In June, the dauphin died at last. Mme de Bonsecours wrote that she'd not been able to bring herself to attend the funeral.
Here is France some twelve million livres in debt, people starving, bread at four sous the pound, the Estates unable to agree on anything at all, and our king proposing to spend 600,000 livres on burying a child. Even M. de Bonsecours thinks it a pity that economy is of no account in the birth and death of princes.
Then, on the twenty-fourth day of July, 1789, Jacques Charreton delivered a thick and much-smudged packet to the kitchen door.
I didn't read it at once. Knowing now what it contained, 'tis hard to credit that I would put it in my pocket until madame awakened from her nap, then tidy her hair and check, as she asked, on her supply of laudanum in case 'twere time to order more from Besançon before I even thought of it again. Only when my mistress was settled to her embroidery did I draw the letter from my pocket, break the seal, and begin to read:
Versailles, 16 July, 1789
My beloved sister:
First, I am safe, and Bonsecours also, although more agitated than I have ever seen him since our wedding night. We may yet fly to Brussels as d'Artois, Lambesc, Breteuil, and the Polignacs have done. But M. Necker has been recalled, and as my husband has always agreed with his policies (although, I fear, not always in public), we remain in Versailles while awaiting events. This chaos in the Estates could be the making or the breaking of Bonsecours: as yet I cannot guess which. The one thing of which I am certain is that France is not altogether the same country she was before Tuesday last.
Do you recall my saying that Paris was like a cannon loaded and primed? Alas that I should have proved so great a Sybil, although, to be sure, I did not prophesy 'twould be the king himself who lit the torch. But there. Everyone knew he never liked Necker, and the saintlier our little bourgeois gentilhomme acted, the less Louis liked him. Monsieur my husband may talk of the queen's influence and Breteuil's ambitions all he pleases, but my reading of the matter is that Louis dismissed Necker in a sudden fit of Divine Right.
They say Necker tried to damp the powder by slipping out a back door on Saturday morning in the hope he'd not be missed before the Estates met on Monday. Had his intention been to condemn the king beyond doubt, he couldn't have acted more slyly. Before he was seated in his carriage, every petty secretary, clerk, and footman in Versailles knew all about it, and the news made Paris before he'd reached Montmorency.
Like the rest of the Second Estate, I knew nothing. Blithe and ignorant as a milkmaid, I drove to Paris for the theater on Saturday. Sunday, I rose, went to Mass, returned to my apartment, looked for Louison to dress me for dinner, did not find her, had to dine at Mme Valence's in a plain Circassian gown, and returned ready to dismiss the minx on the spot. She met me at the door, full of tears and lamentations and a tale of a riot at the Palais-Royal, tumbling St. Bartholomew, Necker, chestnut leaves, the duc d'Orléans, and the Champs de Mars so freely together that I could make nothing of her account. 'Twas only yesterday, when I returned to Versailles, that I heard the full tale of the tabletop Demosthenes and how his auditors denuded the chestnuts of their leaves to make them green cockades. The color of hope, he said; also, he later discovered, the color of the comte d'Artois, whom the hoi-polloi hate worse than hunger itself.
In any case, Louison had not dried her eyes before my maître d'hôtel was telling me that the Bourse and the theaters were closed and self-proclaimed patriots running riot through the streets. I dared not set foot out-of-doors that night for fear of green-ribboned brigands in search of arms and powder. M. de Bonsecours, who had proposed to sup with me in Paris, prudently remained at Versailles. I vow I was quite vexed with him. Yet when Monday dawned, and I saw from my window the cobblestones torn up from the street and piled into barriers, I was glad he'd stayed away. My husband is a gentle man; the sight of smoke rising from all quarters of Paris must have caused him unutterable pain.
At ten, my maître d'hôtel brought the news that the merchants feared to open their stores.
Prudence had counseled lying low; now prudence dictated flight. I ordered my carriage and gathered some few letters and books I wished to save, only to be told that my carriage had been impounded by the French guard. Fresh from the fray, my coachman babbled of a ragtag army of citizens pillaging armorers and bakers' shops. The mob broke into Saint-Lazare, he said, and robbed the good brothers not only of every sack of grain in their stores, but of their wine, their cheeses, even of their vinegar and oil and, most curiously, of a dried ram's head.
All that heaving about of cobbles and flour sacks must have exhausted them, for Monday night was quieter. Half in fear, half in fascination, I sat at my window and watched men in ill-fitting blue and red uniforms build small street-fires and harry the small clusters of dirty vagabonds drifting like restless ghosts among the rubble. From time to time I heard them calling out, their terrible voices flat in the heavy silence: "Armes et pain!" they cried. "Arms and bread!"
The events of the next day are unclear, though some few facts are certain. The Bastille fell. Its commandant and guards are most horribly dead, and their heads paraded through the streets on pikes. The Swiss Guard gave up rifles to the mob without a shot fired or the least resistance. Paris is an ant's nest overturned. Versailles is little better.
Rumors abound, and no one is able to distinguish truth from the merest invention. I've heard that M. de Launay's own guards turned upon him and forced him to open the Bastille to the mob, who first promised him safe conduct, and then hacked off his head with a pocketknife. Some say that the Swiss Guard massacred a thousand citizens in the Tuileries, cut old men's throats and trampled pregnant women. Others will have it that the Swiss Guard joined the mob in burning the wall of the Farmers General and pillaging Saint-Lazare. Jacques de Fleiselles was a traitor to the king. Jacques de Fleiselles was a traitor to the people. It doesn't matter which anymore: the poor old fool is dead and his head stuck on a pike next to de Launay's. I've heard there were eighty pensioners in the Bastille and fifty Swiss Guards. I've heard that there were twenty pensioners, or a handful; ten Swiss Guards, or a battalion. De Launay had promised the king not to fire on his subjects; he was too stupid to fire; he didn't want to risk damage to his new house across the square. Or perhaps that was M. de Besenval, who, fearing that the mob would sack his house—newly painted and provided with the most charming baths in Paris—tamely surrendered the Invalides' entire store of rifles.
Now that I've had time to reflect, I can only wonder at my own foolish astonishment. Have we not lived for a dozen years now in the midst of famine, foreign wars, scurrilous pamphlets, and taxes that rose like hawks? Twelve years ago, did not all Paris embrace Benjamin Franklin and applaud his American War? The Americans had their Concord Massacre; we French have our Fall of the Bastille. Paris and Versailles quiver as from an electric shock, and a number of the resulting sparks, alas, seem likely to catch fire.
From all quarters I hear news of peasants burning châteaux, tearing down dovecotes, shooting rabbits. Dear Adèle, have a care to thyself, and beseech thy husband to hear his peasants patiently lest they leave him without a roof to cover his head. Whatever may come to pass, I rely on the good sense of thine excellent Berthe to keep thee safe.
Thy loving sister,
Hortense de Fourchet de Bonsecours
Well. I remember I read this absorbing missive through from beginning to end, never lifting my eyes from the page to see whether madame listened or not. When I finished, she shrieked and groaned "La sainte Vierge preserve us!" then fainted untidily back upon her chaise longue. I myself was sufficiently horrified that I'd barely the wit to search for her smelling-salts, and indeed took a sniff at them myself before applying them to her nose. She came to with a start, and straightaway began to call for monsieur.
Mlle Linotte peeked in. "What's to do, Berthe?" she asked. "Is madame my mother ill again?"
"She is as you see her, mademoiselle," I snapped. "She desires sp
eech with monsieur your father."
"He's in the aviary: I'll go fetch him if you tell me what has made you look so grim." I hesitated, and she frowned. "You forget I am a woman grown."
"Yes, mademoiselle. I forget." A woman grown, said I to myself. And a Maindur to boot. I put the letter into her hand.
She flicked through the scrawled pages, read the closing lines, reread them. A flame rose in her cheeks and eyes. "Revolution!" she exclaimed. "How monsieur my father will be furious."
Monsieur her father was furious: furious at being dragged away from his precious birds to listen to his wife's hysterical entreaties that he convey her and her daughter to Switzerland now, immediately.
"See where Hortense warns us to have a care, and talks of heads on pikes and I know not what other atrocities," she wailed. "What will become of us should the peasants burn Beauxprés around our ears?"
"Eh bien, foutre!" shouted the duc. "Let them but try! They'll learn fast enough how a Maindur deals with rebels. I'll hear no more of Switzerland, madame, nor of thy vaporish fears. Beauxprés is the seat of the ducs de Malvoeux, and in times of danger and uncertainty, the place of the duchesse de Malvoeux is at Beauxprés. Hortense is making a piece of work out of nothing. Those heads on pikes belong to common rioters, rely on it."
Then he stormed back to his birds, and there, we thought, was an end to it.
That night as I carried a posset up to madame, I heard a great pother from the courtyard of shouting voices and stamping feet. Alarmed, I turned and listened. The noise resolved into a chanted repetition of monsieur's name.
"Duc François," they cried. "François l'oiseleur!"
For an eerie moment I stood benumbed, waiting for the intolerable clamor of magic to shake the air as it had twelve years gone, when the beggar had summoned monsieur to the courtyard. A chilly draught scurried down the stairs and I looked up to see monsieur standing in the open door of his chamber. He was wearing a nightcap and a dark brocaded gown; his eyes glittered madly in the candlelight.
"You shall not have her," he shouted, and rushed past me down the steps and across the vestibule to the library.
At the head of the stairs my mistress appeared, leaning on Linotte's arm and complaining faintly of the prodigious deal of noise without. Hearing the chant, she faltered and clung to the railing.
Some heavy object began to thrust rhythmically against the doors, which gave and shuddered and groaned as with pain. Monsieur emerged from the library with his épée in his hand and started across the vestibule. The lock broke suddenly, ripped from its frame, and the doors gaped around a tree trunk, its branches roughly trimmed. Madame stumbled down the steps and clung to me. Water-kneed, I clung to her again and thought at least that we would die as we had lived.
When the doors burst asunder, there was a small hush. The tree trunk withdrew, and through the gap I saw the courtyard roiling with shadow and flame. One shadow stepped forward alone, proud as any prince over the threshold of Beauxprés. A filthy prince, clad in gray rags, his guard of honor armed with hoes and pitchforks and scythes.
"François Marie Baptiste Armand Maindur."
I started to hear the voice of Artide, rusty as the well-house pump but nonetheless familiar—Artide come into his own.
"François Maindur. Hear the will of the king of France."
Monsieur lowered the point of his épée and lifted his long nose. "I hear only a mutinous lackey backed by a herd of oxen."
An angry mutter greeted these words, more menacing, somehow, than a shout. Madame flinched, but did not retreat. Artide pulled his lips back from his teeth, reached into the bosom of his much-abused livery, and drew out a paper. Slowly he unfurled it, beckoned a flam-beau closer, and began to declaim into a reverent silence.
"In the king's name. All people in the country are allowed to enter all the châteaux of the region to demand their title deeds. If they are refused, they can loot, burn and plunder; they will not be punished."
Monsieur raised his épée. "I'll see you in Hell first. Eater of shit! Peasants!"
At that the mob pressed forward into the hall. Their mouths gaped redly; their eyes rolled and stared; their faces were obscured by soot and fury. Yet I knew them: Yves and Estienne Pyanet, Claude Mareschal, Dieudonné Malateste, Pierre Desmoulins, Just Vissot, all the men in the village.
"The deeds!" Mareschal bayed. "Give us the deeds!"
Beside him, Just Vissot bellowed: "The land we farm is ours!"
"Death to the rich!" a woman's voice cried. "Death to the aristocrats!" And mère Boudin thrust herself through the press and advanced on monsieur like some malevolent fairy, one fist raised and threatening. "Give us what is ours, monster. Have a mind to the curse of the Maindurs, and for your soul's sake, give us what is ours."
Monsieur laughed. He looked upon his children's old nurse, her greasy skein of hair wound up under a red cap and white cockade, and laughed like Roland's horn. The peasants, uncertain, halted.
A hand gripped my elbow; a breath warmed my ear. "Hide the rent rolls," murmured Linotte.
I gasped and started. "What did you say?"
"The rent rolls. Hide them. Artide knows where they're kept, and they'll be ashes in a trice if they're not hidden. Hurry. I'll take care of madame my mother."
"The rent rolls."
"Yes. In the Armament room, where Sangsue keeps the accounts."
"The Armament room."
"Up the stairs and through the gallery of Depositions. Oh, Berthe, you know the Armament room."
Of a certainty I knew the Armament room, but this was no time to dispute with Sangsue my right to remove even a mote of dust from his personal domain. "Devil take the rent rolls," I said. "Let the peasants burn them."
"Go," she said. Just that: "Go."
And I went. With my skirts gathered up in both hands, I ran headlong through the dark and echoing chambers of Beauxprés, tripping over chairs and display cases, cursing the name of Maindur with every panting breath but running nevertheless as though I'd no will in the matter.
By some miracle—or spell—the Armament room was open and Sangsue absent.
Our miser was not a tidy man. Books, scrolls, quills, pen-wipers were scattered pell-mell over the trestle, and unmarked boxes shouldered undated ledgers on the shelves. Though I despaired of finding anything to the purpose, I rummaged, and luck—or some spell of Linotte's—was with me, for soon I came upon a leather box like a stocking-case crammed with dozens of tightly-rolled parchments—the rent rolls without a doubt. Slamming it shut, I snatched it up. A tin lantern stood on the window-ledge. I took that as well, and the tinderbox beside it.
Once outside the door, I stood rooted in a panic of uncertainty. Should I light the lantern? Where should I go? The document case was unwieldy, battered, all too obviously practical. Among all the ordered glory of the Beauxprés collections, 'twould stand out like a rag-seller among the queen's ladies-in-waiting.
Under my pallet? In the nursery? The devil fly away with it! In the distance, I heard shouting and the clatter of sabots on marble, sounds that awoke in my feet a will of their own. Pell-mell they carried me down the gallery of Depositions to the Violin room, down three steps into the cabinet des Fées, right at the Fan room and through the little arch that led to the donjon tower. Almost before I knew where I was going, I was down the winding stairs, across the laundry, and in the room where the soap tubs were kept, the room where I'd found bébé Malateste.
The arched door was uncovered and ajar as I had left it. Without daring to take time to light the lantern, I groped down the steps and into the darkness beyond.
CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH
In Which Berthe Uncovers the Crow's Nest and Linotte Takes Flight
I picked my gingerly way down a steep and narrow stair with the document case clutched like a swaddled infant to my breast. My skirts dragged over a thick, soft silting; under the dust, each step was swaybacked as a goat.
At the bottom I stopped to strike the tinder and lig
ht the tin lantern. 'Twas a tedious, fumbling business in the dark, but I managed it at last. The light revealed a low, stone chamber furnished with a trestle table and stools. I saw torches in the rusty cressets and great rusty keys dangling like hanged men from rusty hooks above eight doors, iron-banded and grated, four to each side of the chamber. A wide arch facing the stair framed a more inward darkness. I had found the ancient dungeons of Beauxprés.
I drew a shaking breath of stale air and held it to listen. Nothing. No rumor of sabots or peasant imprecations. No squeaking or scrabble of verminous feet.
Bon, said I to myself. Peasants have at least as much sense as rats: I'll leave the case down here. I waded through the dust to the trestle and laid my burden upon it. How large it hulked in the lantern-light! How out of place it looked, how exposed! And my trail through the dust was as clear as a way-post: Hidden documents this way.
"Bugger," I muttered. "Bugger the documents. Bugger the duc. Yes, and bugger the peasants, and Artide, and the birds, and the whole fornicating lot of them."
Something in the silence that followed my fit of spleen inspired me to an Ave, a Pater Noster, and a mea culpa, after which I felt somewhat calmer. Here were eight cells, and heaven only knew what deeps beyond the arch. Surely the dungeons of Beauxprés must once have concealed secrets more unwieldy than a document case.
I tried the door of the nearest cell, then another beside it, and another still. All were locked, by time and rust no less than by the heavy, useless keys: I couldn't budge them. There was one left a little ajar, and by dint of putting my back to the oak and pushing with all my strength, I managed to shift it enough to squeeze through. The cell was no wider than two coffins and barely as high as a man, with a narrow stone ledge across the far end. A perfect hiding-place, had it not been for the black water trickling down the walls. No use saving the rent rolls from fire only to lose them to rot.
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