Memoirs of the Court of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, Volume 7: Being the Historic Memoirs of Madam Campan, First Lady in Waiting to the Queen — John Shaqi
Memoirs of the Court of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, Volume 7: Being the Historic Memoirs of Madam Campan, First Lady in Waiting to the QueenCampan, Mme. (Jeanne-Louise-Henriette)
History
Memoirs of the Court of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, Volume 7: Being the Historic Memoirs of Madam Campan, First Lady in Waiting to the Queen
Campan, Mme. (Jeanne-Louise-Henriette)
France -- Court and courtiers; Marie Antoinette, Queen, consort of Louis XVI, King of France, 1755-1793
The royal prisoners had no comfort except their affection for each other.
At that time even common necessaries were denied them. Their small stock
of linen had been lent them; by persons of the Court during the time they
spent at the Feuillans. The Princesses mended their clothes every day,
and after the King had gone to bed Madame Elisabeth mended his. "With
much trouble," says Clrry, "I procured some fresh linen for them. But the
workwomen having marked it with crowned letters, the Princesses were
ordered to pick them out." The room in the great tower to which the King
had been removed contained only one bed, and no other article of
furniture. A chair was brought on which Clery spent the first night;
painters were still at work on the room, and the smell of the paint, he
says, was almost unbearable. This room was afterwards furnished by
collecting from various parts of the Temple a chest of drawers, a small
bureau, a few odd chairs, a chimney-glass, and a bed hung with green
damask, which had been used by the captain of the guard to the Comte
d'Artois. A room for the Queen was being prepared over that of the King,
and she implored the workmen to finish it quickly, but it was not ready
for her occupation for some time, and when she was allowed to remove to it
the Dauphin was taken from her and placed with his father. When their
Majesties met again in the great Tower, says Clery, there was little
change in the hours fixed for meals, reading, walking and the education of
their children. They were not allowed to have mass said in the Temple,
and therefore commissioned Clery to get them the breviary in use in the
diocese of Paris. Among the books read by the King while in the Tower
were Hume's "History of England" (in the original), Tasso, and the "De
Imitatione Christi." The jealous suspicions of the municipal officers led
to the most absurd investigations; a draught-board was taken to pieces
lest the squares should hide treasonable papers; macaroons were broken in
half to see that they did not contain letters; peaches were cut open and
the stones cracked; and Clery was compelled to drink the essence of soap
prepared for shaving the King, under the pretence that it might contain
poison.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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