standing near her mother[1] on the steps of their cottage outside the enclosure.[2] The Queen calculated that the girl, who had then been fourteen years old,[3] must now be a young woman of seventeen, and with her promise of beauty[4] would soon marry: probably, she thought, to young Charpentier,[5] who was
- ↑ Marion's mother died shortly before 1793, Légendes de Trianon, Lavergne.
- ↑ In Mique's map of 1783 there is a building outside the wall between the ruelle and the porte de jardinier.
- ↑ If Marianne was 21 at her son's birth in 1796 she would have been 8 in 1783, and 14 in 1789.
- ↑ In 1793 "Marion" (daughter of an under-gardener) was chosen by the Versailles Republican Club to personate the local Goddess of Reason. Horrified at the prospect, the night before the installation on the altar of the Versailles Notre Dame, she so completely disfigured her face with scratches from a thorn branch that she never completely lost the marks (Legéndes de Trianon, M{sup|dme} Julie Lavergne, pp. 91-97).
- ↑ In 1786 "Charpentier" is mentioned as an ouvrier terrassier, having to clear up sticks and leaves, plant flowers, and rake (Arch. Nat. O1, 1878).
Charpentier seems to have been the "Jean de l'eau," so called from his daily duty of fetching water from Ville d'Avray for the Queen's table. He even tried to get it to her when she was in the Conciergerie, August, 1792. He was afterwards wounded at Marengo and became a captain, and in 1805 was appointed by Napoleon jardinier en chef at the Petit Trianon, and married Marion (Légendes de Trianon, p. 97).
1876, 1877. "Mariamne" is mentioned among the children paid for picking up dead leaves in the grounds, 1783, Arch. Nat. O1, 1877.
