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

of the heart. Others, physically present around me, would blur and move farther away. They became a vague, indistinct background against which, suddenly (for the signs telling of her imminent appearance in no wise diminished the suddenness of her arrival), she stood out.

And thus it chanced that at this moment, coming magically into view, there she was.

We were on the ground floor in a corridor with entrance doors to several of the apartments occupied by her friends. The Queen, when I saw her, was facing away from me. She was alone, holding a candlestick. She was standing at one of the doors, politely and humbly asking to be admitted. After a moment of waiting, she tried again at the lodgings of other friends. At each door, she was greeted by the same silence. Then she lost patience, became indignant, began to utter loud reproaches. But her voice dropped when, on reaching out to give one of the doors a shake, she realized that it was padlocked. As were others. With the padlocks hastily installed, more or less everywhere along the corridor, on those white and gold doors, like locks on gardeners’ huts.

The Queen had two manners of walking that I knew well: her official manner, rather slow and solemn and making her look larger; and her private one, very brisk but showing the curves of her body and with a slight swaying of the hips that made you want to sing. What I had never seen before was this heavy gait, a sagging of the shoulders, and an unsureness, a kind of stupor that inhibited her movements. A walk that betokened misfortune, betokened the discovery that there was an additional degree to her unhappiness. She had thought she could rely on her friends for support, to help her bear the estrangement of Gabrielle de Polignac, and the friends were not responding. For the first time, roles were reversed. She was asking something of them. She needed them.

The Queen had never experienced the dark side of these corridors, salons, and private studies. She had never in her life come up against a closed door. She had never opened a door, for that matter, never touched a door. There was a lost, wandering quality to her progress as she came back toward her own apartments. Like me a moment earlier, she did not give the impression of knowing exactly where she was. Her pace was rapid, but she stopped at intervals. She seemed to go in fear of a danger lurking very nearby and ready to pounce on her. She turned slightly, but could not escape. She had just entered the War Salon. She held her candlestick high, cautiously casting light into a corner or behind a screen. She could have gone to the King’s rooms to ask for protection. She did the opposite. She turned away from him. At that moment, a breath of air put her candle out. She stood motionless, stiff, facing the impassable threshold of the Hall of Mirrors. There was no longer any guard to announce The Queen. Not a single courtier to react to such an announcement. Her presence caused no stir. Everything hung upon the movement she could not bring herself to make. She put a foot forward and drew back. She was terrified as she faced that chasm of shadow. She knew she must make the leap, find the courage to walk forward by herself, between rows of mirrors with no images.

I can still hear the sound of her dress brushing across the inlaid floor, I can see her ring-laden hands holding open the high double doors. I can feel her irregular, terrified breathing. Before her—undulating, beckoning, and treacherous, like a body of water opaquely concealing its bottomless depths—there stretches the Hall of Mirrors.

She has lost the ability to walk. Alone, she cannot walk.

I tell myself: she won’t do it. She will not have the courage to do it. And in my disordered mind, the Queen is no different from that paralytic, the old Duke de Reybaud, left by himself in his chair.

I close my eyes.

I weep for her, for them.

“All is lost,” my friend had said. He was right. All was lost, irremediably lost.

NIGHT

THE HISTORIOGRAPHER OF FRANCE IS

ENTRUSTED BY THE KING WITH A SACRED MISSION:

THE DRAFTING OF A PASTORAL LETTER

(seven o’clock in the evening).

“The Queen is alone,” I said, as I walked into Jacob-Nicolas Moreau’s study.

“The privilege of greatness, my dear.”

His tone of voice surprised me.

“You don’t understand what I’m saying. She is alone in front of closed doors. She is hurting her hands trying to open padlocks. She is alone at the entrance to the Hall of Mirrors.”

“Everything you are telling me is unimaginable and shocking. And many other things are, I suspect, in store, that will be equally unimaginable and shocking, horrors beyond measure, unless . . . ”

“You said it before, and now I’m convinced: we are doomed. The day of punishment is upon us.”

“I did say it, but possibly there is a way to avoid the worst and suspend the punishment.”

“By force of arms?”

“No, the King is prepared to make every concession in order to avoid civil war. All his actions stem from that one policy. He does not want to see killing take place among his children. He swore that no drop of French blood would be shed through any fault of his. He is having recourse to prayer. The country is seething with unrest. The people have been won over and are beside themselves with rage. The real question is to ascertain whether there is still a chance for them to come back to their senses and return to the love of God.”

“I dare say . . . but it seems to me you are considering the matter with a confidence you lacked entirely, not so long since.”

“That’s because in the interval I have been honored with a commission from the King. A charge so deeply moving and so characteristic of his