The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette by Carolly Erickson

Author:Carolly Erickson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St Martin’s Press

November 5, 1782

We have been to the shrine of St.-Brolâdre, but our journey did not turn out at all as we had expected it would.

In order to reach the village we had to travel through the outskirts of Paris. It has been years since I was there. I had forgotten how nasty and overcrowded the streets are, filled with rotting garbage and death-carts hauling away corpses and open sewers flowing down the center of the narrow old alleys. Far from welcoming us, the Parisians we passed looked askance at our carriage, which was clearly a nobleman’s vehicle even though it did not bear the royal coat of arms. Eric and six uniformed guardsmen rode beside the carriage and two postilions led the way.

We had hardly gone any distance along the city streets when we began attracting a crowd. Looking out of the carriage window, I could see a variety of faces, some blankly staring, some excited and smiling, many frowning and surly. The carriage slowed to let a herdsman drive some pigs past, and I clutched the sleeping Louis-Joseph more tightly in my arms.

I felt the coach rock slightly as something hit the door. A second jolt and a third soon followed. I realized that people were throwing clods of earth—I hoped they were not clods of filth—at the vehicle. Eric rode up alongside my open window, shielding the opening from the bystanders who were closing in around us, shouting and singing.

Bring them down

Haughty bastards

Bring them down

Every last one!

Drive them out

Damned aristos

Drive them out

Every last one!

“Stop that singing!” Eric rode into the crowd, shouting orders in his Austrian-accented French. But he, and the guardsmen and postilions, were all pelted with mud and at one point a dead dog was thrown through the window of our carriage, landing at my feet.

Louis, enraged, took the stinking thing by the tail and threw it back out the window.

“Whoreson pigs!” he shouted at the leering, singing demonstrators. “Poxy devils!”

The carriage began to speed up, the road obstruction had passed. I heard our driver shout to the horses and crack his whip, and the crowd parted, melting away in the path of our advance.

I was trembling. I wondered whether we would be able to reach the shrine of St.-Brolâdre in safety. We went on, through the narrow, dark streets, greeted by stares and the occasional shouted insult. I heard Louis swear under his breath.

Eventually we came out through an ancient portal into open country. Eric informed us that we were on the highroad to the vicinity of St.-Brolâdre. In a few moments I felt my anxiety recede somewhat. I turned to Louis.

“These crude Parisians have no idea who we are,” I said to him. “If they knew you were the king they would bow in reverence.”

“And have they no reverence for their betters? Does a nobleman have to be king to be treated with dignity, as he ought?”

“People say it is the Americans who are to blame. They are levelers. They despise crowns and titles. They have infected the Parisians with their ideas.

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