Both my daughters wanted to come home to Chavaniac. Anastasie argued, “We’ve been warned a contingent of soldiers will pass through in the morning, and how much joy they would take in violating Lafayette’s daughters. At Chavaniac, Virginie and I know to hide in the fireplace, in the attic, in the passages and little chambers behind the stairs. Let us come home with you, Maman.”
Though I wished to shelter her from the world’s horrors, she was too much her father’s daughter to be held back. I was also reassured by my reception in Brioude, and by the friendly villagers who now wanted to accompany us safely back to Chavaniac. That night, before we slept under our own castle roof, I demanded of Anastasie, “Assure me again that if soldiers come in the night, you know what to do.”
She nodded. “You will get torches and send for the field hands to carry Aunt Charlotte away in a sedan chair. I will take Virginie upon my shoulders and bear her away through the tunnels, then into the forest.”
“That’s right,” I said.
But the soldiers didn’t come in the night; they came in the morning.
“Mon Dieu!” screamed the housekeeper, rushing to wake us, keys jingling from her belt. “They are at the gate.”
I bolted from my bed to the window—praying not to see an armed mob. What I saw was nearly a hundred armed men. Why should they possibly need so many? The girls know where to hide, I reassured myself. So long as I kept these men out of the house, the girls could get free.
I threw on a robe—issuing orders to the servants, praying Aunt Charlotte would stay in her room. Already I heard angry voices echoing in the grand salon, and flinging the door of my chambers open, I came face-to-face with a hard-looking man, a pistol on his belt.
Too late. I was too late to keep them from the house. But Anastasie was clever; she would’ve already taken her sister to a secret place. I could at least take solace in that. From amidst the soldiers emerged their leader, a man from Le Puy—famed for having recently killed a prisoner in cold blood.
“La femme Lafayette,” he sneered.
Meanwhile, a commissioner presented me with a warrant for the arrest of me and my children.
I always feared they would come for my children, but somehow I had not imagined they would be shameless enough to put it in writing, under color of law, as if without fear of the judgment of humanity. “I will go with you straightaway, sir,” I said, wanting nothing so much as to get these men out of the chateau. Let them center all their rage upon me.
But the leader persisted. “And the children of Lafayette?”
I opened my mouth to say my children were gone to the countryside, but at that very moment, Anastasie swept in, auburn hair cascading over slender porcelain shoulders. “I am the daughter of Lafayette, monsieur, and I intend to accompany my mother if you take her.”
Oh, Anastasie, what have you done? I could scarcely breathe for the terror of what they might do. “My daughter oversteps! She will remain behind. Pray call for horses, sir. I am ready—nay, eager, to surrender myself to you.”
Already uncouth men flooded my chambers, smashing open the drawer where I kept my husband’s most recent letter. “What do we have here?” said the one who boasted of murder.
“Letters my husband would be happy to submit to a court for examination, for no action of his life could incriminate him in the eyes of true patriots.”
“Madame,” the commissioner snapped, “these days there is only the court of public opinion.”
Hearing that, I knew the sooner they took me away, the better. Outside my apartment, the soldiers had hold of the housekeeper, making sport of her, and pointed their sabers at portraits. “Wench, who are these aristocrats on the wall in gilded frames?”
“Good people long since dead,” the housekeeper replied, her countenance awash in scorn. “If they were still alive, things would not be going on as badly as they are now.”
The men smashed vases and pocketed trinkets. Then they saw a portrait of my husband and stabbed it through the heart. It was this, I think, that roused Aunt Charlotte from her hiding place. “For shame!” she cried, wagging her finger.
“Go back to bed, old hag, and we will leave you unmolested.”
Yes, I thought. Go back to bed, Aunt Charlotte.
Instead, she lifted her walking stick like a bat. “Young man, I will not be kept apart from my niece. If you take Adrienne, you must take me too. Even to Paris, if need be.”
All I wanted was to keep my loved ones from danger, yet they insisted upon flinging themselves into its jaws! Should I throttle them or weep with gratitude? All that kept me from sobbing was the thought that Virginie and Georges were safely hidden.