Farewell, My Queen by Black Moishe (children's ebooks online txt) 📗

had soon reappeared on the second-story front balcony, with the Queen, the Dauphin, and the royal princes and princesses. But what metamorphosis was this? On the King’s countenance was no lingering sign of joy. Beside him the Queen stood quite rigid, not waving. Instead, she took the Dauphin’s little hand, where he stood in front of her, and waved that at the crowd. She it was who gave the signal for retiring into the château. She was the first to leave, with her son His Royal Highness the Dauphin, while Madame the King’s daughter, Marie-Thérèse, the little girl dubbed by the Queen “Little Miss Sobersides,” clung to her father’s hand and would not leave the balcony. She looked down with great curiosity at all these people gathered below her, shouting aloud their love for her father. The King now looked quite dejected. He followed his wife, as did the Count and Countess de Provence, the Count and Countess d’Artois, and their children.

Gabrielle de Polignac, Governess of the Children of France, had not appeared on the balcony. “The Duchess is like a mole,” someone said. “She burrows beneath the surface, but a pickaxe will force her up into the open; we’ll find her.”

ENTHUSIASM OF THE CROWD.

I AM CONFIDENT OF VICTORY

(afternoon).

The demonstrations of love and gratitude had again found expression in loud acclamations. These became strident when the King had gone to hear Mass and the motet Plaudite Regem manibus was sung. There were rounds of applause, promises of fidelity, tears. An entire crowd caught up in a frenzied show of love. They were all stamping their feet and clapping so hard that the noise drowned out the singers of the King’s Choir.

Since that time I have learned about crowds, about mobs. The mob will shout acclaim or hurl insults at anyone, or anything. The object of their emotion is of no account. The mob is roused by the feeling of being a mob. Its hysteria mounts in proportion to the strange phenomenon of self-awareness or awareness without the self. “I am no one,” says the mob. Multiplied by thousands, this nonpersonhood is an irresistible force. And I surrendered myself to it, for the space of an emotional outburst, which I could grasp because I seemed to hear, to have within reach of my senses, tangible proof of the people’s love for their King. And I really did have the proof, but what I did not know, then, was that there could exist a people as changeable, as quick to pass from tears of compassion to cries for murder, as the French . . . In my naïveté, I, too, began to applaud, along with everyone else. I was shouting Long live the King, Long live the Nation, Long live Liberty. Honorine was dancing where she stood and hugging the people next to her. She kept saying that she ought to leave, that Madame de La Tour du Pin might be needing her services, but she made no move to go. At last she made up her mind and pushed her way through the densely packed crowd. I stayed. Soon there was no further sound, whether of singing or prayer, coming from the Chapel. The members of the royal family had no doubt dispersed and gone their several ways back to their respective apartments. Unless perhaps the three brothers, after their unplanned walk and consequent upon its spectacular success, had chosen not to part, but to take their meal together with their wives, at the apartment of the Countess de Provence, as quite often happened . . . The crowd—which extended well beyond the Place d’Armes and as far as the entrances to Saint-Cloud, Paris, and Sceaux Avenues—continued to wander about, but the bursts of applause were subsiding. We needed some sort of sign or signal to get us fired up again. None came. I felt as I did at the theater, when the actors had taken their final bow and I desperately waited for them to come back one more time . . . waited in vain. I could see that, on the contrary, most of the château windows were shut and their curtains drawn. And suddenly I felt sad—just the way I had felt cold and discouraged that morning. I had witnessed the erecting of something like an immense and perfect monument to the glory of the King, and now I was conscious only of the cracks already splitting it and its lack of a firm foundation. I went back to the wing that housed my living quarters, the South Wing where my shelter nestled.

What I am neglecting to report, and what probably inspired the debatable image I used, of a monument, is that with the gradual lessening of the applause, discussions started up again. Beside me, the townspeople of Versailles (one of them worked at La Belle Image tavern; I had seen him before, on his regular deliveries of lemon drink to the château) were arguing about the latest events in the capital city. Not merely did they unhesitatingly qualify the supposed taking of the Bastille as a mental aberration; they had already gone further, with gleeful comments about the following plan: the people were proposing to erect, on the spot where the Bastille had stood, a monument dedicated to King Louis XVI, who Restored Liberty.

“On the spot where the Bastille stood?” I asked.

There was silence; distrustful glances were sent in my direction. The group of townsfolk moved away from me. The tavern keeper turned around to look at me and whispered something to his cronies.

NIGHT

IN THE STUDY OF JACOB-NICOLAS MOREAU,

HISTORIOGRAPHER OF FRANCE

(from nine until ten o’clock in the evening).

I have a character trait that has not improved with the years: I find it difficult to face reality squarely. I had heard someone say: “The people have seized the Bastille.” I had noticed the hard, withdrawn expression on the face of the Queen when she had appeared on the balcony and that motion of