The Academie

by Dunlap, Susanne

  The Académie

  SUSANNE DUNLAP

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1 Eliza

  2 Hortense

  3 Madeleine

  4 Eliza

  5 Hortense

  6 Eliza

  7 Hortense

  8 Madeleine

  9 Eliza

  10 Hortense

  11 Eliza

  12 Madeleine

  13 Hortense

  14 Eliza

  15 Hortense

  16 Eliza

  17 Eliza

  18 Hortense

  19 Eliza

  20 Madeleine

  21 Eliza

  22 Hortense

  23 Eliza

  24 Madeleine

  25 Hortense

  26 Eliza

  27 Hortense

  28 Eliza

  29 Madeleine

  30 Hortense

  31 Hortense

  32 Eliza

  33 Eliza

  34 Madeleine

  35 Hortense

  36 Eliza

  37 Hortense

  38 Madeleine

  39 Eliza

  40 Hortense

  41 Eliza

  42 Madeleine

  43 Hortense

  44 Eliza

  45 Eliza

  46 Madeleine

  47 Hortense

  48 Eliza

  49 Hortense

  50 Eliza

  Epilogue Eliza

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  Also by Susanne Dunlap

  Imprint

  For Sofia, Ella, and Avery, with love

  1

  Eliza

  Paris! I’m in Paris!

  Or at least I was, for a few weeks, until Mama decided to ruin everything by sending me to school.

  I wish I didn’t have to go! L’Académie Nationale à Saint-Germain. Horrors. I thought this year in Paris was going to be for fun, a break from learning tedious sums and boring history. It’s 1799, after all. The revolution is long over and France is becoming an extraordinary power again. Not to mention the gowns. How everyone in Virginia will be envious of me when I return with the latest fashions to show them!

  “Remember, Eliza, you can hold your head up in the most exalted company in France. We’re descended from the New York Aspinwalls, a very honored and wealthy family. Our money did not come from trade, and your father was first minister to France when Jefferson was president.”

  This is the hundredth—no, the thousandth—time my mother has told me this as we set out for Saint-Germain-en-Laye. At least she could have found a school actually in Paris, for pity’s sake! But as usual, she had to find the best. Anything to raise us up a notch.

  “Your papa—and I, truth be told—were the ones who managed to get the Marquis de Lafayette out of prison in Germany during the Terreur. You know I went to the jail in Paris where they were holding Madame de Lafayette, and saved her from the guillotine?” She thinks I was too young to remember, but I recall it quite well. How nervous she was, in the rented carriage with liveried servants attending, at a time when everyone who looked aristocratic risked being set upon by a mob. I can still picture the broken-down walls and rubble in the streets. They’ve been cleaned up nicely since then.

  As for the school, I expect I’ll find only the daughters of dead aristocrats, or perhaps a few grocers’ daughters who have risen up in the world thanks to the new system of merit. The new manner of government gives titles and positions to those who actually deserve them. It will be easy to stand out in that sort of crowd.

  Oh, why, why school! It truly isn’t necessary. I already have enough Latin to understand erudite jokes at a dinner party. My needlework is as fine as it must be to entertain me at home on quiet evenings. I can spell tolerably well and have read most of the books in my father’s library. It was supposed to be a lark to come to Paris. Mama promised we’d have a delightful home together for this year, and then go back to Virginia. Papa practices law there, and we have a lovely plantation and neighbors who come to dance and enjoy themselves with us.

  “You understand, it’s not for your education in the usual sense,” Mama says to me. “But I hope it will be an education in other ways. It will add some polish to you and make your French not only good but flawless. Madame Campan is very respected.”

  “Yes, yes, I know. She was mistress of the bedchamber to Marie Antoinette. Do you suppose she went to the execution?” I wondered what it was like to see someone get her head chopped off!

  “Eliza! Don’t be ghoulish!” Mama swallows the last word as she is flung to the other side of the carriage. They may have rebuilt much of Paris, but the roads are still atrocious.

  Once she regains her balance and straightens her headdress, Mama continues. “Ernestine has done a marvelous job on your ensemble.” She pronounces it in an exaggerated French accent. Mama thinks her French is perfect, but I can hear the rough edges. I would never say anything to her about it, though.

  “She knows everything and everyone,” I say. Ernestine was a find. She used to serve in the household of a duchess and is acquainted with the finest couturiers and milliners in Paris. It is because of her that I am wearing the high-waisted gown made of silk voile with a blue satin sash and only a black silk rope with a simple gold locket around my neck.

  “It is not the fashion to wear jewels in the daytime in Paris,” Ernestine told me just this morning. “Ever since the Terreur, one’s wealth is shown only in private circles where everyone is trusted.”

  “I should think Ernestine could teach me all I need to know about French society,” I say, knowing it will vex my mother.

  “Saint-Germain isn’t just any suburb, you know,” Mama says. Sometimes I think she can read my mind. “Many of France’s wealthiest families have homes in Saint-Germain. There’s a royal palace there, although no one stays in it now.”

  “At least you’re not making me board at this school,” I say.

  Mama does not meet my eyes but looks out the window of the carriage. “See how pretty it is here.”

  “I certainly don’t need to mix with bourgeois country girls who have come to Paris for some culture, afterward to return to Rouen, or Lille, or Toulouse—wherever they came from—to marry the wealthy burghers their papas have already picked out for them.”

  Mama says nothing, and before I can press the issue we pull up to the gates of the courtyard. The school’s footman opens them for us. He’s not in livery, I observe. Our Negro coachman in Virginia wears livery. Still, I expect it is another one of those practices that is frowned upon after the revolution. I can see that at one time someone’s crest must have topped the gates, but it was most likely torn off by the mob. I’m pleased to see that the courtyard is well kept and quite large, and there’s a fresh coat of black paint on the doors and window frames.

  An elderly lady dressed entirely in black greets us at the door—well, perhaps she isn’t as old as she looks; many of the people we’ve encountered in the salons who survived the Terreur have white hair, even though they are not yet forty. It was the fear, they told us. But by the lines in Madame Campan’s face I can see that she would have been white haired with or without a fright.

  “Bienvenue, Madame Monroe, and Mademoiselle Elizabeth.”

  “It’s Eliza, s’il vous plaît,” I say, giving her just as much of a curtsy as I think she warrants. I detest it when people call me by my mother’s name.

  “Madame Campan, how good of you to meet us,” Mama says, flashing me a fierce look.

  I suppose it was a little rude of me, and I decide I had better make up for my impertinence by being very sweet.

  “But you have not brought any trun
ks for Mademoiselle ... Eliza,” Madame Campan says as she leads us across a large vestibule with a stairway that sweeps in a curve up to the next floor and into a spacious drawing room where tea things have been laid out.

  “Oh, I’m not—” I start to speak, but my mother places her hand on my arm to stop me.

  “I didn’t want to delay our arrival for the sake of packing. Her maid will bring the luggage—you do have accommodations for personal maids?” Mama flashes Madame Campan her most winning smile.

  My maid will bring...? This was not in our plans! I am so stunned I almost forget to notice what kind of china the tea is served on, and whether the silver is plate or sterling. When did Mama decide that I would board? I don’t want to be a prisoner in a girls’ school! Paris is for attending parties and going out to fabulous banquets and the theater and the opera. I try to catch Mama’s eye, but she steadfastly avoids me. No doubt having Ernestine there is intended to soften the blow to me.

  But it won’t work. She tricked me. My own mother! I feel a sensation like fire bubbling up inside me. I want to throw something, or spit. But I can’t argue. Not in front of others. Instead I have to sit here like a lady.

  “Ah, and here is another one of my pupils,” Madame Campan says, gesturing toward the salon door. “Allow me to present Hortense de Beauharnais.”

  De Beauharnais... That is a noble name. And familiar somehow. And this girl who enters the room is utterly beautiful. Blue eyes, delicate features, and golden blond hair. She is dressed in the very latest fashion, and how she moves—she floats, hardly disturbing the air around her.

  To my surprise, Mama, who considers herself superior to everyone, stands and curtsies to greet this apparition, who I can see is only a few years older than I. “An honor to meet you, mademoiselle,” Mama says. “May I present my daughter, Eliza Monroe? Eliza, this is the daughter of Joséphine Bonaparte.”

  My teacup is about to touch my lips and I must use every ounce of concentration not to jerk suddenly and slosh the tea out and over my gown. Daughter of Joséphine! I just saw the famous lady the other night, in a box at the theater, wearing exquisite jewels and looking absolutely beautiful. Some people say she ensnared the general and he had to marry her. Others are even less kind and say her powerful former lover, the Marquis de Barras, passed her on to his young protégé.

  “And I,” says another voice before I can even address Hortense, “am sister to the great general himself.”

  We all four turn at once to see another girl enter through the same door. She is not quite as beautiful as Hortense, but very striking. Her eyes flash dark and lively. Her skin is smooth as porcelain, and her gown is of the finest silk and decorated with jewels at the neckline.

  “Yes, this is Caroline Bonaparte, who has been at my school almost since her arrival in Paris. You are all close enough in age to be friends, I hope,” Madame Campan says, smiling toward my mother, who looks as though every dream she’s ever had for me is about to come true.

  Could this be why such a plan was hatched? Because Mama wanted to throw me together with these girls—the most famous in all Paris, perhaps even the world? I suppose if I have to be away from home boarding in a girls’ school, it will at least be a compensation to keep company among the most celebrated young ladies alive.

  Now when I look at my mother, she stares right back at me. She positively glows with triumph. I raise one eyebrow just a little, our private signal that I am pleased. And I follow it by looking down, to show her that I’m not entirely happy, either. The end may not always justify the means, and I expect her to make it up to me somehow.

  We all sit down again. Caroline takes the place of honor next to Madame Campan. Hortense sits in the least comfortable chair, farthest away, as if she wants nothing more than to blend into the background. But that would be impossible for such a beauty.

  “We have four levels here, which correspond to those at the Collège Irlandais, our neighbor, where young men study. The youngest are the Green class, which you can see from their caps and ribbons. Above them are the Pinks, then the Blues, and finally the Pearls—my crowning achievement.”

  “Which class will Eliza join?” Mama asks. I see that both Hortense and Caroline are wearing white caps and ribbons, and so must be among the Pearls. Please! I think. I want to be with them.

  “We shall see,” Madame Campan says. “It depends upon her abilities. We do not base our classes solely upon age. There are ten-year-olds who wear the blue ribbons, and twelve-year-olds who are still in pink.”

  I am fourteen, fifteen next year. I wonder how old Hortense is.

  “Eliza has had an excellent education in Virginia. She is well versed in history and mathematics, as well as Latin.”

  “Perhaps she may assist me with the English classes,” Madame says. “Then she may be in one level for some subjects, in another for others.”

  “Which subjects do you place the most importance upon?” I wish Mama would stop speaking and leave!

  “Conversation. Most others require only the faculty of memory. Conversation requires wit.”

  How grand! I may yet avoid boring arithmetic and composition, and perhaps learn things much more to my liking.

  2

  Hortense

  The men are coming for us. I cling to Maman’s hand. Eugène stands behind her, trying to be protective. I am crying.

  “Hush, ma petite!” Maman murmurs. “They will find us!”

  I know there is danger, but I cannot stop the tears. I hear the heavy footsteps and the clanking of swords against leather. They have entered Maman’s bedroom. We press ourselves into the back of the secret cupboard behind the wardrobe. I start to shake. My teeth knock against each other so that I think anyone will be able to hear them. I try to control the trembling of my jaw, but it only becomes worse. I hear the men outside in the room yanking out drawers and emptying their contents. Some jewelry clatters to the floor.

  They aren’t finding anything. Perhaps they will leave.

  “Eh, Marcel! Ici une jolie petite fille!”

  They must have found the miniature of me that Maman keeps on her dressing table. The next thing I hear is the sound of smashing and raucous laughter. I gasp.

  “Sshht!” One of the men stops the others from talking.

  The footsteps approach fast. The wardrobe door opens. It is only a moment before they find the latch that reveals our hiding place. A man with almost no teeth and a wicked scowl raises his knife high above his head. Maman faints. Someone stays the man’s hand.

  All at once dirty arms reach in to grab for us. I feel the imprint of their rough fingers—

  “Mademoiselle Hortense! Mademoiselle!”

  It takes me several moments to realize I have been dreaming—again. The shaking is only Geneviève, the maid who looks after me and the other girls in the school who have not brought their own servants with them. She is gentle and kind. Hers are not ruffians’ hands, but slender fingers, roughened with hard work. And those other hands, and the capture, never happened in quite that way. It is my own imagination that toys with me.

  “You have had another cauchemar,” she says, sitting on the edge of my bed and stroking the hair out of my face. I look down and see that my covers are completely disheveled.

  “I’m so sorry. Is it late?”

  “No, but you asked me to wake you early so you could join the American girl.”

  The American girl? All at once I remember. I leap out of bed, barely letting Geneviève help me into my dress. At least it’s easier now that we don’t wear corsets and panniers! I choose something simple from the wardrobe. Though my family name means nothing now, I don’t want Eliza to be in awe of me. I’m no one, really. I was even apprenticed to a seamstress when I was only nine years old.

  My father left us before I was born. I never even knew him, though I wrote to him in prison at Maman’s instruction. I felt sorry for him. Maman told me he had worked so hard for the revolution and then was called a traitor. I remember the
day he mounted the guillotine. Our governess, who took care of us when Maman went to prison soon after Papa, would not let us go and watch. I don’t think I would have wanted to, although I saw others beheaded. The vision of those brutal executions haunts me. So many familiar faces. They are not the same, though, when they are dead. They are like specters, or wax figures made horrible to frighten children.

  I shake off the memories and in a matter of minutes I am downstairs. But as I approach the breakfast room I hear voices—Caroline’s voice.

  I am too late to warn Eliza not to believe everything she says.

  “You mustn’t be fooled by her manner. She can be very—”

  I know what Caroline will say next, so I quickly open the door to prevent her and walk in. Only the two of them are there. I hear footsteps above and know that soon the others will join us at breakfast—silly girls in the younger classes, some from noble families, others whose fathers are in the Directoire and who have ambitions to marry well.

  “Hortense, ma chérie!” Caroline rises from her place and kisses the air next to my cheek one after the other. I make no pretense of doing the same. I see she has placed herself at the head of the table. Madame Campan does not breakfast with us, instead having her tea and brioche in her room and joining us in time to conduct the first lesson of the day.

  “Good morning, Mademoiselle Eliza,” I say, taking my place next to her. The maid pours out tea for me. Caroline sits down again and bumps the table so that my tea sloshes into the saucer. No matter. She has quite taken my appetite away.

  “I was just giving Eliza some hints about how to manage here,” Caroline says.

  “You mean, about the cold bathing every day, and the lessons where we must carry our books upon our heads?” I smile. She has been talking about nothing of the kind. I wonder if she knows that I am aware of what she has been trying to do to me ever since my mother married her brother.

  She must be. Caroline is not so clever as to hide her distaste for me.

  “Ah yes,” says Caroline. “Madame Campan has some rather antiquated ideas about education, I’m afraid, but she is intelligent, and there is a good library here. All the political writings of the ancients, and Shakespeare—translated, of course.”