Madame Tussaud

by Michelle Moran

  Wolfgang tries to lift the tension. “So, any wealthy widows come to the exhibition recently?”

  I smile, despite my worry. “No, but I’m sure they would be pleased to no end with your gambling.”

  “Then maybe I’ll become a professional cardsharp.” He winks at me and holds out his arm to escort me back to the Grand Commune.

  “I am going to stay here. I want to see the Hall of Mirrors again.”

  “There won’t be anyone there,” Johann warns, thinking I want to catch some member of the nobility I can model.

  “I want to see it in moonlight.”

  My brothers don’t question me. They know how inspiration can come in the reflection on a lake or in the slow, steady curl of smoke from a fire. I watch them leave, then make my way through the candlelit halls. I wish I had known Versailles when the queen hosted her masquerades and her ladies came dressed in blue velvets and white silks. I want to imagine the château as it was in happier days.

  The palace isn’t entirely empty. I catch giggling servant girls allowing liberties to be taken with them on the stairs, and a young man strumming a lap harp for a woman who will certainly be following him to his chambers. Without the crush of people, the heavy stench of body odor has abated. In the moonlight, the palace is beautiful. A silvery sheen falls across the floors, as though I’m walking on water. Even the cold marble statues look alive. So much care and attention have been taken to make this the most beautiful palace on earth. And really, the price has not been terribly high. Yesterday, Madame Élisabeth told me that in the most extravagant times, the court’s yearly expenditures were only six percent of the national budget. And look at what that six percent has created! This is why the Americans rebelled. They never saw such majesty on their own soil. If they could have seen the rich tapestries and gilded halls that their taxes produced …

  I reach the Hall of Mirrors, and the sight is more breathtaking at night than by day. Chandeliers illuminate the marble walls and gilded pilasters, and the entire room is like burnished amber. Only one other person has come to enjoy this vision of light and gold. She is standing in the middle of the hall, as if she is imagining, just as I am, the grand fêtes that took place beneath these painted ceilings. As I approach, she does not turn to me. Probably, she is lost in her various dreams. But as I draw closer, I realize who she must be—the curve of her neck, the width of her shoulders, the sweep of her hair. I have sculpted this person.

  Immediately, I stop walking. The queen is utterly alone. I think of all the courtiers who pressed around her when her fortunes were high, and now, without the music and the masquerades, she is surrounded only by ghosts. I am embarrassed to have interrupted such an intimate moment, but as I back away, the wooden floor creaks and the queen abruptly turns. I sink into my lowest curtsy.

  “Mademoiselle Grosholtz.”

  She has remembered me. Of all the faces she has seen, she has remembered mine. “I did not mean to intrude,” I say. “Forgive me, Your Majesty. I should not have come—”

  “I am the one who should not be here. Only foolish old women wish to revisit the conquests of their youth.” She dabs quickly at her eyes, and I wonder if she’s been weeping. “My husband tells me you took Élisabeth to Saint-Sulpice. That was very kind of you.”

  Not only has she remembered me, but she knows what I’ve been doing in Montreuil. “The entire nation is praying for the dauphin. He is the hope of France.”

  “Yes,” she says vaguely, as if in a fog. “Yes,” she says more firmly. “He is.”

  We stare at each other in the candlelight. She has lost weight since she came to the Boulevard du Temple. There are new angles in her face and less fullness beneath her jaw.

  “It is a beautiful view out of that window.” She points down the hall, and a handkerchief flutters to the ground from her sleeve. I pick up the little square of silk and see that it’s embroidered with her coat of arms as well as her initials. The cloth is lighter than anything I’ve ever held. There is a small rip in the corner, and she sees that I have noticed it. I hold it out to her.

  “Keep it.” She smiles. “Let it be a reminder that nothing in this world can last.”

  “Even pain,” I reply.

  This time, the smile reaches her eyes. “Yes, that’s true.”

  When she is gone, I walk to the place where she was standing and look down the hall. There is nothing to see but golden parquet floors, stretching on to what seems like eternity. And in the gilded mirrors, instead of noblemen dancing the minuet, there is only me.

  Chapter 12

  APRIL 12, 1789

  My blood boils in my veins against the so-called fathers of the country.

  —JEAN-PAUL MARAT

  “THE QUEEN’S HANDKERCHIEF?” MY MOTHER EXCLAIMS IN GERMAN. We are standing in the workshop, where Curtius has finished the body of the corpulent Marquis de Sade. Tomorrow, we will put the entire figure on display. She holds the silk square up to the afternoon light.

  “We can use this,” my uncle announces. “It can be The Farewell Handkerchief!”

  I reach out and take the handkerchief back. “This isn’t for exhibition.”

  “But everything is for exhibition,” my mother says, puzzled.

  “This is a present for Yachin,” I reply, surprising myself.

  I go outside and find our barker. We are advertising the model of Sainte-Amaranthe today. I hold out the embroidered handkerchief, and he puts down his sign and wrinkles his nose. Then he runs his small fingers over the coat of arms and looks up at me with wide eyes. “The queen’s?”

  I nod. “I met her in the Hall of Mirrors.”

  He wraps his arms around my waist. “Thank you, Marie. Thank you, thank you! Wait until Maman sees this. I’ll keep it with me always. This is the best gift I have ever received!”

  “You can show it to your mother now if you’d like.”

  He is beside himself with joy. He rushes down the street so quickly that he nearly runs into the butcher.

  “That was very kind of you.” Henri has been sitting on the steps, washing a basket full of glass vials. He has not bothered tying his long hair back, so it hangs in his face, curling about his lapels. “Did Her Majesty really give it to you?”

  “Yes. It dropped from her sleeve and she told me to keep it.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t want it for the Salon.”

  “I … I couldn’t. We were in the Hall of Mirrors together,” I confide. “She was weeping.”

  “The dauphin,” he says quietly.

  I sit next to him on the stairs. His hands are colored with dye, probably from staining the samples he places beneath his microscope. Though spring is here, the air is still crisp. “Yes.” I say sadly. “His health is growing worse.”

  ON THE TWENTY-EIGHTH of April, just as we are opening the Salon for business, Yachin comes running.

  “Not enough exercise lately?” Curtius asks. He is painting the trim outside the window while I wash the steps.

  Yachin holds his chest and gasps for breath. “Monsieur Réveillon,” he says, and breathes deep. “Monsieur Réveillon—they are attacking him!”

  Curtius lays down his brush and I put aside the mop. “What do you mean?” my uncle asks.

  “My mother heard it from the butcher that a group of men are marching toward his factory in the Porte Saint-Antoine. They intend to tear it down.”

  I look to my uncle. “It has to be a mistake,” he says. He replaces the lid on the paint and stands. “Monsieur Réveillon is a good man. We’ve done business with him for fifteen years.” He disappears inside and returns with his coat.

  “Where are you going?” I exclaim.

  “To help Réveillon.”

  “But what can you do?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  This morning, little business gets done. I sit with my mother at the caissier’s desk in the front of the Salon, and we watch the handsome Thuret clock, a gift from my uncle’s first patron. If a mob has reached R
éveillon’s gates, what hope does Curtius have of helping him? What can he do but put himself in danger? My mother asks every customer what he’s heard. Nothing. Always nothing.

  “Go to Henri,” she says, at last. “He is a showman. Gossip is his job.”

  I go next door, but only to please her. Henri is sitting at his own caissier’s desk. Two women hover over him, showing him something. A snuffbox, I believe. One smells of orange blossom, the other of rose, and both are wearing hats over their towering poufs.

  “Marie!” Henri says as soon as he sees me. “Did you hear?” He rises, and the women look disappointed.

  “About Réveillon?”

  “Yes. They have torn the factory apart.”

  I gasp. “But Curtius is there!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He went to help him this morning and he hasn’t come back.”

  Henri finds his brother and asks him to watch over the desk. Orange Blossom and Rose narrow their eyes at me. You’re not his type anyway, I want to say. Henri is a bachelor, and if he ever decides to marry, it will not be to a woman with a fanciful hat. It will be to a woman who understands his passion for science. We hurry back to the Salon, where I tell my mother that Henri has news.

  “You see?” she says to me in German. To Henri, she whispers, “What is it?”

  “It’s only talk,” he begins, but my mother waves this away. Henri leans forward so that our patrons won’t overhear. “Five thousand workers gathered outside of Réveillon’s shop this morning. They were armed with shovels and clubs.” My mother crosses herself. “The rioters destroyed the factory, then turned toward Réveillon’s house.”

  The door of the Salon opens, and my uncle appears. His coat is torn. His culottes are splattered with mud. He sees that we have been waiting for word and holds up his hands, as if to defend himself. “I had no idea. No idea it would be so violent.”

  My mother rushes forward to take his coat. I tell Yachin to mind the desk, and the three of us follow Curtius up the stairs. We sit at my mother’s wooden table. “It is gone. His house, his factory—as if a storm swept through and took everything,” Curtius says. “There was a rumor that Réveillon planned to cut wages. Thousands of men were at the gates of the factory when I arrived, and none of them were Réveillon’s workers.” He tells us the Duchesse d’Orléans appeared, demanding entry. Because Réveillon had no other choice, he did as he was told and let her in. The men flooded through, destroying everything they came across. “What they didn’t burn, they stole,” he tells us. “Tapestries, books, lidded vases, tables—all his family’s treasures either broken or carried away. They smashed the windows and cut down the trees. Destruction simply for destruction’s sake.”

  “What of Réveillon and his family?” my mother asks.

  “They escaped over the garden wall. When the Gardes Françaises arrived, the rioters climbed onto the rooftops and began to hurl tiles at the king’s men. So the Gardes fired into the crowd. Five hundred are dead, at least.”

  Henri shakes his head, and I realize that the stains on my uncle’s culottes are not dirt, but blood.

  “When I left,” Curtius says, “the mob was growing, and hundreds were making their way toward the archbishop’s palace at Vincennes. A man bragged that he had stopped the carriage of the Duc de Luynes and forced him to shout, ‘Long live the Third Estate!’ They’ll be rioting until nightfall,” Curtius predicts, “unless the king sends more soldiers.”

  “Réveillon employed nearly four hundred people,” Henri says. “He’s been elected to represent his district next month. Who would start a rumor that he planned to cut wages?”

  Curtius spreads his hands. “When the Gardes Françaises searched the dead, they found six-franc pieces on them.”

  The four of us are silent, all thinking the same thing. Finally, it is Henri who says, “So they were paid.”

  There is only one man with both the desire and the funds to destroy Réveillon. The Duc d’Orléans. The same man who sent his estranged wife to insist that Réveillon open the gates.

  THE EVENING’S SALON is joyful. It is as if great wealth has been created rather than lost with the burning of Réveillon’s house and factory. Camille brags that not only has Réveillon’s manor, Titonville, been burned to the ground, but the saltpeter works belonging to Réveillon’s good friend Hanriot have also been destroyed.

  “It is the first step,” Lucile says passionately, “in letting the elites understand that we will no longer tolerate this great division of wealth. And wait until everyone makes their way to the Estates-General tomorrow!”

  I wonder what her father would think of this outburst against privilege. If not for his wealth, she would not be wearing those pretty pearls around her neck or the gold watch at her waist.

  “Robespierre and I will be traveling together tomorrow morning,” Camille announces. “And you, Marat?”

  “If there is space in your carriage, I would be happy to come,” Marat replies.

  “Then w-we all go together!” Camille exclaims.

  But Robespierre clenches his jaw. For as dirty and disheveled as Marat keeps himself, Robespierre is equally fastidious. His green-tinted glasses are polished to a sheen; his silk jacket and matching waistcoat are perfectly creased. Not even Rose Bertin could find something to complain about in his attire. “I believe,” he says in a slow, deliberate voice, “the space in our carriage was given to the Comte de Mirabeau.” He does not wish to lower himself by riding in the same carriage as Marat.

  Camille hesitates, then looks across the table to the Duc. “I thought—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Marat says. “I can make my own way.”

  There is an awkward moment before the Duc says, “I suspect that this will be the last time we shall meet in Curtius’s salon until the business of the Estates-General is over.” He raises his brandy, and his gold rings clink against the glass. “To Curtius and his generous family. May we all return here next month in triumph.”

  While everyone raises their glasses, Marat demands, “Will you be voting to abolish all exemptions from taxes due to privilege and rank?”

  The Duc lowers his glasses, and everyone at the table holds their breath. “Yes. But this convocation must do more than ease the tax burden of the Third Estate. It must recognize the Third Estate as the driving force behind this nation. As the heart and body that gives life to the powerful beast that is France.”

  “Exactly!” Camille exclaims.

  The diamond in the Duc’s cravat catches the candlelight. “Now that the three estates have drafted their cahiers and presented them to the king, he must take action. The lettres de cachet must be abolished. Offices sold by the state to raise money must be abolished. And the corvée must be abolished. What gives one man the right to command another man to work for him without pay?”

  “It’s modern slavery!” Marat shouts. “The corvée must be the first to go.”

  The Duc smiles. “And all citizens must be equal before the law.” There are eager murmurs around the table. “Even now,” the Duc says quietly, so that we know this is a great secret he is about to divulge, “the Marquis de Lafayette is drafting a declaration with help from the American ambassador, Thomas Jefferson. He is calling it the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, and we shall present it to the king.”

  “And if the king won’t agree to it?” Marat challenges.

  “Then perhaps we will have to find a king who will.”

  When we have shown our guests down the stairs and locked the door, I turn to my uncle. “It must have been the Duc’s money that destroyed Réveillon.”

  “He wants the crown,” Curtius agrees. He takes a candle from the wall, and I follow him up the stairs. When we reach the landing, he faces me. “Look at what Thomas Jefferson managed for America. There’s no telling what both he and Lafayette might do in France. We should call on him tomorrow, before he leaves for Versailles.”

  “What do you think the king shoul
d do?” I ask him.

  “He should force the nobility to bear the tax burden, just as we do.”

  “That’s right!” my mother yells from the kitchen, elbow-deep in dishwater.

  “They will refuse,” I predict.

  “Then he must force them. He is king. And he must give consideration to the grievances listed in the Third Estate’s cahiers. But I doubt he will do either. He is afraid of the nobility. When they shout, he will cower.”

  “Do you believe the nobles will follow the Duc’s lead?”

  “The Duc has no intention of being their leader. He has seen where the real power lies.”

  Chapter 13

  APRIL 29, 1789

  The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

  —THOMAS JEFFERSON

  WE HAVE ARRANGED AN AUDIENCE WITH THE MARQUIS DE Lafayette, and we are to meet him in Thomas Jefferson’s home on the corner of Rue des Champs-Élysées! Curtius knows what Henri thinks of Jefferson, who is not only a political philosopher and ambassador but an inventor as well. As soon as the offer to come with us is made, Henri is finding his walking stick and hat.

  As our carriage rolls away, I look back at the sign advertising The Auricular Communications of the Invisible Girl. “And you’re sure you want to come with us?” I ask.

  “What?” Henri puts on a look of mock offense. “Am I such bad company?”

  I feel my cheeks warm. “No. But your exhibit. Who is watching it for you?”

  “My apprentice. I’m training him to take over every afternoon.”

  “But he might let his friends in at a discount,” I warn. “Or worse, for free.”