Farewell, My Queen

out-of-doors as well, in the strange out-of-doors that was unique to the château and meant “outside one’s own living-quarters,” in any space intended for public foot-traffic, where you were in continuous expectation of having the King or the Queen come by, and of a chance to show your presence and be seen. Such was not the reason for being abroad on that night. So great was the agitation that, perhaps for the first time in the annals of Versailles, the perpetual, anxious torment of wanting to be noticed could not continue to operate. Shadowy figures crossed paths on the stairways, in the corridors, in the anterooms. No one was talking. All were disheartened; none could foresee anything but calamities. I soon fell prey to the ambient mood and became disheartened like the others. The Historiographer had been reluctant to go back to his work. He was torn between his duty to bear witness—he was the person who was supposed to set down on paper the events of the reign—and his duty as a moral philosopher: if the will of God expressed itself through History, then his task was to make that will as manifest as possible. At last the urgent need to write his Lessons in Morality had got the upper hand. He had gone back to his book of magic spells, leaving me to wander . . . I was not at ease. I would have been glad to encounter a close friend or acquaintance. Occasionally there was a low-voiced exchange of news. What I heard did nothing to reassure me. It was all about town houses, owned by the Nobility, being destroyed and their inhabitants put to death. It was also rumored that armed bands assembling in Paris were going to attack the château. They were even now on their way. How long would it take them to get to Versailles from Paris? Twelve hours? Fifteen? They would be here by morning. I had that much reprieve. I remember realizing that I had forgotten to take books away for the night.
We were going around in circles. The least sound made us jump. Eleven o’clock had struck. “Going out” had not calmed our fears. Quite the opposite: fears had increased at the sight of the haggard appearance we presented to each other. They were gaining ground, along with insomnia and a sensation of suffocating. Under the circumstances, with the terrible awareness of how vulnerable we were, all the windows were closed. So were the curtains. And in certain public rooms, both the inside and outside shutters. The air around us as we moved from place to place was heavy and murky. For fear of making the château too easy to find, everyone had lit the smallest possible number of tapers, as they said at Court, copying the parlance of the King who had struck from his vocabulary the word candle. There were a few rooms where candlesticks lit earlier had been put out, and it was as dark as a forest. We brushed against other people or accidentally jostled them. Eyes would suddenly shine with an eerie light.
People began to get thirsty. They wanted wine, beer, fruit. They called, they rang. No one came. They could not believe it and rang again. They shouted, confidently at first, then in voices that betrayed growing uncertainty. The person who had called would stand there, hand still on the bellpull, uncomprehending. A crowd would gather round: “Well, but, what are they doing? Have they stopped hearing when we ring for them? Where are they? What has become of our domestics?” Many servants lived in Versailles, in private town houses, brand-new dwellings, while their masters preferred lodgings, however uncomfortable, at the château, so they would not have to go back to their houses every time they needed a change of attire and could always be somewhere close by, near enough to be seen. But that group suddenly had the impression that their own dwellings were occupied by the enemy and they could never go home again. They pictured themselves standing in front of their barricaded mansions, with cries of rage raining down upon them along with bottles thrown directly into their yards. Into their yards. Here at Versailles, the domestics had vanished, the anterooms had emptied. But when, when exactly had it started? Before supper? A little earlier? In the Hall of Mirrors, I noticed the absence of the guards who every night set up camp beds there. Were they busily plotting with the domestics? Had all of them together turned against the château? Had they gone to guide the brigands now marching on Versailles?
Night, filling the Hall of Mirrors and the Apartments with broad expanses of darkness, and melding the corridors, anterooms, and halls into a uniform pitch black, intensified my feeling of being in the midst of total destruction. A few tapers were lit; it gave me some physical relief, but that was all. It was now easier to walk around, but emotionally, it was just as taxing as before. Mental anguish was not uniting us. We kept peering stealthily at one another. We lodgers—logeants, as those who were privileged to live at the château used to be called (I loved saying the word over to myself: he’s a logeant, I’m a logeante . . .)—were experiencing the negative side of our cruel isolation. How nice, how wonderful, to live apart like this, in sublime unawareness. How frightening, how terrifying, to know nothing, or almost nothing, when the rest of the country was joining in league against us. For the fact is we knew very little. And what information we were getting was so hard to believe . . . Maybe it was just me; maybe I had gauged the value of my time so completely in terms of my reading sessions with the Queen that I had completely drifted away from reality. Perhaps I had carried the sheltering effect of “these parts” further than the others had, but