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

of the new Dauphin, on the ground floor of Versailles. I was exhausted. Between weariness and shame, I was of a mind to proclaim my woes. I scarcely knew the woman, but I needed to talk to someone. I made her the confidant of all my fears, in a rush of chaotic and contradictory verbiage. I told her in the same breath that we had to save the Queen and that the Queen had gone, that she had to be protected and that she had fled, that her bedchamber, indeed all her apartments, were empty. I had personally helped with her departure, so I knew whereof I spoke . . .

“You read too much, Madam,” she said jokingly. “It is wiser to confine oneself to what one can actually see. Words are dangerous. They told me so when I was just a little girl, and I am convinced they were right. I had an uncle who wanted to teach me to read. My father was against it. He said: ‘I want the child to be happy.’ The King and Queen are still at the château. Believe me. Each of them is lying peacefully in a royal bedchamber, still asleep. They are recruiting their strength for the day that is presently breaking. They will need it.”

“How can you be so sure? I stood for a while under the windows of the Queen’s Bedchamber. I saw no sign of life. The curtains were open as usual, but in the bedchamber nothing was stirring.”

“And what about that man over there; do you see him? Does his presence have no significance for you?”

A few meters away, more or less hidden behind a bush, I could see the scarecrowlike outline of a man who was perfectly familiar to me; indeed, I had the impression that I was forever seeing him. Everyone referred to him as “the Queen’s unrequited lover”. . .Yes, I had to agree, his presence was significant; among his other oddities was his insistence on never being very far from where the Queen was. With his body straining in the direction of the place where she happened to be—a place sometimes hidden from his view but whose location, mysteriously, he could always sense—the Queen’s unrequited lover stood and waited. His real name was Monsieur de Castelnaux, and in the days when he was of sound mind, he had filled the position of Counselor in the Bordeaux Courts. But his mania now engrossed him so utterly that it was hard to believe he had ever had a name, a position, and a profession. Among the courtiers, as with Captain de Laroche, though this man was more tragic than comical, Monsieur de Castelnaux was a source of great amusement. The sayings of one and the other were repeated, their speech and manner imitated for fun. That may explain why both of them stand out so clearly in my memory, and why I can quite effortlessly call up the sallow complexion, the wild-eyed facial expression, of the man “madly” in love with the Queen. Call up, as well, his figure, curiously apt to pass unnoticed because it blended in so easily with the trees and branches, but haunting, too, because it might suddenly come into view anywhere. All one had to do was cross the invisible line of communication established by his monomania, linking him at all times to the Queen.

The Queen’s unrequited lover was a tall, thin man, his greenish face marked with the scabs of small cuts, which he scratched at, causing them to bleed. Most often, he was silent, preoccupied with his obsession. He was a sinister sight, painful to behold. You found yourself wishing he were somewhere else. At the least, it would have been a great relief to stop running into him every time you were answering a summons to the Queen’s presence. Vain hope: he was always there. Throughout the two evening hours taken up by the Queen’s Games, he stood motionless, facing Her Majesty’s Square; at the Royal Chapel, likewise, he chose a seat just below the royal balcony where she could look down and see him, and he never failed to be present at the King’s Dinner or the ceremonial Public Repast. When the Queen went to Mademoiselle Montansier’s theater, he sat as close as he could to her loge, and, locked in one position, devouring her with his great imploring eyes, not for a single moment did he turn away from her. Leaving the château to travel elsewhere, one might have hoped for a respite from this baneful individual. No such thing. For ten years, wherever the Court had gone, so too had he. In fact he went ahead. He would leave for Fontainebleau or Saint-Cloud the day before the Court set out, and when the Queen arrived at these various residences, the first person she encountered upon alighting from her carriage was her lugubrious admirer. During the Queen’s sojourns at the Petit Trianon, his passion became even further inflamed. He would hastily have a bite to eat with one or other of the guards, and spend the entire day, even in rainy weather, going round and round the gardens. He walked with long strides, always keeping to the edge of the ditches. In all weathers, he wore the same garments, a green jacket and yellow breeches. His waistcoat, which must once have been elegant, was in tatters. From the jacket, pieces of lining protruded. The colors were washed-out. His faded clothes showed lighter streaks, giving the impression that water never stopped trickling down him, even when the sun was shining. He held in his hand a plumed hat, whose feathers were almost completely reduced to their central shaft. Leaves and twigs caught in his jacket collar. The Queen’s unrequited lover had a rented room in the town, but most of the time he spent his nights outside, standing watch beneath the windows of his goddess. It had to be exceptionally cold, or snowing, for him to