Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution

by James Tipton

  I demanded.

  “Mademoiselle Vallon?” It was the musical English accent of “Paul has not mentioned that,” Marguerite said.

  “In Paris one hears things before anyone else does,” said my brother. “Have you heard of the Liberty Tree incident and the invasion of the Tuileries?”

  We hadn’t. “Well, it was only two days ago. You’re so isolated down here,” Etienne said. “Do you want to hear what happened?

  Paul will be surprised. I’ll have to repeat it for him at dinner. I’ll just wait till then.”

  “Oh, tell it,” said Angelique. “I know you want to. We look to you for enlightenment.”

  “You are our sole representative of knowledge of the outside world,” I said.

  “Since you acknowledge,” he said, “my august role in this matter, I will.”

  I was glad the conversation had shifted away from me, but I didn’t know what new ill tidings my brother brought from the capital. It’s said, How Paris goes, France goes.

  He looked at us all individually in the eye, then began: “You know the King is in virtual house arrest in the Tuileries—a woebegone palace, if you could see it. Now, on June 20, the anniversary of the royal family’s escape attempt last summer, a Jacobin mob of thousands enters the grounds of the Tuileries, on the pretext of planting a ‘Liberty Tree ’—a bare pole with tricolor ribbons. The National Guard lets them right in. Imagine this: it’s a hot day; these people are sweating; their clothes are dirty anyway; their odor wafts up to the King and his family at the open windows of the Tuileries. So the mob sticks their ridiculous tree in the ground, does a little dance, then—they invade the palace. They’re carrying hatchets, mind you, pikes, all decked with tricolor ribbons. This is their party. One has a miniature lamppost, a filthy doll hanging from it, with ‘Marie Antoinette’ written on a placard beneath it.”

  I felt faintly nauseated.

  “A butcher bears the King a fresh bull’s heart on a plate,” Etienne went on, “and places it before him, with another placard that reads ‘The Heart of Louis XVI.’”

  “Stop,” Marguerite exclaimed. “You’re making Annette ill.”

  “Sorry,” said Etienne, “I didn’t know—”

  “No, finish your story,” I said. “We ’ve heard worse. I’m just thirsty.” I drank the rest of the glass of water.

  “That’s the worst part,” Etienne said. “Now imagine the King, looking rather kingly in his embroidered silk suit and the cordon bleu sash across his broad belly, and the butcher presents to him, on the edge of a pike, a red woolen bonnet—a ‘cap of liberty,’ they call it—and forces him to put it on over his powdered wig. They make him drink toasts to the Revolution.”

  “How humiliating,” Angelique said.

  “They finally make him sit there, in his silly red bonnet, and listen to speeches on what a beast he is. I personally think the king is sunk so deep in melancholy, nothing will shake him out of it—and nothing will shake him. He asked the butcher to feel his heart, to see if it were beating faster, and it wasn’t. The butcher was impressed.”

  We were quiet now, each probably picturing the scene in our own ways. I always found dolls disconcerting myself.

  “Well, it’s inevitable now,” Etienne said. “The government is going to change again. And this time, there won’t be a constitution that will have a place for a king.”

  “I wish they had escaped last year,” Marguerite said. “It must be so hard on their children.”

  “Yes,” Etienne said, “they knocked down the little prince’s door with a hatchet, pulled him into the King’s apartment, and put a red cap on him that was so big it almost covered his face. He couldn’t say anything, just clung to the Queen. It’s reported that all the next day he kept asking, ‘Is it still yesterday?’ The mob had shouted death threats against his mother, whose lady-in-waiting then sneaked her out through a secret exit behind a panel while they lectured the King.”

  “My God,” Marguerite said.

  “The mayor finally arrived and bade the invaders retire—but he’s a Jacobin, like them, so he had done nothing to stop them entering the palace. The mob left laughing and singing. It was good fun for them. Couldn’t have been much fun for the King.”

  “He could have been killed,” Angelique said. “They killed his guards two years ago, paraded their heads on pikes all the way to Paris from Versailles.”

  “Yes, he could have,” my little brother said.

  “Well, you be careful, living in Paris,” I said.

  “It can be a dangerous place, but it’s an exciting place,” he said.

  “And still has the best university in the world. I’m going back early in August, to get a jump on the next term. I’ll be a doctor in a year. I’ll be back here all the time, then.”

  “We ’ve missed you,” I said. “Stay a bit longer.”

  “We can’t go riding together this summer, dear sister, in your interesting condition. What reason is there to stay, then? Ah, we ’ll play cards after dinner,” he said. “We ’ll play cards all night.”

  The Sourd

  The Prussian army had joined the Austrians now.

  There were two fronts, one along the Rhine and one in Flanders. The Allied commander had sent a manifesto to Paris, saying that if the Tuileries were invaded or the least outrage done to the King and his family, all of Paris would pay for it through total destruction. The assembly had officially declared la patrie, the nation, in danger, and Captain Beaupuy’s Thirty-second Bassigny Regiment had now left for the Rhineland front. William missed his good friend.

  He was visiting chez Vincent even more now, and he and Etienne had taken an instant liking to each other. They talked politics together.

  We played cards, and William always lost. We even played charades and laughed at each other’s absurdities.

  In our charades of the night before, William had acted out the word Enragés—“the Madmen”—a group of Jacobins who had recently smashed one of the Girondin presses of William’s friend Brissot. William had been quoting Brissot’s statement in La Patriote Française about the Enragés. It was a serious topic, but we laughed to see the poet pretend to tear his hair, gnash his teeth, and howl on all fours. Etienne finally guessed it, only because he had recently read the article or heard about it. They were talking about it now, as we walked above the Vincent vineyard.

  “He has also called Robespierre a false friend of the people and an enemy of the constitution,” said my brother. “Brissot has courage but not prudence. Soon all the old Friends of the Constitution will be seen as traitors, if Robespierre gets his way.”

  “Just one good man can still save the Revolution from tyranny,” William said.

  “And who is that, Monsieur? Brissot? He lacks the cunning of Robespierre. His friend Louvet? He’s a novelist, not a politician.”

  “I will write another essay,” William said. “I will write of Brissot as a friend of the people and of the constitution, and against the Enragés. A foreign voice can be seen as more impartial.”

  “Or more traitorous,” my brother said. “Anyone can be seen as counter-revolutionary, as having ‘impure blood.’ Have you heard of the song of the fédérés, the united National Guard of the provinces? After killing counter-revolutionaries and burning royalist villages along the way, these fédérés—thousands of them—marched from Marseille to Paris singing a bloody song.

  “Let’s march! Let’s march!

  To soak our soil

  In impure blood.”

  “I’m afraid it’s rather a stirring melody, though,” he said.

  We stood then overlooking the valley. The setting sun lay in bars across the steep green vineyards descending to the river, and streaked the pale blue water with red ribbons. Clouds in the west obscured the sun itself. We heard the sound of the sourd, the insect that sings a melancholy song every summer evening along the Loire. It reminded me of recent lines of William’s.

  “Etienne, you should hear some of Monsi
eur William’s new work.

  You should hear it before you go back to the land of bloody songs,” I said. “It’s in my pocket. May I read it?”

  “I should love to hear it,” Etienne said. “It will be an edifying contrast to the political slogans or songs I’m used to now.”

  I pulled several poems out of my pocket at once and tried to find the most recent one.

  “It appears, Monsieur,” Etienne said, “that you are filling my sister’s head with verse. Well, it can use something in it besides horses and hunting and dance steps.”

  I looked crossly at my brother. “I wanted to share this with you, Monsieur-Man-of-the-World from Paris,” I said. “Listen—

  And oh, fair France! For now the traveller sees

  Thy three-striped banner fluctuate on the breeze,

  And martial songs have banished songs of love,

  And nightingales desert the village grove,

  Scared by the fife and rumbling drum’s alarms

  And the short thunder, and the flash of arms,

  That cease not till night falls, when far and nigh,

  Sole sound: the Sourd prolongs his mournful cry.”

  “‘Martial songs’ ” Etienne said.

  “‘Have banished songs of love,’” I said.

  “Not a good trade-off,” he said. “I’d rather people be drunk on love or nature than on war. It’s a very sorrowful poem, Monsieur. That little insect is crying.”

  “Monsieur William told me that its name is pronounced ’sword’ in English, which means ’saber’—”

  “So even nature is overcome by the presence of war,” Etienne said.

  “Nature may reflect the sadness of humanity,” William said, “but I don’t think she is ever, truly, overcome by it. Witness the river.”

  And we regarded it, blue in the pale sunlight between golden sandbanks. It looked very peaceful.

  “It makes me want not to go back to Paris,” Etienne said. “It makes me want not to go back to where drunken men sing at night in the streets of soaking the soil with blood.”

  They’ve Fallen Early This Year

  On the days William and I didn’t see each other, we wrote to each other. The man seemed to live on nothing at all. I was concerned about how little he seemed to eat, until I realized he really got along fine with eating very little and with walking quite a lot. Some strange northern constitution, I thought. Still, Marguerite and I tried to get him to have as many dinners as possible at chez Vincent and to take bread with him when he left. He lived so frugally. He said it was his custom, and he was sure he had enough money to last through the year.

  Etienne left on the first of August with the count, who had some business in Paris and was happy to have my brother accompany him there. Etienne would spend the voyage in the comfort of an elegant carriage rather than feel the jolts of the diligence, though the count had taken the precaution of painting over his coat of arms—it would be just another carriage in Paris. Benoît, Claudette’s ami, was going as coachman, groom, and valet. The count was traveling light.

  Ten days later, at about one o’clock in the morning, I had just finished writing to William. I was brushing my hair out by an open window, and in between strokes taking sips of a tisane of peppermint leaves that Claudette had prepared for me. I heard the little fountain lapping below. Marguerite had some jasmine planted a year ago by the doors to the terrace, and I could smell it now in the warm night.

  Claudette and I must have been the only ones awake in the house, for when I heard loud knocking on the door, the ancient Pierre did not answer it, nor did Françoise, Marguerite’s maid. My room was closer to the front of the house than Paul and Marguerite’s. I asked Claudette to see who it was and, wrapped in my dressing gown, followed her to the vestibule. She opened the door, and I was shocked to see Benoît and my brother holding up a disheveled and coatless count, who stood between them and leaned on Etienne. I thought the count was drunk. But what were they doing here?

  “Excuse us,” the count said. “There has been some unpleasantness in Paris. You’ll hear about it tomorrow. Could I prevail upon you to give me a room for a night? Didn’t want to go the extra miles to Beauregard—”

  “Come in quickly,” I said, as I ushered them in and Claudette closed the door.

  “He’s been wounded,” Etienne whispered as he half-dragged the count to a settee.

  “Tell me what I can do,” I said.

  “Help me get him to a spare room. Benoît is driving the carriage round to the stable.” We had the count between us now, going down the hall. “It was bad, very bad,” Etienne said. “We got him out before it got any worse. If we had waited till the afternoon, Benoît would have had a hard time driving over the dead bodies of Swiss Guards in the streets.”

  I opened the door of the room across from mine, where William had stayed, and we laid the count on the bed. Now old Pierre appeared, a lamp in his trembling hand, and Claudette carried in a candelabrum and put it on the dresser. Paul entered now, taking it all in. “What’s happened?” he said.

  “The count’s hurt,” Etienne said. “I cleaned and stitched his wound quickly before we left Paris, and once, when we stopped at Orléans, I procured fresh linen and changed his dressings. I will need to do that again now, then he can rest.” Claudette and I fetched the necessary items, the linen, the hot water, and a sponge. My brother retrieved a bag from the carriage and asked us to wait in the salon.

  When Etienne returned, Paul handed him a brandy, and we sat in the salon together. “I thought it better to let Marguerite sleep,” Paul said. “She ’ll find out everything tomorrow. I had Pierre ready a room up for you,” he said to Etienne. “You’ll need to get your rest.”

  Etienne gulped his brandy.

  “The count will be fine. He will recover,” he said. “He just needs his dressings to be changed three times a day.” I felt proud of my brother’s confident manner as the young doctor. He suddenly reminded me of Papa. Etienne paused. “I’d like to tell you something about what happened, if I could, if you’re not too tired. I’m not ready for sleep, myself. And who knows what rumors you’ll hear tomorrow. Benoît’s the one who needs to sleep right away, driving hard for thirteen hours or more.”

  I had my water. Paul also had brandy. Pierre had only lit the candles on the table, and the room around us remained in shadows. My brother’s face came in and out of the light as he leaned forward or back in his chair. “In short,” he said, “so you can go back to your rest, it’s this: the King has now taken refuge in the National Assembly, and they are debating his fate. The royal family fled there when it seemed imminent that the Tuileries would be attacked by thousands of fédérés—perhaps ten thousand—plus a Parisian mob.

  “As soon as I returned to Paris, I noticed the tension in the air. The city was just waiting for something to happen. I myself felt that I was in some fiction—a chapter from Candide, perhaps, when some senseless conflict is about to explode—the quotidian seemed so unreal. But it was exciting, somehow. More fédérés kept coming in every day. Oh, they wanted to fight. I thought, if they have to fight someone, let them stay in the Rhineland and fight the Prussians. But they hate the King and Queen and counter-revolutionaries more than they hate the Prussians. This morning we heard the shots start, around nine o’clock.

  “All the rest I tell you I heard from the count, in our journey down here. It appears that an old friend of the count’s—I believe he said the Vicomte de Maillé—had written him from Paris, saying that the Tuileries were going to be attacked any day, that they needed loyal aristocrats to boost the numbers of the Swiss Guard, since they couldn’t trust the National Guard, which was supposed to protect the King. (Imagine! The King had gone to inspect his own troops, and they had jeered at him.) I think the count, beneath his pragmatic mien, is a romantic at heart, and he couldn’t refuse a call on his honor, even such a quixotic one.

  “The Queen—I suppose in a gesture of gratitude for their courage—ordered all
the remaining troops protecting the palace be given a round of brandy. The King and Queen wanted to stay, but Louis Roederer, the new man the Assembly put in charge of the protection of the Tuileries (the Marquis de Mandat, the King’s man, had been shot to death the day before when he visited the City Hall), convinced them that they had to escape to the Assembly nearby, which hates the King and Queen, for the safety of their children.

  “The count was near a formal garden at the west of the palace and saw them flee silently, surrounded by Swiss Guards, through the garden. He said the Queen was crying. One tall guard carried the little prince on his shoulders, to make better time. The count heard the King remark calmly on the amount of leaves already on the ground in the Tuileries. ‘They’ve fallen early this year,’ he said. The count said he will remember that statement all his life: that is, he said, if he is to live much longer. He will, if he only stays out of trouble.

  “About a thousand of the Swiss Guard, perhaps the most highly trained troops in the world, and who for generations have protected the kings of France, stood like a wall outside the palace and on the grand staircase, within, still guarding the entrance to the chambers of the royal family. Of course the irony in all this is that by now the family had just escaped—the fédérés had lost their reason to attack—but perhaps they had never had much reason anyway. The count thinks the fédérés knew the royals had left. So was it because they were frustrated to lose them? Because they had planned and were primed for an attack? Because of their blind hatred? Who knows?

  They rushed the palace.

  “Now the count said the Swiss are forbidden to attack, that they can only respond with force to force. They had four hundred loyal National Guard and about four hundred aristocrats with them. The Swiss were as silent as could be. When the fixed bayonets came at them, the Swiss probably fired the first shot. But tomorrow you’ll probably hear that the King had ordered his guard to fire on the innocent fédérés. In any case, the Swiss, far more professional than the fédérés, held them off for most of the morning. The count thought the fédérés might withdraw. The mob itself was waiting in the rear, outside of the action. But the Swiss ran out of ammunition. The count told me the firing was so fierce, he had run out by mid-morning and was using theirs.