“That is true,” the king admitted.
Not knowing what else to do, Lafayette reverted to ancient protocol. “Does Your Majesty have any orders?”
King Louis barked with bitter laughter. “It seems I take your orders now.”
That bitter laughter unraveled my remaining love for the king. I realized now that he had always been insincere, and that he had sworn falsely before God and the nation. However personable and well-intentioned he might seem, King Louis was no longer seeking the good of his people, if ever he was before. His actions were meant only to assure his own personal power. He truly was a despot, and this realization broke my heart.
That night I told Gilbert, “I fear for his life if people should believe he was going to raise a foreign army against us . . .”
Gilbert agreed. “They will tear him to pieces.”
Many would say we should let them. King Louis liked to think of himself as a merciful and enlightened king, but his bad governance had killed hundreds of thousands—some through starvation, others through torture. He might say that was ignorance, or that he was badly advised, but his determination to reinstate an absolute monarchy at the point of a gun was with knowledge aforethought and with no consideration of mercy to those he left behind. Those like my family and me . . .
Perhaps he deserved to be torn limb from limb, but as a Christian, I did not believe justice could be served through murder. I wanted mercy for the king, but more than that, I wanted mercy for the nation, and to my profound shame, the only way to achieve both was through deception.
My husband, whose oaths and principles and sympathies also stood in opposition to one another, now admitted, “Some excuse will have to be made for the king’s escape.”
The official story put out by the National Assembly was that the royal family had been kidnapped. This was the first time my husband put his reputation behind a lie. As a woman of scruple, I should have abhorred it, but it was the only way, unless we wished to throw our lot in with the bloodthirsty zealots wishing to murder all the royals.
Our friends warned, In running a middle course, you run the risk of being hated by both sides . . .
And my family was wavering. My younger sisters Pauline and Rosalie left for the countryside. My father fled the country with his mistress to Switzerland. Even Maman sided now with the royals, for radicals in the new assembly were bent upon destroying the Catholic Church.
All the clergy were now required to swear a civic oath breaking their allegiance to the pope and promising to hold the laws of the nation as more sacrosanct than those of God. I didn’t understand how a movement for religious liberty could devolve into persecutions of priests. I would not support that, and was glad to take Communion with my sister Louise at Saint-Sulpice when the curé announced his refusal to take the oath.
As a result, I found myself denounced in the papers for treason.
“This hurts us,” Gilbert said, throwing the paper into the fire. “Your support for nonjuring priests.”
He did not share my faith, but believed always in the right of every person to freedom of religion. I had sacrificed much to support him as a champion of that idea, but I would not sacrifice this. “Do not ask me.”
“I ask only discretion,” Gilbert said.
“Do not ask that either.” It pained me to distress him, and yet in this, I had to. “I have stood by you, every moment of our marriage, every moment you have expressed controversial beliefs, no matter the danger. Now we come to my own principles and you must stand by me.”
Gilbert stared as if I had grown two heads. Never before had I asserted myself this way. So accustomed to our being in accord in every particular, he did not seem to know what to do or say. So he said nothing—wordlessly slamming out the door in haste to some appointment.
My heart physically ached. I had chosen now, of all times, when he was in the most precarious position, to stake out ground that could ruin us, but how could I give way?
Gilbert scarcely uttered a word to me in the days that followed. And when I refused to play hostess to the new bishop of Paris, who was persecuting nonjuring priests, I feared Lafayette would never forgive me. We are going to become like my parents, alienated and cold.
Even so, I would not change my mind—this was a matter of faith; I had not fought and sacrificed for a revolution that would, in turn, oppress others. What I could do—I decided at the last moment—was explain myself to the bishop. Thus, I dressed and went down to the dining room. I had not yet entered, however, when I heard the bishop say, “Your wife sets a bad example, and it reflects poorly on you that you cannot control her. You must crush this spirit of dissent in your own house, just as I will crush it on the streets of Paris.”