Vive la révolution!

Wrapped in rapture at the queen's beauty, Laborde is, of course, a narrator of questionable reliability, but her guileless testimony provides a story steeped in dramatic irony. In her kindest descriptions, we can see the queen's pathetic triteness and desperate loneliness. She floats in a fog of privilege and artificial expectations, flattered into a state of intoxication, through which she can perceive none of the events around her clearly. Even when the severity of their situation rudely interrupts the Perfect Day, her effete husband and a sense of royal duty force her to abort an escape.

Like most of the royals and exalted servants at Versailles, Laborde has no real duties to perform, which places her in a perfect position to move around the palace, gathering shreds of gossip for a fascinating collection of vignettes that capture the peculiar characters residing at Versailles.

The king emerges as a dull-witted man trying to do right by his enflamed nation, but more interested in his new thermometer. The Captain-Custodian of the Menagerie is convinced that bathing would reduce his vital spirit, a practice that renders him a human stink bomb. In the bushes outside her window, an insane courtier has been stalking the queen for 10 years.

Having discovered their names on a list of royals to be executed, one family puts on a costume party in the dying light of Versailles. Even as beheadings begin in Paris, the court historian is sure that if he phrases a pastoral letter just right, the trouble will evaporate.

Ordinary events that shock Laborde give an eerie sense of how artificial this world is. For instance, on the morning of July 15, when they should all be running for their lives, the entire court is alarmed that someone dared disturb the king's sleep. And in one of the saddest scenes, Laborde expresses her horror at seeing Marie-Antoinette opening a door herself. Quel scandale!

But the most frightening moment isn't the arrival of an angry mob or even the surreal appearance of a bloody hag who storms through the palace like an angel of death. It's the silence, a never-before-heard stillness in the palace when all the peasants, workers, guards, attendants, secretaries, and minor royals have abandoned their king and queen - a haunting moment, perfectly captured, that conveys the tragedy of this collapse and its necessity.

Besides the novel's gorgeous and grotesque historical details, Thomas provides a provocative discussion about the burdens of this new sense of freedom consuming the nation.

It's comforting to imagine that the lessons here aren't relevant unless your peasants are demanding more bread, but Thomas has reenacted this earthquake in a way that should remind us all of the deadly cost of clinging to the past.

• Ron Charles is the Monitor's book editor. Send e-mail comments about the book section toRon Charles.

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