To the scaffold (43 page)

"Oh, sire!" was all he needed to say. The ruse was exposed, further denials were futile.

"Yes," Louis admitted wearily, "I am, indeed, your King. These are my wife and my children. We beg you to treat us with the regard which the French have always had for their King."

From Sauce's bedroom the word spread down the stairs and outside to the waiting crowd, which reacted with angry shouts. The procurator, uncertain what he ought to do, decided to do nothing, at least for the time being. Meanwhile the royal children were asleep and the King and his party were obviously in need of rest. Sauce left them to themselves until, at about three or four o'clock in the morning, two riders arrived from Paris.

In the capital the departure of the royal family had become

known the previous morning, and at once the Assembly had met

and ordered the arrest of the King. The Tuileries was sealed, and

many of the palace servants—who knew nothing of the escape

plans—were arrested. Lafayette redoubled the guards, the stock

exchange and all the shops were closed in anticipation of a violent

reaction. The Parisians, ftirious at the King for leaving, and even

more furious at Lafayette for letting him slip away, broke through

the gates of the palace and ran into the royal apartments. No one

knew what to expect next, whether Louis would return at the

head of a foreign army, or whether his departure ought to be

taken as a form of abdication, as some of the Jacobins insisted.

"People destroyed everything that bore the King's name or his

portrait," Hezecques wrote. "The consternation became gen-eral."6

As soon as the Assembly had passed its decree Lafayette had sent out swift couriers along all the principal roads to search for the escapees. The berlin and its route had been relatively easy to trace, and Romeuf, Lafayette's aide-de-camp and the battalion commander Baillon discovered its trail; they had been riding only

a few hours behind the royal party. Now they entered the chandlery carrying a copy of the decree ordering the King's arrest. One of them began to read it, but Antoinette, outraged that these two guardsmen who "were supposed to be entirely devoted to the royal family" should be so shamelessly disloyal, snatched the paper out of his hands and started to tear it to pieces. Lx)uis stopped her—and she angrily threw it on the floor instead.

Now Sauce knew what to do. He would have to deliver the detainees to the two guard officers, who would return them to Paris.

Outside the chandlery windows people were shouting for the King to go. The hussars, standing guard in the street, were strictly forbidden by Lx)uis to take any action that might harm the townspeople; they were powerless to prevent the insults and the jeering. The Due de Choiseul, a tardy arrival in Varennes, managed to gain access to the King and urged him to take his son and ride swiftly, escorted by the hussars, to rendezvous with Bouill^. The National Guard—which hour by hour was massing in the town, thousands strong—would fire on the loyal soldiers, but the presence of the townspeople would confuse things, and there was a good chance that he would reach safety. Antoinette and the others could do the same, there were plenty of spare horses. But Louis demurred. Bouille could not be far away now, rescue was coming. He would find an excuse to remain in Varennes until the general arrived.

He asked Sauce for a meal, and when this was prepared and eaten he asked that the children be allowed to sleep on a little longer. Antoinette tried to prevail on Madame Sauce, sitting with her and talking with her woman to woman. By permitting the King to continue on his journey instead of turning him over to Romeuf and Baillon, the Queen said, Madame Sauce would be "contributing to a restoration of tranquillity to France." Could she not prevail on her husband to let them go?

The procurator's wife was "moved," Antoinette told Madame Campan afterward. "She could not, without streaming eyes, see herself thus solicited by her Queen." But all she could say was, "Bless me, madame, it would be the destruction of Monsieur Sauce. I love my King; but, by our lady, I love my husband too, you must know; and he would be answerable, you see."^

It was by now full daylight, there were four thousand Na-

tional Guardsmen and at least as many townspeople and villagers in Varennes, with more streaming in by the minute.

"To Paris! To Paris with them! Send them back! Vive la na-

tionr

The people knew, just as the King did, that General Bouill^ was not far away, that the Austrians, whom the Queen had been subsidizing for years with French money, were just across the border. There must be no further delay. The royals had to be packed off to Paris before Varennes became the bloody focus of warfare.

No force was used against the royals, but Sauce became insistent. Louis ran out of excuses for delay. In desperation, one of the chamberwomen pretended to have a fit, clutching her stomach and throwing herself on the bed, weeping and imploring aid. She was ill, she needed a doctor. They could not leave her behind in such a state. But Sauce easily saw through this ploy and refused to permit any more delays.

Where was Bouille? It was seven o'clock. Had the officer failed to reach him in Stenay? Or had Bouille too been seized by the long arm of the Assembly?

Gradually Louis allowed his hopes to die. There would be no rescue. The escape plan had failed. He had had almost no sleep for nearly forty-eight hours, he had lost his will to fight. His children were drowsy, his wife, stricken and mute with anger. The clamoring crowd offered nothing but rebukes, they were eager to be rid of him.^ Sorrowfully he made up his mind to go.

At seven-thirty the berlin rolled out of Varennes, back along the road to Clermont and Sainte-M6n6hould. Large numbers of National Guard escorted it, and hundreds of people surrounded it on its slow course, shouting ''Vive la nation!'' and waving their weapons. The occupants of the berlin, exhausted and defeated, were not permitted to close the shutters over the carriage windows. Their every act, their every word, was public.

Antoinette sat staring stonily ahead, her backbone rigid, her expression unreadable. She did her best to ignore the dirty faces that watched her through the windows, the dirty hands that reached in to touch her garments, the foul words flung at her from a dozen mouths. She, the daughter of an empress and the wife of a king, to be made the sport of coarse peasants! It was not possible, unthinkable. She shut her eyes and did her best to endure.

Across the Aire from Varennes, on the Stenay side, General Bouille and his army arrived just in time to see the huge crowd and to hear the shouting and sense the excitement. They knew that the King and Queen were prisoners of the National Guard, on their way back to Paris. But Bouille could not follow. The bridge was blocked, the only ford they knew of was too deep to cross. He had come too late. Well then, there was nothing to be done. He had to protect himself. Without hesitating Bouille rode back the way he had come, toward the frontier and safety.

>i^27^^

LL the color had faded from Antoinette's once lovely face. Her pinched cheeks were pallid, her lips bloodless, her imperial blue eyes a grayish blue, and red-rimmed with frequent weeping. Her hair was as white and lusterless as that of an old woman, and her body, once buxom and erect, had become stoop-shouldered and thin. She was aging. The constant strain she had been under for years had drained away her vitality, leaving her brittle and prematurely old.

Misfortune had wrought an "astonishing change" in her mistress, Madame Campan thought when she saw Antoinette after her return from Varennes. She suffered from insonmia, her nerves were constantly on edge, she was constantly, almost compulsively, apprehensive.

The return to Paris from Varennes had been a purgatory. The extreme heat, the choking dust of the roads, the savage voices howling and catcalling, the insults, the impudent man who spat in the King's face, above all the constant fear of death: these had preyed on the Queen's very sanity. For days the torment had continued, and when at last they reached the capital and returned to the Tuileries she discovered that her servants had been arrested, and that in her absence her apartments had been invaded and profaned by the angry Parisians.

She had only the slenderest of hope that the monarchy would endure in anything like its former status. The monarchist Mira-beau had died several months before the fateful emigration attempt. The Jacobins and the even more radical Cordeliers were

gaining in strength. There were moderates in the Assembly, but they were struggHng against their extremist colleagues and against the irrepressible Parisians, whose ferocity was rapidly becoming the driving force of the revolution. And the Parisians hated Antoinette passionately, and were calling for the deposition of the King.

Angered by Louis's attempt to leave the country, pinched by food shortages and the lack of employment, frightened by the falling value of the assignat, a crowd of thousands marched to the Champ de Mars on July 17 to sign a petition calling for an end to the monarchy. Violence broke out, two men thought to be agents of the government were hanged. At once Lafayette and Bailly brought in the National Guard, which opened fire. Some fifty people were killed, and many others injured. The massacre at the Champ de Mars ended Lafayette's popularity and widened the rift between the property-owning Parisians who feared anarchy in the city and the desperate, increasingly vengeful laboring classes and the very poor. The latter groups, alienated from the King, dissatisfied with the Assembly, inflamed by the radical press which seemed to articulate their darkest impulses, now boiled to avenge the men and women martyred on the Champ de Mars. Blood called for blood, they would have their turn.

But in September of 1791 it was the turn of the Assembly, which finally completed work on the constitution. Meant to enshrine the liberty the French had won for themselves, and to stand as the abiding foundation for the new France, purged of corruption and of privilege, the constitution represented in fact a political compromise and was ftindamentally unsound. It retained the monarchy, shorn of its sacred quality and with the King reduced to "representative of the people," and possessing a suspensive veto—that is, he could cause the execution of any law passed by the Assembly to be delayed for five years. The National Assembly, which for all its flaws had passed the thousands of laws that created the new France, was to be dissolved and replaced by a Legislative Assembly with wide-ranging powers. To guarantee a fresh beginning, members of the National Assembly were forbidden to be elected to the Legislative Assembly—which meant that inexperienced men would fill the new legislative body.

Antoinette was contemptuous of the "monstrous constitution," and of the "collection of scoundrels, lunatics and beasts" who

were to run the new government. But Louis, under duress, swore loyalty to the constitution, though afterwards he collapsed in tears.

His ceremonial oath-swearing over, he returned to the Tui-leries and went into Antoinette's apartments via a private entrance. "He was pale," Madame Campan recalled, "his features were much changed. The Queen uttered an exclamation of surprise at his appearance." He looked quite ill, the bedchamber woman thought.

"All is lost!" he cried out. "Ah! Madame, and you are witness to this humiliation!"

His words were choked, he could hardly speak for the sobs that convulsed his fleshy body. He sat down heavily and dabbed at his eyes with a linen handkerchief. Antoinette "threw herself upon her knees before him," according to Madame Campan, "and pressed him in her arms." Quite stupefied, not knowing what to do, Madame Campan stayed where she was until Antoinette remembered her presence and in exasperation ordered her to leave the room.^

Antoinette was so offended by the constitution that, for a few hours at least, she considered escaping to Vienna. As far as she was concerned, there was no monarchy left. "These people will have no sovereigns," she said. "We shall fall before their treacherous though well-planned tactics; they are demolishing the monarchy stone by stone."^

Yet the constitution was celebrated in Paris with spectacles and celebrations. The Champ de Mars, so recently stained with blood, became once again a site of rejoicing when the constitution was proclaimed there to loud shouts of ''Vive la nationV Food shortages were forgotten as the municipality provided bread, meat and wine in huge open-air banquets, free to all. There were balloon ascensions and fairs, games and shows. The gardens of the Tui-leries, so often host to furious, ranting crowds, were lit with thousands of glass lamps and turned into a fairyland by night. The palace itself, the squares, the Champs-Elysees were hung with lanterns and the Parisians, ever mercurial, surged happily through the streets, suddenly in a mood to forget their grievances and cheer the King and Queen.

But the mood of euphoria passed all too swiftly, leaving Antoinette once again feeling old, drained and overwhelmed. "Have

pity on me!" she wrote to Mercy, "I assure you that it takes more courage to endure my situation than if I stood in the midst of a battle. . . . We have huge obstacles to overcome and great wars to wage."^