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“No worries. You hear that, the rest of you?” said Santerre, addressing the entire battalion. “The Widow Capet wants to come down and have a walk in the garden. She is allowed to, thanks to the nation; you just make sure she doesn’t jump over the walls and run away. For if that happens, you’ll all get the chop.”

An outburst of Homeric laughter greeted this little joke of the citizen general’s. “Don’t say you weren’t warned,” said Santerre. “So long. I’m off to the Commune. It looks like Barbaroux’s2 caught up with Roland in the suicide stakes; they need to be issued a passport for the next world.”

This was the news that had put the citizen general in such a good mood. Santerre galloped away. The outgoing battalion followed close behind, and finally the previous shift’s municipal officers made way for the newcomers who had received Santerre’s instructions regarding the Queen.

One of these went to see Marie Antoinette to tell her the general had granted her request.

“Oh!” she thought, gazing at the sky through her window. “Will your anger rest, Lord, are you tired of bearing down on us with your terrible might?”

“Thank you, monsieur,” she said to the municipal officer with the same stunning smile that was the finish of Barnave and had made so many men lose their heads. “Thank you!”

Then she turned to her little dog, who was leaping at her as he stood on his two hind legs, for he understood from his mistress’s expression that something extraordinary was going on.

“Let’s go, Black,” she said, “we’re going for a walk.”

The little dog began to yap and dance about; he cast a grateful look at the municipal officer, no doubt knowing that it was from this human source that the news that made his mistress so happy came; he crawled over to him groveling and wagging his long silky tail and even took the risk of licking him.

This man, who might well have remained unmoved by the Queen’s entreaties, was quite overcome by the caresses of the dog.

“If only for this little fellow, citizeness Capet, you should have gone out more often,” he said. “Humanity demands that we take care of all creatures.”

“What time are we to go out, monsieur?” asked the Queen. “Don’t you think the heat of the middle of the day will do us good?”

“You can please yourself,” said the officer. “There is no specific recommendation on this point. But if you want to go out at midday, that’s when we change shifts, so there’ll be less of a bustle in the tower.”

“Well then, let it be midday,” said the Queen, pressing her hand to her heart to stop it from beating so hard.

She examined this man, who didn’t seem as hard as his colleagues and who might well be about to lose his life in the struggle the conspirators were contemplating for deigning to accede to the Queen’s wishes.

But just when a certain compassion was about to weaken the woman’s heart, the soul of the Queen took over. She thought of the tenth of August and of the bodies of her friends strewn over the carpets of her palace; she thought of the second of September and the head of the Princesse Lamballe looming up on a pike3 in front of the palace windows; she thought of the twenty-first of January and her husband dying on the scaffold to the sound of a drumroll that drowned out his voice; finally, she thought of her son, that poor little boy whose cries of pain she had more than once heard coming from his room without being able to help him—and her heart hardened.

“Alas!” she murmured. “Calamity is like the blood of the ancient Hydras: it is blood and bone fueling fresh new calamities.”

26

BLACK

The municipal officer left to call his colleagues and read the outgoing officers’ report. The Queen remained alone with her sister and her daughter. All three looked at one another. Madame Royale threw herself into the Queen’s arms and held her tight. Madame Elisabeth went to her sister and gave her her hand.

“Let us pray to God,” said the Queen. “But let’s do it quietly so no one suspects we are praying.”

There are fatal periods in history in which prayer, the natural hymn God has planted