When they reached Paris, the royal family did not go straight home to the Tuileries. There was something to be done first. They had to go to the great city hall, to meet the authorities of Paris. The mayor received them, and welcomed them to the city; and the king replied that he always came with pleasure and confidence among his good people of Paris. In repeating what the king had declared to those assembled, the mayor forgot the word “confidence.” The queen said aloud, “Say confidence;—with pleasure and confidence.”
Then there were many speeches made, during which poor little Louis, tired as he was, had to wait. Called up before five in the morning, and having sat so many hours in the carriage, with guns and pistols incessantly popping off, and yells and shouts from such a concourse of people, he might well be tired: but before they could go home, the king had to show himself in the balcony of the city hall, by torch-light, with a great tricolor cockade in his hat. It was just eleven o’clock before they got to their palace of the Tuileries.
There everything was comfortless,—for there had been no notice of their coming. The apartments had been occupied by the servants of the court, who, turning out in a hurry, left everything in confusion. Probably Louis did not mind this,—glad enough to get to bed at all after such a long and dreary day. This was the 6th of October.
Volume Two—Chapter Six.
The Dauphin at Paris.
In the morning of the 7th, some magistrates came, bringing upholsterers with them, and asked the king how he would be pleased to be lodged. They were ready to dispose and furnish the palace as he liked. He answered gruffly that others might lodge as they pleased, he had nothing to say to it. He was apt to be sulky occasionally, in his most prosperous days; and it was natural that he should be more so now. Sometimes, when the queen made anxious inquiries about the state of affairs, he answered, “Madam, your affair is with the children.” He knew that he was, in fact, a prisoner in his own capital; and that it must at any rate be long before he could leave it. He was losing the fine hunting season; and there was no saying when he might hunt again. This grieved him very much. He sent for his locksmith, and did a little filing, now and then; but he was losing his pleasure in everything.
Some of the women who had walked by the royal carriage yesterday came this morning, and stationed themselves before the queen’s windows, requesting to see her. One of them told her that she must send away all bad advisers, and love the people. The queen replied that she had loved the people when she lived at Versailles, and that she should go on to love them now. They repeated to her some reports that they had heard against her,—that she had wished in the summer that Paris should be fired upon; and that she would yesterday have fled to the frontiers, if she had not been prevented. She replied that they had heard these things, and believed them; and that while some people told and others believed what was not true, the nation and the king would never be happy. One woman then spoke a few words of German: but the queen interrupted her, saying that she was now so completely a French woman, that she had forgotten her German. This delighted the women much; for some of the jealousy of the queen which existed was on account of her being a foreigner. They clapped their hands; and asked for the ribbons and flowers out of her hat. She took them off with her own hands, and gave them to the women. They divided them to keep; and they remained half an hour shouting, “Long live Marie Antoinette! Long live our good queen!”
It was found, during the whole long period of her residence where she now was, that everybody who talked with the queen liked her;—her bitterest enemies were heard to shout as these women did, when once they had heard her speak; and soldiers, who had spoken insultingly of her before they knew her, were ready to lay down their lives for her when they became her guards. The reason of this was, not merely that she was beautiful, and that she spoke in a winning manner, when she knew how much depended upon her graciousness;—it was chiefly because the ignorant and angry people had fancied her a sort of monster, determined upon her own indulgence at all cost, and even seeking their destruction, and delighting in their miseries. When, instead of this monster, they found a dignified woman, with sorrow in her beautiful face, and gentleness in her voice, they forgot for the time the faults she really had, and the blameable things she had really done. When again reminded of these, in her absence, the old hatred revived with new force; they were vexed that she had won upon them, and ended by being as cruel as we shall see they were.