Confessions of Marie Antoinette Read Free Page B

me, but for Louis as well. I pray that he will turn around so that I might catch his eye and convey the contents of my heart, but Axel is intent on his task. He balances an armchair upholstered in sea-green brocade upon an inlaid chest, which already sits atop atable, and orders a trio of guards to help him push everything against the closed doors.
    I am concerned that the children of France will be frightened by the commotion, so I hasten to my library, retreating into my private suite of rooms through a doorway cleverly concealed by the damasked wall covering. I find the four-year-old dauphin Louis Charles happily sprawled on the carpet, playing with his older sister Madame Royale, under the watchful eye of their new governess the marquise de Tourzel. My son has nicknamed her Madame Sévère.
    Louise de Tourzel rises when I enter the room.
    “Maman!” The dauphin looks up and grins at me, gripping a yellow wooden ball in a chubby fist. Mousseline frowns and, now that I am in the room, pointedly turns her back on her brother. Nearly eleven, my daughter makes it clear that she would rather not be cooped up with a little boy.
    Catching the look of concern in my eyes the marquise approaches and I take her hands, drawing her close enough to whisper, “Who can say what will happen, but the children’s routine should not be disrupted, unless of course—”
    There is a scratching at the door. Madame Campan opens it to admit a footman who pauses breathlessly at the threshold. Spying the royal children, he whispers urgently, “ Votre Majesté , the king has returned!”
    I sweep my son and daughter into my arms and press my lips to their sweet brows. Campan and Tourzel curtsy to me as I head to the door, placing my finger to my lips as a reminder not to unduly alarm the children. But how much longer, I wonder, can I shield them from the events that threaten our doorstep?
    I glide through the State Rooms, entering the Salon de Mars to see Louis, still wearing his tall hat, his hunting suit of olive-hued velvet spattered with mud. His ministers cluster around him likecolorful lichens on a stone wall. I spy the powdered head and incongruously dark eyebrows of the loudest speaker, Jacques Necker, who strains to be heard over their raised voices. The council chamber now honors its celestial namesake; it has become a war room.
    “You must stay here, Sire.” Necker glares at the comte de Saint-Priest, Secrétaire d’État of the royal household. “Think of how it would appear to the mob if you were to flee!” he insists.
    What have they been discussing in my absence?
    “I was not the one who suggested that His Majesty abandon the throne,” Saint-Priest retorts hotly. “I merely said that—for their own safety—the queen and the children of France should be taken under escort to Rambouillet. If you were listening, you would have heard my proposal that the king ride with his bodyguard of eight hundred men and the two hundred troops of the Chasseurs des Évêchés to meet the advancing Parisians. A force of a thousand men is confrontation, messieurs, not retreat!”
    It would not be a long ride to the Île de France; Rambouillet is not far. Still, I worry about making the journey. Six years earlier Louis had purchased the château, a medieval fortress in its early days, for its location at the perimeter of a lush game forest. There, the children and I would be secure, at least for the time being.
    The comte de La Tour du Pin clearly agrees with Saint-Priest; however, being Minister of War, he sees ahead, as if everything is an enormous game of chess. “But it is said that there are some six thousand on the march. When a thousand men stand to be outnumbered, you have only two alternatives: to attack with the element of surprise and then fire upon them, and to have another plan, should the first one fail.”
    “I will not order the blood of any Frenchmen shed—especially on my account,” Louis says bluntly. “And you tell me