THE MOST TRAGICAL HOUR in the declining years of Marie Antoinette’s short life were not those when storms were manifestly raging, but the deceptive interludes of fine weather. Had the Revolution come like a landslide, had it crushed the monarchy with the overwhelming and sudden violence of an avalanche, giving no time for reflection, hope or resistance, it would have been less painful to the Queen than the agony long drawn out which she actually had to suffer. Again and again, between the hurricanes of events there were periods of calm. Five times, ten times perhaps, the royal family had good reason to believe that peace had at length been re-established, that the fight had been fought to a stable conclusion. The Revolution, however, is like the rising tide. After each wave there is a reflux, in which the force of the onslaught seems exhausted, but the decline is followed by another and yet another and more destructive advance. Those who are threatened by the flood can never know whether the last wave has been the strongest, the most decisive.
After the acceptance of the constitution the crisis seemed to be over and done with. Revolution had become the law of the land, unrest had been, so to say, crystallized! There came a few days, a few weeks, of illusory well-being, a period of fallacious euphoria. There were cheers when the King and the Queen were seen in the streets, shouts of jubilation when they appeared at the theatre. Marie Antoinette, however, had long since lost the simple credulity of youth. Returning to the Tuileries from a drive through the illuminated town, she said with a sigh to Madame de Tourzel: “How sad it is that a sight so beautiful should give rise only to feelings of melancholy and disquiet!” Having been too often disillusioned, she would no longer tolerate the veil of illusion. Writing to Fersen she said: “Things are perfectly quiet for the moment, to all seeming, but this tranquillity hangs by a thread. The people is just what it has ever been, ready to commit atrocities. We are told that it is on our side, but I have no faith in the assurance, at any rate as far as I personally am concerned. I know how much such assurances are worth! Speaking generally, one has to pay for popular favour, and the crowd only loves us while we yield to its whims. Things cannot go on much longer like this. There is no more safety in Paris than there was before, and perhaps even less, since people are getting accustomed to see us humiliated.” In fact the newly elected National Assembly was a great disappointment. The Queen regarded it as “a thousand times worse than the other”. One of its first decisions was that the King should no longer be spoken of as ‘His Majesty’. Within a few weeks, the leadership had passed into the hands of the Girondists, who outspokenly favoured the establishment of a republic, and the rainbow, the sacred symbol of reconciliation, was speedily hidden by new storm clouds. The struggle was renewed.
It was not, however, merely to the progress of the revolutionary movement that the rapid deterioration in the position of the King and the Queen had to be ascribed. The conduct of their own relatives was mainly at fault. The Count of Provence and the Count of Artois had established their headquarters at Coblenz, and from this safe retreat they waged war against the Tuileries. It suited their purpose marvellously that the King, under constraint, had accepted the constitution, since this gave a specious justification to the reiterated assertions of journalists in their pay that Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI were cowards who had sought safety by abandoning the cause of the monarchy, and that they themselves were the true defenders of that sublime institution. Little did they care that they were staking their brother’s life by the game they were playing. Vainly did Louis XVI implore, nay command, them to return to Paris, and thus to dispel the justified suspicions of the people. The legacy-hunters spitefully declared that such utterances as this could not be the expression of the true will of the captive King. At Coblenz, being well away from the fighting front, they could assume the heroic role without any risk to their own precious skins.
Marie Antoinette was infuriated by the pusillanimity of the émigrés, “contemptible men who proclaim their attachment to us and who only do us harm … It is their conduct which has brought us into the position wherein we now find ourselves … Well, what can you expect? In order to escape having to do what we wish, they continue to proclaim that we are not free agents (which is true enough); that, consequently, it is impossible for us to say what we really think; and that they are therefore compelled to do the precise opposite of what we ask.” Vainly, through Mercy’s instrumentality, did she beg her brother the Emperor to keep within bounds her brothers-in-law and the other émigrés. The Count of Provence outstripped her messengers, to represent that all the Queen’s commands were issued “under constraint”, and everywhere the bellicose royalists took the same view. Gustavus III returned unopened the letter in which Louis XVI announced his acceptance of the constitution, and Catherine of Russia showed even more contempt for Marie Antoinette by writing that it was a pity to have no better hopes than for a wreath of roses. In Vienna the Count of Provence let weeks elapse before he sent his brother a confused reply to the effect that the powers were waiting until circumstances should take a turn which might enable them to derive some advantage from the anarchical situation in France. No one offered effective help. No one honestly tried to discover what the captives in the Tuileries really wanted. The two French princes, the other émigrés, all the ‘royalists’ of Europe, continued to play a double game—at the cost of the unhappy King and Queen of France.
What were Marie Antoinette’s true wishes and designs? The French revolutionary leaders (being ever ready, like political partisans in general, to ascribe deep-laid schemes to their adversaries) believed that the Queen, that the ‘comité autrichien’—Austrian committee—in the Tuileries, was organising a crusade against the French people, and many historians of later days have shared this view. In actual fact Marie Antoinette, who had entered the paths of diplomacy only because of the promptings of despair, never had a clear idea or a consistent plan. With admirable self-sacrifice, with a diligence which in her case was astounding, she sent letter after letter in all directions; she composed and revised memorandum after memorandum; she negotiated and advised—but the more she wrote, and the more of her writings at this period we read, the less plain does it become what political notions she cherished. She had some vague scheme for an armed congress of the powers, a half-measure, neither hot nor cold but Laodicean, which must avoid trying to intimidate the revolutionists by threats and must be equally careful to do nothing which could affront French national sentiment. As to the how and the when of this congress, her mind was hazy. She did not think logically. Her violent movements, her abrupt cries of alarm, recall those of a drowning man whose struggles serve to plunge him deeper into the water. She would insist that the only course open was an attempt to win the confidence of the people, and in the same breath, in the very same letter, she would write: “There is no longer the faintest possibility of reconciliation.” She declared herself opposed to war, foreseeing clearly enough what would ensue: “On the one hand we should have no choice but to take up arms against the foreign invaders, and, on the other, we should be suspected of bad faith and of being in league with them.” Yet soon she wrote that “nothing but armed force can set things right again”, and, “without foreign aid we shall be able to do nothing”. She tried “to induce the Emperor to feel that insult and injury are being done him. Let him show himself at the head of the other powers with an imposing force, and I can assure you that the revolutionists here will shake in their shoes. There is no reason for being anxious as to our safety; it is this country which is inciting to war.” A few days later, the opposite view was urged, and she wanted to arrest the movement against the republicans: “An attack from without would put our heads under the knife.” In the end it was impossible for those with whom she was corresponding to gain a consistent idea of her wishes. The chancelleries, which were far from being inclined to lavish funds upon the holding of an ‘armed congress’, and which, if they sent armies to the frontiers, would only do so in order to wage war with the prospect of annexations and indemnities, derided the notion that they should mobilise merely ‘for the sake of the King of France’.
“What,” wrote Catherine of Russia, “are we to think of persons who are continually championing two conflicting outlooks?” Even Fersen, the staunchest of the staunch, the man who might really have been supposed to know Marie Antoinette’s intimate thoughts, was unable to ascertain what the Queen hoped for, war or peace; whether she had reconciled herself to the constitution or was trying to trick the constitutionalists with vain hopes; whether she was cheating the Revolution or the rulers of Europe. All that the poor, tortured woman really wanted was to live, to live, to live and to escape humiliation. Inwardly she suffered more than anyone suspected, for duplicity was intolerable to her straightforward disposition. Again and again her loathing of the part she was forced to play found expression in a cry of anguish. For instance, writing to Mercy, she said:
“I do not know what attitude to adopt or what tone to assume. Everyone accuses me of dissimulation, of falsehood, and (naturally enough) no one can believe that my brother can take so little interest as he does in his sister’s terrible position, so that he is perpetually exposing her to danger without saying a word to her about the matter. Yes, he exposes me to danger, and a thousandfold more than he would if he were to take effective action. Hatred, mistrust and insolence are the three motive forces at work in this country. People are insolent because they are in such a dreadful fright, and because, at the same time, they do not believe that an attack will be made on them from across the frontier. Nothing could be worse than for us to stay as we are, since we can no longer expect any help from time or from within the country.”
There was only one person who realised that these movements now in one direction and now in another, all these orders and counter-orders, were but signs of hopeless perplexity, and that Marie Antoinette could not possibly save herself unaided. He knew that she had no one standing shoulder to shoulder with her, for Louis XVI was too irresolute to count. Even her sister-in-law, Madame Elisabeth, was far from being the ideally faithful, the God-given companion of royalist legend. “My sister is so indiscreet, surrounded by schemers, and (above all) held in leading strings by her brothers across the frontier, that we find it impossible to converse with one another except at the risk of quarrelling from morning until night.” Again, more explicit and terser, comes a cry from the soul: “Our family life is a hell—can only be thus described, with the best intentions in the world!”
More and more evident did it become to Fersen, now far away, that no one could help her but a person who possessed her full confidence; not, therefore, her husband, nor her brother, nor yet any of her relatives by blood or by marriage, but only himself. A few weeks before, she had conveyed a message to him through the instrumentality of Count Esterhazy, assuring him of her inviolable love: “If you write to him, tell him that neither many leagues nor many countries separate our hearts. I become more strongly assured of this truth day by day.” Again: “I do not know where he is. It is a torment to have no news of those whom one loves, and not to know where they are living.” These last words of ardent affection were accompanied by a gift, a gold ring on which were graven three lilies with the inscription: “Faint-heart he who forsakes her”. This ring, explained Marie Antoinette to Esterhazy, had been made to fit one of her own fingers, and had been worn by her for two days before she sent it, so that the chill gold might bear with it the warmth of her own blood. Fersen wore his mistress’s ring on his little finger, and the inscription “Faint-heart he who forsakes her” made its daily appeal to his conscience, urging him to hazard all for the woman he loved. Indeed, so profound was the despair now breathed to him in her letters, that he felt impelled to perform heroic deeds in her behalf, and he resolved, since he could not keep closely in touch by correspondence, to seek out the Queen in Paris, in that city where he had been placed under a ban, and where, if he were discovered, he would unquestionably be put to death.
Fersen’s announcement of this intention terrified Marie Antoinette. It was impossible, she said, for her to accept so heroic a sacrifice. Since she was truly in love with him, she loved his life more than her own, and more even than the unspeakable comfort and happiness his proximity would have given her. She therefore wrote to him under date 7th December 1791: “It is absolutely out of the question that you should come here at this juncture; your coming would risk our happiness. You can believe that I feel this strongly, since I have so great a longing to see you!” But Fersen would take no denial, replying: “It is essential to extricate you from the present position of affairs.” In collaboration with the King of Sweden, he had elaborated a new plan of escape. Despite her protest, his lover’s clairvoyance showed him how much she craved for his coming, and what an intense relief it would be to her lonely spirit to be able to converse with him freely and unrestrainedly after the caution and secrecy of their correspondence. In the beginning of February 1792, therefore, Fersen made up his mind that he would wait no longer, but would return to France in order to see Marie Antoinette.
The resolve was almost suicidal. The chances seemed a hundred to one against his ever being able to get away unscathed, since in France at this juncture the revolutionists lusted for his blood. There was a warrant out for his apprehension; he had been declared an outlaw; should anyone recognise him, his shrift would be short. Yet Fersen had determined that, instead of looking for some secure hiding place in the purlieus of Paris, he would make his way to the very heart of danger, to the Tuileries, watched day and night by twelve hundred National Guards, to the palace where every groom, every footman, every waiting maid, every coachman, among the multitude of servants knew him personally. It seemed to him that now or never was his opportunity of showing his devotion to his beloved. “I live only to serve you,” he wrote to her on 11th February, just before starting on one of the boldest journeys, just before beginning one of the most foolhardy enterprises, in the history of the Revolution.
Wearing a wig, provided with a false passport at the foot of which he had forged the signature of the King of Sweden, he set forth ostensibly as part of a diplomatic mission to Lisbon—representing himself to be the servant of his own orderly, who was his sole companion. As luck would have it, neither his person nor his papers were closely scrutinized, and on 13th February he reached Paris safely at half-past five in the evening. Although he had in the city a lady-friend who was prepared to offer him harbourage at whatever peril to herself, Fersen, on quitting the post-chaise, made direct for the Tuileries. Since night had fallen, darkness favoured him. By an extraordinary piece of good luck, the private entrance, of which he had a key, was unguarded. He effected his entry unobserved. After eight months of cruel severance, eight months during which the world had changed, Fersen and Marie Antoinette were together for the last time.
There have come down to us in Fersen’s handwriting two accounts of this memorable visit, one an official report and the other a memorandum intended for private use. The reader can detect notable differences between the two, and the fact confirms the opinion we have previously formed as to the intimate nature of the relationships between this Swedish junker and the Queen of France. In the official report he informs the King of Sweden of the day and hour of his arrival in Paris, and goes on to say that he saw Their Majesties (note the plural!) that same evening, and again on the next evening. Fersen knew his royal master to be a gossip, and had therefore worded his missive in a way which would safeguard the Queen’s honour. In his private journal, however, he wrote: “Went to see her; made very anxious because of the National Guards; she is comfortably installed.” Note that he writes “her” and not “them”. Thereafter in the diary follow two words which have been written over with pen-and-ink coils by the prudish hand of the successor who tampered with the diary, and who designed to make them unreadable. Fortunately, however, it has been possible to decipher them. They are “resté là”—stayed there. The late-revealed conclusion of the sentence, brief and clear, makes evident to posterity what happened on that Tristan night. Fersen was not received by “Their Majesties” as he reported to the King of Sweden, but by Marie Antoinette alone, in her private apartments. It would have needlessly multiplied the danger to visit and to leave King Louis’s rooms that same night, since the corridors were patrolled by the National Guards. But Marie Antoinette’s private quarters were on the ground floor, and they consisted only of a bedroom and a small dressing room. What other inference, then, is possible, than that which is so distressing to the purity-fanatics, namely that Fersen spent the night of 13th February and the whole of the next day until midnight hidden in the Queen’s bedroom, the only place in the palace where he was safe from discovery by the National Guards and from the prying eyes of the servants?
Concerning the hours in which he and his mistress were alone together, Fersen, who had a fine capacity for silence, said no word even in his private journal. Anyone who chooses to do so is, therefore, at liberty to believe that this night was exclusively devoted to platonically chivalrous service and to political conversation. But those who have known the spell of ardent passion, those whose observations of themselves and others have convinced them that hot blood will run its course, can hardly doubt that, even if Fersen had not already long before this become Marie Antoinette’s lover, he must have become her lover on so fateful a night, a night which when once gone would be lost beyond recall, a night on which he had shown such splendid courage.
The first night and the next day belonged to the lovers, and, so far as we know, it was not until evening came that politics had their turn. Then, at six o’clock on 14th February, exactly twenty-four hours after Fersen’s arrival, the discreet husband came to his wife’s room in order to hold converse with the bold envoy. The upshot of their talk was that Louis XVI rejected the proposal to attempt escape once more, and this for two reasons: first, because the King held the practical difficulties in the way of flight to be insuperable; and, secondly, because he had pledged his word to the National Assembly to stay in Paris. In this connection, Fersen respectfully notes in his diary: “Louis is, in truth, a man of honour.”
Talking as man to man, having full confidence in Fersen, the King expounded his view of the situation as follows: “We can talk plainly to one another, since there is no interloper present. I know that people charge me with weakness and irresolution, but who has ever found himself in so difficult a position? I missed my chance of escape on the fourteenth of July, and have never had so good an opportunity since. The whole world has left me in the lurch.”
The Queen had no more hope than the King that they would be able to save themselves. The best thing would be for the powers to do all that was possible, regardless of what might happen to the captives in the Tuileries. Nor ought they to be surprised if, being held prisoner, Louis were to give his assent to many things that might seem undesirable. He and Marie Antoinette were in a position which compelled them to do much that went against the grain. They might thus be enabled to gain time, but as for rescue, it could only come from outside.
Midnight struck. Every possibility had been discussed. Now came the hardest task of these thirty hours, the farewell. Fersen and his beloved tried to persuade themselves that it was not a last farewell, but in their secret hearts they foreboded the inevitable. Never again would they meet in this life! Trying to reassure his mistress, the lover promised to come again if it should prove possible to do so, and his sorrow at parting was tinged by happiness through the knowledge that his visit had been a comfort to her. The Queen accompanied Fersen to the door, which again, by good fortune, was unwatched. But the last goodbyes were still unsaid, the last embraces had not yet been exchanged, when the measured tread of an approaching sentry was heard. There was no choice left; they had to wrench themselves away from one another. Fersen slipped out into the night, and Marie Antoinette fled back to her room. The lovers had seen one another for the last time.