There is no need to introduce Rosalie Lamorliere. The poor girl has no story, or rather, her whole biography is contained in the few pages presented here.

We must, however, draw attention to the fact that Rosalie, being quite illiterate, did not herself write her account of the Queen’s last days. It is to the investigations of Lafont d’Aussonne (1) that we owe this interesting narrative, and we must guard ourselves from too implicit a belief in all its details. For Lafont d’Aussonne was the author of a history of Marie Antoinette; he had finished the work, and in editing the recollections of this servant girl he took care to omit everything that did not concur with his own views. It is even possible that he added a few apparently insignificant details of his own, which he thought might be useful as so many points gained for his own side.

We shall not interrupt Rosalie’s story except for a few short notes. We shall presently show that, even if Lafont d’Aussonne, voluntary or otherwise, made some mistakes in his own version, the fundamental part of the tale is absolutely authentic, as Rosalie herself recognized and certified later on.
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Declaration of Rosalie Lamorliere, Native of Breteuil in Picardy, Servant in the Conciergerie During the Imprisonment of Marie Antoinette.

I was employed, in the capacity of lady’s maid, by Madame Beaulieu, the mother of the celebrated actor, when King Louis XVI was condemned to die upon the scaffold. Madame Beaulieu, who was at that time both infirm and ill, nearly died of grief when she had heard he had been condemned, and she cried out over and over again: “Unjust and barbarous people, the day will come when you shall shed tears of despair upon the grave of this good King.”

Madame Beaulieu died soon after the September massacres (2), and her son then confided me to the care of Madame Richard, wife of the gaoler [ jailer] at the Law Courts.

At first I felt a great dislike to taking a situation with a gaoler; but M. Beaulieu, who was, as is well known, a good royalist, and in his legal capacity was going to defend the victims of the Revolutionary Tribunal without any fee, begged me to accept this place because, he said, I should find opportunities of being useful to members of worthy people who were confined in the Conciergerie. He promised to come and see me as often as he could, for his theatre, the Theatre de la Cite, was only a few steps away.

My new mistress, Madame Richard, had not the education of Madame Beaulieu, but she had the same gentleness of disposition, and as she had been a dealer in ladies’ wardrobes she was naturally inclined to cleanliness both in her house and in her person.

At this time it took a great deal of capability to manage a huge prison like the Conciergerie, yet I never saw my mistress perplexed. She answered everyone in few words; she gave orders with absolute clearness; she never slept for more than a few minutes at a time, and nothing occurred within or without the prison of which she was not immediately informed. Her husband, though not so capable in business matters, was painstaking and hard working. I gradually became attached to this family, because I saw that they did not disapprove of the pity I felt for the poor prisoners of that dreadful time.

After dinner on the 1st August, 1793, Madame Richard said to me in a low voice: “Rosalie, we shall not go to bed tonight. You shall sleep on a chair. The Queen is going to be moved from the Temple to this prison.” Immediately afterwards I heard her giving orders for General Custine’s removal from the Council Room, so that the Queen might be put into it. A turnkey was dispatched to the storekeeper of the prison, Bertaud, who lived in the Cour de la Sainte Chapelle. He was asked for a folding bedstead, two mattresses, a bolster, a light coverlet and a basin.

This slight supply of furniture was placed in the damp room that M. de Custine was leaving. A common table and two prison chairs were added. Such were the preparations made to receive the Queen of France.

At about three o’clock in the morning I was sitting in an armchair, half asleep, when Madame Richard pulled my arm and woke me suddenly, saying: “Come, Rosalie, come, wake up! Take this candlestick – they are coming!”

I went downstairs, trembling, and followed Madame Richard to M. de Custine’s cell, which was at the end of a long, dark passage. The Queen was already there. A number of gendarmes stood before her door on the outside. Several officers and prison officials were inside the room, and were talking together in low voices. The day was beginning to dawn.

Instead of registering the Queen’s name in the office with the glass partition, to the left of the entrance hall; they registered it in her cell. This formality being completed, everyone went out except Madame Richard and myself, who remained alone with the Queen. The weather was hot. I remarked the drops of perspiration that ran down the Queen’s face, which she wiped two or three times with her handkerchief. She looked around with astonished eyes at the horrible emptiness of the room, with a certain amount of interest at the gaoler’s wife and myself. Then, standing on a cloth covered stool that I had brought her from my room, the Queen hung her watch upon a nail that she saw in the wall, and began to undress to go to bed. I went forward respectfully and offered my assistance. “No thank you, my good girl,” she answered without a sign of sullenness or pride; “since I have been without anyone to help me I have done everything for myself.”

The daylight was growing. We took away our candles, and the Queen lay down in a bed that was certainly unfit for her, though we had at least provided her with very fine linen and a pillow.

When morning came two gendarmes were posted in the Queen’s room, and she was also provided with a servant in the person of a woman at least eighty years old who was, I have learnt since, at one time the concierge of the Admiralty Court in this very building of the Law Courts. Her son, who was about twenty-four or twenty-five years of age, was one of the turnkeys of our prison. Her name was Lariviere.

During the first forty days I had nothing to do in the Queen’s room. I only went there with Madame Richard or her husband to carry in the breakfast at nine o’clock, and the dinner, which was generally at two o’clock or half past. Madame Richard laid the table and I, to show my respect, stood near the door. But Her Majesty deigned to notice this, and did me the honor of saying: “Come nearer, Rosalie; do not be afraid.”

Old Madame Lariviere, after having patched and mended the Queen’s black dress very neatly, was considered unfit for her post. She returned to her home near the Admiralty Court, and was at once replaced by a young woman named Harel, whose husband was employed in the police department.

The Queen had shown confidence in the old woman, and evidently had some regard for her. She did not think too well of her successor, and hardly ever spoke a word to her.

The two gendarmes, who were always the same, were called Dufrene and Gilbert. The latter seemed rougher than his companion. Sometimes Her Majesty, in her intense weariness of doing nothing, would go up to them while we were laying the table, and would watch them playing cards for a few moments, while Madame Richard or the gaoler was present.

One day Madame Richard brought into the cell her youngest child, who had fair hair, very pretty blue eyes, and a charming face that was much more refined than is common in his class of life. He was known as FanFan.

When the Queen saw this fine little boy she was obviously greatly moved. She took him in her arms, covered him with kisses and caresses, and bursting into tears began to talk to us about M. le Dauphin, who was of about the same age. She thought of him night and day. This incident was most painful to her, and after we had gone upstairs again Madame Richard told me nothing would induce her to take her little boy into the cell again.

About he middle of September a most unfortunate thing happened, which did the Queen a great deal of harm. An officer in the army called M. de Rougeville was brought into her cell in disguise by a municipal officer named Michonis. The former, who was known to the Queen, dropped a carnation (3) on the hem of her skirt, and I have heard it said that that the flower concealed a paper on which were written the details of a conspiracy. The woman Harel saw everything, and reported the matter to Fouquier-Tinville, who came to the prison every night before twelve o’clock. The two gendarmes were also questioned. The Government thought that there was a wide-spread plot in Paris for helping the Queen to escape, and immediately issued orders that were more severe and a hundred times more terrible than any previous ones. M. Richard, his wife, and their eldest son were confined in the prisons of Sainte-Pelagie and the Madelonnettes. The woman Harel disappeared. The two gendarmes were removed from the Queen’s cell, and a man called LeBeau, the head gaoler at La Force, was appointed to be the new gaoler at the Law Courts.

At first sight LeBeau seemed hard and stern, but he was not a bad man at heart.. The directors of the prison told him I was to remain there in his employ as a cook, because they had no reason to distrust me, and I meddled with nothing but my own business. They added, however, that I was no longer to go to market as in Madame Richard’s time, and was to be kept in the confines of the Conciergerie, like the gaoler and his young daughter Victoire.

It was decided that LeBeau was to be answerable with his life for the Queen’s person, and that he alone was to have the use of the key to her cell. He was never to enter it except when absolutely necessary, and then was always to be accompanied by the officer of the constabulary on duty, or by the corporal.

A sentinel was posted in the little Cour des Femmes, which the Queen’s room overlooked, and as her two little windows were nearly on a level with the pavement the sentinel, as he passed to and fro, could easily see everything that took place inside the room.

Although Her Majesty had no communication with anyone in the Conciergerie, she was not in ignorance of the misfortune that had befallen her first gaoler and his family. Some members of the Committee of General Security had paid her a visit, and had questioned her with regard to Michonis and the carnation, and I heard that she had answered all the questions with the greatest caution.

When LeBeau entered the Queen’s room for the first time, I went with him, carrying the soup that Madame usually had for breakfast. She looked at LeBeau, who, in accordance with the fashion of the day, was dressed in the garment called a Carmagnole. The collar of his shirt was open and turned back, but his head was bare. Holding his keys in his hand, he stood close to the wall near the door.

The Queen removed her nightcap, took a chair, and said to me pleasantly: “Rosalie, you must put up my chignon for me today.” On hearing those words, the gaoler ran forward, seized the comb, and, pushing me aside, said in a loud voice: “Leave it alone, leave it alone: that is my business.” The Queen, greatly surprised, looked at LeBeau with an air of indescribable majesty: “I thank you, no,” she said to him. Then, rising from her chair, she arranged her hair herself, and put on her cap.

Ever since she had been in the Conciergerie her hair had been dressed in the simplest way. She parted it on her forehead after sprinkling it with a little scented powder. Madame Harel bound the hair at the end with a piece of white ribbon about a yard in length, knotted the ribbon tightly and gave the two ends of it to Madame, who crossed them herself, and by fastening them on the top of her head gave her hair the shape of a loose chignon. Her hair was fair, not red.

On the day that she declined LeBeau’s help, and resolved in the future to arrange her hair herself, Her Majesty took from the table the roll of white ribbon that was left over, and said to me, with an expression of melancholy friendliness that went to my heart: “Rosalie, take this ribbon, and keep it always in remembrance of me.” The tears came to my eyes, and as I thanked Madame I made her a curtsey.

When the gaoler and I were in the passage he took possession of my white ribbon, and when we reached the room upstairs he said: “I am very sorry to have annoyed that poor woman, but my position is so difficult that the least thing is enough to frighten me. I cannot forget that my comrade Richard and his wife are in a prison cell. In heaven’s name, Rosalie, do nothing imprudent or I am lost.”

When, during the night of the 2nd August, the Queen arrived from the Temple, I noticed that no kind of underclothes or other garments had been brought with her. On the morrow, and on every following day, this unfortunate princess asked for some linen, but Madame Richard, fearing to compromise herself, did not dare to lend her any, or procure any for her. At last the municipal officer, Michonis, who was a good fellow at heart, went to the Temple, and on the tenth day a parcel was brought from the Tower. The Queen opened it without delay. It contained some beautiful cambric chemises, some pocket-handkerchiefs, some fichus (4), some stockings of black silk or filoselle, a white wrapper to wear in the morning, some night-caps, and several pieces of ribbon of various widths. Madame was quite touched at the sight of the linen, and turning to Madame Richard and me she said: “From he careful way in which all of these things are arranged, I can recognize the thoughtfulness and hand of my poor sister Elisabeth.”(5)

When Her Majesty came to the prison she was wearing her large mourning cap, her widow’s headdress. One day she said to Madame Richard, in my presence: “I should be glad, if it were possible, to have two caps instead of one, so as to be able to change. Would you have the kindness to give my headdress to the sempstress you employ. There is, I think, enough lawn in it to make two simple caps.”

Madame Richard carried out the Queen’s commission without any difficulty, and when we brought her the two perfectly simple new caps she seemed satisfied with them, and turning to me was good enough to say: “Rosalie, I have nothing now that I can give away; but I should like, child, to give you this wire frame and this piece of lawn that the sempstress has returned.”

I curtsied humbly as I thanked Madame; and I still have the pieces of lawn that she did the honor of giving to me. I showed it, twenty-nine or thirty years ago, to the Boze ladies when they came to see their prisoner at the Conciergerie, and they covered these remnants of material with tears and kisses. The Queen suffered from one great privation. She was not allowed to have any kind of needle, and she particularly liked occupation and work. I noticed that from time to time she pulled out the coarse threads of he canvas that served as wallpaper and was nailed along the walls on wooden frames; and with these threads, which she polished with her hand, she made a kind of braid, and made it very evenly too, using her knee for a cushion and some pins for needles.

Her taste for flowers had been, by her own confession, a veritable passion. At first we used now and then to put a bouquet on her little oak table, but M. LeBeau did not dare to countenance this indulgence. He was so much afraid of me for the first few days after he arrived that he had a large screen made, seven feet high, with a view to hiding the prisoner from me while I was bringing in the meals or cleaning the room. I saw this screen, but it was never used for this purpose. LeBeau contented himself with the one we gave the Queen in Madame Richard’s time, which was only four feet high. This was used as a kind of curtain beside the Queen’s bed, and separated her in some degree from the gendarmes while she was occupied with her toilet, which the barbarity of those in authority forbade her to perform in private. A convict called Barassin was employed for part of the menial work in her room.

When she rose in the morning she put on some little low slippers, and every second day I brushed her pretty black prunella shoes, whose heels were made a la Saint Huberty, about two inches high. Sometimes the gaoler was called away to see about something urgent and indispensable in connection with the prison, and at such times he left me in the constabulary officer’s charge. One day, to my astonishment, this officer took up one of the Queen’s shoes himself, and using the point of his sword, scratched off the mildew that came from the damp bricks, as I was myself doing with my knife. The imprisoned priests and nobles watched our proceedings from the yard, through the grating that divided us from them, so that they may see the Queen’s shoe near at hand. They took it from me, and passing it from hand to hand, they covered it with kisses.

Madame Richard, on account of a law that had just been passed, had hidden all her plates. On the Queen’s table, therefore, the plates and dishes were of tin, which I kept as clean and as well-polished as I could.

Her Majesty had a fairly good appetite. She cut her chicken in two; that is to say, it sufficed her for two days. She stripped the bones with incredible ease and care. She never left any of the vegetables that composed her second course.

When she finished she said grace in a very low voice; then rose, and began to walk about. This was the signal for our departure. After the affair of the carnation, I was forbidden to leave so much as a glass at her disposal. One day, M. de Saint Leger, the American, who was coming from the registrar’s office and was on his way to the yard with his companions, noticed that I was carrying a glass half filled with water. The Creole said to me: “Did the Queen drink the water that is gone from this glass?” I answered that she did. With a quick gesture, M. de Saint Leger uncovered his head and drank the water that remained, with every indication of respect.

Her Majesty, as I have said already, had neither chest of drawers nor cupboard in her room. When her little stock of linen arrived from the Temple she asked for a box to put it in, to keep it from the dust. Madame Richard did not dare to repeat this request to the prison authorities, but she permitted me to lend a cardboard box to the Queen, who welcomed it with as much pleasure as if she had been given the most beautiful piece of furniture in the world.

The prison system at that time did not allow looking glasses to be supplied, and every morning Madame repeated her request for one. Madame Richard permitted me to lend my little glass to the Queen. To offer it to her made me blush, for the mirror had been bought on the quays, and had cost me no more than twenty five sous in assignats. I seem to see it still. It was edged with red and had Chinese faces painted on each side of it. The Queen accepted this little glass as though it were quite an important affair, and Her Majesty used it until the last day of her life.

As long as Madame Richard was there the Queen’s meals were prepared with care, and indeed I might say with refinement. Everything that was bought for her was the best of its kind, and in the market there were three or four women who knew the gaoler well by sight, and gave him their tenderest chickens and their finest fruit. “For our Queen,” they said with tears.

After Richard and his family were sent to prison we no longer went to market ourselves, but the tradespeople came to the Law Courts and spread out the articles of food, one by one, in the presence of the police and the corporal.

The Queen, when she saw the new kind of dinner that was prepared for her, perceived at once that the affair of the carnation had changed everything. But she never allowed a word of complaint to escape her. I brought her nothing but her soup and two other dishes. (Every day there was a dish of vegetables, and this was followed by chicken and veal alternately.) But I prepared these things to the best of my ability. Madame, whose love of cleanliness and daintyness was excessive, looked at my table linen, which was always spotless, and seemed to be thanking me mutely for my consideration for her. Sometimes she gave me her glass to fill. She drank nothing but water, and had drunk nothing else at Versailles, as she sometimes recalled in talking to us. I admired the beauty of her hands, whose charm and whiteness were indescribable.

Without moving the table she took up her position between it and the bed. I was then able to see the delicacy of all of her features, which were clearly visible in the light from the window; and one day I noticed here and there a very few slight marks of smallpox—so slight that they were imperceptible at a distance of four or five yards. In LeBeau’s time Madame did her hair every day in his presence and mine, while I was making her bed and spreading out her dress on a chair. I noticed patches of white hair on her temples. There was none on the top of her head nor in the rest of her hair. Her Majesty told us that this was due to her distress on the 6th October. (6)

Madame de Lamarliere, who is still alive and residing in Paris, begged me more than once in Madame Richard’s time to procure some of the Queen’s hair for her to put in a locket. I might easily have done this, for Her Majesty cut her hair from time to time.

After the affair of the carnation Madame de Lamarliere was unable for a long time to obtain permission to see her husband, who was a prisoner.

Before the disgrace of Richard’s family the Queen’s washing had been done by Madame Saulieu, our ordinary laundress, whose house was a few yards from the Archbishop’s palace. After the unlucky business of the carnation our laundress did not come any more. The registrar of the Revolutionary Tribunal took away the Queen’s personal linen, except her caps and fichus, and it seemed that her chemises were only doled out to her one by one at long intervals. She asked me privately for some underlinen, and I put some of my chemises under her bolster.

On the fourth day after her arrival at the Conciergerie the prison authorities took away her watch, which she had brought from Germany when she came here to be Dauphine. I was not with her when this unpleasant incident took place, but Madame Richard spoke of it in our room, and said the Queen wept bitterly when she was made to give up this gold watch.

Fortunately the commissioners did not know that she wore a very valuable oval locket , hung around her neck, by a thin black cord. This locket contained some of the young King’s curly hair, and a portrait of him. It was wrapped in a little yellow kid glove, which had been worn by M. le Dauphin.

The Queen, when she came from the Temple, had still two pretty diamond rings and her wedding ring. The two diamond rings, though she was unconscious of the fact, formed a sort of plaything for her. As she sat dreaming, she would take them off and put them on again, and slip them from one hand to the other several times in a minute. After the affair of the carnation her little room was inspected several times: her drawer was opened, her person searched, and her chairs and table overturned. The wretches who did this saw the glitter of the diamonds in her two rings, and they took them away from her, telling her that they would be returned when everything was over.

After this she was liable to receive unexpected visits of this kind at any hour of the day and night: and the architects and the prison authorities were perpetually coming to make sure that the iron bars and walls were perfectly secure. I could see that they were in a constant state of perplexity. They said to each other: “Could she not escape this way, or escape that way?” They allowed neither us nor themselves a single moment of relaxation.

Their fear of treachery within or of some surprise from without kept them constantly about us in the Conciergerie. They ate their meals unceremoniously at the gaoler’s table, and every day I was obliged to prepare a large supply of food for fifteen or eighteen of these people.

I once heard Madame Richard say: “The Queen does not expect to be tried. She still hopes her relations will insist upon her being given up to them: she told me so with the most charming candour. If she leaves us, Rosalie, you will be her lady’s maid: she will take you with her.”

After the affair of the carnation the Queen seemed to me to be more anxious, and much more alarmed than before.

She thought deeply, and sighed, as she walked to and fro in her cell. On day she noticed , in a room barred with iron opposite to her own windows, a prisoner, a woman, praying with clasped hands and eyes raised to heaven. “Rosalie,” said this noble and good princess to me, “Look up there at that poor nun: how earnestly she is praying to God!”

No doubt the nun was praying for the Queen. The ladies in the prison spent all of their time in this way.

My father came from the country to see me. As no one had been allowed to enter the prison since the Carnation Conspiracy he had the greatest difficulty in obtaining leave to see me, and was escorted to my very room. M. LeBeau said to him: “I am forbidden to receive visits or allow others to receive them. My own family does not come in here. Do not be more than four or five minutes with your daughter, ---and, my good fellow, do not come again.” I was not even able to offer my father a refreshment. Showing him a foul that was on the spit I said to him in a low voice: “That is for the poor Queen, who we have here.” My father sighed and we parted.”

One day while I was making the Queen’s bed I dropped the day’s paper, which I had tucked under my fichu; and I discovered what I had done when we were upstairs again in our rooms. I was greatly troubled and confessed to M. LeBeau what had happened. He was much more disturbed than I, for he was naturally timid. “Come quickly,” he said, “come back to the cell. Take that bottle of fresh water which we will change for the other. I see no way out of this.”

We had to apply to the gendarmes again; then we went into the Queen’s room, and I found the newspaper, which she had not noticed.

The Queen, who had suffered much discomfort from the heat of the month of August, suffered equally from the cold and damp of the first fifteen days of October.

She complained of it in her gentle way; and, as for me, I was mortally distressed that I could do nothing to lessen her suffering. I never failed in the evening to take hr nightdress from under the bolster, and run up to our own room to warm it well. Then I replaced it under the bolster, together with the large fichu that the Queen wore at night.

She noticed these little attentions, which were the natural outcome of my loyalty and respect, and she thanked me for them with a glance as full of friendliness as if I had done more than my simple duty. She had never been allowed any lamp or candle, and I prolonged as much as possible the little preparations for the night, so that my revered mistress might not be left in solitude and darkness until the latest moment possible. As a rule she had no light by which to go to bed except the feeble glimmer of the distant lamp in the Cour des Femmes.

On the 12th October, about two hours after she had gone to bed, the judges of the Tribunal came to subject her to a strict examination; and the next morning, when I went to make her bed, I found her walking rapidly to and fro in her wretched cell. I felt as though my heart would break, and dared not let my eyes dwell on her.

For several days previous to this she had no longer been alone. An officer had been put into her cell to watch her.

At last that terrible day, the 15th of October, dawned. By eight o’clock in the morning she had gone up into the Court to suffer the ordeal of her trial, and as I do not remember taking any food to her on that day it would seem that she was made to go up there fasting.

During the morning I heard some people discussing the trial. “Marie Antoinette will get out of it,” they said, “she answered like an angel; she will only be banished.”

At about four o’clock in the afternoon he gaoler said to me: “the proceedings are suspended for three quarters of an hour, but the prisoner will not come down. Go up there quickly: they are asking for some broth.”

I instantly took up some of my excellent broth that I was keeping in reserve on my range and went up to find the Queen.

As I was on the point of entering the room where she was, a superintendent of police called Labuzire, a little man with a broken nose, snatched the bowl of broth from my hands and gave it to his mistress, a young woman who was greatly overdressed. “This young woman,” he said to me, “is extremely anxious to see the Widow Capet, and this is a grand opportunity to do so.” Whereupon the woman went off carrying the soup, half of which was spilt.

It was in vain that I begged and implored Labuzire ; he was all powerful and I was obliged to submit. What must the Queen have thought when she received her soup from the hands of a stranger.

At a few minutes past four on the morning of the 16th October we were told that the Queen of France was condemned. I felt as though a spear had pierced my heart, and I went to cry in my room, smothering my groans and sobs. The gaoler was grieved to hear of the sentence, but he was more accustomed to such things than I, and he affected to be unconcerned.

At about seven o’clock in the morning he told me to go down to the Queen and ask her if she requires anything to eat. As I entered the cell, where two lights were burning, I perceived an officer of constabulary sitting in the left hand quarter, and as I drew near to Madame I saw that she was stretched upon her bed, dressed all in black.

Her face was turned toward the window, and she was supporting her head with her hand. “Madame,” I said to her tremblingly, “you ate nothing yesterday evening and hardly anything during the day. What would you like to have this morning?” The Queen was weeping bitterly. She answered, “I shall never need anything again, my girl: everything is over for me.” I took the liberty of persisting. “Madame,” I said, “I have kept some broth and some vermicelli on the range: you require support: let me bring you something.”

The Queen, weeping still more bitterly than before, said to me, “Rosalie, bring me some broth.” I went to fetch it. She sat up but could hardly swallow a mouthful or two. I declare before heaven that she took no more nourishment than that.

A little time before it was broad daylight a priest came to the Queen, with the sanction of the Government, and offered to hear her confession. Her Majesty, hearing from himself that he had a cure in Paris, understood that he had taken the oath (7), and refused his ministrations. The incident was discussed in the prison.

When it was daylight, that is to say at about eight o’clock in the morning, I went back to Madame to help her dress, as she had told me to do when she took the drop of broth sitting on her bed. Her Majesty went into the little space that I usually left between the folding bed and the wall. She herself unfolded a chemise that had probably been brought to her in my absence, and having signed to me to stand in front of her bed so as to hide her from the gendarme, she stooped down beside the bed and slipped off her dress in order to change her underlinen for the last time. The officer of gendarmerie came forward instantly , and standing by the head of the bed watched the Queen’s proceedings. Her Majesty quickly threw her fichu over her shoulders with the greatest gentleness said to the young man, “In the name of decency, monsieur, let me change my linen without being watched.”

“It is impossible for me to allow it,” answered the gendarme roughly, “my orders are to keep my eye on you, whatever you are doing.”

The Queen sighed, slipped her chemise over her head for the last time as cautiously and modestly as possible, and then dressed herself, not in the long black dress that she wore before her judges, but in the loose white gown that she usually wore in the morning. Then, unfolding her large muslin fichu, she crossed it under her chin.

I was so much disturbed by the gendarme’s brutality that I did not notice whether the Queen still had M. le Dauphin’s portrait, but I was glad to see that she carefully rolled up her soiled chemise, slipping it into one of her sleeves as though into a sheath, and then squeezing it into a space that caught her eye, between the old canvas on the wall and the wall itself.

On the previous day, knowing that she was going to appear in public and before her judges, she had raised her hair a little, for the sake of appearance. She had also fastened to her lawn cap, with its little plaited trimming at the edge, the two hanging lappets that she kept in her cardboard box; and under these mourning lappets she had neatly fastened a piece of black crepe, which made her a pretty widow’s headdress.

To go to the scaffold she woe only the simple lawn cap, with no lappets nor other sign of mourning; but having only one pair of shoes she kept on her black stockings and prunella shoes, which were neither out of shape nor spoilt, though she had worn them for the seventy six days that she had been with us.

I left her without daring to say a word of farewell, or make a single curtsey to her, for I feared to compromise her or distress her. I went away to my room to cry, and to pray for her.

When she had left this hateful building, the chief usher of the Tribunal, accompanied by three or four men employed, like himself, in the Courts, came to the gaoler and asked for me. He told me to follow him to the Queen’s cell, where he allowed me to take possession of my looking glass and my cardboard box. As for the other things that belonged to Her Majesty, he told me to wrap them up in a sheet. The men made me put everything into the bundle, even a straw that had been dropped, I do not know how, on the floor of the room; and they carried off these wretched spoils of the best and most unhappy princess that ever lived.

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NOTES

(1) A biographer of Marie Antoinette and other members of the Royal Family. He documented Rosalie Lamorliere’s narrative between 1820 and 1825 during the Bourbon Restoration

(2) A series off bloody incidents that took place in Paris in the summer of 1792. News reached Paris that the Prussian army had invaded France and was advancing toward the capital. On September 3rd and 4th, crowds broke into prisons and murdered prisoners, including clergy, who were feared to be counter-revolutionaries who would assist the invading Prussians.

(3) The Chevalier de Rougeville visited Marie Antoinette in the Conciergerie and, when the gendarmes were not looking, threw two carnations at her feet. One blossom contained a note indicating that the Chevalier planned to rescue Marie Antoinette. A guard found the note and gave it to his superiors. The Chevalier disappeared.

(4) A woman’s triangular scarf made of light material worn around the neck and shoulders

(5) Elisabeth was Louis XVI’s youngest sister who was incarcerated with Marie Antoinette and others in the Temple. She was eventually executed.

(6) The 6th October was the date that the women of Paris first marched on Versailles

(7) Neither Louis nor Antoinette would have anything to do with priests who had sworn allegiance to the Tribunal.

An incredibly touching and well told story. I only wish I had access to this account many years ago. Many of us in the states [ if we were exposed to French history at all] have received only the most negative information and hearsay about Marie Antoinette's character, both as woman and monarch. This almost to the point of her very name or portrayal being made into a characature.

Thank you for this wonderful article.

Thank you; I'm glad you enjoyed it.

I remember reading about Louis XVI and Antoinette as a freshman in college and being so angry that history had slandered them so.

The more I studied, the more intrigued I got.

If you want 'touching', I'll post Antoinette's last letter she wrote shortly before her execution. I saw the actual letter at the Biblioteque National in Paris; her tear stains are still clearly visible on the paper. I'm such a boob, I stood there and cried it affected me so much.