Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution

by James Tipton

  This present Christmas saw the royal family truly imprisoned in the Tuileries. They had tried to escape in June, but had bungled it and were caught close to the border near a town called Varennes. The National Guard escorted them back to Paris in shame, disgrace, and utter mistrust. If the King had any credibility left, it was gone after the flight to Varennes. It would be improper to discuss this final blow to the sham authority of the King, though, among the people in silks and velvets at chez Dubourg. Nevertheless, my family, in private, had gone over the what-ifs of the aborted escape many times.

  Paul held out hope that things could settle down now. He thought we could have a constitutional monarchy, like Great Britain with their king and parliament. He said that would be the most stable government, for struggles were already rife within the National Assembly that ruled France, power shifting almost monthly between different men, like a ball they kicked to or stole from each other.

  Anyone who still believed in having a king of any sort was called a royalist. But there were different types of royalists: those like Paul, who wanted a peaceful transformation; those, like the Varaches, who, threatened by the instability, simply emigrated; and those who secretly accepted no change and quietly waited for the King’s restoration to power, to be brought about by his brothers and their émigré armies forming abroad. Chez Dubourg was a royalist household, perhaps of the third category.

  The greatest change for me, though, on our way to Orléans, was that Monsieur Vergez, a poor substitute, was sitting in Papa’s place in the old family carriage in which Vergez had installed new velveteen curtains. He said he wanted to keep out the glares of the commoners.

  As a lawyer, though, he supported all the new laws that supported them.

  Vergez became garrulous about business matters regarding Grégoire, the new constitutional bishop of Blois. Grégoire had secured his title by taking an oath that his first priority of allegiance was to the republican constitution and not to his religion, an oath any self-respecting priest would not take and which would, in the near future, cause much strife throughout France. Vergez said he planned to please Grégoire in a case involving a priest who would not take the new oath, though Vergez loathed Grégoire for being a revolutionary.

  My stepfather was also planning to ask the bishop to recommend him, Vergez, to a seat on the new trade tribunal. My mother seemed untroubled by this hypocrisy.

  I opened the Romance of the Rose:

  I bathed my face in clear water,

  The bottom paved with shining stones

  and Maman took that moment to enumerate to me the young men I’d meet in the coming season in Orléans. I reflected, not for the first or last time, that when you are reading, others think they can disturb you because you are not doing anything.

  So I asked, in my own non sequitur, had she noticed that we were traveling the same route, north along the river, that Joan of Arc’s troops had taken in 1429 to end the siege of Orléans? She didn’t seem interested in my historical allusion. His own speech finished, Vergez was asleep, his head against the velvet.

  I peeked out the heavy curtains at the endless brown and white, stubbly wintry fields and bare poplars that marched up long narrow roads to isolated farms and searched out the two towers of Sainte-Croix Cathedral that would signal that we were approaching Orléans.

  Finally we arrived, driving down the rue Royale. After the long hours of empty road the street was suddenly crowded with carts and carriages, its shops lit in the wintry dusk, and men and women hurrying home in their long coats with high collars or in billowing capes. I was impatient to get out of the carriage.

  Slowed at times to a standstill by the traffic, we finally turned left on the rue de Bourgogne, which led to the old porte through which Joan had entered to the cheers of the people. We stopped in front of a large stone house with two lanterns lit outside, and the Dubourgs’ footman rushed out to greet us. Soon we were in the lit vestibule, enfolded by the embraces of the Dubourgs and of the Vincents, who had journeyed in their own carriage.

  Monsieur Dubourg, small and portly, with a powdered and curled wig, bent over my hand and smiled with real affection. His tall, thin wife, with a heaped-up coiffure that made her still taller, loomed above him and lowered herself, giraffe-like, to bestow on me two kisses and a lavender scent, and the words that I still looked as young and pretty as ever. Twenty-two and unmarried, I wasn’t sure if this was a compliment. She was my mother’s best friend, and they disappeared into the front salon, already lost in low and urgent gossip.

  Monsieur Dubourg took my arm and led me into another room, firelit, with a couch embroidered with Chinese-style boughs. I took my perch on a branch with Marie and Gérard on either side, and Monsieur Dubourg offered me a glass of eau-de-vie. Angelique had arrived at chez Dubourg to start the round of fêtes a week early, and now she and Etienne entered together with delight at our reunion.

  The Christmas season had arrived, and the first dance would be here, tomorrow night, in chez Dubourg’s small but elegant ballroom, walls festooned with ribbons and gilded flowers, as real as if they were alive.

  Etienne pulled a small box, tied in saffron silk ribbon, from his pocket and insisted that I open it straightaway. It was a watch on a gold chain, and inside it I beheld a painted miniature of a sorrel horse—the likeness of La Rouge. My brother laughed. “I thought you would rather look at a portrait of your horse than of me,” he said.

  “La Rouge does have smaller ears.”

  “So you like my longer hair,” he said, and I stood up and kissed him on both cheeks. It was good, after all, to be together again. One could almost imagine Papa, shedding his cloak in the vestibule, hastening to join us. I could hear his deep voice as he entered the room.

  I could see us all rushing up to him.

  I sat there on an oriental bough, with a golden bird behind me, and allowed myself the luxury of imagining, for a moment, that our world had not changed, not changed at all.

  BOOK II

  1791–1792

  The Foreigner

  The harpsichord music chimed pleasantly through the drone of voices. I sat sipping Monsieur Dubourg’s felicitous Poire William and enjoying its warmth when I accidentally caught the eye of a young man in dark green silk stockings. He asked if he could sit down, and I was angry that now I would not be alone with the music and the taste of the wine. A servant came by. “What are you drinking?” asked green stockings.

  “Eau-de-vie.”

  “You’re too young to drink that by yourself.” He requested one.

  “Enjoying the fête?”

  “Very much so.”

  “It’s good to see so many elegantly dressed ladies in these republican times. What are you called?”

  “Mademoiselle Annette Vallon.”

  “I am Monsieur Letour of Bordeaux. My father owns a grand vineyard in the Médoc, and I’m the personal guest of the vicomte and vicomtesse de Fresne d ’Aguesseau. Perhaps you’ve heard of them?”

  I nodded. The vicomtesse had snubbed my mother once because, though my father’s family was old and respected in the Loire region, it had no title. Then, as if to make up for a rudeness that, after all, wasn’t intentional but just a reflex of her class, the vicomtesse said to Maman, “What a lovely coiffure,” and to me, “What nice amber ringlets.”

  “Are you from Orléans?” Monsieur Letour asked.

  “From Blois.”

  “I visited the grand château there on my tour. It is an amazing montage, this wing of one century, that wing two centuries before, old Catherine de Medici’s room with secret panels hiding shelves where she kept poisons.”

  “I never really liked her.”

  “But she was better than her son Henri III.”

  I could hear the oboes stepping lightly over the buzz of voices. It had been months since I had talked at a fête to a strange and eager young man. It can be very tedious. Monsieur Letour from Bordeaux continued to tell me about the history of my city. “I was in the act
ual room on the second floor where Henri III murdered the duc de Guise, who ruled Paris. Do you believe in phantoms?”

  “It depends.”

  “I think I heard the ghost of Henri telling his mother, ‘I alone rule France! The King of Paris is dead!’ Do you know what I heard her phantom answer?”

  I remembered the line that every schoolchild in Blois knows. “I forget,” I said.

  “She said, ‘I hope that you have not now become the King of Nothing!’ Isn’t that clever? ‘The King of Nothing’!”

  “Perhaps that could be said about our present king, shut away, as he is, in the Tuileries.”

  I had willfully committed an indiscretion, and Monsieur Letour regarded me as if trying to assess if I were a revolutionary in a blue satin gown with a lawn kerchief and sleeve ruffles. I was bored with acting as if nothing had changed, as if the King were still hunting happily on the vast grounds of Versailles. Monsieur Letour finally decided to overlook my bad manners. I was just a woman, after all.

  “The King of Nothing,” he went on, “then killed the duke’s brother, just to make sure, I guess, then burned both bodies and let the Loire take the ashes. He thought of everything.”

  “I like that the windows aren’t symmetrical,” I said.

  “What windows?” asked my guest.

  “Of the château.”

  “Oh, they are horrible.”

  “They were made to harmonize with what was inside. No one cared about symmetry,” I said.

  “That wouldn’t happen now,” said the man from Bordeaux, “though the vicomte and vicomtesse both say contemporary architecture—”

  Then from the door I heard a familiar voice calling, “Annette! Annette!”

  “Pardon me. It’s my sister.” I went to greet Marguerite and Paul, handsome in his gray velvet coat but looking a little tired, and my younger sister, Angelique.

  “The dancing is going to start,” said Marguerite. “I know how you hate to miss the first one.”

  “You will join us, won’t you?” Paul asked.

  “And bring your new friend,” whispered Angelique. “He’s already missing you.”

  I could feel his eyes on me and wanted to slip with my sisters into the ballroom. Instead, remembering my manners, I returned to the table. “Who are your sister’s friends?” my guest asked.

  “Her husband and my other sister.”

  “You have a good-looking family.”

  “Thank you. They say the dancing is beginning.”

  “Shall we go?” We left our glasses on the table. My heart lifted at the sight of dancers forming into circles in the little jewel of a ballroom. Angelique raised the tip of her fan, and we joined them.

  “Who is your friend?” she whispered to me. I had forgotten his name. I only remembered whom he wanted me to associate him with, the vicomte and vicomtesse. He stood beside me, conspicuous in his nonidentity, and I looked helplessly at Angelique.

  “May I present myself. I am Monsieur Letour of Bordeaux and guest of the vicomte and vicomtesse de Fresne d ’Aguesseau.” I noticed Angelique raise her eyebrows. I presented my family, and he had just time to kiss Angelique’s hand before the music started.

  I love dancing. I do not care who my partner is. When I move to music, nothing else exists for that time. My partners sometimes think the enchantment is of their making. I let them think that, as long as it does not interfere with my transport. This was a lovely minuet, and I recognized in it the lightness of the young Austrian composer who had recently died. His music belongs to the old world of refined movements, of lace and silk rustling, of courtesy and charm (though Papa had seen him play in Paris once, and it seems from what he said, Herr Mozart would be now what is called a citizen, not a subject, and would not have cared for ceremony, though his music soars in an ordered universe of grace).

  I could see the gloved hand of Monsieur Letour being extended toward me. I smiled and whisked forward and back. Gloves are convenient things. His powdered face smiled back, and the lace at his wrist brushed the folded fan dangling at mine. Under the chandelier of a hundred wax tapers his powdered wig gleamed white, and the music picked up my feet. They knew the right steps, and I had no thought of them. Over the green silk collar of Monsieur Letour I saw a wigless, fair-haired stranger standing by himself at the door.

  His hair was wet from the rain and hung loosely to his shoulders. He looked like a citizen. His face was suntanned and without powder.

  He stood there unsmiling and seemed nervous, as if he would at any minute bolt back out into the winter night.

  When the minuet was over, Marguerite brushed by me, waving her fan, and smiled. It was cold outside, but the fire in the hearth and the warmth of the dancers in their velvets and silks were making pearls of perspiration under the ringlets on the back of my neck. I excused myself and walked toward the door and felt the cool air from the hall on my bare shoulders and throat. The strange fair-haired man stood at the edge of the hall and the ballroom, as if he were about to enter either one, but having no immediate purpose, hovered there, glancing at the thronging people and fingering one of the buttons on his plain brown frock coat. For a moment I was in the path of his glance.

  He stared at me, then purposefully looked at the orchestra, as if he were inspecting to see if the candles were properly fixed on the music stands.

  The cooler air in the hall felt good, and the music started again, sounding beautiful without anyone to interrupt it.

  “Mademoiselle Vallon.” Madame Dubourg was dressed for a grand occasion in a robe à la turque, an embroidered red satin robe, over a skirt of Chinese silk with stripes that looked faintly like bamboo. “Are you enjoying yourself?”

  “Yes, thank you. A fine chamber orchestra.”

  “I forgot that you know so much about music. You studied singing and dancing some years ago with that handsome teacher, did you not? I saw you dance with him at the château de Beauregard. Both so charming and accomplished.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Annette, I want you to do me a favor. Will you talk for a moment with an Englishman from Cambridge University? He was invited here tonight by his landlord on the rue Royale, Monsieur du Vivier, who is a friend of my husband. Monsieur du Vivier made the mistake of promising the Englishman he would introduce him to Orléans society. So now he is here, and I don’t know what to do with him. He doesn’t know anyone; his French is poor, and his clothes are worse. But I hear he is an educated gentleman. I will introduce you.”

  She ushered me over to the damp-headed stranger, and when she presented me to him, his eyes regarded me sharply. Madame Dubourg mumbled an awful foreign surname. As she left us she said in my ear, “Get him to practice his French. If he is going to come to our fêtes, it is embarrassing to have him looming around in silence.” Then he and I were standing alone together at the entrance of the ballroom.

  “How long have you been in France?” I asked.

  “About a month.”

  “How do you like it?”

  “I like it very well.” His French was not as bad as Madame Dubourg had said. It was just slow.

  “Lovely music, isn’t it?”

  “It’s very pretty.” Then he ventured on a longer sentence. “I like watching the people dance. Do you like to dance?”

  “Yes, very much.” In the long pause I thought he was going to ask me to accompany him to the floor.

  “I am afraid I do not dance very well,” he said. I could see him translating and conjugating verbs in his head. His eyes would wander to the ceiling as he spoke. When they returned to me, they were the opposite of his speech. They looked on after his sentence had ended, as if they were speaking after his words had stopped. They certainly made more interesting conversation. What were we going to do if he could not dance?

  “Shall we sit over there?” I asked. We sat down on a small settee in the music room, but the harpsichordist had gone to have his brief supper. Only two or three people were left in the room. I saw the unfin
ished liqueur glasses still sitting on the table. On the wallpaper next to us a bird, its tiny mouth open, sang surrounded by a forest of blossoms. As soon as the foreigner sat down, he looked at me again with his eyes that seemed not embarrassed to stare, and now it was I who looked away.

  He started on his own: “This is a very grand house. I have seen something very interesting here.” He was out of his depth. He could not tell me what was so interesting. “On the...walls there are...”

  He flapped his arms, as if he were about to take off from the settee. I almost laughed and stopped myself. I didn’t want to embarrass him.

  He was wonderfully different.

  “Birds,” I said.

  “Birds, of course,” he said. “I know that word. How stupid of me. Isn’t that amusing that bête, ’stupid,’ is the same word in French as beasts. I don’t think that beasts are necessarily stupid. I know many humans who are more stupid than some horses I’ve known.”

  Now I did laugh, not at him, but at his delightful insight.

  “What did you say you were called?”

  “William Wordsworth.”

  “You have an unpronounceable name.”

  “Try it.” He had a gently mischievous smile.

  I could not get my tongue and lips around his foreign name, and mangled it.

  “Close,” he said. “William, with an L as in ‘Loire.’ Then Wordsworth.”

  “William.”

  “Very good.”

  Then I mangled his surname again. It came out something like “Woodswoods,” and he laughed and said he preferred it.

  “I am supposed to be helping you with French.”