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

as speedily as they could, and for the few who were fleeing empty-handed with just one idea in mind—to leap on a horse and make for foreign soil—there were many more, the majority, in fact, reenacting on a smaller scale the King’s indecisive behavior. They wanted to leave, as fast as possible and without attracting notice, but balked at the prospect of traveling without their creature comforts. Perhaps, too, it occurred to them that if they were rushing off pell-mell into an unknown land, they might be glad one day to have the option of selling the rosewood console table, the marble statuette, the Sèvres umbrella stand, the sapphire-inlaid clock, or whatever object it was that they held absurdly hugged in their arms until, either to move faster or because they had just cracked their treasure in two by banging into a door, they simply left it there on the spot. Not without regret; some of them actually turned and came back to pick up the abandoned item, which in many cases had been a gift from the King or the Queen. I heard arguments and recriminations. And, as there were no children at Versailles, the courtiers were going away without them, confident that the wet nurse who had begun to suckle them would continue to do so. Or else the courtiers completely forgot them. Reverting to savagery, for they could feel rebel hands around their throats, dragging them away to be hanged from the nearest lamppost, some of these noble parents did not even remember having procreated.

A lady was walking with slow steps. Her husband was striding ahead. Struck by a sudden thought, she set down the hatbox she was carrying in her arms, and asked:

“What are we going to do about Henriette?”

“To what Henriette does Your Ladyship refer?”

“Our daughter, Your Lordship.”

“I beg you will not confuse all these problems one with the other. It happens there is an immediate one. The people are a tangible threat. They are drawing near. They intend to kill us. They are going to kill us. Our names are on lists. Perhaps as early as tomorrow Versailles will have been reduced to a heap of ruins, with bodies scattered about. Nothing else will remain of the last French Court. Do you quite understand, Madam?” (He was expressing himself with grandiloquence and speaking too loudly, addressing his wife as though he were at one end of a room in a feudal castle and she at the other.) “Is that the fate you desire? To die here? If so, I give you leave; I do not force you to follow me, but do not seek to delay me with trivial queries. And I would point out to you that Henriette is not our only child. You appear to take very lightly, Madam, the matter of Achille, Modeste, Sosthène, and Bénédicte.”

The lady abandoned her hatbox by a wall, almost at my feet. And thus disencumbered of her baggage and her maternal solicitude, she could move on at the same rate as her husband.

The awkward feature of the affair was the accumulation of bags, trunks, chests, and bundles that were being dragged along and had very quickly, in that narrow corridor, begun to block the passage.

The people who were leaving with baggage are the ones I remember most vividly. Because they looked so ridiculous as they struggled past. Because of the mixture of haste and waste, and their rather touching incompetence, thus exposed for anyone to see. By the very manner of their fleeing, they were forgetting what was due their rank. Perhaps that explained the shame they felt: it was not the flight, but the fact of being forced to flee in this disgraceful fashion. Flee without a presentable travel costume, as the Queen had insisted a few hours earlier, referring to herself. Many, however, rendered even more distraught by the sense of urgency, were departing empty-handed. It seemed to them that their lives were hanging by a thread, that to linger was to perish, victims of a collective massacre. I think that was when the latest of many malign rumors reached us: it was said that the underground passages at Versailles were stuffed with explosives. The château was going to blow up at any moment. Over the previous few days, the same fear had the Parisians terrorized and helpless: they were convinced that the royalists had planted bombs and Paris was about to be wiped out.

Panic took hold of me again.

“My dear, you must keep your wits about you. If we are on the point of being blown up, we are too late to prevent it. We will be dead a few seconds from now. Or else we already are. Let us put aside this rumor and return to my apartments. I will read you the next part of my Pastoral Instruction.

“Some of them are leaving without any baggage, without a change of clothing, without the basic necessities. Could they be intending to return in a few days? That would explain why they are not taking anything with them.”

“How could I possibly have the answer to your question? Who knows? But perhaps it’s as you say . . . We shall soon see them returning . . . those who escape the wrathful fury of the rebels. The others, well . . . As for us, no purpose is served by continuing to stand in the path of the herd, where we could easily come to grief. Someone might do us a mischief, and we’ve already learned all we need to know about human ingratitude.”

Just then, as though to supply him with additional proof, he spied a man in the act of pulling a small painting off the wall: Still Life with Asparagus. Jacob-Nicolas Moreau could not help intervening.

“Mister Moreau,” said the culprit, speaking with the greatest arrogance, “you are a good, decent writer, a respectable scholar, a remarkable librarian, and an unrivaled observer of human behavior, but I invite you to take your remonstrances