Farewell, My Queen

convictions I held at that time, a notion common to the greater part of the château’s residents at every level in the hierarchy, on every floor of the building, still reigned intact: there was no need for undue concern; we were going through a bad patch, to be sure, but not for the first time. This wind of rebellion was no worse than the one the King had confronted in the first year of his reign. Since he had subdued it successfully at the age of twenty, surely he would more easily emerge triumphant now, in the prime of his maturity.
To remove any lingering doubts I might have on this score, I walked over to where the Ministry apartments were located. The activity there showed no signs of abating (had they been working the whole night?); on all sides, orders were being passed along, furniture was being moved. Desks, tables, armchairs, pedestal tables, went speeding past me as though self-propelled. It seemed to me that there was something very promising about this feverish haste to settle in. I did not catch sight of any government minister in person. Nothing surprising about that; I was told that they were meeting in consultation. From this point on, everything could be expected to return to normal very quickly, since the only discordant voice, that of Necker the Genevese, had been excluded.
My peace of mind was further strengthened by another certainty: the conviction, widely held in the château, that the whole affair was a fabrication invented by the journalists. Nothing was happening, or almost nothing, but they had their pages to fill. And meanwhile, what did the King think? How had he reacted, always supposing such a thing could really have happened, to Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt’s intrusion into his sleep? Had the Grand Master of the Wardrobe parted the alcove curtains himself, or had he, at least on that one point, respected Court etiquette? In which case the trimestrial King’s First Valet would have been the one to open the curtains . . . And what about the Guards of the Royal Bedchamber; where was their captain now? I didn’t know what to think about any of it. No one around me had the smallest piece of definite information to contribute. Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt himself was nowhere to be seen. And did our new government have an opinion? “The government is settling in,” someone said. “It cannot do everything at once.” The same individual stated his own opinion: “There is no such thing as the people, it’s just an abstraction. What I propose, and we have here a very concrete proposal, is that the populace, I mean the entire populace, be placed under arrest and locked up in the Bastille.” There was no immediate support for his proposal; at last a more conciliatory person suggested: “Or we could lock up just the leaders . . . ”
Strangely, for in general she was the chief topic of conversation, no one made any reference to the Queen. But I carried with me her smile of the previous day, the image of her smooth, radiant face bowed over her Wardrobe Book, as I moved from one group to another. I was curious, of course, but not alarmed. A rumor, however extraordinary it might be, did not constitute an event.
THE KING AND HIS BROTHERS
GO TO THE TENNIS COURT
(eleven o’clock in the morning).
THE QUEEN ON THE BALCONY.
Something that did, beyond a doubt, constitute an unprecedented event was the little group of men who suddenly emerged to the right of me. They were coming out of the Petit Théâtre, called the Hubert Robert Theater, that had been fitted out at the Queen’s wishes, halfway along the unfinished wing of the building, and the little group walked out to find themselves in among the Swiss Guards keeping watch at the entrance to the theater. Honorine had joined me. We were inside the Royal Courtyard, leaning against its fence.
The group—but surely I was dreaming—consisted of the King and his two brothers, the Count de Provence and the Count d’Artois. They had no guard, no escort, none of the usual trappings. All three were making their way out of the château on foot, trying to pass unnoticed. A few gentlemen were around them but there was no resemblance to a cortege; it was more like a group of friends. Honorine climbed up onto the fence’s supporting wall for a clearer view. “The King does not have his plumed hat,” she informed me. He was wearing a velvet one, broad-brimmed but unassuming. It was a truly surprising sight to see the three brothers walking along together, over uneven paving stones that were slippery with the damp. At eleven o’clock in the morning! which could by no stretch of the imagination be called a promenade hour. And moreover, they were walking not toward the grounds but toward the town! Only the King appeared to forge ahead; the Count de Provence and the Count d’Artois were more reluctant. The King, tall and of sturdy build, was treading heavily, with that uncouth rolling gait of his and the impression he always conveyed of doing whatever it was against his will. For the Count de Provence, the walk was not just drudgery, it was torture: Monsieur was dragging himself along. Short, obese, with swollen lower limbs, he had trouble moving. Ill-natured folk called the Count de Provence “His Heaviness,” and even without being mean, one had to admit that the nickname was apt, just as “Her Heaviness” aptly described their married sister Clotilde, living in Italy. Straw and manure were customarily scattered on the paving stones so the horses would not slip. Monsieur, whose shoes sparkled with their buckles of precious stones, contemplated this arrangement with distaste. Probably he had never encountered it before. The same was true of the wretched soldiers’ huts on the Place d’Armes. As for the Count d’Artois, who was slender, stately, fascinating to look at, his displeasure was