In the morning of the 7th, some magistrates came, bringing upholsterers
with them, and asked the king how he would be pleased to be lodged.
They were ready to dispose and furnish the palace as he liked. He
answered gruffly that others might lodge as they pleased, he had nothing
to say to it. He was apt to be sulky occasionally, in his most
prosperous days; and it was natural that he should be more so now.
Sometimes, when the queen made anxious inquiries about the state of
affairs, he answered, "Madam, your affair is with the children." He
knew that he was, in fact, a prisoner in his own capital; and that it
must at any rate be long before he could leave it. He was losing the
fine hunting season; and there was no saying when he might hunt again.
This grieved him very much. He sent for his locksmith, and did a little
filing, now and then; but he was losing his pleasure in everything.
Some of the women who had walked by the royal carriage yesterday came
this morning, and stationed themselves before the queen's windows,
requesting to see her. One of them told her that she must send away all
bad advisers, and love the people. The queen replied that she had loved
the people when she lived at Versailles, and that she should go on to
love them now. They repeated to her some reports that they had heard
against her,--that she had wished in the summer that Paris should be
fired upon; and that she would yesterday have fled to the frontiers, if
she had not been prevented. She replied that they had heard these
things, and believed them; and that while some people told and others
believed what was not true, the nation and the king would never be
happy. One woman then spoke a few words of German: but the queen
interrupted her, saying that she was now so completely a French woman,
that she had forgotten her German. This delighted the women much; for
some of the jealousy of the queen which existed was on account of her
being a foreigner. They clapped their hands; and asked for the ribbons
and flowers out of her hat. She took them off with her own hands, and
gave them to the women. They divided them to keep; and they remained
half an hour shouting, "Long live Marie Antoinette! Long live our good
queen!"
It was found, during the whole long period of her residence where she
now was, that everybody who talked with the queen liked her;--her
bitterest enemies were heard to shout as these women did, when once they
had heard her speak; and soldiers, who had spoken insultingly of her
before they knew her, were ready to lay down their lives for her when
they became her guards. The reason of this was, not merely that she was
beautiful, and that she spoke in a winning manner, when she knew how
much depended upon her graciousness;--it was chiefly because the
ignorant and angry people had fancied her a sort of monster, determined
upon her own indulgence at all cost, and even seeking their destruction,
and delighting in their miseries. When, instead of this monster, they
found a dignified woman, with sorrow in her beautiful face, and
gentleness in her voice, they forgot for the time the faults she really
had, and the blameable things she had really done. When again reminded
of these, in her absence, the old hatred revived with new force; they
were vexed that she had won upon them, and ended by being as cruel as we
shall see they were.
She found, this morning, how frightened her little boy had been, the day
before. There was some noise in the court-yard of the palace. Louis
came running, and threw himself trembling into her arms, crying, "O,
mamma, is to-day going to be yesterday again?" When they were settled,
and everything was done to make him as happy as a child should be, he
did not forget what he had seen and heard. He not only walked with his
mother, or with Madame de Tourzel, in the garden of the Tuileries, but
he had a little garden of his own, railed in, and a little tool-house
for his spade and rake. There the rosy, curly-headed boy was seen
digging in the winter, and sowing seeds in the spring; and, sometimes,
feeding the ducks on the garden ponds with crumbs of bread. Still he
did not forget what he had seen and heard. One day, his father saw the
boy looking at him very gravely and earnestly. The king asked him what
he was thinking about. Louis said he wanted to ask a very serious
question, if he might; and the king gave him leave.
"I want to know," said Louis, "why all the people who used to love you
so much are now so angry with you. I want to know what you have done to
put them in such a passion."