Marie Antoinette — Volume 06 eBook

Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Campan
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 105 pages of information about Marie Antoinette — Volume 06.

Marie Antoinette — Volume 06 eBook

Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Campan
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 105 pages of information about Marie Antoinette — Volume 06.

The King did me the favour to say that he noticed a reserve in my account, of which he approved.  The Queen condescended to add a few obliging remarks to those of the King.  However, my office of journalist gave me in this instance so much pain that I took an opportunity, when the King was expressing his satisfaction to me at the manner in which I gave him this daily account, to tell him that its merits belonged wholly to M. d’Aubier; and I ventured to request the King to suffer that excellent man to give him an account of the sittings himself.  I assured the King that if he would permit it, that gentleman might proceed to the Queen’s apartments through mine unseen; the King consented to the arrangement.  Thenceforward M. d’Aubier gave the King repeated proofs of zeal and attachment.

The Cure of St. Eustache ceased to be the Queen’s confessor when he took the constitutional oath.  I do not remember the name of the ecclesiastic who succeeded him; I only know that he was conducted into her apartments with the greatest mystery.  Their Majesties did not perform their Easter devotions in public, because they could neither declare for the constitutional clergy, nor act so as to show that they were against them.

The Queen did perform her Easter devotions in 1792; but she went to the chapel attended only by myself.  She desired me beforehand to request one of my relations, who was her chaplain, to celebrate a mass for her at five o’clock in the morning.  It was still dark; she gave me her arm, and I lighted her with a taper.  I left her alone at the chapel door.  She did not return to her room until the dawn of day.

Dangers increased daily.  The Assembly were strengthened in the eyes of the people by the hostilities of the foreign armies and the army of the Princes.  The communication with the latter party became more active; the Queen wrote almost every day.  M. de Goguelat possessed her confidence for all correspondence with the foreign parties, and I was obliged to have him in my apartments; the Queen asked for him very frequently, and at times which she could not previously appoint.

All parties were exerting themselves either to ruin or to save the King.  One day I found the Queen extremely agitated; she told me she no longer knew where she was; that the leaders of the Jacobins offered themselves to her through the medium of Dumouriez; or that Dumouriez, abandoning the Jacobins, had come and offered himself to her; that she had granted him an audience; that when alone with her, he had thrown himself at her feet, and told her that he had drawn the ‘bonnet rouge’ over his head to the very ears; but that he neither was nor could be a Jacobin; that the Revolution had been suffered to extend even to that rabble of destroyers who, thinking of nothing but pillage, were ripe for anything, and might furnish the Assembly with a formidable army, ready to undermine the remains of a throne already but too much shaken.  Whilst speaking with the utmost ardour he seized the Queen’s hand and kissed it with transport, exclaiming, “Suffer yourself to be saved!” The Queen told me that the protestations of a traitor were not to be relied on; that the whole of his conduct was so well known that undoubtedly the wisest course was not to trust to it;

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Marie Antoinette — Volume 06 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.