Suddenly the door burst open and Louis was pulling Anne inside. "Annette! Thank God you're all right!"
"What about the children?" Anne cried.
"They're already in the carriage," Louis told her. "Come, there's no time to waste!"
"But where are we going?" asked Anne.
"The Tuileries Palace," Louis told her.
As soon as the King and Queen were seated side by side in the carriage, the grand procession was on its way. Armed National Guards led the way, and a throng of sixty thousand people surrounded the carriage as it moved along.
Three-year-old Sophie sat in her mother's lap, staring with round eyes at everything that was going on.
"Who are all these people, Mama?" she asked.
"They are our subjects," Anne told her. "They are escorting us to the Tuileries Palace."
"What's that?" asked four-year-old Louis-Charles, who sat in his father's lap.
"It's where my great grandfather once lived," Louis told his son.
"It must be really old," remarked Marie-Elise, who sat behind her parents with her older sister.
"It is," Louis replied glumly.
Suddenly gunshots rang out. The family screamed and ducked as bullets flew over the carriage.
"Mama, I'm scared!" cried Sophie as she clung to her mother and sobbed. Anne didn't know how to comfort her daughter, as she was scared out of her wits herself.
It was nightfall before the family reached the dilapidated Tuileries Palace. "You mean this is where we're going to live now?" Marie-Therese asked in dismay.
Anne herself looked at the ruins of the formerly grand palace and felt her heart sink. She and Louis carried their sleeping youngest children into the living area and laid them on the available cots. Then they got the two older girls settled and finally retired themselves.
As Anne lay in the dark, memories of both Versailles and Whitehall Palace filled her mind, and she began to cry. Soon she felt Louis' arms around her, comforting her. "At least we still have each other," he murmured. "And this is only temporary, mi amour. Soon we'll be able to return to our true home."
"Make love to me, Louis," Anne said. "I need to feel you inside me, now more than ever before."
He did, more gently and tenderly than he ever had, and then she fell asleep with her head resting comfortably on his shoulder.
The family lived at the Tuileries Palace for two years, and then on June 20, 1791, they fled after dark to Montmedy. In the picturesque little town near the Austrian border, they began new lives as ordinary French citizens. Having always been a royal, Louis at first had no idea how to adjust to the life of a commoner, but Anne, who'd been a commoner herself before marrying Henry, helped him.
In their adopted home, Louis and Anne lived long, happy lives, surviving to see their children and grandchildren grow up.