56
The mood was changing. The bawdy celebrations of the Old Regime, such as the ones that had attended Mardi Gras, were now banned as indecent. Fashions too were different. Ladies’ dresses became simpler and narrower. No one wore hoopskirts anymore, even at Court. The difference for men was still more striking. They wore their hair shorter, untied and without powder. They dressed in dark clothes of plain cloth, cut in the American style. Embroidered garments, for males and females, would now have looked very odd.
I was taken aback the first time I saw Villers go out with his hair loose on his shoulders and its natural reddish blonde colour, for there was no grey in it although he was past forty. Until then, I had seen him in this manner only in our intimacy. Oddly enough, Robespierre, the most extreme advocate of reform in some regards, remained faithful to the old fashions and wore his hair long, tied and powdered.
Many other changes of greater import occurred. The new Assembly was controlled by a group who would come to be known as the “Girondins,” after the Department of Gironde, around Bordeaux, whence many came. They tended to be Republicans in their ideals, and were wary of the King’s intentions. At the same time, they distrusted the people of Paris and wanted to reduce the influence of the capital to that of any other department.
The Girondins’ grossest mistake was to declare war on Austria to “spread the ideals of the Revolution.” The King signed a declaration of war against his brother-in-law, Emperor Leopold. I heard the Queen gloat about the superiority of the Austrian army. Both the King and Queen seemed to believe that the French would be speedily defeated, and welcome the foreign invaders as liberators, who would then restore the Old Regime. Everyone would then rally around the throne. Although I disapproved of the war, the Queen’s words outraged me and gave me yet another reason to avoid the Court.
Villers and I were of one mind on this subject.
“This is one of the very few occasions,” he said, “when you will hear me agree with Robespierre: spreading liberty by military force is a notion that could only have taken root in the head of a fool. No one abroad will welcome armed missionaries.”
Indeed that war, which the Girondins expected so easily won, and the King and Queen hoped so speedily lost, raged on, interrupted only by brief truces, for twenty-two years. It ended last year, long after all of those who had wished it had perished.
The war had an unexpected consequence. Villers, now deprived of his seat at the Assembly, was supplying the army with horses, which often required his presence in Normandy. Aimée and I accompanied him there. I was happy to see Madame de Gouville again and never failed to be entertained by the sight of the aristocratic Villers turned horse trader. He greatly increased his already ample fortune during these months. Such an interest in business affairs would have been deemed unbecoming, if not disgraceful, in a nobleman before the Revolution. Times were different now.
The Assembly decreed all assets of the émigrés forfeited. I sometimes thought of Villers’s son, Charles-Marie, who had joined the army of the Prince de Condé in Germany. Although Villers never spoke about that topic, and I did not feel free to broach it with him, I knew that it caused him great pain to be estranged from his only legitimate offspring. I did not know what provisions he had made in his will, but he now had to disinherit his son, who, as an émigré, could no longer own property in France. I knew that he had large sums of money secretly transferred by his attorney to London, no doubt for the benefit of Charles-Marie. Villers still paid my rent and my servants’ wages. I no longer expected to receive anything else from him.
57
In early June of 1792, I received another letter from Hélène.
I wish, dearest Gabrielle, I had better news to impart. Noirvaux is closing. I am only allowed to stay here for the sole purpose of taking an inventory of our furniture and religious artifacts, which I must deliver to the Procureur-Syndic of our Départment in a few days.
As to taking the “great pledge” of allegiance to the Constitution, as you suggest, it is out of the question, for me as well as for the twelve other remaining nuns of our community. We will never buy our safety by reneging on our vows. We all took the “little pledge” to liberty and equality, a step we hope will be sufficient to pacify the authorities.
I thank you for proposing again to receive me in Paris. I would accept gratefully now, but I cannot abandon the twelve remaining nuns of our little flock. Fortunately the Countess de Lalande has offered us all her hospitality in her château once the Abbey is finally closed. There, with God’s help, we will continue to serve Him as in Noirvaux.
Pray for us, Gabrielle, as I will pray for you and Aimée.
Hélène, Abbess de Noirvaux
Hélène’s assurances did little to cheer me. Who could tell whether she would find a lasting refuge in her new home?
The news from the front was no better. The Austrians and their Prussian allies were advancing into French territory. Reports of their atrocities spread to Paris. Along their path, villages were set ablaze, women were violated by entire battalions, civilians were slaughtered. All over France, Patriots volunteered to defend the Nation at this hour of desperate need. A law mandated the creation near Paris of a camp of 30,000 such soldiers. The King chose to veto this measure. I had opposed the war, but once it had been declared, I wanted my country to win and strongly supported the idea of the volunteer camp.
The populace was incensed by the King’s veto. A mob, some said 100,000 men and women, invaded the Tuileries on the 20th of June, carrying signs of the most offensive nature. I was later told that among those was a miniature gallows from which hung a doll with a banner reading “String Marie-Antoinette from a lamppost.” There was a display composed of a pig’s ears, tail and genitals, referring to the King’s lack of virility, and another with the horns of an ox, the symbol of cuckolds. The King drank from a wine bottle offered to him by an insurgent to toast the Nation, even donned the red hat of the sans-culottes, but refused to withdraw his veto. The crowd grudgingly retired at night.
Villers was outraged at the behaviour of the populace. He even requested an audience with the Queen to present his condolences for the insults she had suffered. To my surprise, she received him. He did not tell me what transpired, but I assumed that she was now desperate enough to accept the help of a man she had not long before wanted executed. Villers took Aimée and me to Vaucelles in June and spent most of his time there with us, only occasionally returning to Paris to attend to his horse supply business with the army. I would probably have remained the whole summer of 1792 in the country if word had not reached me that the Duchess’s health was failing.
Over Villers’s objections I left Vaucelles for Paris in early August to be close to the Duchess during what seemed to be her last days. I took Aimée to my friend’s mansion. We arrived immediately after Dr. Jansaud had bled the Duchess. My daughter blanched at the sight of the red liquid in the porcelain bowl on the nightstand. The Duchess looked wan. Her blue eyes, which I remembered sparkling with kindness, were now dull, their light extinguished. Life had already deserted her. As we left, Aimée asked me tearfully why the Duchess had not recognized her. I pressed my daughter’s hand without answering.
Thereafter I alone visited the Duchess every day, usually in the morning, because Dr. Jansaud’s potions tended to make her drowsy later on. I returned to my lodgings and Aimée in the afternoon. I had not seen Morsan for over six weeks, although I had heard through Emilie that he was enquiring often about me. I had not many opportunities to think of him, absorbed as I was by the sorrow of losing a beloved friend of many years.
I was surprised when, on the 9th of August in the late afternoon, Junot announced that Monsieur de Morsan requested the honour of an interview with me. The footman should have turned him away, as he had been instructed to do with all male callers. The poor man was becoming forgetful and sometimes barely remembered the names of my visitors long enough to announce them. I would normally have refused to rece
ive Morsan, but I reflected that he had too much delicacy to call on me without a compelling reason. I asked Junot to show him in.
“I beg your forgiveness,” Morsan said. “I would have never, under normal circumstances, have taken the liberty of intruding upon you. The current situation justifies, I hope, my presumption in coming here.” He hesitated. “A new attack against the Palace will take place within days. You must be aware of it.”
“Monsieur de Villers mentioned it. I would not have left Vaucelles but for the Duchess’s condition.”
“I shudder, My Lady, when I think of you crossing the Seine every day to visit her.”
I frowned. “Pardon me, Sir, but what gives you the right to be so solicitous of my safety?”
“Nothing, I am afraid. Yet I worry about you, Madam, with or without the right to do so. You do not seem to measure the gravity of the situation. Those of us who remain here are going to die.”
“I will return to Vaucelles as soon as the Duchess no longer needs me.”
“Going to Vaucelles is not going to do a thing. Do you think the Jacobins’ reach does not extend to the suburbs of Paris? Forgive me for being blunt, Madam, but you are blind to your own danger.”
“The Jacobins do not control the Assembly.”
“They control Paris, and it is all that matters. We will be swept away by the coming storm. By we, Madam, I do not mean only those who, like me, have remained faithful to their King. I refer to the whole nobility, including Monsieur de Villers and his friends. The great French Nation has tired of us, even of those of us who flatter the rabble. They will soon string us all from lampposts without making any distinctions between the ones who supported the Revolution and the others.”
“Is it to share those dire predictions that you are disturbing me at this hour, Sir? They could have waited until our next meeting.”
“I think not, Madam. In a matter of days it will be too late. Once the Palace is stormed, the royal family will be massacred, along with all of the nobility in town. I secured false passports this afternoon. I will be leaving by the stagecoach for Lille tomorrow and from there try to reach the Austrian Netherlands.”
I stared at him. “You are going to emigrate?”
“If anything, I have delayed too long. Such a journey would have been safer a few months ago. You can probably guess at the reason why I was reluctant to leave Paris. I have secured, in addition to my own passport, another one for a Widow Durand, a lady traveling with a little girl. It is at your disposal and that of your daughter.”
Morsan fell to his knees and seized my hand. “Please, Madam, hear me. I expect from you neither gratitude nor fondness. I know that you do not, you cannot love me. I am asking only that you to trust me enough to let me lead you to safety. I cannot bear the thought of you being hanged or torn to pieces by a mob. In my nightmares I see your head paraded through the streets by those cannibals. Horrible as it is to say, this is the fate that awaits you if you stay in France. Please, Madam, I beg you, save yourself, save—”
Villers, who must have been alerted to Morsan’s visit by his spies within my house, burst into the room. I was wearing a light summer dress, made of several layers of lilac gauze. Startled, I rose from the sofa where I was seated. The flimsy fabric of my skirt was caught beneath one of Morsan’s knees and tore with a loud noise. Villers ran to us, slapped the other man full in the face and seized my arm with such violence that I felt it pulled out of its socket.
Morsan rose. “You may hit me, Sir,” he said, glaring at Villers, “but I forbid you to mistreat this lady.”
“Forbid me? This lady, if you want to give her that name, is mine. I have kept her for years and will do what I please with her.”
“Calm yourself, Sir,” I told Villers. “There is no need for such language. Monsieur de Morsan was asking me to emigrate with him, and I was ready to decline.”
“How clever of him! He knows he could never hope to approach you otherwise, but on the straw of a barn, while you are both hiding at night, he would only have to extend his hand, and then who knows…Maybe, with the excitement of fear, and under cover of darkness, you would not be too cruel. Or do you already feel for him a craving like that of a woman with child?”
Morsan drew his sword. “This I absolutely forbid,” I said, looking into his eyes. “There will be no duels on my account. You can see that Monsieur de Villers is no longer his own master. You must leave, Monsieur de Morsan. I will not emigrate with you. You may be right in your assessment of our situation and I may be a fool not to avail myself of your offer. I thank you and wish you from my heart the best of luck, but I will not follow you. Please go, Sir.”
Morsan was shaking with anger. After a moment, he sheathed his sword, bowed to me and before leaving, gave Villers a most unfriendly look.
“You should leave too,” I told Villers. “I cannot reconcile myself to what I heard you say.”
He was still holding me by the arm above the elbow and pulled me closer. “Not so fast, my pretty. I am not done with you. You have humiliated me by allowing the attentions of the most repulsive man in Paris, and now you dismiss me from your presence like a lackey? You will hear me first, Madam. Your ingratitude astonishes me. Have you forgotten what you were when I found you that night at the Opera? A little provincial goose, without any education, any experience of the world. A little nobody. The youngest daughter, unwanted and unheeded, of one of those families of aristocratic paupers still found in the most remote provinces of the Kingdom, with nothing to show for their arrogance but their titles. And what did your brother do for you? Give you, at the age of fifteen, to a brute like Peyre, and then abandon you after your husband left you penniless.”
Villers’s grip on my arm was so tight that it brought tears to my eyes. I tried to use my free hand to disengage myself. He began to shake me. “For all your family cared, you could have starved to death or ended in a brothel, which might have been, come to think of it, the right place for a little trollop like you. You would have been hard-pressed to find a decent establishment to take you, though, because you had not even a maidenhead to peddle. A fine man, the Marquis de Castel, that brother of yours, who did not awaken until after I had bedded you, and then only because his honour was at stake.”
I coloured from anger. “Do not speak in this manner. You know nothing of my brother’s motives.”
“The less I know of them, the better, I am sure. God knows what depravity lurks behind all that pride. But you are right, we were talking about you. You were pretty, you were eighteen and you were ready to sell yourself to me. That was all.”
“It seemed good enough for you then.”
“Like an imbecile, I had fallen in love with you. You were fortunate to look as fresh as you did after having passed through the hands of another man, and not any man, but Peyre! I should have made you confess what your husband made you do. I am sure such a tale would be entertaining enough. It might even have cured me of my infatuation. Yet it is not too late. Do not be shy, my sweet, tell me everything. Or, still better, you are going to show me.”
My arm was hurting so much that I felt faint. “You are no better than him,” I said, quivering with pain and anger, “if you can entertain the thought of tormenting me as he did. How dare you speak to me in this manner after I have shared your life for all these years?”
Villers stopped shaking me. His grip became still tighter. The pain took my breath away.
“The more I know you, Madam, the less I like you. Oh, you have given me my money’s worth, I will grant you that. I was smitten in the beginning. Not enough, however, to be blinded to your limitations. As soon as I had decided to keep you, I had to give you some rudiments of education. Without me, you would still be more ignorant than the lowliest scullery girl in my kitchens. You could not open your mouth in society for fear of shaming yourself. Have you forgotten it? I made you what you are. You owe me everything.” Villers was now shouting. “Do you hear me? Everything. And now this is how you are t
hanking me. Maybe you have not let that toad Morsan fuck you yet, although I would not swear to it, but you have been deceiving me since I started keeping you. I have for years shared your favours with Lauzun and half of the Court.”
With this he let go of my arm. His rage turned to my dress. Seizing handfuls of the flimsy gauze around my waist, he tore away at it in a frenzy. Shreds of fabric fell to the floor. I ran from him to put the sofa between us.
“This is not true,” I cried. “You know it. No man has ever approached me save my husband and you.”
“You expect me to believe such a lie? To be a fool in addition to a cuckold? Come, little whore, how many lovers have you had?”
Villers was facing me across the sofa, out of breath, his eyes wild, his jaw tighter than I had ever seen it.
“I must ask you again to leave,” I said. “You have now hurt me in every possible manner. I have no reason to tolerate your behaviour.”
“You have far more reason for it than you suspect. You have pushed me to the limit and will regret it before long. Good night to you, Madam.”
He slammed the door.
58
Shaking, I went to my bedroom. I did not wish to face Manon and removed the shreds of my dress myself. My arm was hurting from the elbow to the shoulder, the flesh red and swollen from Villers’s grip. I lay on my bed in my corset and petticoat, reflecting that I had no choice now but to leave him. I felt dizzy and must have drifted off. Manon awakened me later that evening. She brought me a note from Mélanie, the Duchess’s chambermaid, informing me that her mistress was not expected to survive the night. I rose and dressed in haste, relieved to have something other than the memory of Villers’s madness to occupy my mind.
Mistress of the Revolution: A Novel Page 36