Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution

by Michelle Moran

  The door to the workshop opens, and Madame Élisabeth appears in a long muslin gaulle belted with a sash of rose-colored gauze. Immediately, I curtsy. She takes a seat on the nearest stool, and tears roll down her cheeks. The marquise hurries to her friend and wraps the princesse in a tight embrace.

  “They are leaving,” she says. “My brother and his wife, the Comtesse d’Artois, are leaving for Turin. They are to stay with our uncle, the King of Sardinia. And the Polignacs are leaving for Switzerland tonight.” She looks up at me. “The queen is to lose her dearest friend. Gabrielle de Polignac has been at Versailles for fourteen years. She is Governess to the Royal Children. What if we never see them again?”

  The marquise looks nervously at me. “Why should that be? The king is here. You are here. What about the Comte de Provence?”

  “He is staying.”

  “You see? You have two brothers in France, and one of them still wears the crown. Your family will overcome this. And when they do, Artois and the Polignacs will return.”

  Madame Élisabeth is wearing a black and white cockade, one of Rose Bertin’s creations. Her eyes are full of pain, and I wonder if she knows that we are all fair-weather friends. That we smile and bow and then return to Paris to sketch tricolor bonnets and finish exhibits called The Conquest of the Bastille. “Will my family overcome this?” she asks me.

  Suddenly, everything feels close and hot. The truthful answer is, It all depends on your brother’s resolve. Is he willing to tell what troops remain with him to fire on the rebels? Can he call up favors from other nations and ask for soldiers and weaponry? And when those troops arrive, can he turn away when they spill French blood? If so, he may keep his crown. If not, he is at the mercy of the National Assembly. “It seems that much will depend on His Majesty’s actions.”

  “Yes.” She blinks away her tears. “That is what I told him. The queen and I, we’re in favor of fleeing. The minister Breteuil has suggested Metz in eastern France,” she reveals.

  “Madame,” the marquise says warningly.

  But the princesse waves away her concern. “Marie is a royalist.”

  I wonder if my cheeks are burning with shame. I lower my head, in case they are.

  “We could wait on the border of Germany and the Netherlands for troops there, in the strongest fortress in Europe. But my brother, the Comte de Provence, thinks we should all remain here. He has told the king that to leave Versailles is to leave the crown, and that if he plans to do that, he cannot blame anyone who might come along and reach for it themselves.”

  The marquise’s eyes go wide. “Such as whom?”

  “The Duc d’Orléans. Or the Comte de Provence himself. My brothers”—she addresses me—“are not as close as they might be.”

  She should not be telling me this. I am a tutor. A wax modeler.

  “The queen was packing her belongings this morning, and this afternoon, the king told her that he was staying. She believes her duty is to remain at my brother’s side. And of course that is where my duty lies as well.”

  The three of us are silent. So the royal family will remain in Versailles. Has the king considered what should happen if the National Assembly decides against a constitutional monarchy and adopts a Constitution? Then he would be a rallying point for men who wished to see a return of the monarchy—making him popular with rebels and dangerous to the Assembly. “Given these precarious times,” I say, “I understand if you wish to discontinue wax modeling.”

  “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” Madame Élisabeth quotes. “Not only do I wish to continue,” she replies, “but I wish to model the patron saint of every cathedral in France. When each model is finished, it will be my gift to that cathedral.”

  I look to the marquise, whose face tells me that she has already heard of this plan. “Do you know how many cathedrals there are in France, Madame?”

  “Nearly a hundred.” She rises from her stool and gathers her apron, tying it neatly around her waist. “Shall we begin?”

  WOLFGANG CAN’T MEET me outside the Grand Commune until eleven at night. When he appears, I see that he has brought Johann with him, and before we speak I follow my brothers inside to the back of the crowded hall. How many men have eaten well here at the expense of the king? Wolfgang picks out a table in the farthest corner of the room, a place where we can watch instead of being watched.

  “Tell us about the fourteenth,” Johann says. He looks tired, as if there hasn’t been much sleep to be had in Versailles in the past two weeks. Even Wolfgang looks drawn in his white silk shirt and velvet doublet.

  I tell them everything, from Lafayette and the National Guard to the mobs who stormed the Boulevard du Temple. When I come to the part about de Launay and de Flesselles, my brothers are silent. Johann reaches across the table to take my hand. “I wish we had been there,” he says.

  “It’s better you weren’t. They were desperate for a confrontation.”

  “These are going to be tense weeks,” Wolfgang says. “Until the king decides whether to stay or flee—”

  “He has already decided. He is staying.” I tell them what the princesse said, and how she wept to think she might never see the Polignacs again. Suddenly, Wolfgang and Johann are fully awake.

  “He’s a fool,” Wolfgang replies. “After what he saw today, there shouldn’t be any question. The king went to the Hôtel de Ville.”

  “Again?”

  “He wanted to greet the people and tell them that he’s recalled Necker from Switzerland. He made his will before he left. There was much wailing from the women—they thought the Parisian crowds would kill him. He promised to broker peace with ‘his good people.’ ”

  “And what happened?”

  “He went and riled the crowds. They shouted ‘Vive le roi,’ and everyone loved him. When he returned here a few hours ago, he was wearing a tricolor cockade in his hat. The king! And do you know what the queen told him? She said, ‘I thought I married the King of France, not a commoner.’ ”

  My God. What did the king think? That he could return to Versailles with a tricolor cockade floating from his hat and his guards would love him for it?

  “I think Curtius was wise to join the National Guard,” Johann says.

  “We’re foreigners to this country, whether or not we think of it as our own. And with the three of us in the Swiss Guard, not to mention your position with Madame Élisabeth, it may become dangerous …”

  “That’s what Curtius says. He’s gone every day. And some nights, too.”

  “And the Salon?” Wolfgang asks.

  The Salon has never been better, I think. Chaos is good for those who sell news. “I am working all the time. New tableaux. New signs. We reopen tomorrow.”

  Chapter 29

  JULY 18, 1789

  Curtius does not miss an opportunity to add something new to his show.

  —MAYEUR DE SAINT-PAUL, EXCERPT FROM TOURIST BROCHURE

  I DON’T KNOW HOW CURTIUS HAS MANAGED IT IN TWO NIGHTS, but The Conquest of the Bastille is one of our best exhibits. I walk through the Salon with paper and ink, ready to write down whatever needs to be fixed, but there is almost nothing: a minor adjustment to de Launay’s wig and a quick dusting of Jefferson’s desk.

  “Take these notes to Dr. Curtius,” I tell Yachin. “And be ready for a ten o’clock opening. I’ll be next door.”

  Yachin grins. “Are you going to see Henri?” he asks. “He likes you, doesn’t he?”

  “I certainly hope so.” I pause in front of the mirror. “He’s my neighbor, after all.”

  “But he likes you more than that,” Yachin persists. “He wants you for his wife.”

  I adjust my fichu and turn around. “Now why would you say that?”

  “Because he’s over here so much.” He notices everything, Yachin. He would make a fine wax modeler, although his future will certainly be in printing. “And at night,” he continues, “before the Salon is closed, you sit on his steps.”
/>   “I never leave before the Salon is closed,” I correct him.

  “You did once. And I saw you. You were sitting together.”

  “Perhaps we were discussing the weather.”

  Yachin gives me a long look. “I’m right, aren’t I?” he asks eagerly.

  I smile. “We’ll see.”

  “Will you tell him I made my own barometer using a bottle, a stopper, and a straw?”

  I pause at the door. “He taught you to do that?”

  “Four days ago. Remember?”

  “No.” But it’s because I’ve been selfish. When we meet, it’s always about my models, my work, my family, my tutoring. When is the last time I asked Henri about his experiments and what he’s been doing in his lab with Jacques? I look down at Yachin’s face and see the same hope in his eyes that I’ve seen in Henri’s. These experiments mean so much to them, yet it’s been five months since I’ve been inside Henri’s lab, and the last time I was there I was hoping his tour of the Invisible Girl would be brief so I could return to my workshop and model Émilie Sainte-Amaranthe. “I will tell him,” I say. “And I know he’ll be proud.”

  I walk next door, and before I even raise my hand to knock, the door swings open. “Henri.” I smile, and suddenly I’m nervous.

  “I thought you forgot.” Henri steps back to let me inside. The hall smells of coffee and something else—warm bread?

  “When have you ever known me to forget something? Besides,” I tease, “I want to know what a pair of bachelors eat for breakfast.”

  He takes me into the parlor, and I was right, he’s found bread. It’s laid out on a silver tray with an array of jellies and cheeses. Nothing has ever smelled more delightful. I inhale. No one can imitate the bread in Paris. Not even the best bakers in Montreuil.

  “I told the baker I was hosting a lovely woman for breakfast, so he took extra care in finding me some flour.”

  I laugh. “So when is this lovely woman coming?”

  He takes me in his arms. “I believe she’s already here.”

  He kisses my neck, and I close my eyes. It can’t continue like this. I can’t keep dreaming about him at night and resisting him in the day. We move to the couch, and suddenly I don’t care about marriage or children or what happens with the Salon. “What about Jacques?” I whisper.

  “He’s sleeping upstairs. He won’t be awake for another three hours.”

  I watch him undress and think that even if I had all the time in the world, I couldn’t sculpt the perfection of Henri’s body. His arms, his chest … the lean muscle in his thighs. I take off my cap, and when my hair tumbles down my back, he sighs.

  It is painful at first, as I knew it would be. But there is also pleasure, and he is careful not to spill into me. I have experienced tremendous joy in seeing wonderful places and sculpting beautiful things, but this is a different kind of bliss. A fleeting, private, exquisite kind of bliss I have never known until right now. We lie together on the couch, and I feel the warmth of him against my back. The bread must be cold, but it doesn’t matter. Henri kisses my shoulder, and I think, It could be like this always. We could wake together to the smell of coffee and sleep at night in each other’s arms. “Are you happy?” Henri asks.

  “Very, very happy,” I tell him.

  He stands and offers me his hand. I take it, and he turns me toward the mirror. He traces my long neck with his fingers and cups my breasts in his hands. The paleness of my skin is a stark contrast to the darkness of my hair. Together, we make a pretty picture.

  “What am I going to do with you, my passionate, creative, ambitious Marie?”

  I turn to face him. “Help me dress, and then take me on a tour of your lab?”

  He smiles. “I was thinking more like marriage.”

  “You know—”

  He puts a finger to my lips. “Yes.”

  “What we’ve done is dangerous,” I warn.

  He watches me dress, and the longing in his eyes is unbearable to see.

  “Curtius won’t be a guardsman for long,” I promise. “We’ve already discussed other ways to show our patriotism.”

  “And how is that?”

  “We might do away with all our royal tableaux. Or perhaps he’ll join the Jacobin Club.”

  “Those radicals?” Henri asks. He begins to dress, and I am sorry to see him back in his clothes. “I would try to deter him from that idea.”

  “It was Robespierre’s suggestion when he visited the Salon to see himself in wax.”

  “Ah yes. Robespierre can be very persuasive.”

  “What is wrong with the Jacobins?”

  Henri buttons his coat. “They have a habit of preaching dangerous things. I would be careful.”

  “Well, Curtius believes in hedging his bets, and many of the men in the National Assembly are part of the Club. If they succeed in this constitutional monarchy, Curtius will have very influential friends.”

  “You already have influential friends. That’s why you’re still going to Montreuil.”

  “Yes, but then we’d have important friends in and out of the palace. Although perhaps I should make friends with your baker,” I tease.

  We eat, and Henri takes me into his lab, where he tells me about the experiments they’ve been doing. He wants to launch another balloon, only this time it won’t be for show. “There are so many possibilities,” he says. “Think of all the uses for flight.” He takes down a book and flips through the pages. The mahogany bookshelves stretch to the ceiling, some filled with leather tomes, others packed with glass bottles and mysterious jars. There are ladders to reach the topmost shelves, and I long to climb one.

  “Listen,” Henri says, and he reads a passage from David Bourgeois’s book Des Expériences de la Machine Aérostatique. “ ‘Someday, man will cross burning deserts, inaccessible mountains, impenetrable forests, and raging torrents. And all of this will be done by balloon.’ ” He looks up at me. “Bourgeois predicted it five years ago, and I plan to see it come to pass.”

  I feel humbled to hear him speak. “So you’re going to fly away?” I ask.

  “Not me. But someone will. Imagine the uncharted territories these explorers will find. My brother was the first man in the world to see the sun set twice. What else can be accomplished? What else can we do?”

  I’m in the presence of genius, yet the world is more concerned about tricolor cockades. Henri takes me to his desk, where his notes on the weather are carefully laid out. “With enough balloons, we could observe the weather from here to London and make predictions.”

  “As in when it’s going to rain?”

  “Or snow or hail …”

  “But how?”

  “By sending up a mercury barometer,” he says, “or by having someone record the movements of the wind and clouds. And imagine what you could do with a telescope! Think of how close an astronomer could get to the stars. My brother ascended nearly fifteen thousand feet. With the proper gear, perhaps you could go higher. There are scientific uses, commercial uses, even military uses for these balloons. King George the Third is already sponsoring experiments in England.”

  We watch each other in the bright morning light. There is so much to hope for between us. I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him. “Come tonight,” I say. “My mother is cooking ham from Bayonne.”

  THE REOPENING OF the Salon passes by in a haze. Curtius has excused himself from his duties in the National Guard this weekend, and in front of a crowd of nearly a thousand people, he makes a great show of taking our wax model of the king and placing him outside, then pinning a tricolor cockade to his hat. They must hear the exclamations of joy in the Palais-Royal.

  “What’s the matter?” my mother asks. “That’s the second person you’ve forgotten to record.”

  I look down at the record book and suppress a smile. It’s true. Already, Henri is detrimental to my profession. I write down, “Female, seventeen sous,” then listen to the exclamations of horror as the woman comes face-t
o-face with de Launay and de Flesselles. But the most popular model is the one of the decrepit Comte de Lorges. Curtius has given him his very own room, painting the walls to look like a dungeon and cluttering the nearby tables with mementos taken from the Bastille. Knowing how valuable these items will become, he’s purchased inkwells and armor, green curtains, and even a set of iron firedogs. A pair of men stop by my table and point to the Comte de Lorges’s tableau. “So is that who you would have us believe came tottering out of the Bastille?” the younger man demands.

  I frown. “What do you mean?”

  “That’s the beggar from Notre-Dame,” the older man says. “I should know. I pass him every day.”

  “No. That’s the Comte de Lorges. He was a prisoner.”

  The old man exchanges a look with his son.

  “Did he have a mark on his cheek?” the younger man asks. “And a red spot beneath his eye?”

  I think back three days ago to the night the Comte de Lorges allowed me to sculpt him. “Yes.”

  “Then he’s the beggar from Notre-Dame.”

  “But the Comte de Lorges—”

  “Is probably a myth, Mademoiselle. Why? Did someone pass that man off as a comte?”

  “Yes.” I think of Robespierre. “But all the newspapers … they’re printing his story.”

  “Well, you know how it is,” the older man says angrily. “Anything for a sale.”

  I am beside myself with rage. I want to take the model of de Lorges and utterly destroy it. I find Curtius outside with the wax model of the king, and I tell him the story.

  “And they were sure he was a beggar at Notre-Dame?” he asks.

  I nod. “What do we do?”

  “Obviously, we have to keep him. These people believe he existed, and they’ll want to know what happened to him if he suddenly disappears.”

  “Well, perhaps he had a tragic accident,” I say angrily in German. And then it occurs to me. “Do you think Robespierre lied to us on purpose?”

  “I think Robespierre believes what he wishes to believe.”