He shook his head in disgust. “But that would be nothing if she did not openly keep lovers, male and female, for she has both tastes. Yes, my dear, she is a tribade, she enjoys the intimate company of her own sex. Her favourite used to be the Princess de Lamballe, but now the Duchess de Polignac occupies that place. And there are men too. Nobody knows who sired the Queen’s children, including the little Dauphin, heir to the throne. When I was at Court, she could not keep her eyes off the buttons of the Count de Fersen’s breeches. He is a Swede. She used to have the decency to reserve her favours for French noblemen, like the Duke de Lauzun, but no, not anymore. She hates France. Do you know what she calls the Parisians? The frogs of the Seine.” He shrugged. “They do not like her much either. They too have names for her: Madame Deficit and the Austrian Woman. With her spendthrift ways and her depravity, she will bring nothing but disgrace upon the sacred person of the King. Now she is with child again, probably by that Fersen scoundrel.”
Queen Marie-Antoinette’s third pregnancy had just been officially announced. A little prince, Louis-Charles, was born in March of 1785.
Although the Baron expressed little interest in religious matters, we attended High Mass every Sunday.
“We should be seen by the peasants as often as possible,” he said. “I despise those noblemen who live in town or at Court. They leave the management of their estates to bailiffs or such rascals, and are content to collect their rents and feudal duties without ever having anything to do with their vassals. Yet God knows that nothing bores me quite as much as that religious tomfoolery.”
Indeed he spent the divine service with his eyes closed and his chin resting on his chest. Since we sat in the chancel, the entire congregation saw him sleep. Yet he never failed to awaken with a start at the end of Mass. Before we left the church, I would pause to light a candle and kneel before the altar of the Blessed Virgin in a side chapel, to implore her protection against my husband and the favour of presenting him with a son.
His lack of religious fervor did not make him any less popular with the peasants, who were not fond of the priest themselves and resented the tithes they had to pay him. They credited the Baron for being “without pride.” He dressed simply, avoided trampling their crops when hunting and remembered their names and concerns. After Mass, he would stop outside the church to converse with them in the Roman language. Some, bowing and holding their hats with both hands, would then approach him with some plea or other.
Towards the end of my pregnancy, I noticed that Thérèse’s eyes were often red and swollen. One morning, I felt a sudden kick from my child and put my hand to my stomach. She burst into tears.
“Thérèse,” I said, “I think I know what is ailing you.”
Her sobs redoubled.
“How far along are you?”
“About two months, My Lady. I went to a woman in the village, and she gave me some herbs, but nothing’s happened yet. My Lord’ll throw me out, and then my father’ll kill me when he learns of my disgrace.”
“Have you seen a midwife?”
“I can’t. Everybody’d know of my shame if I did.”
I complained of some pain and had the midwife fetched the same afternoon. I asked Thérèse to stay with me during her visit. The girl was indeed with child. When she heard it, she started sobbing again. I took her in my arms and assured her that I would speak to the Baron.
I waited until after he joined me in bed to broach the subject. I had found that it was the time when he was most likely to listen to my requests.
“Thérèse, with child?” he said. “She must be mistaken.”
“I had her examined by the midwife, Sir.”
“And pray what is it to me? Am I to be taken to task whenever a maid misbehaves under my roof ?”
“Certainly not, Sir, but Thérèse is a decent girl. I had the impression that she was a virgin when you took a fancy to her.”
He shrugged. “These things are easy to feign, my dear. Some brothels sell the same whore as a maiden fifty times over.”
“Thérèse is a simple peasant girl. She could not have secured the means to impose on you. Besides, you would not be fooled by such tricks.”
“All right, let us admit for the sake of argument that I took her maidenhead. It does not follow that I fathered her child. Any of those rascals I keep as menservants could have impregnated her.”
“She could not have strayed without your being informed of it. You know how Maryssou watches the servants. She would have been delighted to shame Thérèse in your eyes and have her dismissed.”
The Baron raised himself on one elbow. “Well, now Maryssou will dismiss her as soon as she suspects the truth.”
“Please, Sir, do not let it happen. I know your kindness. One of your vassals might, for some monetary consideration, be induced to marry Thérèse. I would consider it the greatest favour to me as well as to her. It would bring me bad luck to throw out a pregnant girl while I am with child.”
“What a notion! I will see what can be done.” He wagged his finger at me. “But be careful, Gabrielle. Do not imagine that I am completely henpecked yet.”
It is, for everyone’s sake, better to conclude this kind of arrangement before the bride begins to show. Thérèse, within days, became engaged to marry Pierre Petit, a young peasant who lived in a cottage a half-league from Cénac. He was a tenant of the Baron’s and had just purchased a small parcel of his own nearby, which made a little additional money very welcome to him. He was respectably known in the parish and there was no reason to doubt that he would make as good a husband as any other man. Thérèse was overcome with gratitude. Not only did she keep her good name, but she could never have married so well without the Baron’s generosity. General opinion pronounced her, just as it had in my case, the most fortunate bride in the world. Of course, some gossip would later attend the premature birth of her child.
In a way I envied her because, unlike me, she had escaped the Baron. I presented her with a sturdy black wedding gown. In those days, peasant women were married in black clothes, since fabric of that colour was more durable than any other, and could be used for a lifetime of funerals, weddings and other formal occasions. I attended the ceremony, congratulated the new spouses and kissed the bride on both cheeks.
Thérèse had to be replaced. My husband entrusted to me, rather than to Maryssou, the choice of my new lady’s maid. I invited him to have a look at the applicants. He seemed to be hesitating between two of them, equally comely.
“I will soon need a nursery maid as well,” I said. “With your permission, Sir, I will hire both.”
A smile lit his face. “Gabrielle, dearest, you are a good girl.”
16
Monsieur de Laubrac, my husband’s cousin, never acknowledged me more than required by common politeness, and sometimes rather less. Since my pregnancy had been announced, he would cast furtive, unfriendly glances at my stomach. Early in the spring of 1785, he braved a fresh coat of snow to introduce his bride, a stout, loud, pockmarked widow of inferior birth, endowed with a fortune of 60,000 francs. That kind of marriage where an impoverished scion of the nobility wedded a woman for her money was called in French fumer ses terres, which can be translated by “spreading manure upon one’s estate.”
Although I experienced little discomfort throughout my pregnancy, the weather became hot and my back began to ache under the weight of my stomach. I often thought of the late Baroness’s untimely death in childbirth and wondered whether I would meet the same fate.
Early in the morning of the 15th of August 1785, one year to the day after first meeting the Baron, I felt the first pangs of childbirth. The pain, from dull, became close to unbearable. In spite of the midwife’s assurances that all was well, I was convinced that my body was splitting apart and that I would not survive my lying-in. At last I had the relief of hearing, in the late afternoon, the first cry of my child.
“Oh, Madam,” announced the midwife, “it’s a beautiful little gi
rl. I’d be surprised if she didn’t weigh a full nine pounds. Who would have guessed it, with Your Ladyship being so young and slender!”
My heart sank, but my daughter was so pretty that she consoled me as soon as she was handed to me, all bundled up. She had dark blue eyes and the thickest head of black hair I have ever seen in an infant. The maids marveled at her resemblance with me, apart from her colouring. She was perfectly finished, down to the nails of her tiny fingers, which grasped mine with surprising strength.
I dreaded meeting my husband’s eye. No one had mustered the courage to break the news to him. I was sitting in bed, holding my child as a shield when he entered my apartment with an eager look. I closed my eyes for a moment and said a silent prayer. My fears were unfounded. His face fell when I made my announcement, but he raised neither his hand nor his voice. With his forefinger, he pulled the white blanket in which our daughter was swaddled away from her face and glanced at her.
“Well,” he said, “at least she seems healthy enough, which is a good sign for the others to come. I guess it is not your fault, my dear. Just rest and regain your strength. We will try again soon.”
He kissed me on the forehead and left without a second look at our child.
Before giving birth, I had convinced him to allow me to nurse my child. It was less due to the influence of Rousseau’s ideas on the question than to the fact that I could not imagine giving it up to a strange woman for years, as my mother had done with me. The Baron had reluctantly agreed on principle but had reserved the right to curtail what he considered a whim to any term he deemed appropriate. Nursing would of course interfere with my ability to become pregnant again. At the time, many ladies of the nobility bore more children than peasant women because they married far younger and did not feed their own offspring. The fact that I had borne a female was likely to shorten the period during which I would be allowed to nurse. Now that I was holding my daughter in my arms, parting with her seemed unthinkable. My aim was to continue feeding her until she could be weaned or was old enough to drink cow’s milk.
It remained to name my daughter. I had spent hours thinking of names during my pregnancy, but I had not dared mention to the Baron any that were suitable for a girl.
“What about Aimée?” I suggested. “It is the female form of your second Christian name.”
“And a ridiculous one for a grown man. But it was my mother’s name, and it will do for a girl. Call her whatever you like.”
Aimée means “beloved” in French. In happier days, Pierre-André had called me mon aimée, “my beloved.” It had been a year since I had seen him. During that time, I had married and become a mother. The ideas of love or romance I had once entertained had succumbed on my wedding night. However, in a part of my memory I dared not revisit, a faint echo of past feelings survived. So my little girl was christened Aimée Françoise Marie de Laubrac de Peyre. I called her simply Aimée, to remember that I too had once been beloved. My brother was her godfather and Mademoiselle de Carlat, an elderly maiden aunt of my husband’s, her godmother.
“The old sow is rich,” the Baron explained, “and we might as well induce her to leave something to the child. I do not believe that daughters should expect to inherit much from their fathers. It is enough of a nuisance to raise them and marry them off. Hopefully this one will be pretty like you. Some fool will fall in love with her and take her without a sol.”
I agreed readily to the Baron’s choice since I did not want my mother, the Marquise de Castel, to be the godmother. It would have seemed bad luck to let her, like a wicked fairy, approach my little girl’s cradle.
I had naively imagined that, immediately after giving birth, I would feel and look exactly as I had before my pregnancy. I was surprised to be sore, and horrified, when I rose the next day, to see that my waist had thickened and my stomach looked very strange indeed, as if my skin was now too large for my body. The midwife laughed at me when I asked about it.
“What did Your Ladyship expect?” she asked. “It will be another few days before you feel fine, and you will not get your figure back for weeks or even months, maybe not before your next pregnancy. My Lord must be impatient to father an heir and I would not be surprised if you were again with child before long.”
Within three weeks, I was happy to observe that my waist and stomach had returned to their usual proportions.
“You are as slender as ever,” my husband remarked, looking down at my kerchief. “Except for your bosom, of course, and I have no complaints about that. Send for that fool of a midwife. You must be fit to resume your duties now.”
The midwife concurred. When he grasped me that night, I felt as if a knife were plunged into an open wound. Yet I bore the pain without a whimper or a word of protest, afraid that my little girl would be taken away from me if I angered him by my reluctance. I would have endured much worse to keep her with me. She was thriving and outgrew one set of baby linens after the other. I would hold her for hours, rocking her in my arms and singing to her, while her dark blue eyes remained fixed on my face.
My former maid Thérèse also gave birth to the Baron’s offspring. I called on her after she was delivered of a large, healthy boy. Blushing, she asked me whether I would do her the honour of becoming the child’s godmother. I agreed. As long as I remained in Auvergne, I followed little Gabriel’s progress. I sometimes wondered how many other bastards of the Baron populated the surrounding countryside, unacknowledged and unheeded by their father.
One dark and snowy November afternoon, my husband came to my apartment while I was feeding Aimée. He seldom visited there during the day except to use the dressing room with the maids. I moved to rise and curtsey, my daughter in my arms, but he gestured to me to remain seated. He watched us in silence. Aimée’s eyes were slowly closing. The movements of her mouth were becoming lazier. After she dozed off, still clutching my breast with her tiny hands, I gently put her down in the lace-draped cradle where generations of little Peyres had slumbered.
“She is growing like a weed,” remarked the Baron. “I am sure that she can be weaned. If not, find her a nurse. What a notion for a noblewoman to feed her own child!” He was staring at my bare breasts. “I have to admit, though, that it does enhance the size of your bosom.”
I blushed and began to readjust my bodice. He caught both of my wrists to draw me to him. “Stay as you are, my dear. Let us lie down for a minute.”
He led me to the couch. As always, he did, and made me do, what he wanted. Once satisfied, he rose and proceeded to button his breeches and waistcoat. I seized his hand and kissed it.
“Please, Sir,” I said, “let me continue to feed our daughter. I beg you. Just for a few weeks longer.”
He frowned. “Have you not heard what I said? I have shown much patience with you. We have been married for over a year now, Madam, and you are still giving no sign of presenting me with an heir. You will put an end tomorrow to this nonsense.”
I closed my eyes and made no answer.
In anticipation of his decision, which I had been dreading for some weeks, I had begun to introduce into Aimée’s diet, much to her annoyance, gruel made from cow’s milk. I found a peasant woman nearby who had a boy of the same age and agreed to come to Cénac during the day. I watched, with feelings of bitter jealousy, my daughter root for her breast instead of mine. Aimée was apparently healthy enough to become accustomed to this regimen without any ill effects.
By January of 1786, two months later, I was with child again. I was afraid of bearing another girl. The Baron made no effort to hide his misgivings. We never regained the hopeful feelings of my first pregnancy.
One afternoon in late July, I felt a sharp pain low in my back and was taken to bed. I was only six months along. The midwife kept repeating, a terrified look on her face:
“Don’t worry, My Lady, you’ll be fine.”
“What about my child?” I asked between two pangs. “Is it going to be stillborn?”
“It’ll be
fine too. Just don’t worry.”
Her assurances sounded hollow, and I knew that my husband would blame me if anything went wrong. All of a sudden, I heard through the closed door his voice yelling oaths. He had come home earlier than expected and must have been informed that I had gone into labour. He burst into my apartment, booted and still holding his riding whip. My heart stopped for a moment, then started beating so fast that my chest felt ready to burst. I had been until then only moaning, but began crying aloud, not in pain but in terror. The midwife, although she had the good fortune not to be married to him, joined her screams to mine.
“Bitch,” he shouted, glaring at me, “what have you done?”
He was advancing fast towards me. Never before, not even during my wedding night, had I been so afraid of him. I gathered my remaining strength to rise and run away, but with one hand he caught me by the shoulder while he raised his whip with the other. Blows were raining on my arms, my breasts, my stomach. I felt something warm gushing between my thighs. I fainted.
I came to my senses too late to see my son alive. The midwife had baptized him in haste so that the poor innocent could attain eternal salvation. It tore my heart to behold the tiny body, so frail, so raw. I mourned that child, whose white coffin had to be pried from my arms for burial. I was not recovered enough to attend his funeral.
The Baron was content afterwards to look at me in a resentful and malevolent manner. I was pronounced fit to resume my duties even sooner than after the birth of Aimée. Yet I failed to become pregnant. I was terrified of having become barren.
Mistress of the Revolution: A Novel Page 11