1 794. This is a mistake ; for we can only accept this date as correct by altogether ignoring the existence of the Cemetery of Les Errancis in the Pare Monceau, where the victims of the guillotine were buried between the 25th March and 13th June 1794. But this mistake on M. Desclozeaux' part can be easily explained. The bodies of the dead were ostensibly taken to the Cemetery of the Madeleine, and it was only several days after their execution that they were transferred by night to the Cemetery of Monceau. M. Des- clozeaux must have noted their going in, without taking their coming out into consideration, and this was why he credited his cemetery with containing the remains of everyone who was executed in the Place de la Revolution. I think that on this particular point we may have perfect confidence in Michelet, though as a rule he is careless in his choice of authorities, and indeed rarely quotes the sources of his information at all. But his chapter on the cemeteries of the Terror was founded on a work of considerable importance, which was undertaken especially on his account by M. Hardy, an official in the muniment-room of the Prefecture of Police. Briefly, the Cemetery of the Madeleine was used for burials till the 24th March, 1794. Hebert and Clootz were the last victims of the guillotine to be interred there. These details will not be found useless in assisting the reader to form an opinion, in full knowledge of the facts, with regard to the following collection of original documents. 268 THE EXHUMATION OF THE REMAINS OF KING LOUIS XVI. AND QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE Legal Statement by the High Chancellor of France, concerning all the circumstances preceding, accompanying, and following the burial of King Louis XVI. and Queen Marie Antoinette. ON the 12th May, 1814, before us, Henri J , 200- 202 and n Lamarliere, General, 72 Lanmrliere, Mme. de, 164 Lamarque, 2 Lamballe, Princesse de, 231 n ; accompanies Royal Family to Les Feuillants, 7, 9 n ; murder of, 34, 43-49, 52-55, 186 ; finding of the remains, 55-58 ; relations with Philippe Egalite, 57-58 Lamorliere, Rosalie, Narrative of, 150-71 ; in the Hospital for In- curables, 175 ; personality, 179 ; Mme. Simon - Vouet's interview with, 179-85 Lanjuinais, M., 127 and n Lariviere, Mme., attendance on Marie Antoinette, 154, 156, 240 Lariviere, Louis, turnkey, 176 ; ac- count of, 238 and n ^39 ; narrative of the Queen's execution by, 238-44 Launoy, Mme., 109 n Lazare, Louis, 264 Le Monde, letter of Father Fouch6 quoted in, 209 n ; declaration of the Abbe Magnin quoted, 215 n Lebeau, the Queen's gaoler at the Conciergerie, 158 and n-GQ, 164, 166-69, 181, 183 Lechenard, the tailor, excesses at the Temple, 112 ; denounces Toulan in the Commune, 126, 128 Legentil, Mine. Alexandre, 214 n Legot, M., 260, 262 Lepitre, Jacques Francois, 96 n ; Recollections of, 102-33 ; character, 102-3; accusations against, 111, 125-26, 128-29, 129 ?i; relations 294 INDEX with Toulan, 114; plan for the Queen's escape, 116-21 ; not re- elected Commissioner, 128 ; sent to Sainte-Pelagie, 131-33 ; witness in Queen's trial, 132-33 Lequeux, sketch in the Temple, 139 n Les Feuillants, Convent of, Royal Family lodged in, narrative of Dufour, 1-12 Lindsay, Englishman, 57 Logographe, the, Tuileries, 5 Longwy, blockade of, 40 Louis VII., 283 Louis XIII., 282 Louis XIV., 282 Louis XVI., 144, 152, 218, 243, 259, 263-65, 279; Convention, before the, 32, 108 ; Commune troubles in Artois, remark concerning, 92-93 ; Communion tablecloth preserved by Clery, 116 ; Daujon, gratitude to, 34-35 ; Dauphin, education of the, 82, 91 ; Death of, 147; (Turgy), 69 ; (Goret), 95-96 ; (Santerre), 98 ; popular sympathy, 113-14; Ex- humation of his body, 269-76 ; re- burial, 277-82; Fear of the Septembriseurs, 42, 49-50; Im- prisonment arrival in the Temple, 28-29 ; incidents (Daujon), 40-41 ; (Turgy), 66; (Goret), 82-94, 97; (Lepitre), 108-14; (Moelle), 136-40; Library in the Temple, 137 n ; Personality (Goret), 94 ; (Lepitre), 108; (Moelle), 136-37; Plot for his escape, Clery's account, 98-99, 99?i; Separation from the Queen, Lepitre's attempts for re-union, 112-13 ; Wardrobe in the Temple, 136 n Louis XVII. , 147, 157, 165; Arrival at the Temple, 27; Deposition, the, wrung from him by Hebert, 35, 50-51; Education in the Temple, 82, 91 ; Hebert's treatment of, 51 ; Imprisonment in the Temple, incidents of (Turgy), 71, 76, 77 ; (Goret), 83, 87 n, 100; (Lepitre), 108-31 passim-, (Moelle), 136-43 passim ; Personality (Daujon), 42 andn; (Moelle), 142-43; Song composed for, on death of his father, 121-22 Louis XVIII. , 162 n, 215 n, 221, 267, 283, 284 n ; testimonial to Turgy, 60 ; declares himself Regent, 71 ; foundation of Chapter of St. Denis by, 280 Louis Joseph Xavier, Dauphin, 282 Louis Philippe, 215 n Louise de Lorraine, 283 Luxembourg Palace proposed as prison for the Royal Family, 21 MADELEINE, Cemetery of the, 1793, position, 264, 266-67; burial of Marie Antoinette, 264-84; burial of Louis XVI., 269-84 Madeleine, old Church of the, 270 n Madelonnettes, prison of the, 157, 158 n ; the Richard family im- prisoned in, 157, 172 Magnin, M. Charles Abbe, 156 n\ 207, 208; Conciergerie, ministra- tions in the, 194 and n, 200-203, 210, 213 ; Declaration of, 215-27 ; facts in proof of his reliability, 215 n ; Elevation of, 215 n ; Lafont d'Aussonne, attacks of, 203-4 ; Last years of, account, 205 w-206 ; Resi- dence with Demoiselles Fouches, 209 n Malesherbes, M. de, 255 ; visits to Louis XVI. in the Temple, 32, 93-95, 112 Mallemain, Mme., 79-80 Mancel, servant of, the Comte d' Artois, 28 Mandet, M., 2 Manuel, Procureur of the Commune, 40 ; remorse of, 133 ; evidence in the Queen's trial, 229, 234 Marat, death of, 77 Marchand, man-servant, 80, 135 Maribon-Moutaut, M., deputy, 17-19 Marie Antoinette, Queen Abbe Mag - nin, ministrations of, 200-203 ; Burial in the cemetery of the Madeleine, 264-68 ; exhumation of the body, 272-76!; re-burial, 275-83, 284 n ; Characteristics, 161-62 ; (Moelle), 141-42; Communion in the Conciergiere, 156 n 2 , 196-206, 210, 213, 215-27 ; Conciergerie, her imprisonment in : transference from the Temple, 144-45; her last night in the, 247 and w-48 ; details of her imprisonment (Rosalie Lam or - liere), 150-71 ; notes by Monseig- neur de Salamon, 172-74 ; account by Mme. Simon- Vouet, 176-85 ; account by Mme. Bault, 186-95; 295 INDEX Confession refused in the Con- ciergerie, 169 ; Courage and dignity displayed at her trial, 229-33 ; Death of : decreed Sept. 2nd, 147-49 ; the morning of the execu- tion, 168-71, 173; narrative of Lariviere, 238-44 ; narrative of de Busne, 245-46; narrative of gendarme Leger, 247-48 ; narrative of Desessarts, 249 ; narrative of Vicomte Charles Desfosses, 250-52 ; narrative of Rouy, 253-54 ; Identi- fication of her remains, 220, 275 ; King's death, her sorrow for, 69, 99-100,114-15; question of mourn- ing, 115 ; Les Feuillants, her im- prisonment in, 4-12 ; Letter to Mme. Elizabeth, 222-23; to the Duchesse d'Angouleme, 260 ; gene- ral destruction of her letters, 59 ; Mile. Fouche, visits of, 207-14; Plots for her escape, 70-71, 116-21, 196 (see also Carnation, affair of the) ; Relics of, 260-61 ; fate of her possessions, 171 ; Sketch of, on her way to the scaffold, 251 ; Temple, details of her imprisonment (Dau- jon), 35, 41-55 ; (Turgy), 63, 67-69, 73-74 ; (Goret), 82-86, 90-91, 96 TO, 97-101; (Lepitre), 106-31 passim-, (Moelle), 137-43 passim ; her re- moval from the Temple, 131 ; Trial of, 168-69 ; recollections of Lepitre, 132-33; description by Bault, 194-95 ; notes by M. Chauveau-La- garde, 228-34 ; description by Comte Horace de Viel-Castel, 231 n ; re- collections of Moelle, 235-37; Ward- robe in the Temple, 137 n ; Will of, 204 n ; intercepted by Bault, 255-56 ; handed to Fouquier-Tin- ville, 256 ; secreted by Robespierre, 256 and n 2 ; stolen by Courtois, 256-58 ; his attempts to sell it to the Royal Family, 258-63 ; quota- tion from, 259 ; received by the Duchesse d'Angouleme, 203 Marie de Medicis, 282 Marie Therese, 282 Marino, 144 Martainville, M. , 6 n Martin, Marie Antoine, 260 Mass celebrated at the Conciergerie for Marie Antoinette, 213 Massacres, the September, 34, 43-49, 52-58 Massieu, M., 260, 262 Mathey, porter in the Temple, 139 n Mathieu, ex-Capuchin, 41 and -42 Maussion, M. de, 261 Menjaud, painting of the Communion in the Conciergerie, 215 n Mercereau, stone-cutter, insults the Queen, 109 Meunier, cook, 30 Michel, 144 Michelet, 268 Michonis, inspector of police, 78, 144, 151, 157, 158, 160, 196, 212, 241 ; death of, 133, 186-87 Milhaut, 198 n Military Commission, the, 202 Minier, municipal officer, 140 Miranda,, the name mentioned in Mme. Elizabeth's notes, 77 Mittau, 59, 212, 215 n, 220 Moelle, Claude Antoine Francois, 32 ; narrative of, 63 TO, 134-43 ;' Tison's accusation against, 96 n, 129 n ; recollections of the trial, 235-37 Molleville, M. Bertrand de, 223 Montaigu, Abbe, 198, 201 Montjoie, Histoire de la Heine, cited, 141 ro, 158 n, 245 Montmorin, Mme. de, 255 n Montreuil Section, the, 56 Morinerie, M. de la, Papier s du Temple, cited, 82, 84 n, 86, 108 n, 129, 138 n, 144 n Morgue, the, 54 n Municipality, the Provisional, 68, 102, 103, 134 NANCY, Bishop of, 274, 276, 278, 279 Nantes, Fran9ais de, President, ex- amination of M. Rohan-Chabot, 16-20 Nantouillet, M. de, 8 n Napoleon I. , 283 Napoleon III., 283 Narbonne, M., 16 National Guard, duty at the Temple, 39, 44, 83, 88 ; Marie Antoinette's repugnance for the uniform, 242 Noailles, M. de, Prince de Poix, 14, 16, 278 and n, 279 OLIVIER, pictures of, in the Temple, 23, 24 Orleans, Catholicism in, 197 Orleans, Due d', 265 296 INDEX PACHE, Mayor of Paris, visit to the Temple, 96 n ; meeting of Com- mittee of Public Safety in house of, 146-49 Paffe, M., 124 Palais Royal, the Septembrists at, 47, 54 n Palloy, Patriot, Palloy's wall, 28- 32 Pantheon, Section of the, 81 Pare Monceau, 268 Paris Arrests of citizens decreed, 147 ; rising against the merchants of, 121 Paris, Monseigneur the Archbishop of, 210, 215 71, 221 Parisot, M., 69 Partiot, Mme., 8 n Partiot, M., portrait of Marie An- toinette in possession of, 8 n Pascal, M. Maurice, 283 and n Passage du Perron, 54 n Pelagic, Sainte, prison : see Sainte- Pelagie Pelletaii, Dr., 203 Penthievre, Due de, 238 ; attempt to secure remains of Princesse de Lamballe, 52-55 Petion, Mayor, 49, 62; suspended, 92 Petit, Mme., 132 Philibert, , Abbe, 198 n, 201 Philippe Egalite, attitude on death of Mme. de Lamballe, 57-58 Picard, Le, 273 and n l Picavez, M., 269 Pierart, Z., Recherches historiques, 12271 Piquet, Citizen, 30 Place de la Revolution, 249, 254, 267 Place Louis XV, accident in June, 1770, 265, 266 Place Vendome, 4, 6 n ; the Hotel de la Chancellerie, 22 Poiritel, Citizen Jacques, 54 and (n ; secures the head of the Princesse de Lamballe, 56-57 Poix, Prince de : see Noailles, M. de Porte Saint-Denis, 54 n Pouquet, Sieur Antoine, 56 Prieux, 196 Prud'homme, gendarme, 677?, 156 n 2 , 200-2, 202 n Prussia, negotiations with, as to Marie Antoinette, 147 QUAI DES ORFEVRES, 140 Quelen, Mme. de, 210-11 Quelen, M. de, 206 n, 215 n Quentin, Abbe, 206 n Queruelle, Jean-Gabriel, 55 Quex, Le, sketch of the Temple, 28 Quinze-Vingts Section, extract from the original minutes, 55-58 Quotidienne, La, for the year 1821, 263 TO RABAUT, Saint-Etienne, 141 Rambluzin, 257, 258 Rancourt, Mme., 132 Ray, M., 196 n Real, Pierre Fra^ois, 130 and n Reiset, M. de, Madame Eloff, 91 n Renard, Sieur Sylvain, account of the burial and exhumation of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, 269-79 passim Renaud, Abbe, services at the Con- ciergerie, 19871 Renet, registrar, 56, 57 Revolutionary Tribunal, 144, 145, 202 ; their part in the Queen's death, 147, 149, 194 ; surveillance of the Queen in prison, 165, 167 ; takes possession of the Queen's belong- ings, 171 ; methods, 190-91 ; terror inspired by, 245 Ricard, M., inspector of national property, 70 and n Richard, the child Fan-fan, 157 Richard, Gaoler, 153, 157, 158 TO, 172-74, 176, 201, 207-8, 210, 212, 218, 239, 242, 255; the affair of the Carnation, 157, 200 ; Rosalie Lamorliere's reference to, 181 ; his dismissal, 187 Richard, Mme. , guardianship of Marie Antoinette in the Conciergerie, 152-54, 157, 158, 160, 161 n 2 , 162, 163, 165, 166, 242 ; death of, 177 ; Rosalie Lamorliere's reference to, 181 Richelieu, Mare"chal de, 99 n Riouffe, 151 Robert, chemist at the Temple, 115 n Robert, lad visiting the Temple, 116 Robespierre, 36, 101, 193 n, 231 n, 256 and n 2 , 262 n 2 Robiano, Comte Fra^ois de, 207 ; pamphlet by, 203 ; method of com- piling his narrative, 206 297 INDEX Roche, Barthelemy de la, letters of, quoted, 198 n Rochefoucauld, M. La, 19 Rocheterie, M. Maxime de la, Revue des Questions historiques, 206 ; Histoire de Marie Antoinette, 230 n, 264 n Rohan - Chabot, M. , examination before the Assembly, 13-20 Roland, Mme., sketch of Cubieres, 68 n Rothe, M., 60 Rotunda of the Temple, the, 25, 27 Rouen, College of, 103 Rougeville, A. D. J. Gonzze de, Le Vrai Chevalier de Maison Rouge, cited, 146?i, 159 n 1 Rougeville, M. de, involved in the Carnation Conspiracy, 133, 151, 157, 196 Roux, Jacques, official report of the King's death, 95 ; methods of annoying the Royal Family, 114; present at death of Louis XVI., 114 and n Roux, Louis, 129 Rouy, narrative of Marie Antoinette's execution by, 253-54 Royal Guard, soldiers of the, 1 Royale, Mme. : see Augouleme, Duchesse d' Royalist songs, 121-22 Royalists in Paris, efforts on behalf of the Queen, 145-46 Rue d'Anjou, 266, 267, 281 Rue d'Anjou Saint-Honore, 270, 274, 276 Rue d' Avignon, 55 Rue de Buffaut, 134 n Rue de Charonne, 56 Rue de Clery, 53, 54 n Rue de Coq- Saint- Jean, 33 Rue de 1' Arcade, 266, 270 n Rue de la Barillerie, 152 n 2 Rue de la Corderie, 23, 54 n, 109 u Rue de la Pepiniere, 266 Rue de la Rotunde, 25 Rue de la Savonnerie, 55 Rue de la Vieille-Draperie, 152 w 2 Rue de la Ville 1'Eveque, 264, 270 n ; Convent in, 266 Rue de Saint-Louis, 103 Rue de Sevres, 178 Rue des Ballets, 53, 54 n Rue des Franc-Bourgeois, 54 n Rue des Mathurins, 266 Rue des Petits-Champs, 54 n, 56 Rue du Chaume, 54 n Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine, 55-56 Rue du Temple, 23 Rue Haute, Temple, 25 Rue La Coutellerie, 54 n Rue La Ferronnerie, 54 n Rue La Tixanderie, 54 n Rue Le Roi de Sicile, 54 n Rue Malher, 53 Rue Popincourt, 56 Rue Saint-Antoine, 53, 54 n Rue Saint-Honore, 54 n, 249-51 Rue Saint-Jacques, 102 Rue Saint-Nicholas, 56 Rue Saint-Romain, 179 SAINT ANDR, 147 Saint-Cyr, 78 Saint-Denis, Royal church of, burial of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette in, 277-84 ; desecration of the Bourbon vault, 282 ; Royal Chapter of, founded, 280 Saint-Eustache, Church of, 110, 205 n Saint-Gall, 78 Sainte-Genevieve, section of, 81 Sainte-Germain-en-Laye library, 33 Saint-Germain-1' Auxerrois, Church of, 203, 215 ; closed during last years of Abbe Magnin, 205 ?i-206 Saint-Hugues, L. de, 196 n Saint- Jacques-la-Boucherie, battalion of, 55 Saint-Leger, M. de, 163 Saint-M , vicar of, visits the Queen in the Conciergerie, 214 n Saint-Nicholas-des-Champs, 215 n Sainte-Pelagie, prison of, 157, 222 ; Lepitre sent to, 131-33 Saint-Roch, 203; Sisters of, 211, 220 Saint-Sulpice, Seminary of, 198 Salamon, Monseigneur de, Notes by, 172-74 Sambucy, Abbede, 198 TO, 201 Sansculottes, use of the term, 125 Sanson, Henri, executioner, 243 and w,250 Santerre, Commandant-General, 49, 62 ; visits to the Temple, 96, 108 ; account of the death of Louis XVI., INDEX Sardou, M. Victorien, collection, 33, 36, 189 Saulieu, Mme., 164 Saumur, 77 Savard, Commissioner, 56, 57 Savornin, Abbe, '273 n Segur, Comte Anatole de, Un Episode de la Terreur, cited, 198 n, 200 TO, 201 n Senozau, Mme. de, 255 Serent, Mme., correspondence with the Temple, 65, 66, 73, 77, 78, 129 n Sze, M. de, defence of the King, 33 Simon, care of the Dauphin, 30, 51 ; tribute by Goret, 100-101 Simon, Citoyenne, 32 and n, 100 n Siinon-Vouet, Mme., 230 ?i; inquiry of, 175-85 Solminiac, M., Qn Songs, Royalist, 121-22 Stable Court, Temple, 26 Suin, Mme., 132 Sulleau, M. Fra^ois, 6 and n Swiss Guards, 2 and n TARENTE, Princesse de, 212, 220 Tasse, M. la, sent for by the Queen, 115 and n, 116 Temple, the Bailliage, the, 25, 26, 28; Church of the, 26 ; Communication with the outside world, methods established by the prisoners, 109 and n ; Council of the, methods of working, 62-63, 104, 105 ; Coun- cil Room of the, 73, 105, 111, 135 ; removed to the ground floor, 134 n ; Court of the Indemnity, 24 ; Court of the Little Fortress, 24; Grand Priory, meals prepared in, 135 ; Hanriot places in a state of siege, 144 ; Identification of the King's attendants, 62; Lamballe, Princesse de, her remains brought to the, 34, 43-49, 53 TO; Little Tower, the Royal Family in the, 82 ; Manor of the, plans, 27 ; Meals for the Royal Family, Turgot's account, 62-66 ; Moelle's, 63 TO, 135-36, 139; Goret's, 86-88 andnn ; Lepitre's, 111-12 ; Palloy's wall, 28-32; Passage of the In- demnity, 24 ; Plans of the, 29, 31 ; Porte du Bailliage, 61 ; Precincts, 22 ; plan of, 25 ; cemetery of the, 26 ; Removal of the Queen from, 131, 144-45; Royal Family's im- prisonment, 21-32 ; Dufour's nar- rative, 11-12 ; Daujon's narrative, 37-58 ; Turgy's narrative, 61-69 ; Goret's narrative, 81-101 ; Le- pitre's narrative, 104-33 ; Moelle's narrative, 136-43; Stable Court, 26 ; Topography during the Revo- lutionary period, 22-32 ; Tower of the, Henri de Curzon's description, 84?i; in the Visitations of Paris, 84 TO ; Lepitre's description, 104 Terror, the, 207 ; Religion during, 197 Theatre de la Cite, 103, 152 and w 2 Theatre du Lycee, Adele de Sacy played at, 127 n Theatre Francais, 132 Thuriot, M., 15 Tison, Mme, denunciation of Commis- sioners, 72, 128-29, 129 TO ; mental derangement of, 73-74, 74 n, 130 Tison, Pierre Joseph, accusations brought by, 72, 74, 75, 96 TO, 111; account of, 74 TO ; subsequent loyalty, 76 ; duties in the Temple, 97, 98, 117, 135; personality, 105-6 ; spying of, 135 and TO, 140 Toulan, Francois Andrien, conversion of, 66-67 ; loyalty of, 69, 76-78, 109, 110, 112, 113, 114; his plan for escape of the Royal Family, 70-71, 116-21 ; prevented from serving in the Temple, 72, 128; plan of signals, 77 ; arrest of, 80 and n ; accusation against, 96 TO, 126, 129 TO ; account of, 106 n ; con- demned to death, 125; escape of, 133 Toulon, re-capture of, 146 Tour-du-Pin, M. de la, 235 and n Tournan, 59 Tournan-en-Brie, 59, 80 Tourzel, Mme. de, in Les Feuillants, 6-7, 9 n ; Memoir es quoted, 6 TO 2 r 27 ; in the Temple, 61 TO Treilhard, M., 112 Troche, M., cited, 204 TO, 215 TO Tronchet, M., defence of the King, 112, 113 Troncon-Ducoudray, M., 228 TO, 230, 231, 233, 253 TO 2 , 260 Trouv6, Mile., 220 Tuileries, Palace of the, 254 ; meet- ing of the Legislative Assembly in the Riding School, 1-3 ; mob attack INDEX on August 10th, 4-6 ; attempt of the mob to enter, with the body of Mme. de Lamballe, 53-54, 54 n ; gardens of the, 249 Turgy, Louis Francois, 30, 135; narrative of, 59-80 ; rewarded by the Duchesse d'Angouleme, 60, 109 n ; list of r concerted signs between Mme. Elizabeth and, 64, 72-73 ; notes to, from Mme. Eliza- beth, 75-80, 107 n VALAYEB, M., 215 n Varinot, M., of Versailles^ 178 Vaudeville Theatre, La Chaste Suzanne played at, 127-28 Vaugirard, 187 Verdun, fall of, 40 Vergy, Gabrielle de, 85 Verniaud, M., 6w 2 Verniquet, 266 Versailles, College of. 103 Versailles, Palace of, the (Eil de Bceuf, 71 and n ; population during the Restoration, 177 n Vertot, M., 150 n Vicq, Sieur, 56 Victoire, Mme., 283 Viel-Castel, Comte Horace de, quoted, 231 n Vienna, negotiations with, as to Marie Antoinette, 145, 147 Vigier, M. du, 6 n Vildavrai, M. Thieri de, visit to Louis XVI., 10-12 Vincent, the doctor, accusations against, 69 n, 129 n Vis6, Mercure, 137 Visitation of Paris, 1495, descrip- tion of the Temple, 84 n Voisin, Abb6 de, 199 Vyre, M. de, L'Hittoire de Marie Antoinette, cited, 9 n, 87 n, 115 n, 214 n WALLOK, M. A. , cited, 250 n War Office, Archives of, cited, 245 Weber, Memoirs, quoted, 2 n, 52-53 Welvert, Eugene, Le Saisie des Papiers du Conventionnel, &c. , cited, 257 n, 261 n, 262 n Werthmuller, Marie Antoinette's portrait by, 7 n THE END R. CLAY AND SONS, LTD., BREAD ST. HILL, K.C. AND BUNOAY, SUFFOLK. LA' HOME USE CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT MAIN LIBRARY This book is due on the last date stamped below. 1 -month loans may be renewed by calling 642-3405. 6-month loans may be recharged by bringing books to Circulation Desk. Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date. ALL BOOKS ARE SUBJECT TO RECALL 7 DAYS AFTER DATE CHECKED OUT. INTERUBRARY LOAN 9.3 1974 UNIV. OF CALIF., BERK. LD21 A-40m-5,'74 General Library (R8191L) University of California Berkeley 059G4