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!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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