Finding Emilie

by Laurel Corona

  “As black as a raven,” Voltaire said. “Do you see what she’s holding?”

  “A compass and a carnation.”

  Voltaire smiled. “She had the portrait painted for me. I knew what it meant the minute I saw it. She was offering me her passion—that’s the white carnation—but at the same time the compass was telling me she would never let anyone interfere with her right to use her mind. And of course that was what I loved most about her.” He paused. “Did you read the book I gave you?”

  Lili sat in the chair closest to the portrait, where the air felt bathed with her mother’s presence. “More than once.”

  “Apparently I didn’t incur the complete loss of your affection by letting you read about me. I’m afraid I didn’t always behave well, and I certainly was never much of a lover,” Voltaire said with a rueful smile, “although I suppose it’s in poor taste to offer any of the details.”

  Germond came in with a tray, relieving Lili of the awkwardness of a reply. She took a sip of coffee. “She said happiness involves both living passionately and being able to let go when the passion is no longer there.”

  “Yes, and isn’t that the trick—the letting go? We were truly excellent friends, far more satisfying than being lovers, but I don’t think she lived long enough to take her own advice about Monsieur Saint-Lambert.”

  Saint-Lambert. “I saw his portrait in a drawer at Cirey,” Lili said. “I’ve been trying to accept that the man I always assumed was my real father has no blood connection to me at all, and that the man who is my father gets up in the morning and takes coffee just as I’m doing now.” A lump grew in her throat. “And that neither of them feels anything for me”—she swallowed hard—“or I for them.”

  She caught a tear before it could fall. “I take it,” Voltaire said, “that the last part is something you’d like to convince yourself of.” He passed her a neatly pressed handkerchief from a stack on his bedside table.

  Lili wiped her eyes. “I can deal with Saint-Lambert,” she said. “It feels like teasing one of the specimens at the Jardin de Roi, trying to get it to lie in place. I can think about him without feeling it has anything to do with me, however odd that may sound. But my father—” Her attempt at a laugh came out as a wilted sniff. “My not-my-father. That’s harder to bear, because I suppose I spent my life hoping …”

  Voltaire waited to see if she would continue and when she did not, he spoke. “There are many kinds of passion, and one of the most painful ones is hoping in vain. I am certain your mother would tell you that you need to let go of what isn’t going to happen, if you are going to choose to be happy.”

  Lili sighed. “I suppose you’re right. But I’ve been wondering about what you said yesterday—that the solution to my problem was right under my nose. Did you mean that Saint-Lambert could help me somehow? That if he acknowledged he was my father, he would have the right to contract my marriage?”

  Voltaire sat up straighter. “You are a very clever girl,” he said, “but that’s a very distressing idea indeed, and one that I don’t think your mother would approve of at all. We went to great pains to cover up your true paternity, and a scandal now would do neither the dead nor the living any good.”

  Lili’s spirits deflated. Voltaire had rejected the only idea she had come up with. “Couldn’t he just go quietly to Baronne Lomont and tell her to leave me alone?”

  “She would refuse to receive him. He would know that, and he wouldn’t embarrass himself by trying. The Marquis du Châtelet must be viewed as your father for propriety’s sake, and you, my dear, benefit from that more than anyone. Do you really want, at this point in your life, to be reborn as the bastard child of your mother’s illicit affair? If you want to destroy any chance of choosing the things that will make you happy, that’s a good place to start.”

  “But you told me the answer is obvious, and I can’t see what else it might be.” Her anger flashed at what she thought was a hint of glee in Voltaire’s smile. “Can’t you please tell me? I feel as if I’m drowning and you won’t lend me a hand.”

  “No, I won’t,” he told her. “You can figure it out yourself. God gave us the gift of life, but it’s up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well. You can trust me that a solution exists right under your nose. You don’t have to feel you have no choice but to go back to Paris and settle for something that runs contrary to living well. Having confidence in that is my gift to you, but I will hand you nothing more.”

  He was silent for a moment. “Look at me, Lili,” he finally said.

  She took the handkerchief away from her face and raised her eyes to meet his. The gleeful look was gone, replaced by tenderness so profound her eyes welled with tears again. “You must think things through for yourself,” he said. “If I have had one message for the world in all my work, that is it. And it’s my message for you too. I know I’m doing what your mother would want. You need to see yourself as more than a helpless girl, dependent on others, to have the strength to create a good life. That’s what your mother did.”

  He looked at her with a gleeful smile. “Mon Dieu, at eighteen you’ve already had the courage to go off by yourself in search of what you need. She would be so proud.”

  He was right about depending on herself, much as she hated to admit it. She looked over her shoulder at her mother’s portrait. “Look at my hands,” the eyes seemed to say. “Your passions and your mind. You can have them both—it’s the message I chose. A message for you.”

  The sound of a man’s frantic voice echoed in the vestibule, followed by the click of boots in the salon. A man rushed into the bedroom. Over his clerical collar lay strands of hair tangled from what had obviously been a fast ride on horseback.

  “They executed La Barre in Abbeville!” he said. “Those dogs!”

  Voltaire had already thrown off the bedcovers. “Germond! Get me my clothes!” He hopped around on his skinny legs until Germond handed him his pants. Holding on to the back of the chair, he put them on without sitting down. He pulled off his nightshirt, revealing protruding ribs and flaccid skin the color of skimmed milk, before Germond got a clean silk undershirt on him.

  When he had finished dressing he headed across the salon to the library, with Lili, Germond, Father Adam, and now Michon in his wake. “Shall I …?” Michon said.

  “Yes, coffee for everyone,” Voltaire said, waving her off. “And bring the brandy too.”

  “Tell me the details,” Voltaire demanded of Father Adam as he motioned him to sit. Lili sat down also, choosing a chair out of Voltaire’s sight just in case she hadn’t been invited.

  Father Adam patted his coat over the inside pocket. “I came off without the letter, I was in such a hurry,” he said. “But I remember what it said. La Barre received no royal pardon, even after the papal nuncio and the bishop requested it.”

  “No royal pardon from a death sentence for not doffing his hat at a crucifix in a parade?” Voltaire eyes flashed with anger. “That’s the only thing the prosecutors could prove he did!”

  “They took him to the scaffold wearing a sign that said he had been found guilty of impiety, blasphemy, and sacrilege—”

  “Sacrilege? The judges agreed there was no evidence he was the one who smeared filth on the statue of Christ in the cemetery. It was obviously someone else and they know it!” Voltaire banged his hand so hard on his desk that the inkwell rattled. “And blasphemy for singing a few dirty songs in a tavern with his friends, and having a pornographic novel in his room? One dies for this in France?”

  “What did you expect?” Father Adam said, as Michon put down the tray. She motioned to the brandy and he nodded. “Just a little. That lawyer Duval wanted him to die, and he was going to die even if all he’d done was blow his nose during mass.”

  Voltaire’s chest heaved, as if he were trying to hold back an explosion. “This is partly my fault, you know. When they found that novel they also found my dictionary. That’s what that bastard Duval really wanted to say. �
�Read Voltaire at your peril. If you decide to think, you’re risking your life.’”

  “It is not your fault,” Father Adam said. “Of course, you could always let an old defrocked priest forgive your sin with a little wave of my hand …” Voltaire snorted in derision but calmed a little at the priest’s joke. “But really,” Father Adam went on, “unless you are saying you were wrong to write it, you aren’t at fault that he decided to read it.”

  Father Adam tossed down his coffee and poured another cup that was mostly brandy. “La Barre made that choice—and apparently he didn’t regret it. The letter said he laughed when they read the sentence on the scaffold, and laughed even harder when he saw the name of the friend who was smart enough to escape written on a sign above an empty noose.”

  “He laughed?” Lili gasped.

  Voltaire didn’t hear. “What happened then?” he demanded.

  “They cut off his head and threw it on a bonfire.” Father Adam stared at Voltaire for a moment. “Along with a copy of your Philosophical Dictionary.”

  The same dictionary she had found so amusing? Lili knew people got thrown in jail for crossing the authorities—Voltaire himself had—but hanging a man and desecrating his body just for having a forbidden book in his room? A memory of the nun at the abbey slapping her face for having Rousseau’s Emile made her stomach churn. This is France? Lili thought with dismay. This is the society the Comte de Buffon believes is improving?

  Voltaire spun in the direction of the door. “Germond!” he called out. “Pack my bag,” he said when the valet came in. “You know that bonfire was a message for me,” he said to Father Adam. “Are the police on the way?”

  “No sign of them yet—but you’re wise to expect them.”

  As he turned to leave, Voltaire seemed to notice for the first time that Lili was there. “I must get across the Swiss border,” he said. “This is likely to blow over in a few weeks, but I do not intend to allow the imbeciles running this country to subject me to even one night in their jail.” He looked at Father Adam. “What day is today? When does the next coach to Paris leave?”

  Lili’s heart sank. “Tomorrow morning,” Father Adam said.

  “You’ll be safe here, with Madame Denis and Father Adam.” Voltaire clasped his cold, dry hands over Lili’s. “The authorities don’t want anyone but me. Still, you should take the coach to Paris no later than next week. It isn’t going to be pleasant here for a while, I’m afraid.”

  LILI STOOD ON the steps of the château less than two hours later, watching Voltaire’s coach disappear down the road. Charcoal-colored thunderheads had gathered over the mountains behind the château, and she saw the first flash in the sky, followed by a loud, crackling boom. A gust of wind sent fallen leaves swirling across the driveway just as the first drops of rain spotted the ground. “Best get inside, mademoiselle,” Michon said. “It’s not good that he had to go off in this, but no need for you to get a soaking too.”

  Wordlessly, Lili walked back through the vestibule and into the salon. The room seemed drained of life, not just from the clouds covering the sun, but as if the house knew that Voltaire was gone. I don’t want to be here with Madame Denis and Monsieur de La Harpe, Lili thought with an inadvertent shudder of mistrust.

  She went to Voltaire’s bedroom and picked up the nightshirt Germond had not yet put away. She draped it on the chair beneath her mother’s portrait. Taking a candle, she held it up to examine the face more closely. “I’m still here,” the eyes seemed to say. “Still waiting.”

  Tell me the answer, Lili pleaded silently. If it doesn’t involve Saint-Lambert, then—

  A flash of light illuminated the garden behind her, followed almost immediately by a louder and more immediate clap of thunder. Lili stood transfixed in front of the portrait, as what felt like lightning traveled through her mind. “That’s it!” she said to the face in the portrait. She pressed her fingers to her lips, and stood on her toes to touch her mother’s rosy cheeks and whisper her thanks.

  She found Michon in the dining room. “Please ask Justine and Louise to pack my bags immediately,” she told her. “And tell Stephane to go to the stables to see about a carriage. We’ll be taking the Paris coach tomorrow.”

  DRESSED IN HER traveling clothes, Lili waited in Voltaire’s library while the carriage was loaded. In Voltaire’s desk, she had found a stack of vellum sheets, and she was using her last hour at Ferney to finish the story she was writing as a gift for Voltaire. Her eyes lit on what she had already written and she read it again.

  “Look at those men!” Tom said, tugging on Meadowlark’s sleeve.

  She turned around just in time to catch a glimpse of a small group, all with crooked noses and flattened cheeks. “What happened to their faces?” she asked.

  “The king fell out of a tree once and landed on his face,” a girl said. “He had two terrible black eyes and a broken nose. They wanted to show how devoted they were, so they bashed their faces in with boards.” The girl gave a furtive glance around. “The king healed quite nicely. Most people think those men were quite foolish to do that, since they don’t look like him at all anymore, but we admire them greatly all the same. See the medals around their necks? They’re Knights of the Royal Order of Self-Bashers. The king established it to honor them for their devotion.”

  Lili smiled, imagining Voltaire cackling as he read it. She skimmed to the end of what she had written and picked up her pen to add more.

  Meadowlark and Tom left the ceremony for the Return of the Four Wanderers and found Comète in a nearby pasture. As they flew over the mighty Amazon, Meadowlark pulled back on the reins. “Who’s that?” she asked Tom, pointing down toward a young man paddling a boat. She guided Comète to a landing on the banks. “Are you the missing Fourth Wanderer?” she asked.

  “I am.” The young man nodded with a wide grin.

  “They’re waiting for you back there,” Tom told him. “Did you find a place where people are happier? We heard that’s what they send you out to do, but you’re not supposed to find any. It makes people happier at home when you don’t.”

  “No, I didn’t,” the Fourth Wanderer said. “Things are much the same everywhere. But I’ve discovered I’m happier out here on the river, with no one telling me what to do or think, and I’ve decided I’m never going back.” He looked at the two of them. “Do you think that’s wrong? Maybe I could convince people that bashing their faces in has nothing to do with happiness at all.”

  Lili thought for a moment. She hadn’t known exactly how to end the story, but now it came to her.

  “I’ve wandered the world a little myself,” Meadowlark said gravely, “and I can tell you something you’ll probably find wherever you go.”

  “What’s that?” the young man asked.

  “It’s easier to bash one’s skull in than to think with the mind inside it.”

  Lili blotted the last words. After signing her name, she sat looking at the page for a moment. “Thank you for making me think for myself,” she added. “I’m off to live well. With deep affection, your Lili.”

  THE COACH STOPPED overnight at Bar-sur-l’Aube, but in the morning, Lili was not on it. She, Justine, and Stephane were rattling back along the road to Cirey, not in Anton’s cart, but in a carriage Lucien brought from the château. A few days later, they returned, and when the next coach came through Bar-sur-l’Aube, Lili was once more on her way to Paris.

  “I pray this will work,” she had written to Delphine the night before she left. “And if not, I will strive to be happy, whatever happens.” From time to time for reassurance, she slipped her hand into her satchel, where, tucked next to the pouch containing her mother’s prism, there were three letters with wax seals imprinted with the crest of the Marquis du Châtelet.

  GEORGE-LOUIS LECLERC, COMTE de Buffon, got up from his chair at the valet’s announcement that Mademoiselle du Châtelet had dropped in to see him. “Lili!” he said, opening his arms wide before kissing her cheek. “Are you ba
ck from Étoges already?”

  “Not exactly,” Lili replied. “At least not from Étoges. It’s rather a long story. Do you have time?”

  “For you, my dear, always,” he said. “But perhaps I may exact a favor in kind. I have bones from a South American rodent on the table over there—”

  “A gift from Jean-Étienne, I imagine,” Lili said, practicing her resolve not to have unreasonable hopes.

  “Indeed.” The count looked at her quizzically. “It’s a bit too difficult for me with my poor, old eyes. I was working on it when you were announced, and I was telling myself to stop before I destroyed it altogether, but as usual I was being rather stubborn about it.”

  He sat down on a comfortable armchair directly across from Lili. “I saw Baronne Lomont at a funeral last week, and she said you were coming back in a matter of days from Étoges and that you would be married by the end of the year. She wouldn’t say to whom. Odd—something about not being at liberty yet to publish the bans …”

  “If I am betrothed, I am not aware of it,” Lili said icily.

  The count stroked his chin and gave her a penetrating stare. “So, if you haven’t been at Étoges, where, pray, have you been?”

  “Cirey,” Lili said, waiting to see the name register in his mind. “And Ferney.”

  “With Voltaire?” The count’s eyes widened with astonishment.

  “Yes, and with my—with the Marquis du Châtelet. Delphine concocted the story that I was at Étoges, but I was never there at all.” Lili smiled. “Apparently it worked, since the whole point was to fool the baronne. I’m sure Delphine will be most delighted.”

  “Fool the baroness?”

  Lili sighed. “Baronne Lomont told you her intentions, not mine. I went off to see if I could do anything about it, and I discovered—at least I think I did—that I can.” She opened the bag she was carrying and handed the three letters to the count. “I’ve come up with a plan.”

  He sat down and read the letters. At first his brow furrowed with puzzlement, but by the time he had read them twice he was chuckling with undisguised glee. “You clever girl!” he said, wiping his eyes. “You are certainly your mother’s daughter.”