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press against the secret panel beside my bed, thrusting my weight against it as I fumble for the hidden latch that will release the door.
    “We must have the bitch’s heart!” “Where is she?” I hear, the voices growing closer. My women are now right behind me and we disappear behind the door into the passage that connects the queen’s bedchamber to Louis’s rooms. What a stroke of brilliance the comte de Mercy had to have suggested its construction all those years ago! Who could ever have foreseen that the secret passage intended to facilitate the creation of life, that of the children of France, would one day play a role in saving mine?
    I finally reach the heavy door to the Oeil de Boeuf, but find it locked. My breath is ragged and my heart pounds beneath my breast. The intruders have reached my bedroom. I can hear them through the wall. I must find Louis—and safety. I race down the corridor to his apartments and, dropping my garments in a heap, I begin to pound upon the first door I come to, flailing upon the wood with both fists. “Save me, mes amis !”
    From the direction of the State Apartments I hear the rioters’ shouts and the crash of an axe shattering wood. They are breaking down the door to the Oeil de Boeuf. Only Providence has saved me. Had the door not been locked from the corridor, I’d be in the antechamber now, torn to ribbons by a mob that is baying quite literally for my blood, my entrails, my head.
    Finally, after what feels like an eternity, the door to Louis’s bedroom opens and a tiny face peers out. It belongs to a frightened page, who apologizes for not having heard my frantic entreaties for entry. “The noise has been so great, Majesté .” He is trembling.
    I scan the room. Madame Élisabeth is there already, along with Madame de Tourzel. But where—where are my children? Finally I spot them. Madame Royale is standing on a chair, looking out the window. The dauphin is clinging to her skirts. I throw my arms about the pair of them, clutching them to me. Then the dauphin says, “Papa?” and I realize something is horribly wrong.
    Where is the king?
    “He went to search for you, ma soeur ,” says Madame Élisabeth. Her face is as white as parchment. “You must have missed each other in the corridor.”
    Merciful God! Was Louis inside the antechamber when the mob …?
    My ladies-in-waiting urge me to finish dressing as I continue to ask the empty air, “Where is my husband?” Realizing the door remains open, I run to tug it shut, only to hear a familiar voice shout hoarsely, “ Attends! Wait, ma chère !”
    I fall weeping into Louis’s embrace, never so happy to see him as in this moment. But it is impossible not to think of the future as well. Choking on ragged sobs, I tell him, “They will kill our son.”

TWO
    Mayhem
    Louison Chabry finds herself swept up in a tide of teeming … Amid the chaos, her mind freezes helplessly. One could never refer to this clamorous mass as “humanity.” There are so many people that she is lifted off her feet and borne on the tide of rioters through the most magnificent rooms she has ever seen. Is she the only one to gawp at her surroundings? The palace is almost as wondrous as a cathedral! She cranes her neck to admire the ceilings with their gilded copings and breathtaking murals, and marvels at the fluted marble pilasters that stretch as high as the eye can see, ending in a spray of perfectly carved acanthus leaves. She envies the sculptors commissioned to create such beauty, and wonders if any of them might have been women. And as her comrades-in-arms rampage through the gilded halls, Louison’s cheeks grow wet with tears at the willful destruction of it—Chinese vases that must have cost a king’s ransom, bronze figurines decapitated with a cry of “Kill the queen!” and chests and chairs inlaid with porcelain, marquetry, and mother-of-pearl, representing untold hours of painstakingcraftsmanship, smashed to bits in a matter