From the time I left Passy till my final departure from Paris for Italy,
which took place on the 2nd of August, 1792, my residence was almost
exclusively at the capital. The faithful driver, who had given such
proofs of probity, continued to be of great service, and was put in
perpetual requisition. I was daily about on the business of the Queen
and the Princess, always disguised, and most frequently as a drummerboy;
on which occasions the driver and my man servant were my companions. My
principal occupation was to hear and take down the debates of the
Assembly, and convey and receive letters from the Queen to the Princesse
de Lamballe, to and from Barnave, Bertrand de Moleville, Alexandre de
Lameth, Deport de Fertre, Duportail, Montmorin, Turbo, De Mandat, the Duc
de Brissac, etc., with whom my illustrious patronesses kept up a
continued correspondence, to which I believe all of them fell a
sacrifice; for, owing to the imprudence of the King in not removing their
communications when he removed the rest of his papers from the Tuileries,
the exposure of their connections with the Court was necessarily
consequent upon the plunder of the palace on the 10th of August, 1792.
In my masquerade visits to the Assembly, I got acquainted with an editor
of one of the papers; I think he told me his name was Duplessie. Being
pleased with the liveliness of my remarks on some of the organized
disorders, as I termed them, and with some comments I made upon the
meanness of certain disgusting speeches on the patriotic gifts, my new
acquaintance suffered me to take copies of his own shorthand remarks and
reports. By this means the Queen and the Princess had them before they
appeared in print. M. Duplessie was on other occasions of great service
to me, especially as a protector in the mobs, for my man servant and the
honest driver were so much occupied in watching the movements of the
various faubourg factions, that I was often left entirely unattended.
The horrors of the Tuileries, both by night and day, were now grown
appallingly beyond description. Almost unendurable as they had been
before, they were aggravated by the insults of the national guard to
every passenger to and from the palace. I was myself in so much peril,
that the Princess thought it necessary to procure a trusty person, of
tried courage, to see me through the throngs, with a large bandbox of all
sorts of fashionable millinery, as the mode of ingress and egress least
liable to excite suspicion.
Thus equipped, and guarded by my cicisbeo, I one day found myself, on
entering the Tuileries, in the midst of an immense mob of regular trained
rioters, who, seeing me go towards the palace, directed their attention
entirely to me. They took me for some one belonging to the Queen’s
milliner, Madame Bertin, who, they said, was fattening upon the public
misery, through the Queen’s extravagance. The poor Queen herself they
called by names so opprobious that decency will not suffer me to repeat
them.
With a volley of oaths, pressing upon us, they bore us to another part of
the garden, for the purpose of compelling us to behold six or eight of
the most infamous outcasts, amusing themselves, in a state of exposure,
with their accursed hands and arms tinged with blood up to the elbows.
The spot they had chosen for this exhibition of their filthy persons was
immediately before the windows of the apartments of the Queen and the
ladies of the Court. Here they paraded up and down, to the great
entertainment of a throng of savage rebels, by whom they were applauded
and encouraged with shouts of “Bis! bis!” signifying in English,” Again!
again!”
The demoniac interest excited by this scene withdrew the attention of
those who were enjoying it from me, and gave me the opportunity of
escaping unperceived, merely with the loss of my bandbox. Of that the
infuriated mob made themselves masters; and the hats, caps, bonnets, and
other articles of female attire, were placed on the parts of their
degraded carcases, which, for the honour of human nature, should have
been shot.
Overcome with agony at these insults, I burst from the garden in a flood
of tears. On passing the gate, I was accosted by a person who exclaimed
in a tone of great kindness, “Qu’as tu, ma bonne? qu’est ce qui vous
afflige?” Knowing the risk I should run in representing the real cause
of my concern, I immediately thought of ascribing it to the loss of the
property of which I had been plundered. I told him I was a poor
milliner, and had been robbed of everything I possessed in the world by
the mob. “Come back with me,” said he, “and I will have it restored to
you.” I knew it was of no avail, but policy stimulated me to comply; and
I returned with him into the garden toward the palace.
What should I have felt, had I been aware, when this man came up, that I
was accosted by the villain Danton! The person who was with me knew him,
but dared not speak, and watched a chance of escaping in the crowd for
fear of being discovered. When I looked round and found myself alone, I
said I had lost my brother in the confusion, which added to my grief.
“Oh, never mind,” said Danton; “take hold of my arm; no one shall molest
you. We will look for your brother, and try to recover your things;” and
on we went together: I, weeping, I may truly say, for my life, stopped at
every step, while he related my doleful story to all whose curiosity was
excited by my grief.
On my appearing arm in arm with Danton before the windows of the Queen’s
apartments, we were observed by Her Majesty and the Princesses. Their
consternation and perplexity, as well as alarm for my safety, may readily
be conceived. A signal from the window instantly apprised me that I
might enter the palace, to which my return had been for some time
impatiently expected.
Finding it could no longer be of any service to carry on the farce of
seeking my pretended brother, I begged to be escorted out of the mob to
the apartments of the Princesse de Lamballe.
“Oh,” said Danton, “certainly! and if you had only told the people that
you were going to that good Princess, I am sure your things would not
have been taken from you. But,” added he, “are you perfectly certain
they were not for that detestable Marie Antoinette?”
“Oh!” I replied, “quite, quite certain!” All this while the mob was at
my heels.
“Then,” said he, “I will not leave you till you are safe in the
apartments of the Princesse de Lamballe, and I will myself make known to
her your loss: she is so good,” continued he, “that I am convinced she
will make you just compensation.”
I then told him how much I should be obliged by his doing so, as I had
been commissioned to deliver the things, and if I was made to pay for
them, the loss would be more serious than I could bear.
“Bah! bah!” exclaimed he. “Laissez moi faire! Laissez moi faire!”
When he came to the inner door, which I pretended to know nothing about,
he told the gentleman of the chamber his name, and said he wished to see
his mistress.
Her Highness came in a few minutes, and from her looks and visible
agitation at the sight of Danton, I feared she would have betrayed both
herself and me. However, while he was making a long preamble, I made
signs, from which she inferred that all was safe.
When Danton had finished telling her the story, she calmly said to me,
“Do you recollect, child, the things you have been robbed of?”
I replied that, if I had pen and ink, I could even set down the prices.
“Oh, well, then, child, come in,” said Her Highness, “and we will see
what is to be done!”
“There!” exclaimed Danton; “Did I not tell you this before?” Then,
giving me a hearty squeeze of the hand, he departed, and thus terminated
the millinery speculation, which, I have no doubt, cost Her Highness a
tolerable sum.
As soon as he was gone, the Princess said, “For Heaven’s sake, tell me
the whole of this affair candidly; for the Queen has been in the greatest
agitation at the bare idea of your knowing Danton, ever since we first
saw you walking with him! He is one of our moat inveterate enemies.”
I said that if they had but witnessed one half of the scenes that I saw,
I was sure their feelings would have been shocked beyond description. “We
did not see all, but we heard too much for the ears of our sex.”
I then related the particulars of our meeting to Her Highness, who
observed, “This accident, however unpleasant, may still turn out to our
advantage. This fellow believes you to be a marchande de modes, and the
circumstance of his having accompanied you to my apartment will enable
you, in future, to pass to and from the Pavilion unmolested by the
national guard.”
With tears of joy in her eyes for my safety, she could not, however, help
laughing when I told her the farce I kept up respecting the loss of my
brother, and my bandbox with the millinery, for which I was also soon
congratulated most graciously by Her Majesty, who much applauded my
spirit and presence of mind, and condescended, immediately, to entrust me
with letters of the greatest importance, for some of the most
distinguished members of the Assembly, with which I left the palace in
triumph, but taking care to be ready with a proper story of my losses.
When I passed the guard-room, I was pitied by the very wretches, who,
perhaps, had already shared in the spoils; and who would have butchered
me, no doubt, into the bargain, could they have penetrated the real
object of my mission. They asked me if I had been paid for the loss I
sustained. I told them I had not, but I was promised that it should be
settled.
“Settled!” said one of the wretches. “Get the money as soon as you can.
Do not trust to promises of its being settled. They will all be settled
themselves soon!”
The next day, on going to the palace, I found the Princesse de Lamballe
in the greatest agitation, from the accounts the Court had just received
of the murder of a man belonging to Arthur Dillon, and of the massacres
at Nantes.
“The horrid prints, pamphlets, and caricatures,” cried she, “daily
exhibited under the very windows of the Tuileries, against His Majesty,
the Queen, the Austrian party, and the Coblentz party, the constant
thwarting of every plan, and these last horrors at Nantes, have so
overwhelmed the King that he is nearly become a mere automaton. Daily
and nightly execrations are howled in his ears. Look at our boasted
deliverers! The poor Queen, her children, and all of us belonging to the
palace, are in danger of our lives at merely being seen; while they by
whom we have been so long buoyed up with hope are quarrelling amongst
themselves for the honour and etiquette of precedency, leaving us to the
fury of a race of cannibals, who know no mercy, and will have destroyed
us long before their disputes of etiquette can be settled.”
The utterance of Her Highness while saying this was rendered almost
inarticulate by her tears.
“What support against internal disorganization,” continued she, “is to be
expected from so disorganized a body as the present army of different
nations, having all different interests?”
I said there was no doubt that the Prussian army was on its march, and
would soon be joined by that of the Princes and of Austria.
“You speak as you wish, mia cara Inglesina, but it is all to no purpose.
Would to God they had never been applied to, never been called upon to
interfere. Oh, that Her Majesty could have been persuaded to listen to
Dumourier and some other of the members, instead of relying on succours
which, I fear, will never enter Paris in our lifetime! No army can
subdue a nation; especially a nation frenzied by the recent recovery of
its freedom and independence from the shackles of a corrupt and weak
administration. The King is too good; the Queen has no equal as to
heart; but they have both been most grossly betrayed. The royalists on
one side, the constitutionalists on the other, will be the victims of the
Jacobins, for they are the most powerful, they are the most united, they
possess the most talent, and they act in a body, and not merely for the
time being. Believe me, my dear, their plans are too well grounded to be
defeated, as every one framed by the fallacious constitutionalists and
mad-headed royalists has been; and so they will ever be while they
continue to form two separate interests. From the very first moment when
these two bodies were worked upon separately, I told the Queen that, till
they were united for the same object, the monarchy would be unsafe, and
at the mercy of the Jacobins, who, from hatred to both parties, would
overthrow it themselves to rule despotically over those whom they no
longer respected or feared, but whom they hated, as considering them both
equally their former oppressors.
“May the All-seeing Power,” continued Her Highness, “grant, for the good
of this shattered State, that I may be mistaken, and that my predictions
may prove different in the result; but of this I see no hope, unless in
the strength of our own internal resources. God knows how powerful they
might prove could they be united at this moment! But from the anarchy
and division kept up between them, I see no prospect of their being
brought to bear, except in a general overthrow of this, as you have
justly observed, organized system of disorders, from which at some future
period we may obtain a solid, systematic order of government. Would
Charles the Second ever have reigned after the murder of his father had
England been torn to pieces by different factions? No! It was the union
of the body of the nation for its internal tranquillity, the amalgamation
of parties against domestic faction, which gave vigour to the arm of
power, and enabled the nation to check foreign interference abroad, while
it annihilated anarchy at home. By that means the Protector himself laid
the first stone of the Restoration. The division of a nation is the
surest harbinger of success to its invaders, the death-blow to its
Sovereign’s authority, and the total destruction of that innate energy by
which alone a country can obtain the dignity of its own independence.”