by Marge Piercy
The Queen, whom he had never viewed closer than a block away, now stood halfway up the staircase waving her arms and throwing a tantrum. Her train was filthy, her hair had lost its powder and its curl, the hem of her long white robe was trampled upon. She had a long horsy face but a fine complexion, visible since the rain had washed off the customary heavy golden powder and magenta rouge. She saw him looking and glared. He dropped his gaze.
It was time for him to slip out and hasten back to Sophie. He would see if she could tolerate something light for supper, perhaps fish. He had ordered a clear but nourishing soup for her earlier. He had never been around children much. They had decided to stop using contraception in May, the sheath he had always worn with her, and to let nature take its course. Still, he had been surprised when she announced her pregnancy one morning, after throwing up. He had been more taken aback than overjoyed. He supposed they should have a child. It was an experience he could not deny her, however much he might secretly prefer to retain all her attention. He had a great theoretical interest in education, but now he would have to conduct practical experiments. He was a little daunted at the prospect, for he had no models of the good father to draw on. He had never known his father. His uncles were nasty and tyrannical with minds of granite. He would have to improvise. Well, he might be father, but he would not be king in his house. They would be a little democracy of three. He hoped the King would abdicate absolute power as willingly.
TWENTY-NINE
Georges
(November-December 1789)
GEORGES’ fellow lawyers in the high court were frantic with worry. If the King lost his powers, what use was the King’s court? Suddenly nobody was trying to prove patents of nobility. If offices were no longer bought and sold, how would they ever recoup what they had paid? Georges was in debt over his eyebrows but far less anxious. He found the new situation promising. He told Gabrielle, pregnant again after losing the first son, “Everything’s looser. We’ll land on our feet. There’s always something an able and energetic man can do.”
Mirabeau had noticed him already. They got on. Unlike most noblemen, Mirabeau did not expect to be groveled to. He had endured hard times. He had been decapitated in effigy, publicly condemned, pursued by vigilantes and angry fathers (including his own), shut up in prison. When Mirabeau had walked into the Estates General representing the Third Estate because the nobility would not have him, Georges heard that everyone moved away from him as if he had a communicable disease. Soon delegates were seeking him out, because he became important.
He was, like Georges, a physically ugly man who did not give a damn. They were both men who liked women and whom women found attractive. Georges thought that with himself, it was energy, virility coming through. Sometimes women seemed to scent him and turn, as if he were a tomcat leaving his mark.
Mirabeau wanted a constitutional monarchy, and he wanted to be the intermediary between the National Assembly and the royal power. Mirabeau told Georges honestly that the court did not trust him but could not do without him. He was a good orator. When he spoke to a point, people listened. His speeches were often quoted. He was an interestingly ambiguous figure, revolutionary and mistrusted courtier at once.
Georges sat in the galleries of the National Assembly a few times, after the Assembly followed the King to Paris and set up in the former royal riding school. Georges did not meet Mirabeau at the Assembly. He always saw him at the Palais Royal. That was why he made his way there tonight with Camille. Camille enjoyed the notoriety, the cheer that went up when he was recognized, the way respectable people drew away from him. The orator of the lamppost. Ten minutes after they entered the crowded courtyard, where the early November moon was just a sliver above the lanterns, Camille forgot Georges, and he was free to slip away. He left Camille wobbling on a table, shouting.
There were many restaurants among the theaters, whorehouses and shops on the level below ground. Mirabeau met Georges in one restaurant, the Black Rose, whose private rooms were often used by higher-priced courtesans. Georges thought Mirabeau’s choice of locale for their meetings not inappropriate, since he was certainly being courted with an eye to being bought.
Mirabeau was clearly at home in the Palais Royal for he did not arrive, as did Georges, through the public entrance, but appeared in the room by some private passage through the bowels of the Palais. Mirabeau had a fat purse to influence and bribe. All things considered, Georges thought that Mirabeau was acting for the due d’Orléans, master and founder of this weird emporium of sex, food, theater and politics. All forms of entertainment in Orléans’ opinion? Orléans was ambitious. He felt he would make a much better king than his cousin. He had placed himself far to the left of the royal family, but he was unmistakably royal. Red in opinions, blue of blood: the liberals who wanted a constitutional monarchy must eye Orléans with interest. Georges had an open mind. He would go for that which offered the most freedom to the most people; otherwise, he would ride along and listen, reserving the right to make his own decision.
Mirabeau always wined and dined him lavishly. He was an ostentatious dresser, big jewels and bright silks and satins. His head was extraordinarily large. Like Georges, he had been marked by smallpox. His eyes were bulging, commanding. Georges found him stimulating company. He told stories well and he knew the gossip about everybody.
“The Queen is bored, so she gambles harder than ever and flirts with the noble Swede Axel Fersen and her old favorite, the Comtesse de Polignac. Polignac had been thrown over for a new intimate, but Princess Lamballe fled to Germany. Marie abandoned her old wardrobe in Versailles. Now she buys and buys dresses and jewels. She’s defiant. Her Hapsburg blood is up.”
“Doesn’t she know how angry the people are?”
“Danton, she’s seen nothing of France but the cathedral at Reims, the palaces of Versailles and now the Tuileries. That’s her entire France.”
They were still feeling each other out, but Mirabeau was a shade more aggressive. Georges suspected he wanted to land his fish tonight. Georges was in no hurry. He would betray no eagerness because he felt none. He enjoyed his meal, from the oysters on through the sole and the venison, accompanied by fine Bordeaux. Georges gave his opinions when asked, not shading them to please Mirabeau. Mirabeau collected able men. He would have to take Georges as he was.
“Congratulations. I hear you have a new child on the way. But children can be expensive. You want to give him a good start in the world.”
“He’s not born yet. It’s a little early to start looking for a regiment or a match.”
“Never too early to consider how to provide for your family. Your expenses have been high. Your debts must worry you, perhaps distract you from giving your full energy to the crisis our city, our country finds itself in.”
“I land on my feet.”
“Like a cat.”
“I’m probably more of a bulldog. Or a bull.”
“So I hear. You have a man’s needs. We like to help men of talent who lack means. Consider it patronage to those who will serve the country.”
“What you see is what you get. I won’t turn into someone else.”
“What we’ve seen is what we want.” Mirabeau put a book on the table. The Adventures of Casanova. “You might find this quite stimulating. Don’t read it now—that wouldn’t be polite. Read it when you’re alone.”
Georges looked at the leather-bound gilded container, which he was sure held some quantity of livres. It would be interesting to see what Mirabeau judged him worth at this point. It was his first bribe. He would be losing his cherry. He considered it on the table, making no move to touch it. “I will not take instruction. I will listen to you with interest, but finally I will make up my own mind. I hope you understand my position.”
Mirabeau nudged the book a little closer. “Oh, I believe I understand your position quite well. Enjoy the book. You might as well. If any of your friends ever discover our quiet meetings, you might as well have taken it.”
“But if you publicized them, that would end my potential usefulness.” Georges did not care for dueling with weapons, considering it foolish vanity. But he could enjoy a verbal duel.
“Excellent observation.” Mirabeau helped himself to a pastry from the platter the discreet and silent waiter had left.
Georges felt he had played the scene for as much as he could get from it. Except the money, except the money, which he did desperately need. He would never allow that eagerness to show. He was doing Mirabeau a favor by agreeing to take his patronage, that was what his bearing was intended to convey. He hoped he was succeeding. He picked up the book.
Georges left first, as always. Mirabeau remained seated. He was there before Georges, so that Georges never saw the route by which Mirabeau entered the little red-velvet-hung room with its atmosphere of a well-appointed brothel. Georges stopped to listen to orators, greeted acquaintances in the crowd. Was Mirabeau reporting even now to Orléans? Or did Orléans just give him money and trust Mirabeau to know what best to do with it? Or was it not even Mirabeau’s money but the court’s? That was as likely.
“What did you think of my speech?”
“I’m sorry, Cam. I was getting laid. A dish I couldn’t pass up.”
Georges was putting much effort into the Cordeliers district, whose president he had become. His neighborhood was seething. Camille had finally got his prospective in-laws to permit him to court Lucile. Georges told him when they married, they could move into his building, owned by old friends of Gabrielle’s family. It would work out famously. They would dine together, discuss everything. Georges had a direct line into Camille’s newspaper, The Revolutions of France and Brabant, which was catching on. Camille was famous, but Georges was becoming known too, after being elected president of the Cordeliers.
It was a turbulent district assembly. He had already survived several attempts at unseating him. When he stood up before the district, instead of feeling cowed or intimidated by the rowdy crowd, he felt enlarged. He could raise his voice and fill the room till it reverberated. He could get people out of their seats cheering or shouting. He could give voice to what they wanted, what they hungered to hear said.
Yes, the King’s law court might be gone, but municipal politics had its charms and plenty of openings. He aimed for power, for he believed that a man in power could always make money. He was gathering a group of men around him in the Cordeliers district, radicals able and eager. He could speak to the working people, who were beginning to call themselves “sans-culottes,” he could speak to the shopkeepers and the printers. He could also command loyalty from men he had previously known, Fabre d’Églantine, Camille, Paré, another former lawyer Panis who was also in the district, to all of whom he had thrown work. Around him were many young men with careers to make, who had liberal ideas but also well-honed ambition and great needs. They were his kind. They admired him. They listened to him: men he could count on.
Marat, the foremost radical journalist, had recently taken refuge nearby to escape the police. Lafayette hated Marat and kept trying to lock him up. His presses were regularly destroyed. He had a good woman, Simonne Évrard, who took care of him as well as anybody could, but his life was that of a hunted animal. He would not trim his rhetoric. He denounced what he hated, and the people loved him for his anger. Georges admired Marat but would never emulate him. Martyrdom was not his metier. He had a family to support in what he intended to be considerable style. Gabrielle must not lose this child. They both desperately wanted children. Neither could be complete without them.
He liked his neighborhood, he liked his political allies, he liked leading the troops and making speeches, he liked feeling himself push on the world and make an imprint. He had only begun. And if on the way, some sucker who thought himself far cleverer than Georges wanted to shower money on him, he was not too coy to let it fall in his lap.
At home he waited until he was alone with Gabrielle before opening the book. She was the only person in the world he trusted to know exactly what was going on. Their love was powerful, as solid as the table between them, after two and a half years of marriage. She had her peasant shrewdness and her bourgeois respect for hard cash. Whatever he did was right in her eyes. “A thousand livres,” she said. “My only worry is what he expects for this!”
“It doesn’t matter what he expects. It only matters that I do what I want to, and he can’t ask for it back. Money has its own color. It doesn’t wear livery. And neither do I.”
THIRTY
Claire
(Winter 1789-Spring 1790)
CLAIRE had been happier in Bordeaux than ever before in her life. It felt almost unnatural. Joy in her childhood had been rare and usually followed by catastrophe. Now she had been in Collot’s safe and prosperous company for four years. Few actors left Collot. He had a cruel streak, a temper that could light up an auditorium, contempt for women that Claire was always aware of: but he took care of them. Thus it was like the sky breaking open and the darkness and hail pouring through when Collot called them together still in make-up and costume, just after a performance one Sunday in November.
“I have an announcement to make. I’m going to Paris. If one of you wants to take over the company and run it, be my guest.”
“Are you going on the stage in Paris?” Juliette asked him.
He shrugged. “I’ve had offers, but I’ll decide when I get there. Momentous things are happening, and I can’t sit out here. I want to be part of the Revolution.”
“There’s a lot going on in Bordeaux,” François said defensively. “This is a very revolutionary place.”
“I need to be back where I belong. If you want the company, old man, it’s yours.” Collot put his tricorn hat on and strode off. At the edge of the stage he paused. “We’ll split up the take evenly, like good revolutionaries. See you on the ruins of the Bastille, and I’ll dance a jig with you all.”
Claire didn’t know what to do. François decided he would try to keep the company together, but Claire found him lacking in business sense. Bordeaux had been good to her. She was known, highly thought of as an actress. She wouldn’t have anything if she left in Collot’s wake. Then there was Mendès. She found that relationship a heavy anchor. She loved to be with him. He still interested her, after all these months. But Mendès had his own announcement to make.
“You can go to Paris with me. I’m off in ten days, as soon as I can wind things up here. The Jewish council has asked me to observe the National Assembly and present a petition to be recognized for full citizenship. We hear that the issue is going to be raised in the next month.”
“All right, I’ll go.” She decided on the spot. She didn’t see anything to hold her. She could look over the scene, and when Mendès was ready to return, she could make up her mind. She had never been to Paris. She got Collot to write her a letter before he left about what a good actress she was.
“Claire,” he said. “Nobody is going to hire you because I say you can act. They’ll take you for your looks. You think any Parisian snob cares what a provincial company director says about an actress? Just stick your tits out and smile. You’ll do all right in Paris. You’ll have a job before me.”
Still, he wrote the letter. She was packed for six days before Mendès could tear loose. Once she had decided to go, she was already gone in her mind and endless reiterated farewells made everything stale.
They put up in inns on the road, much like the ones her company had stayed in all over France. But in Paris, Mendès took her to one inn and then set off for another. He said he would be staying in a place for Jewish travelers, where she would not want to accompany him. He was not about to bring her there. She was slightly offended. This was going to work out less well than she had imagined.
From her room that opened onto the street she could hear the roar of Paris, the clatter of hooves, the rolling of wheels on uneven stones, the cries of peddlars, pigeons, dogs, children screeching, horses neighing, the bray of a donkey,
the clatter of a bucket being winched up. The stench was strong. The innkeeper said that when the wind blew from the great dumping ground of garbage and human waste outside the city, that smell was the result. Mendès had told her to stay in the inn and he would come as soon as he could. She ignored that, running downstairs as soon as she unpacked. She hoped he was not under the illusion she planned to sit like a poodle in a window and wait to be taken for a walk. She had a city to learn, a job to find.
By the following Friday, she got a role in a boulevard theater that put on pageants and pantomimes. She was Columbine in a low-cut red-and-blue dress. It was a comedown from Collot’s plays, but she would eat. And she would not be dependent on Mendès. She spoke to the other women, wanting to make friends. They were suspicious, aloof, disdainful. “Girls from the provinces don’t last around here,” one said to her.
“We’ll see who lasts. I’m not worried.”
She did not see a lot of Mendès. He was staying twenty blocks away. He was busy with his politicking, and she was working. The National Assembly was debating extending rights to Jews. On two occasions, she sat with him in the gallery of the former riding school to observe. A scent of horses and their urine still seeped from the walls. Many clerical representatives were violently opposed. So were liberals influenced by Voltaire, who had written anti-Semitic diatribes. But some on the left were strongly in favor. A delegate named Robespierre argued for rights. “Let us remember,” he said at the rostrum, “it can never be politic, it can never be wise, to condemn a multitude living among us to oppression and degradation. That diminishes all our rights.” He spoke with a kind of cold intense precision she thought persuasive. The biggest stir was made by Camille Desmoulins, however, who was not even in the Assembly. He ridiculed the notion of denying rights to Jews by saying that a man would have to take his pants down to vote. It was amazing how politically useful it was to make people laugh. Desmoulins’ joke was repeated all over town.