Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution

Chapter 58

AUGUST

–OCTOBER

1793

Courage! I have shown it for years; think you I shall lose it at the moment when my sufferings are to end?

—MARIE ANTOINETTE

IT IS UNTHINKABLE. A QUEEN, OUR QUEEN, THE QUEEN OF France, has been separated from her family and moved to the Conciergerie prison to await a trial on the charge of treason. When the criers begin to shout the news, I turn to my mother in the doorway of our Salon. “Curtius warned me that this would happen,” I whisper.

“This is the Committee of Public Safety’s doing,” she accuses. “They are the ones who have voted for this.” Her lower lip begins to tremble. “I think of the monsters we have sheltered in here …”

“None of us could have known it would come to this.”

“But Robespierre! He was so polite, so well-spoken. Curtius trusted him.”

We are both silent. In a little more than a month, it will be Michaelmas. But every week, a letter comes to us from the front. There is another general they would like Curtius to investigate. Then another, and another. Each report he sends to the Committee is positive. Every man is a patriot, no man is an enemy. But how long before the Committee grows tired of innocence and begins to suspect him as well?

Throughout August and September, I hear news from the soldiers in the Madeleine Cemetery of what life is like for the queen. They have imprisoned her in the darkest, dampest cell, without any changes of clothes or a bath to keep herself clean. They say that she walks barefoot for want of shoes, and that the black gown she wears is so tattered that, as summer turns to fall, she will feel the change on her skin. “While she was strolling across Versailles in her fancy silk shoes,” the guard outside the charnel house says with a laugh, “my wife was wearing rags. Let’s see how she enjoys it.”

But the silks and taffeta were expected of her. When she went barefoot in the tall grasses of her Hameau, every paper in France mocked her as a peasant. So what did they want? When she tried to economize, her own courtiers turned against her. Whom is a queen supposed to please? Her people? Her court?

On the twelfth of October the queen’s trial begins. My mother does not come, but Isabel and I find seats the night before in the Salle de Spectacle, where the Convention now meets. We sit in the public galleries until morning, watching the gloomy space fill with spectators, lawyers, and eventually the members of the National Convention itself. Of course, it is all a grand farce. They will find her guilty, and nothing she can say or do will change that. The only surprise will be where they send her. Either back to Austria or to some convent in the Alps.

When the trial begins, a man announces, “Madame Capet,” and the doors are thrown open for the woman who once held Europe in her thrall. Every spectator in the Salle de Spectacle gasps. An old woman appears in a simple white gown; her shoes are worn and her white hair is cropped carelessly at the neck. Yet for all her misfortune, she moves with the dignity and grace of a queen.

She sits and listens to their accusations in silence, even when they charge her with molesting the dauphin. “Still no reaction?” the prosecutor thunders from his podium. “Even when you are charged with corrupting your own son?”

There is a murmur in the galleries. Then, for the first time, she speaks.

“Because Nature refuses to answer such a charge brought against a mother. I appeal to all the mothers in here! Do you truly believe this?”

There are many in the crowds who are openly weeping, despite the danger of being seen to do so. Now that the prosecutor has had his wish and the queen has spoken, he hurries through the rest of his accusations without stopping to ask if she wants to reply.

The next day, the verdict is read. Guilty, on every charge.

There is a stunned silence in the Salle de Spectacle as the punishment is announced. In three days, on the Place de la Révolution, the queen shall meet her death as a traitor to the patrie. Isabel grips my hand, and there are women in the galleries who collapse in a faint.

When we return to the Boulevard du Temple, my mother and Paschal come running. They have already heard the verdict and want to know if it is true. “Have they really sentenced Madame Capet to death?” my mother asks.

“Yes,” Isabel replies.

The three of them look to me, and I say, “I won’t do it.”

“You must,” my mother cries. “If you refuse, they will know—”

“What?” I shout. “What will they pretend to know?”

But Isabel’s voice is steady. “If you refuse, they will accuse you of treason. They have sent women to the guillotine for less.”

“It is one head,” my mother says.

“The queen’s head!” I cry. I am trembling.

“What would Curtius want you to do?” Isabel asks.

He would want me to choose life over death, whatever the cost.

But I do not go to witness the miserable spectacle of the queen’s last moments. When the time comes for Isabel to walk with me to the cemetery, I stop in the Salon and pull a hidden rosary from beneath the shirt of Robespierre. “The last place anyone would ever look,” I tell her.

We pray together in the darkness of the Salon. Although it’s possible that God has abandoned France, we ask forgiveness for what we are about to do, and for His protection in whatever lies ahead. Last, we pray for the queen’s soul.