by Marge Piercy
Then the army lottery was announced on wall posters. Wars were the business of the nobles and the King. The common people had to fight them, if they got taken for the ships or the army. Otherwise, they didn’t much care. King Louis sent ships and money to America, where they had beaten the British. People talked about America, because they had no kings or nobles there and everybody was equal, except the Blacks. And the women, Pauline thought. We’re never equal except in the amount of work we do. Now there must be armies marching somewhere, because they had the lottery in Paris. People were furious about the lottery, the way they always were. Servants were excluded, as if they were somebody special. In fact anybody who had a noble on his side could get out of it. Henri had no such luck. He lost in the lottery. He would have to go and be a soldier for the King. Everybody in the neighborhood commiserated with him.
“I didn’t even know there was a war,” he said. “Off someplace like the Caribbean, wherever that is. Down south, I think. Why do kings have these wars nobody cares about?”
Even Pauline who read all the pamphlets had no idea where the fighting was. A few years ago it had been India. Nobody she knew ever went to these places and nobody who went there to fight, came back.
He frowned. “Let’s get married. You can go with me.”
She promised to think about it, and she thought about it long and hard. Henri might never return to her. It would be years. He might get killed. He might be wounded and need her to nurse him.
She talked to Babette and Aimée. Aimée surprised her. “If you were married, you’d go, naturally, a woman must go with her man. But you aren’t married, and this is some totally fucked time to do it.”
Babette was as blunt. “Give up the business to go chase after the army with ragtag prostitutes and washerwomen? You’d have to be an idiot. They die like flies of typhus in those camps. If he’s wounded, he can send for you.”
That argument got to her. To give up the business in order to be a camp follower? Abandon her home, her friends, her business, her life? “I’ll wait for you,” she promised. “But I told Papa I’d keep up the business. I swore I would. It’s something for you to come back to.”
He couldn’t argue with that, because his master was never going to take him back. That was the end of being a hat maker. His parents were desolate. They ran about from government office to government office, but they were obvious common people and could not get past the gatekeepers. Henri must go and he might never return.
His father told him, “If it gets bad, just slip off. You know nobody in the neighborhood would rat on you. We hate the King’s army. But if you do take off, bring your musket. I know somebody who buys that kind of thing. It’s worth some money.” In the tavern, everybody gave Henri advice.
Henri was depressed and drinking too much. Now he sat at the table in her kitchen glowering at the fire. “Everyone says it’s hell in the army. They can flog you for anything. The officers are all noble shithooks who don’t even think you’re human and don’t care how many of you die in a pile. But sometimes there’s loot. And I can always desert, right?”
She wept all night after she saw him off. She wept but she did not change her mind. He would return or he would not. In the meantime, she had a business to run. Her life was here in the neighborhood and she wasn’t ready to give it up, not for any man and certainly not for the sake of being married. In this neighborhood, she was somebody: Pauline who makes chocolate, the Léon girl.
ELEVEN
Nicolas
(1783–1788)
NICOLAS, permanent secretary of the Science Academy, was proposed by Jean d’Alembert for a vacancy on the Académie Française. Buffon, the naturalist, proposed the astronomer Bailly. A battle half to the death was fought between the factions; the victory of Jean d’Alembert and thus of Nicolas was credited to women of the salons, who had championed Nicolas. But his pleasure was short-lived as Jean became mortally ill and his kidneys failed. Jean refused an operation, saying he’d had enough pain. He died, leaving nothing but a request that two aged servants be taken care of Nicolas obliged. There was a hole in his life, where his friend had been.
Nicolas still lived and worked in the Mint, a huge imposing palace on the left bank of the Seine across from the Louvre, attended the two academies sedulously, went to his favorite salons. He was a genial man. People enjoyed being around him, although they often liked to tease him. He was seen as a bit abstract, absentminded, lofty: a secular saint.
He was just bringing out his Life of Turgot, while he continued his ongoing edit of Voltaire’s letters, making copious notes for a biography. Whenever anybody important in the arts or sciences died, he was expected to write an elegy. He did his share of certifying experiments as good or bad science, part of what the Science Academy paid him to do.
One Jean-Paul Marat, a doctor to society ladies and the soldiers of the Comte d’Artois, the King’s brother, had been sucked into the morass of charlatanism that was the home of Mesmer. Mesmer and his cohorts claimed to cure epilepsy and nineteen other afflictions by the use of electricity and peculiar baths. No evidence supported Mesmer’s claims, but he was howling repression and censorship and claimed the court was willfully keeping his cures from the populace. Marat demanded the academy certify his work with light and electricity, poorly designed experiments Nicolas felt proved nothing except Marat’s ambition. Marat had become passionately fixated on Nicolas whom he blamed for his failure to achieve scientific respectability.
Nicolas had lately become concerned with the lot of black slaves in the colonies. He had heard firsthand accounts of how the slaves were shipped, as tightly as pigs to market, and how many died horribly on the seas, what they called the Middle Passage. He helped launch a new society, Friends of the Blacks, to work toward the abolition of slavery. To make a profit on human flesh was barbaric. No one could own anyone else. It was an abomination. Every man was born free.
Not only every man, Nicolas was beginning to believe. He was almost alone in his new ideas, but he observed in the salons that educated women were as intelligent and able in argument, in pointed discourse, as any of the men, and often as witty. He could see no basis in his own experience for the universal belief that women were mental or emotional children. Some women no doubt were, since they were given little useful training and no real education; but then, a great many men were idiots or mental incompetents. Freedom was a universal right of all humans or an intellectual contradiction. If only some were born free, then freedom could not exist except as a greedy privilege.
Much was to be said, much was to be done. Therefore Nicolas had begun to write pamphlets. He went to the academies, the salons, the Masons, the Friends of the Blacks. Every night he dined out. Every morning he rose with the sun and wrote furiously. How could he be lonely? Yet he was. He felt a physical longing for someone in his bed. He wanted to love. D’Alembert had told Nicolas that they were alike, neither was capable of real love. But d’Alembert had loved Julie for years. They had briefly been lovers, but d’Alembert confessed he had not satisfied her. Would he himself be able to satisfy a woman? Could he ever inspire a woman’s love? Women friends fussed over him, as they might a lapdog with brains. Nicolas felt he had much to offer, but to whom should he offer it? The years slid by in a blur of frenetic activity. At forty-two, he was never at a loss for a cause or for a meeting or for someone—individually or in groups or clubs—to discuss or dispute with. He was never without something he was supposed to have taken to the printers yesterday. It was a full life—almost.
His older friend du Paty recruited him to take on an injustice, just as Voltaire used to do. Du Paty had interested himself in the case of three peasants who had been sentenced, essentially without benefit of trial, without witnesses, without proof, to be broken on the wheel for robbery. They had never seen their accusers. They had never been given a chance to defend themselves. They had been rotting in prison for years waiting for death by torture. As punishment for his efforts, du Paty had bee
n stripped of his judicial offices by the King. Nicolas took over the battle and seemed to be winning.
Broken on the wheel, judges said unctuously, but it made Nicolas shudder, since Voltaire had insisted he view an actual torture. “Put to the question,” was the phrase. In the Palais de Justice, they sat the accused murderer, still swearing innocence, on the interrogation seat. Sanson blithely explained the details, pleased to show off his work to a nobleman. The man’s legs were held by boards. Then Sanson’s assistants, under his watchful eye, drove wedges with a sledgehammer blow by blow into the wretch’s knees. He screamed and screamed. “Sounds like a cat in heat,” Sanson said. “He’s a tenor.” Four wedges were pounded into ankles and knees. Nicolas would never forget the sound of the crunching of bones. Conduits carried away the blood.
“This is just the simple question,” Sanson explained. “I’m sorry you can’t see the extraordinary question, but we go by what the judges tell us, Marquis. We have little leeway.”
The man finally confessed and passed out. Nicolas left while they were bringing him to. He would observe the wheel, as he had promised Voltaire. The crowd was extraordinary in the Place de Grève. People had brought ladders and high stools. The windows in all the surrounding houses had been rented. Nicolas sat with other minor nobility on a special platform, not as close as that for the highest-ranking ladies and gentlemen, but well above the mob. The accused could not walk of course. He was dragged to the Saint Andrew’s cross and stripped to his shirt. His arms and mangled legs were placed into slots in the crossbars and he was tied down. Then the executioners began to pound his flesh and bones with iron bars. He was screaming his innocence again. Again and again they smashed him until all but the trunk was a mass of broken bone splinters and mangled flesh. Nicolas had not eaten but still tasted bile. He fought to keep himself from fainting. The gentleman on his left was smoking a long pipe, which did not help. The lady to his right was wearing heavy musk.
Finally they were done and what was left of the man was abandoned on the wheel, high up at the end of a pole. He was not to be burned alive, often the culmination, but simply left to moan and slowly, slowly die. Sometimes it took twelve hours, sometimes twenty-four, Sanson had told him. It was three days before Nicolas could sleep.
From that day, he worked twice as hard to free the innocent. From that day, he hated capital punishment. He was eager to help du Paty save the three peasants from the wheel. Since their families were destitute, he hired one of their sons as his valet. Du Paty invited Nicolas to visit him at his in-laws. Now that it was hot, Nicolas was pleased to escape the miasma of Paris. Villette was a fine house, northeast of Paris, gracious, big enough to absorb the twenty or so house guests. The father of the house was a cold and severe soldier; the mother was a pious woman, sweet but limited.
He met the older daughter, a lovely tall twenty-one-year-old who was taking care of her little cousin Charles. He had noticed her in passing, because she was hard to overlook. Then he discovered her reading the newest Diderot in the garden. “I have to read out here,” she explained. “Maman is upset I’ve lost my faith. When I came home from the convent at Neuville, she burned all my books. So I carry books I care about outside to read.”
Sophie was the protégée of her great-uncle, du Paty, who spoke enthusiastically of her intelligence and strong character. “Ah, you met her. Isn’t she a jewel? I can talk about anything with her, anything.” All those factors made Nicolas take notice of Sophie de Grouchy, who was called by her family Grouchette. She was so much younger, he took only a paternal interest in her reading, as he assumed du Paty had done. It was a pleasure to talk with her. She had several languages and read English as well as Nicolas, although she needed more practice in speaking.
It was a warm day in July and Sophie was out on the lawn with little Charles. Her aunt, her mother, several nieces were ail lounging on the terrace up at the house fanning themselves and gossiping, drinking lemonade. Nicolas was sitting under a tree with du Paty, talking about the King convening a gathering of Notables, by invitation only, to consider the state of the kingdom. Neither were invited. Before them spread the garden in the fashionable formal mode of long vistas, low cookie-cutter hedges, conifers in the shape of balls and cones. The boy was sailing toy boats in the fountain and Sophie was reading in the shade, when suddenly a large dog came tearing out of the woods. Before anyone could react, the dog had thrown himself on the boy and was worrying him, growling like a wolf. Everyone froze. It was a tableau stopped in time except for the dog attacking the child. Then Sophie in white lawn threw herself across the grass and, seizing the dog by the nape of its neck, hurled it from the boy. The dog was so surprised it did not even bite her but flung through the air and landed with a thud that knocked the wind out of it. Then it ran off howling.
“He’s bitten,” she cried. “Charles!” The blood ran down his arm onto her summer dress of white sprigged with tiny roses.
Now Nicolas finally moved. “Are you all right? Are you injured?” He could not tell at first if the blood were hers too or only the boy’s.
“I’m fine. But Charles is hurt. Help me get him to the house.”
Now her Aunt Adelaide, the boy’s mother, was bustling down. “Is the dog rabid? This is a tragedy! We must get him to the sea and wash him in seawater, or he may die.”
“He won’t die,” Sophie said firmly, holding the boy to her breasts as he sobbed, shaking with a delayed reaction. “It was simply a vicious dog usually kept chained up. We must fetch the doctor to see to Charles’ arm.”
Nicolas volunteered to go for the doctor. He was on his way before he realized what the strange sensation in his chest was. He had fallen in love with Sophie de Grouchy. He had fallen utterly in love. Before him on the road danced the image of her charging the mauled boy and tossing the fierce dog through the air. Her white dress hung like a banner in his mind. Her thick dark hair was tangled about her like a storm cloud.
He saw her as an Amazon, fierce in love, competent, fearless, strong. She was bright. Learned. She brought no religious or superstitious baggage along. She was also beautiful. If she was tall, that was fine, for he was always stooping with people, because he was taller than most people found comfortable. They would match physically. If she would have him. If she could love him.
He had no clear idea how to court Sophie. The house was in an uproar and he could not open a dialogue with her until his next visit, although he thought about her a considerable portion of the time. Fortunately he had remarkable powers of concentration and could read or write under any circumstances. D’Alembert had said Nicolas could write a pamphlet while standing on his head.
The discrepancy in their ages troubled him. But a woman his age would be married, and he did not desire a mistress. He wanted someone to live with; he did not want someone, he wanted Sophie. He was exactly twice her age.
He came again to Villette as soon as he could get du Paty to invite him. He hardly knew where to begin, except to tell her about himself. “My mother is as pious as yours, and crazier. She didn’t burn my books, but she dressed me in the clothing of a little girl until I was eight. I think it made me understand the difficulties women face in doing almost anything, from running down a flight of steps to crossing a muddy yard.”
“My mentor Du Paty tells me you have a very high regard for women.”
“I do. And that is not a front for taking advantage. I don’t want to take advantage of you. I want to marry you.”
She looked stunned. Her eyes—how large and very dark they were—widened and her long mouth slightly gaped. “What did you say?”
“I’ve fallen in love with you. I want to marry you.”
She blinked several times. “You certainly get right to the point. You’re a remarkable man. I might find it interesting to be married to you. Most of the lives I see available are incredibly boring. I don’t want to spend my life thinking about gowns and wallpaper.”
They were interrupted by Charles, coming to
show her a frog he had found. She got him to put it back where he had found it. Nicolas waited impatiently for her to return. “Do you mind that I’m forty-two? Do you find me too old?”
“The man I’ve cared for most in my life is married to my grandmother’s sister—my mentor. I never found him ancient. He’s my best friend. He’s older than you by more than a decade. He has a high opinion of your character—a rare recommendation. I can’t recall hearing him talk of anyone with such respect and approval.”
“Everything about you delights me. I promise to share with you whatever you wish to share—work, politics, philosophy, writing.”
She put her hand on his. His hand grew suddenly hot. He felt he might spontaneously combust. He did not want to alarm her, but he seized her hand in both of his and held it against his mouth. She gazed at him with great curiosity. Her eyes were a luminous brown. “I see my mother looking at us. She is about to appear, so let my hand go and we’ll discuss something neutral.”
“May I speak to your father?”
“You should. I’d like to marry you—I think. But you understand the families will enter negotiations as if we were two dynasties merging.”
“I don’t care about dowries. I have enough for whatever we might want. I will tell your father I wish no dowry at all.”
“That’s sure to delight him. But how shocked everyone else will be. You may not care, I may not care. But we’re the only ones who won’t fight for the last clause and loophole. Speak to my father tonight. Otherwise we won’t be married for years.” She smiled at him. “And try to find some time when my mother isn’t around to kiss me. I’d like to kiss you. I’ve never kissed anyone I wanted to kiss.… Do you have connections I should know about—mistresses, children you’ve acknowledged?”