‘Long live the King! Long live the little father!’ shouted the crowds. And those who had called ‘Murder him!’ now cried ‘Honour him!’

It was eleven o’clock when, surrounded by the shouting multitude, his carriage drove into the Cour Royal.

Antoinette heard it; she ran down the great staircase and threw herself into the King’s arms.

He was back. He was safe. There was then a little respite.

She looked into his face, saw the marks of fatigue under his eyes, the stains on his clothes, his twisted cravat – and the tricolor in his hat.

She was frightened then. But the King was smiling blandly.

‘Not a drop of blood has been shed,’ he cried triumphantly. ‘I swear that it never will be.’


* * *

In the courtyard the carriages were waiting. Those who had been the intimate friends of the Queen would soon be leaving Versailles and making their way with all haste to the frontier – Artois and his family, Condé, Conti, Esterhazy, Vaudreuil, Lauzun, the Abbé de Vermond, all those who had been the companions of her carefree days in the Trianon. The Polignacs were ready to leave. They would be the first to go. They knew that if ever the rabble marched to Versailles theirs would be the first heads to be placed on pikes.

They remembered de Launay, the Governor of the Bastille who had lost his head. There were terrible tales coming from Paris. Foulon, a former Minister of Finance, had met a violent death. The people hated him because they blamed him for the taxes he had imposed, and it had been whispered that he had once made the inhuman statement that if the people were hungry they should eat hay. They hung him upon a street lamp and stuffed his mouth with hay, before they cut off his head and paraded with it through the streets. The same fate was meted out to Foulon’s son-in-law, Berthier de Sauvigny.

The mob was determined to deal savage deaths to those it hated.

So the Polignacs must go. Antoinette was anxious on their account. ‘I shall know no peace until they have left,’ she said. ‘I shall not be happy until I know that Gabrielle has crossed the frontier.’

She sent 500 louis to her friend with a tender note: ‘Adieu, my dearest friend. What a sad word is good-bye, but I have to say it. Here is the order for the horses. I have only strength left to send you my love. I will not try to put into words the sorrow I feel at being separated from you. We are surrounded by misfortune and hardship and ill-starred people. Since all are deserting us, I am in truth happy to think that those in whom I am chiefly interested have had to depart. You may be sure however that adversity has not lessened my strength and courage. These I shall never lose. My troubles are teaching me prudence.’

When Gabrielle had left, disguised as a servant, the Queen sat alone in her apartment and, although she covered her face with her hands, she did not weep. Now that great sorrow, great foreboding was upon her, she did not weep so easily as she had in the carefree days.

Gabrielle was thinking of the Queen as the berline carried her and her relations towards the Swiss frontier. Poor Antoinette, to remain in that place of terror. Gabrielle shivered. She had been fond of the Queen. She would have been content to be her simple little friend if there had not been so many making their constant demands upon her.

‘The King and Queen should be with us,’ she said suddenly. ‘They are foolish to stay there. They should escape while they can.’

No one answered her. The Polignacs had no time to think of the Queen. They were nearing the Swiss frontier. There they would be safe. But until they passed that frontier they could think of nothing but their own safety.

At the town of Sens, while the horses were being changed, their coach was surrounded by a mob. Gabrielle drew back into her seat as unkempt heads were thrust into the carriage. She trembled and waited for disaster.

‘You come from Paris?’ asked one of the intruders. ‘Then tell us, are those wicked Polignacs still at Court?’

Gabrielle tried to speak, but she found she could not do so. The Abbé Balivière, who was travelling with them, said quickly: ‘The Polignacs! Those evil leeches! I could swear they are not at Court now. I heard the Queen had rid herself of them.’

‘That is well,’ said the man. He turned to the crowd. ‘The Polignacs have left Court,’ he cried.

‘We’ll search every coach till we find them!’ shouted someone. ‘Then … off with their heads!’

But the berline was allowed to go on; and thus the Polignacs, who had done so much to enhance the Queen’s unpopularity, passed safely across the border, leaving Antoinette behind to bear the results of her unfortunate friendships.


* * *

Gloom hung over Versailles. There was silence in the Galerie des Glaces and the Salon de la Paix. There were no more balls, no banquets during those terrible weeks of July and August. Each morning the King and Queen with their children heard Mass; then they would spend long hours closeted with the ministers, all desperately seeking some solution to the alarming situation.

One by one the courtiers were deserting and, as their carriages drove out of Versailles, fresh and more terrifying news arrived each day.

There was revolt in the country towns and villages, where peasants were rising against the Seigneurs. Châteaux were pillaged; carriages making their way across the country were suspect and stopped by howling mobs, who might decide that the occupants were fleeing aristocrats; sometimes they imprisoned them; at others they killed them on the spot. No one any longer paid taxes. In the big towns, houses and shops were closed; their occupants had secretly left the country. Many of those who had served the rich were unemployed and starving in the streets. The country revolts meant that no grain was coming to Paris. Crowds massed daily outside the shuttered bakers’ shops, demanding bread.

In the meantime the leaders of the revolution never ceased to work upon the people, inflaming them to greater activity. Desmoulins wrote in those newspapers which continued to appear. Men and women walked about the streets, flourishing the Patriote Français and discussing the latest light which was being thrown on the callousness of the aristocrats, and the wrongs endured by the people.

Paris had acquired a new sport. Massing in the streets, marching in a body to the house of some ill-fated man of whose behaviour in the past they had read in the articles of Marat or Desmoulins in the Patriote Français or the Courier de Paris et de Versailles. They would haul him from his house, lead him to the Place de Grève, shouting insults and threats, almost tearing him to pieces before they hung him on a lamp-post, then sliced off his head and paraded with it through the streets.

It was said that the English were planning to attack France now that the revolution had brought her low; defences were put up in the Channel ports. And who, it was asked, had escaped to England? Who was giving information to this enemy of France? The aristocrats. The émigrés. Then to the lamp-post with a few more.

Those terrifying days in Versailles would never be forgotten. There were few left now to comfort the Queen. There was her good friend the Princesse de Lamballe who refused to leave her, and there was Madame de Tourzel who refused to leave the children.

‘What will the end be?’ the Queen often asked herself. For the first time in her life she was concerned for the future, and for the first time she was truly afraid.

One day the Princesse came to her and said: ‘There is someone to see Your Majesty. He has just arrived at Versailles. He craved audience and, knowing that you would not wish to wait, I have brought him here to you.’

The Queen lifted her eyes and stared at the door where he was standing. He had changed. He was no longer debonair, no longer the handsome young man he had been at their first meeting.

She could not stop the cry of pleasure which rose to her lips as he strode across the room to her. He took both her hands and covered them with kisses.

‘Axel,’ she said, ‘you should not have come. You should not have come.’

He lifted his head and she knew in that moment the depth of his love for her and, in spite of the threatening gloom about her, in spite of all that had happened and which she feared was yet to come, she was conscious of a happiness such as she had never before experienced.

She sought to control her emotions.

‘This is not the time to arrive in Versailles,’ she cried. ‘Do you not know what is happening here? Everybody is leaving us.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘And that is precisely why I have come.’


* * *

What peace there was in the Trianon. There it was possible to believe that cruelty and violence were far away; there was the ideal village she had built, where she could wear her muslin dresses, her shady hats; there she could escape for long hours at a time – escape to forgetfulness.

Only her intimates were with her, only those whom she could trust. Now, she often thought, I know whom I can trust, because all those whom I could not have long deserted me.

Fersen came to Trianon. Each day he called. They would walk together in the French and English gardens, by the lake and the stream; they would sit in the boudoir like two cosy happy people. They shut out the world. It was the only way to escape.

And each moment of every day was precious because it must be lived as though it were their last. For who could be sure that it would not be?