Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette (P.S.) (56 page)

“As he sat in his tub,” the other lawyer adds. His name is Tronson Doucoudray.

“And what was her fate—Charlotte Corday?” When I try to imagine her, I see Jeanne d’Arc.

Chauveau-Lagarde does not answer, but Tronson Doucoudray says, with intentional irony, “She met the swift, humane death offered by the guillotine.”

“You are brave men to agree to defend me.”

Now Chauveau-Lagarde smiles. “Not so very brave. As I passed through the wicket-gates and through the labyrinth of corridors, I felt I was descending into hell. My knees trembled. But we must make this effort, Madame, for your children.”

“For the sanity of France,” his partner adds.

“For your children,” Chauveau-Lagarde reiterates. “We defend in your person, the widow of Louis XVI, the mother of the King’s children.”

I pick up my pen and ask for three days’ delay, so that the numerous documents pertinent to my situation may be examined by those appointed to conduct my defense. With wan satisfaction, the three of us smile at the reasonableness of our request.

Before they leave, my lawyers regretfully prepare me for the fact that my son’s keepers have extracted from him statements resulting in documents claiming that I and his aunt caused him to lie between us in bed and to have intercourse with us of a sexual nature.

“There are documents from interviews with his sister and from his aunt contradicting the charges.”

“The villains have trumped up this charge in its entirety,” I say boldly, but my heart is stricken. How they must have manipulated my son to make him say such things. How they have sullied him and stolen away his innocence.

They wish to try me not as a human being, but as a monster. In their filthy pamphlets I have been depicted that way: a harpy wearing my face, a devil woman with talons of steel.

T
HE PETITION
for postponement is ignored, and today, 14 October, the guards come to conduct me to a far part of this enormous fortress, where I am to be tried before the tribunal of the National Convention.

As I walk the corridors to their court, my resolve is only to preserve my dignity. How strange it is to move one foot in front of the other. In a few days, I have no doubt, these feet will have no life in them, and I will lie under the earth. Such ideas lack vividness in my mind, yet I believe them to be true. Only my shoes are vivid, their plum-colored toes occasionally emerging from under the hem of my black dress, appropriate for a widow, as I walk through the hallway.

Sometimes I feel the blood of my womanhood gush from my body, but Rosalie has tied me up into cloths very securely in that region, using her own chemises for the purpose. How strange it was to stand before her, her gentle fingers sometimes brushing my old flesh, making me as secure as possible.

When I enter their court, I lift my head, for I am the daughter of Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria, and the mother of Marie Thérèse, the dearest girl in Christendom, my friend. And I am the friend of Rosalie, who has come to be my hidden daughter. It is I who represent the seamstresses, laundresses, and painters, the mothers and sisters of France, and not these rabid men. I look the man named Robespierre in the eye. Just once, I will show him my spirit. After this glance, he is beneath my regard.

There are some forty witnesses to be called, and my lawyers whisper that we will not finish today. Ah, I am to live an extra day. It does not matter to me.

I am sworn in as Marie Antoinette of Lorraine and Austria, widow of the King of France, born in Vienna, age almost thirty-eight, but I am always referred to in their discourse as the Woman Capet.

It matters little to me. I make the shortest possible replies to their preposterous accusations: that I sent great sums of money to my brother Joseph II through the Polignacs, that I manipulated the King and gave him evil counsel, that I plotted to have the representatives of the people murdered with bayonets, that I made the guards drunk with wine, that I have slept with my young son.

All witnesses against me lie. All is hearsay. They produce no documents, only assert that they could do so. From time to time I see that my hands are moving over the table as though they were playing the harpsichord. I do not know exactly what notes I finger. I think it is a piece of that form called a fantasia, one that is by its nature formless. It follows the thoughts of the composer as they float along, like clouds in a reverie.

I once heard such a piece for pianoforte, composed by Mozart, whom I knew as a child, but he has been dead several years. They say he died a pauper, of neglect. And yet I am sure he had talent. He was a glittering child. As I have done throughout my life, I recall the child’s question. “Now do you love me?” he asked my mother, sitting in her lap.

Suddenly I think of the immense talent of my friend the painter Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun. With all my heart, I hope she and her brushes have escaped this tiger nation.

From my lawyers I have learned that the du Barry was denounced again by a fellow servant of the little Nubian page, now grown up and become her footman. They coveted her wealth. Like myself, she is imprisoned and may await that swift and humane death invented by the enlightened French. But the lawyers know nothing of my friend the painter.

I believe that the court will finish with all the witnesses today. Perhaps I shall be marched straight to the guillotine, but no, there is to be a second day among them. For me, it is all one. Not so important as to be an ordeal, this event leaves me greatly fatigued, and I have bled so much that I fear the back of my dress may be besmirched.

T
HIS NIGHT
, R
OSALIE
comes to me. She brings fresh cloths and takes the soiled ones away to wash. “I will heat the flatiron and iron them till they are dry,” she whispers. “Now try to eat a bit.” She mothers me.

The second day is much the same till they circle back to the question of my son.

“Citizen President,” one of the jurors insists, “I ask you to request of the accused that she respond to the facts concerning what occurred between her and her son.”

I am roused. I stand. My royal composure leaves me, and I speak with all the ardor of my outrage. “If I have not replied, it is because Nature itself refuses to respond to such a charge against a mother.” The courtroom stirs in response. Some women, the market women, cry out that this proceeding is unfair, that the court is an insult to all women, that the trial must be stopped.

“I appeal to all mothers who may be present,” I add, and then I sit down.

The murmurs subside. The market women are too curious to see what will happen next; they wish to be entertained. Today it is not their mood to change the course of human events.

Close to panting, I try to subdue my impulse to gulp the air. Chauveau-Lagarde puts his hand over mine in a kindly fashion. It is finished.

“Did I do well?” I ask him. I am flushed with the success of my appeal, how I have admitted nothing.

“Madame, be yourself and you will always be perfect,” he replies.

T
HERE IS A BREAK
in the proceedings. I see Rosalie approaching, bearing no doubt some of the consommé of which she is so proud. A wife of one of the jurors stands in the girl’s way and insists that she will be the one to serve the deposed Queen of France. She is a careless woman, and I watch her spill a good deal of the soup onto the shoulder of another woman.

I have eaten nothing since morning.

It does not matter.

Yes, there is a little left, and I spoon it to my mouth, seeking the eyes of Rosalie, to thank her only with a steadfast gaze. Nothing in my public expression can ever be construed as cause for her arrest.

When I am asked if I wish to speak before the jury retires, I stand and say very simply, “No one has substantiated any claim against me. I conclude by remarking that I was the wife of Louis XVI. It was always my duty to obey him and to submit to his will.”

Chauveau-Lagarde reminds the jury that I was never mentioned during the trial of Louis XVI as having influenced the King in any way. He has a graceful silver tongue with all the strength of iron. Then he argues against the charge that I conspired with foreign powers. There has been no proof. Chauveau-Lagarde speaks not only with conviction, but with ardor. Doucoudray argues that I have not conspired with enemies of the state within its borders. There has been no proof of conspiracies on my part, only empty allegations, he insists.

When they have finished, I thank them with utmost warmth and gratitude. To my brave defenders I say, “Your elegance and honesty manifest themselves in every syllable. Forgive me, my own words are inadequate ever to thank you sufficiently.” Looking into Chauveau-Lagarde’s sympathetic eyes, I say, “Please know the inexpressible gratitude that I will feel to you, even until my last moments.”

The man blushes, and bows. He has said all that he can say.

I wait an hour. I imagine that I will be deported, for it is my due. I hope for that outcome, but I do not have faith in their justice.

They summon me now.

The verdict is that I am guilty of high treason and sentenced to death.

I feel nothing. I feel my chin tilt up—ah, yes, the royal habit. I am pleased that my body remembers the gestures typical of my life.

I
N MY CELL,
I am given pen and paper and I write to Madame Elisabeth:

 

I have been sentenced, not to a shameful death, for it is shameful only for criminals, but to join your brother. Innocent like him, I hope to show the firmness he showed in these last moments.

I deeply regret having to abandon my poor children. You know that I lived only for them and for you, my good and loving sister.

 

For a moment, I think of Elisabeth as a small child, coming to help me unpack the great coffin of wedding jewels, how she handed me a pink rose. I loved her then, and I love her now. She has truly become my sister.

 

You who have out of friendship sacrificed everything to be with us in all our troubles….

May my son never forget his father’s last words, which I expressly repeat, that he is never to avenge our deaths. In regard to the great distress this child must have caused you, forgive him, my dear sister. Remember his age and how easy it is to make a child of only eight years say anything, even things he does not understand….

I die in the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion, the religion of my fathers, the one in which I was brought up and which I have always professed….

I forgive all my enemies the harm they have done me. I here bid farewell to my aunts and to all my brothers and sisters, my companions of many years.

I had friends. The thought of being separated from them forever and their sorrow is among my greatest regrets in dying; may they know, at least, that I thought of them up to the very last.

Farewell! Farewell.

 

Now I lie in bed and think of my life here in the Conciergerie. In its own way, it was a new beginning, bereft as I was of all those whom I loved and for whom all my efforts were made—my family. As a single soul, I have had to become acquainted with my starkest self. And yet I lived, though I suffered deeply. I saw the birth of some new affections. I explored the world of memory, that strange realm where nothing is real but thinking makes it seem so. I never imagined a future. I wish that I had tried to do so.

I wish that I had laid aside my youthful self-righteousness and been kinder to the Comtesse du Barry. I wish her peace. I wish that I had chosen to have less so that the people of France might have had more. I wish them happiness.

With my fingertips, I touch my own body. I am telling it good-bye—the protuberances of my wrist bones, my curving ribs. I touch an ear and feel the mobile cartilage within that gives it shape. I tug on the lobe of my ear. Finally, I place one hand on my head and the other on my body. My head is to be severed from my body tomorrow. I touch my throat, and then my fingers seek for vertebrae in the back of the neck. It is here that the blade will fall. It will have no difficulty, falling as it does from a height, parting this column of small bones. Will I think a last thought, perhaps even as the blood drains from my brain? If I must, I will. If not, then a blankness, perhaps a bit like this blank moment.

A bell tolls. I am yet in this world. I move my feet, flex my toes. I am cold, but they said I could not have an extra blanket. I pray, but always there is a numbness. I can will myself to go through certain motions—holding up my face, looking at the sky, watching for dawn. I cannot will myself to feel. It is better not to feel the pain of separation from those I hold so dear. It is true: here I have come to know myself in a way I have not done before.

Rosalie is here.

Reaching into my cardboard box, she tells me that they will not allow me to go to the scaffold in my widow’s black, lest it stir the sympathy of the populace. She helps me change into the white dress, and she tries to stand between me and the guards, whom I would not like to see either my nakedness nor my bloody cloths. I speak to the young man, as gently as I can, for he is too young to have learned much about the need for gentleness among human beings.

“In the name of decency, monsieur, allow me to change my undergarments without witnesses.”

“I cannot give my consent for your privacy,” he answers.

Rosalie shields me, as she helps me. My new chemise is the white piqué, with a mild waffle texture. In the dark, I have already kissed Rosalie good-bye, explaining that I must not do so in front of our jailers, lest she, like the Richards, should be arrested for excess sympathy.