For the six months of her public mourning Madame Dufour has made it a point to call upon dear cousin Marguerite Salles once a week. It is her preferred way to catch up on all the latest news, big and little, as she waits out her widow’s relative isolation. What she longs to hear, and tries to follow at her imposed distance, are the stories coming out of the court at Versailles and the highest levels of Paris society. It both piques and satisfies her to hear what’s going on. First, however, before she can taste the main course, she must get through the appetizer. That is cousin Marguerite’s own situation, the pending marriage to what’s his name, the young one Marguerite is so fixed on. Madame Dufour doubts she’ll hear anything today she hasn’t heard before, but one has to go through the motions nonetheless.
“Well,” says Madame Dufour when Marguerite finally sits in the chair closest to the chaise longue where Madame has struck a regal pose, “and so, how does it feel to be so close to signing the contract? All set to marry once again. Anxious, I’m sure.”
“It is wonderful, yes,” says Marguerite, smiling as if she means it with all her heart, “that it is.”
Madame Dufour is taken aback. Her cousin’s smile is simply too robust. Like she might still be a girl and the upcoming marriage her first. Instead of a mature woman who should know better than she apparently does.
As if she can read Madame Dufour’s mind, Marguerite’s smile slowly wilts. It disappears completely as she recalls what her father told her when she asked about her betrothed’s visit to the anatomy class. All he said was: “He could never be a doctor, your young man. Let’s just leave it at that.”
“To speak with complete candour,” says Marguerite to her glum-looking cousin, “I am a little anxious. Nervous, I guess.”
“His age, is it?” says Madame Dufour. She presents an understanding and forgiving face. For weeks she has disapproved of the age difference between her cousin and her intended groom-to-be yet not said a thing. Why, Marguerite is nearly twice the young man’s twenty-six years. Moreover, she has a life of comfort and elevated position whereas the intended has neither. Real life is not a story, Madame Dufour has wanted to say, but she has kept her wisdom to herself. She simply nods sagely at Marguerite. They have each finished reading the same novel in the past month in which true love wins out in the end. Yes, they both cried their separate tears when it ended, but Madame Dufour understands, as Marguerite apparently does not, that the reason one reads such things is precisely because they’re not real. A book about real life would be boring and without end.
“His age? No, why? Do you think that Thomas is too young? For me, I mean.”
“Me? Heavens. He’s fine, isn’t he, your Thomas? Husbands have to be younger or older, don’t they? So one might as well have a young one, I suppose.”
Marguerite’s eyebrows twitch. Why can’t her cousin just come out and say what she really means: that Thomas is too young and possesses insufficient rank?
The room is silent except for the tapping of Marguerite’s foot on the parquet floor. Madame Dufour smiles as she waits, hands clasped in her lap. She’s said enough. She did her duty and gave her cousin all the warning that she could.
Marguerite’s brow furrows. She did not think her cousin disapproved so strongly of the match. But so what if she does? Cousin is only jealous, there’s no mistaking that. You would think that at nearly sixty and beyond plump, Madame might call it quits. Yet that is not the case. She clearly resents the happiness Marguerite has found.
Marguerite casts her glance down to the floor. For a dozen years she was happily married to her first husband before he went to Marseilles on a business matter and didn’t return. Smallpox, the letter said. Marguerite never even got to see the body. He was buried down there, in some improvised graveyard away from everything, the letter said. She resigned herself to being a widow for the rest of her life. She was comfortable enough with the estate he left behind, so she did not fret about marrying again. For three and a half years she was content, when, out of nowhere, at an evening salon near the Place des Vosges she ended up standing beside a young man who said something funny. The renowned Voltaire was making a toast to the author of some new book, going on gushingly about it and its author. In a whisper, the warmth of his breath stirring her ear and neck, the young man said: “You could spread that on your strawberries, could you not?” She laughed out loud, like the call of a bird, and everyone looked her way. Yet the whispered words were true. Voltaire’s outpouring of words was mere cream, too sweet and thick by far. When the official talk was over the young man introduced himself as an aspiring man of the law. That was her first introduction to her intended, Thomas Pichon. She liked his brown eyes and the smooth look of his skin. More than that, she liked how he listened to her every word. She caught a vanilla scent on his breath and a different tang from his clothes. The latter was a sort of burned chocolate smell. She imagined he spent his evenings alone in dark cabarets. Until that moment Marguerite had not known that she still wanted a man in her life. With him so close to her ear and neck it seemed that maybe she did.
“Are you all right, Marguerite?” Madame Dufour is leaning forward.
“Yes, yes,” says Marguerite, her focus coming back to the salon. “Distracted is all.”
“So it seems.”
A fresh silence blankets the room. Each lady ponders what to say next. Madame Dufour wonders if it’s not finally time to switch the topic of conversation away from Marguerite’s upcoming marriage and over to the latest rumours swirling from Versailles. She’s heard that the young king’s marriage to the older Polish princess is not a completely happy one, though perhaps they shouldn’t speak of that. Too tender a topic no doubt, given that Marguerite’s situation is nearly the same. Madame Dufour gestures with her hand, a sign of impatience cousin Marguerite knows all too well.
“He’s bound to rise higher,” Marguerite says in a rush. “Eventually of course. Don’t you think so? That Thomas too will advance? In law and its positions, I mean.”
“But of course, my dear cousin, of course. Of course he will advance.” Madame Dufour smiles like a piece of sugary candy is melting in her mouth. “Why would he not? Is there some reason why not? No, of course. Don’t you worry about that. Your Thomas has lots of time. He’s very young after all.”
Madame Dufour pushes her fixed smile higher still. She recalls how the snippy young man virtually snubbed her on the one and only occasion they met. She mentioned that she’d been reading and enjoying Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, thinking they could speak of it while Marguerite was out of the room. Thomas, however, her cousin’s chosen one, replied: “Oh, Madame, are people still reading that?”
“I see,” Marguerite says to her cousin. Her shoulders have slumped.
Madame Dufour continues: “Oh yes, you see when you speak with him that he has a, well, a particular intelligence.” She pauses to glance over at the little doll on the ottoman, the one she and Marguerite examined last time she was here. It’s the way to see the latest fashions and make the choices that must be made. She returns her gaze to Marguerite. “The young all have a bright future ahead of them. That’s their main virtue. They can still get better while we, well, we’re stuck with who we are.”
Marguerite wants not to glare at her cousin for her words, so she sends a rapid glance around the room. The drapes briefly catch her eyes, especially the panels that have faded badly in the sun. When she comes back to Madame Dufour she finds she cannot rein in her words.
“Thomas has already overcome a great deal, if you must know. He was to have a career in medicine and was considered promising in the field. But there was a problem in his family back in Normandy. No fault of his own. Filial duty, is all he says. He does not complain, but I suspect it was his parents who let him down.”
“Surely,” says Madame Dufour.
“So he’s chosen law instead. He began as a clerk
and has risen steadily. I forget how many posts and offices he’s been in, but he’s in demand.”
“Of course.”
“In fact, he’s on the inside track for a post as a secretary to a magistrate. Yes, one of the first magistrates of the Parlement of Paris and a councillor of the state. That will advance him nicely.”
“Doing well then.”
“Yes.” Marguerite pauses to allow a tiny smile. She recalls what she and Thomas did on the divan two nights earlier, behind a closed screen. She raises her eyebrows to go back to the subject at hand. “On those evenings when he’s not here with me, why, he writes at his place. He’s working on a treatise of some sort. Philosophical precepts. And in Latin, I think. His Latin is that good. Quite the writer, my Thomas.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“He’ll do well, he will.”
“Yes, well, you know what is said. Marriage is a great adventure.”
Marguerite’s eyes blink. She had not thought of it quite like that. Her cousin just might be right.
“Speaking of which,” Madame Dufour continues, desirous of completing the shift, “what news this week about the older Polish princess and our young king? Have you heard anything delicious? I’m curious to know.”
Marguerite Salles sighs as she gives her dear cousin what she wants. She turns to the gossip that her cousin’s visits are really about. “Have I told you what the duc de Saint-Simon said the other day, regarding the Polish queen?”
“You certainly did not.”
“Only hearsay of course, but apparently....” And so begins nearly an hour of obligation for Marguerite Salles and a much appreciated entertainment for Madame Dufour.
—
It’s going to be a long walk; Thomas and Gallatin both know that. And it’s not just the distance. It’s also the aches and pains each is feeling thanks to the whacks their one-eyed attacker, Jacques the glazier, gave them the moment they stepped outside the guinguette. With Gallatin it took only one blow from behind. He was down like an animal shot between the eyes. Thomas was not so lucky. He heard the truncheon strike Gallatin’s head and turned to glimpse a fierce-faced Jacques pulling back his bat to wield it once more, this time at him. Thomas raised his arms to protect himself, but that likely made it worse. Unlike Gallatin, Thomas saw all too clearly what was coming. Jacques rained down blow after blow to beat Thomas to his knees. Hands and arms, shoulders, back and chest: each part had its turn. It was only when Thomas pulled out his money pouch and tossed it at his attacker that the beating stopped. Jacques took the pouch and bent down to get the other one he wanted from the inside pocket of the knocked-out Gallatin as well. And with a jingle of the pouches’ contents, a crook of the head followed by a smile and a wink, Jacques was off.
“It’s going to take us a couple of hours.” Jean is rubbing his shoulder, which hurts as much as his head. He figures he hurt the shoulder when he tumbled unconscious to the ground.
“If not more,” says Thomas, resigned to his fate.
“I didn’t like him, not one bit. Didn’t trust him from the start.”
“I know.”
“You thought he was amusing. You thought we should sit and listen to his tales. They were all lies, by the way, in case you didn’t know.”
“You want me to say it was my fault? Is that it?”
“No,” mutters Gallatin. “Well, yes, maybe I do.”
“All right. It was my fault.”
With that out of the way, the two friends walk along in silence marked by the occasional moan as one or the other feels the need to let his companion know how he sore he’s feeling as they trudge along.
Thomas’s thoughts are no longer about the struggle with the glazier and the few coins the man took from each of them. Thomas figures the beating was likely overdue. The city is filled with brigands and pickpockets, mountebanks and robbers, footpads and foisters. Considering how many late nights and dark places he’s been in and out of over the past decade, he’s almost thankful that the beating and the robbery weren’t worse. He can still walk, well, with a limp. Besides, he didn’t have that much money in his pouch to lose. He makes sure he never does when he goes out. Instead, he keeps what he has saved hidden in his room. It’s in the hollowed-out centre of the big book on the bottom of the stack of books behind the door. No one will ever find his money there.
Though he may have been due for a thrashing, he hopes that’s it for a while. Next time it could be worse. Thomas didn’t have a hint it was on its way, not until he heard the whack on Gallatin’s head. Is he losing his edge, his awareness of risk and of danger? Has he become just another Paris stooge waiting to be taken? He hopes not. If he has to make a choice, he’d much prefer to be one of life’s predators than its little prey. Whatever else happens, he never wants to be prey.
Thomas looks over at Gallatin. His friend appears to be still locked in a funk. His eyes are fierce yet unseeing. Thomas cannot but smile. The older he gets the harder he finds it to keep any emotion around for long. As soon as one comes along it’s soon gone, as if evaporating in the air. He’s aware that it makes him a little distant from his life as he goes through it, but what’s wrong with that? The very thought makes Thomas go and touch the wooden piquet fence bordering a likely garden on the other side. Such touches reassure him now, as they did when he was a boy, that he is very much in this world.
Thomas understands that Gallatin is different. The bookseller has attachments and passions. Thomas almost envies him for that. But almost is as close as it gets. Thomas will stay who he is, thank you very much, not that there’s any choice in that. He’s advancing at a not bad rate. The upcoming marriage to Marguerite will surely help him out in that. The moment the knot is legally tied it moves him up a tier or maybe two. Mediocrity is an ugly word. The marriage to Marguerite will speed his climb.
“I’ve been thinking,” says Gallatin as the two young men go past the windmill at the corner of rue du bas Pincourt and turn left on to the rue du Menil-Montant. He says no more, distracted by the large wooden arms of yet another windmill up ahead on the left. Neither of them especially likes being in this largely uninhabited part on the far left bank of Paris. If they wanted to live in the country or in some small town with lots of gardens, then that’s where they’d choose to live.
“Yes, all right,” says Thomas, “so you’ve been thinking. I always thought you might. Eventually.”
“Funny. Look, I wasn’t sure I should say it out loud or not. But here goes: I’ve been thinking, thinking I might move away.”
“Away? What’s away? Away from what?”
“Out of Paris. Over to London.”
“London? Seriously?” says Thomas, reaching out to halt his friend. They both come to a stop.
“Yes.” Gallatin glances down at the cobbled street and then back up to look Thomas in the eyes. “Maybe it sounds foolish, but it’s a thought I’ve had off and on ever since I started reading John Locke.”
“John Locke?”
“I thought you’d laugh.”
“Do I look like I’m laughing?”
“No, but. It’s just that the more I read about politics and government the more I’m drawn to England. Well, to London.”
Thomas says nothing. He’s blinking at his friend.
“Do you read their newspapers, Thomas? The English ones, I mean.”
Thomas gives his head a shake. Ever since Gallatin’s lady friend, the widow Marie, died of the bloody flux a few months ago, Jean Gallatin has become increasingly oblique in the things he says. It’s like he’s lost his compass bearings the last while.
“Well, I do.” Gallatin continues. “And I’m convinced their system of government is much superior to ours.” He looks at Thomas like he’s expecting some sort of challenge.
Thomas merely shrugs. “By ‘their,’ you mean
the English?”
“But of course.”
“Real life is not in the newspapers, Gallatin. You know that, right?”
“I didn’t think you’d understand.”
Gallatin begins walking again, at a faster pace than before. Thomas quickly catches up. The bruises and limps from the beating they took are no longer in either man’s mind.
“The Church is not a factor over there,” says Gallatin. “Well, they have a Church of course, their own not ours. Their king is its head, not the pope.”
“That’s better? Aren’t they godless heretics? That’s what I’ve always heard.” Thomas is smiling. He knows he’s pushing the right lever to get Gallatin going some more.
“That’s just it. With the king at the top of their church it doesn’t matter. It’s clever, it is. Because their king is checked by their parliament. Religion doesn’t come into it.”
“I somehow doubt it, my friend. Religion always comes into it. There’s no other way.”
“You’re right, but not into their government. In England religion remains what it should be. A story for the gullible. The English leave it at that. It’s so much better than a faith that blinds you to other truths.”
Thomas, A Secret Life Page 26