Confessions of Marie Antoinette by Juliet Grey Read Free Book Online

the vicious bitch?” It is clear from the demolished bed, the furnishings in the chamber reduced to thread, rubble, and sticks, that the target of their hatred isn’t there.
    She must be called to account for her sins, the market women decide. If Saint Peter could not judge her this dawn, we will be her jury.

THREE
    The Bakers’ Procession
    “Maman, j’ai faim.” The dauphin looks at me with wide blue eyes.
    “Do we have anything in here for him to eat?” I whisper to his governess. Madame de Tourzel shakes her head.
    “I’m sorry, mon chou d’amour ,” I coo, snuggling him to my breast. “You will have to be a big boy and be patient.”
    “I’m hungry, too,” says Madame Royale.
    “Let’s pretend we all have a sweet inside our mouths,” I say gaily. “And we each have a different flavor. Mine is horehound. What flavor do you have, ma petite ?”
    Before Mousseline can respond, Madame de Tourzel’s little daughter Pauline proclaims her preference for peppermint.
    “I don’t want to play silly games,” Marie Thérèse replies sullenly, shoving her thumb in her mouth, a habit that she persists in, even at the age of ten, when she wants to end a conversation with me. Madame Royale goes to the window and I anxiously follow her, only to tug her away from the sill when I see a troupe of rag-clad harridans, some nearly bare-breasted, having stripped to thewaist in the autumn chill, parading beneath the window. They are accompanied by sinister-looking men brandishing pikes.
    Despite the tumult outside, we can hear a scratching at the door. Louis assumes it is friend, not foe, for it is the time-honored protocol at Versailles to use the nail of one’s pinky, rather than to knock for admittance. Nonetheless, I urge caution. If the mob had been given directions straight to my bedchamber by someone who knew the plan of the château, then it is just as likely that one of the assassins has been informed of the age-old etiquette.
    The door opens and a large man enters the room, impeccably dressed and groomed, his hair powdered and coiffed. One might have thought he had come to attend a meeting of government ministers on an ordinary morning.
    “More than friend— mon frère !” Louis exclaims, clasping his brother the comte de Provence—known as Monsieur—to his chest. This embrace of these two ample men would be comical, like a moment out of an opéra buffa , were our circumstances not so desperate.
    Monsieur announces that he has just come from the Oeil de Boeuf, where the destruction is severe. It seems odd to me that he has been utterly unmolested by the rioters. But before I can question my brother-in-law, there is a furious pounding upon the door.
    “C’est moi! Lafayette!” The voice indeed belongs to the commander of the Garde Nationale. He bursts into the king’s bedchamber as though he has been shot from the mouth of a cannon.
    “There is no controlling them any longer, Majesté ,” he says, without bowing to the king. “I threw my hat upon the ground before them, pulled open my coat and bared my breast”—he illustrates his words by grabbing his lapels—“and dared them to kill me on the spot. They have already murdered two of the royal bodyguard, Your Majesty. Lieutenants de Varicourt and Deshuttes.” Lafayette lowers his bare head; his hat, embellished with the revolutionaries’detestable tricolor cockade, remains in his hands. “I am genuinely sorry,” he says. “A general is supposed to know his troops, but I did not expect this. ‘I do not wish to command cannibals!’ I told them. ‘If you wish to take the lives of the gardes du corps , then take mine as well.’ My dare turned the tide, for the next moment, they cried, ‘Vive le roi! Vive la Nation!’  ”
    More of the bandits have gathered outside our windows. “The king! The king! We wish to see the king!” they roar, demanding that he appear on the balcony. Louis looks to Lafayette. After nineteen years of marriage I