The most perfectly cold moments of all, tucked away in her Petit Trianon. Antoine liked to walk the grounds in simple dresses just before retiring, growing so chilled that she could not feel her fingers, her toes. Her skin would feel like a hard shell encasing her flesh. She was endlessly entranced with the puffs of her breath clouding the air. "Maman, pourquoi est-tu si froid?" Marie Thérèse asked when Antoine came to bed, hugging her daughter tight.
"Parce que je suis si chaud," she whispered. And then they would mound the bed with blankets and giggle until they fell asleep.
Antoine kept those memories in her mind, those memories of childhood, of her most special place, of her sweet Thérèse, even of the indignities of Versailles. She let herself ignore the ugly ground upon which she walked, the rough wood of the gibbet, the leering faces. Antoine was cold, and so she remembered times when being cold meant that she was happy, that she was where she ought to be. She remembered those times until the moment the blade ended her life.
