An Angel
October 16, 1793
I-The Phantom and the Hollow Crown
The sun shone bright that day in the sky high above the streets of Paris. The Place Louis XV, sorrounded on the one side by the Tuileries Gardens was a blur of colours and sounds, red and cries. For the place no longer retained its former name, this was the Place de la Révolution, the emblem of the downfall of the monarchy, the first step of the child born from the ashes of the ancien régime.
Marie Antoinette's dress was simple and white, catching at times the autumn light and revealing her figure. Her face was pale, tired and thin. Her body was scrawny and she looked famished. Her eyes had once been azure like the lapis lazuli which had adorned her neck long ago. Yet now they were grey and hollow, like the crown she had worn for many years. Her lips had been her mother's delight and vaunt as a child, red and full. And although they had lost none of their beauty and grace, they resembled a withered rose. We cannot question its fairness and yet we take note of the fact we cannot abide to gaze at it, as if we fear to weep at the thought of what a magnificent flower it had been.
Marie Antoinette was a ghost, she had become almost phantom-like, and like all ghosts, she was at once loved and loathed. Loved because she was beautiful and a queen, and even as the mob screamed at her, the people in secret regarded her with pity and admiration (and perhaps some even in respect). Loathed because she had somewhat been what every woman had desired to be in her youth and the wife every man had longed for. And so, as when a ghost appears to us and we love that pale shapeless entity, that memory of a long-lost person, do we do not also hate it for it is ghastly and reminds us of death? And Marie Antoinette appeared to the people just so.
She was the dark of the ages in the past and the colour of the dawn of the new world. She represented at once both the ancient régime and the promise of the days of the Republic.
II-Veuve Capet and the will of God
At about midday, her cart came abruptly to a halt and she was forced down from it as a commoner. She gazed at the many angered faces before her, the poor, the young, the old… 'Madame Capet!' 'Veuve Capet!'.
She seemed not to hear those voices and kept on looking ahead, as a child might do when its parent reproaches him and he understands not why. Marie was not a child, nor was she a woman. She was a mother and a widow, a very peculiar condition of the female heart. She was lost, did not distinguish life from death… she knew her husband had long been gone from her, but her children were far away from her too. They had been unjustly stolen from her. And for this, she did not seek to blame the people of France, but God himself. How had it come this? Lovely, gentle, Austrian Marie Antoinette had been sent away from her home to be the dauphine of France when she was only fourteen years of age. She had been unhappy in the place she had come to, thus imagining and creating her own blissful and idyllic world. She had not cared for what had happened outside the gates of Versailles. The people had starved and died and she had simply lived. Had she been oblivious or uncaring? Had she been both? It did not matter then. God had made his choice. Maria Antonia was to die.
III-Of young boys and greatness
Marie Antoinette had only one fear, and not that of dying, but that her son and daughter would follow her on the gallows and were destined to die at such a young age. Marie Thérèse was a gay and pretty child. She would make a good marriage one day. And her dear boy, Louis, the dauphin of France, was petit but witty. He would become a great king. And yet some of us are often prone to greatness, we endeavour to reach it but just before touching it, we fall in a dark, deep pit, unable to climb back to the surface. It is the fate of ambition and success, for the higher we climb, the higher the fall if we do not succeed. Some boys grow to become kings, others remain everlastingly young.
IV-Lady France and her sword
The queen was made to climb the wooden steps of the gallows, as they creaked under her small cloth shoes. She wondered then where she might have been, had her mother not sought to make her the queen of France. Perhaps she would now be roaming the green hills of Austria with her family. But such a thought was absurd. She had always known she would never be simply Maria Antonia. She was Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, greatest and most important woman of the country.
And yet Lady France had seen it fit to dismiss a woman who assumed she could best her. And Lady France possessed a weapon the queen did not: the people. Their will cut deeper than the guards's blades, they were altogether more powerful than the king himself, although less dear and valuable than Marie Antoinette's diamond necklaces.
But jewels and gems do not have much influence in saving lives, power and violence do.
V-The Queen begs for forgiveness
Marie Antoinette walked on the gallows, her hands trembling, her hair grey and her eyes lost somewhere in the crowd. It was in doing so that she did not notice the gaoler's foot in the way and stepped upon it. Monsieur Henri Sanson softly gasped whilst the people burst in roaring, wild laughter as their deposed Queen had almost tripped. And yet, those brutal clamours suddenly became wordless murmurs when a gentle voice was heard: "Pardonnez-moi, monsieur. Je ne l'ai pas fait exprès…" Perhaps we now do not understand the power of these words, nor the effect such a simple sentence had on the mob and yet, of its own accord, the audience come to see Marie Antoinette's last show, spoke no more until she died. Indeed not even she had given much thought to what she had said, being in such a wretched state, and even the crowd only perceived and truly pondered upon those words once they realized they were the last she ever spoke.
The gaoler was the people's justice, he represented the people themselves and when the Queen asked for forgiveness for her mistake, she in fact begged to be forgiven for all her sins. And she obtained her pardon, perhaps even that of the French.
As to further emphasize her repentance, she bowed before Madame la Guillotine with her hands bound behind her by a rough rope. In a few words, the Queen bowed before the country, she accepted its will and her fate.
VI-One last thought
It is sometimes amusing and odd what we think just before dying. Our thoughts are often mingled with grief and regret but they can also be paradoxical.
Marie Antoinette neither thought of death, nor of her children, or her past extravagant life. As a matter of fact, it was a memory, her mother's words from a time long ago, which almost made her laugh, though she had not the time…
"Adieu, chèr enfant; une grande distance va nous séparer. Faites tant de bien aux Français, qu'ils puissant croire que je leur ai envoyé un ange."
*Pardon me, Monsieur. I did not mean to do it.
**Farewell, my dearest child, a great distance will separate us...Do so much good for the French people that they can say I have sent them an angel.