But we are all sorry when loss comes for us. The test of our character comes not in how many tears we shed but in how we act after those tears have dried.
Chapter 55
APRIL 7, 1793
In order to ensure public tranquillity, two hundred thousand heads must be cut off.
—JEAN-PAUL MARAT
TERROR. THIS IS WHAT DANTON HAS UNLEASHED IN THE WAKE of his wife’s death. He is urging the National Convention to establish a committee to root out every enemy of the patrie and send them first to prison, then to the guillotine. He is like a man possessed, preaching about enemies wherever he goes, from the Jacobin Club to the floor of the Convention. This war against conspirators has given him a new reason to live, and he is not alone in his crusade. In one of his recent placards, Marat has calculated how many criminals can be guillotined in a single day. Even Robespierre has joined the call for a committee responsible for hunting down the enemies of equality.
On the sixth of April, the Convention takes Danton’s advice, making him the first member of the Committee of Public Safety. Now he and eight other men are given the task of finding traitors by any means necessary, and only the Chronique de Paris is brave enough to write the truth. It begins by attacking Marat and Danton. Then, the author moves on to Robespierre.
There are some who ask why there are so many women around Robespierre: at his house, in the galleries of the Jacobin Club, in the galleries of the Convention. It is because this Revolution of ours is a religion, and Robespierre is leading a sect therein. He is a priest at the head of his worshipers. He thunders against the rich and the great, and prides himself on how he lives on next to nothing. Then he talks of God and of Providence, creating his own disciples in the process. He calls himself the friend of the humble and the weak, yet happily receives the adoration of both women and the poor in spirit. He is a false priest and will never be other than a false priest.
I burn the paper in the fireplace. That evening, when the patrol comes to our house, they search our cabinets, our storeroom, the glass jars in our workshop. They scour our shelves for royalist books and make themselves comfortable in our salon, going through newspapers. When the men are finished, they congratulate us. “Not every house is filled with such dedicated patriots as yourselves.”
We watch them leave, and I could cry with relief when they are gone. Not everyone is so fortunate. The news that comes to us every night through Curtius is terrifying. They have arrested a general who surrendered to the Prussians and sentenced him to death. When his young wife heard of this, she ran into the streets screaming, “Long live the king!” Tomorrow, they will both be executed in the Place de la Révolution.
“They are sending women who have just given birth to the guillotine,” Curtius reveals. “Yesterday, a mother with an infant still at her breast was led to the scaffold. The executioner handed the child to an old man in the crowd, then bound the mother’s hands and executed her.” He lowers his head. “And everyone watched in silence.”
We are all guilty. Every one of us. When Danton’s Committee of Public Safety arrests fourteen girls discovered dancing at a Prussian ball in Verdun, not a single voice speaks out for them. Instead, the masses watch as the girls are led through the public square, their red chemises blowing in the warm spring breeze. Every day there is another story of a woman crying “Vive le Roi!” at her sentencing before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Wives are marching to the guillotine with their husbands, and daughters are going with their fathers and brothers. When the news comes that Madame Sainte-Amaranthe has been arrested for once gambling with royalists, I know that the world has gone mad. Where does it end? Who will risk death to tell the truth that the Committee of Public Safety is worse than any king who ever ruled in France?
“They have arrested her children as well,” Curtius tells me. We both look across the room to the models of Madame Sainte-Amaranthe and her daughter, part of our Parisian Beauties tableau. I remember the morning when Émilie Sainte-Amaranthe came to sit for me. It was four years ago. The king’s courtier came with the invitation for me to be Madame Élisabeth’s tutor, and Robespierre advised me to turn it down. Émilie declared that to refuse would be insane.
Lucile once warned me that Robespierre never forgets an indignity or a slight. Has Robespierre remembered this and sentenced her entire family to death? “You don’t think—”
He knows what I am about to say. “They still call him The Incorruptible,” he says wryly.
But that is only a name. A reputation he has built for himself.
Chapter 56
JUNE 1, 1793–JULY 5, 1793
Clemency is also a revolutionary measure.
—CAMILLE DESMOULINS
NO ONE CAN TELL ME WHY THE SAINTE-AMARANTHE FAMILY has been arrested. Finally, when I pay a visit to Lucile, she closes the doors to her salon so that no one may hear us speak. “I would not appear too interested in their fate.”
I study her face. “The day you gave birth,” I say, “you said that Robespierre never forgets a slight.”
She moves her hand through the air. “That was nearly a year ago.”
“And has Robespierre changed? He sits on the Revolutionary Tribunal,” I remind her. “He’s as responsible for their fate as Danton and his Committee. Perhaps Camille—”
“No.” She is firm in this. “He has other problems. We need more soldiers.”
“From where? There are no young men left in the streets.”
She puts a hand to her forehead. “I know. But they must be found somewhere.”
I discover where they will be found the next morning. When my mother hands Curtius his morning coffee, he does not appear in any rush to finish. He drinks it slowly, allowing Paschal to sit on his knee and read his newspaper. When Isabel asks if Curtius will be needing the button on his military coat sewn, he tells her, “Rather sooner than later I’m afraid.”
We all stop what we are doing. My mother puts her hand to her chest. “What does that mean?”
“I’m being sent on a mission,” he says. “A trip to Mayence to report on the patriotism of General Custine. They want me to leave in seven days.”
Paschal asks, “Will you be fighting?”
Curtius smiles. “I am too old for that.”
“And you are too old for any mission,” my mother says angrily. “Are they so desperate that they need old men?”
“It would seem that way.”
“You will be careful,” I worry. “You won’t be mistaken for an actual soldier?”
He laughs. “I doubt there’s any chance of that.” He lifts Paschal from his lap and goes to my mother. “It will only be few months.” He leans over and wraps his arms around her. But she is weeping. “I will return before Michaelmas,” he promises.
“What Michaelmas?” she cries. “It’s now the day of the cat, or the tree, or some pebble.”
He holds her tightly. “It’s only for a few months.” But I know he is putting a cheerful face on a dangerous situation, and the night before he leaves, he takes me to his room and unlocks a metal chest. “These are all of our most important documents,” he says. “If anything should happen to me—”
“You shouldn’t talk like that.”
“We don’t know, Marie. Who would think that two of your brothers would be gone?”
Or that war would separate us from Wolfgang and Henri so that any correspondence would look like treason. It has been months since we have had a letter from them, and who knows how much longer it will be before they are able to send word.
“In here is the deed to the house.” Curtius shows it to me. “Now it is fully paid. And this is my will, along with your inheritance.” He puts away his papers. “Things are changing rapidly. Do not be surprised if they put the queen on trial.”
“You can’t go,” I say desperately, and for the first time in many years, I see his resolution waiver. “What will we do without you?” I ask. “How will Maman survive?”
“She has Paschal a
nd Isabel. And, above all, she has you.”
“It’s not the same.”
His eyes fill with tears. “I know.”
When our family gathers outside the Salon to see him off, the neighbors come to bid him farewell. There is the chandler, the grocer, a handful of actors who have remained on the Boulevard, and of course, there is Jacques. I remember the last time so many people gathered on this street to bid a carriage farewell. It was my first trip to Montreuil. Yachin had stood here, where I am standing now, and begged me for playing cards. But instead of bringing cards, I brought him death.
I go to the lamppost where the carriage driver is waiting and tear off Marat’s most recent placard. It is a list of suspects he believes should be guillotined. I fold the paper and tuck it inside my sleeve.
“I wish we could walk across this city,” Isabel admits, “and tear every one down. Last week, he wrote against the Polish Princesse Lubomirska, and someone posted it on this lamppost. They arrested her on suspicion of treason last night. It was in this morning’s paper.”
He is like God. He has the power of life and death. Princesse Lubomirska came from Poland in a golden berline to help fight for the cause of liberty. I keep the placard tucked in my sleeve, and the next morning I compare it to the list printed in the Chronique. Every name on Marat’s placard is there. Wealthy, poor, women, men—they have all been arrested.
Chapter 57
JULY 1793
I am the anger, the just anger of the people, and that is why they listen to me and believe in me.
—JEAN-PAUL MARAT
IT IS A DIFFERENT HOUSE WITHOUT CURTIUS. ALTHOUGH THE days are the same, the nights are quiet. Everything makes my mother nervous now. The ringing of the bells, the soldiers in the streets, Paschal’s footsteps on the stairs when he is running. She is on constant vigil, waiting for another loved one to be snatched from her home. Only Curtius’s letters from Mayence can calm her.
He writes weekly, telling us how it is on the fronts, of the cannon fire in the distance and the cries of men in the hospital tents. Though he has a sent a positive report of Custine to the Convention, both Marat and Robespierre are convinced that the general is secretly a royalist.
“We must remember,” Marat writes on his insidious placards, “where the name Custine comes from. He was the Comte de Custine, an aristocrat no different from our tyrant king!”
As soon as I read these words, I know it is over for the general. He is summoned back to Paris, and because his children are here—hostages like the rest of us—he has no choice but to come. It is not enough that they arrest him. The Revolutionary Tribunal sentences his entire family to death: his son, his grandson, even his young daughter-in-law, whose only crime was to marry into a family that has displeased Marat.
When news of their sentencing reaches us on the Boulevard, Isabel comes to me in the workshop. “What does this mean for Curtius? He gave his word that Custine was a patriot.”
“They will not turn against us. We are their angels of death, remember?” I know that my voice sounds bitter, but she understands the toll these masks have taken on me. On both of us. “And many years ago,” I add, “we helped Marat. He came to our salons. When the king’s men wanted to arrest him, we hid him for a week.” It’s been more than three years since the night we stood together on our balcony and watched the New Year fireworks. Johann and Edmund were alive, and in a small apartment in Saint-Martin, Yachin was celebrating with his family. “I believe he will keep his silence.”
Indeed, he does, but not in any way I would have imagined. I am sitting with Isabel when Jacques-Louis David appears at the door of the Salon. He has not been here since he came with the news that the Swiss Guards had been massacred. That was nearly a year ago, and now my whole life is measured by this date. For every event I recall, I think, Was that before or after Johann and Edmund were killed? The Convention has their calendar, and I have mine.
Jacques-Louis must remember this as well. He approaches the caissier’s desk with hesitation. He is the Convention’s favorite artist, the man commissioned to sculpt a Goddess of Reason for every Temple in Paris. But he is trembling. Either terrible events are unfolding or he is ill. “Marie,” he says breathlessly, “you must come. You are wanted in the Rue des Cordelières.”
“Why?”
He looks at Isabel. “I cannot say.”
“And it’s a matter of urgency?”
For such a slight man, he is sweating profusely. His hair is wet, and there are stains beneath his arms. “Of grave, grave emergency,” he swears. I stand from the desk, and he adds quickly, “Bring your bag.”
“With plaster?”
“And towels—everything.”
“Let Maman know I’ve gone with Jacques-Louis,” I tell Isabel. I gather my bag and follow him out the door and into the street. He is practically running. “What is this about?” I demand.
“A tragedy. An absolute tragedy!”
“Has someone died?”
“Yes!” he cries. He stops walking to look at me. In the harsh morning light, he looks all of his forty-five years. “They have murdered Marat. A woman, who bought a knife in the Palais, went to his apartment and asked to see him.”
My heart is thundering in my chest. “He let her in?”
“She said she had the names of suspects who could be considered traitors to the patrie. So he invited her into his bathing room—”
“He was in the bath?”
“He spends much of his time there. For his skin.”
“Yes.” I remember the open sores.
“When she arrived, she gave him a list, and while he was reading …” He makes a stabbing motion with his hand. I know that Jacques-Louis is devastated, but I think of the bravery of this woman.
“And the girl?”
“Was apprehended at the door! She is still there. They are simply waiting for the National Guard.”
We continue to hurry, and I ask him why this is a secret.
“We must discover her coconspirators before the news begins to spread.”
“How do you know she didn’t act alone?”
He gives me a look. “She is a woman. A girl.”
We arrive at Marat’s apartment in the Rue des Cordelières, and Robespierre and Danton are already there. Robespierre appears the most distraught. He is pulling at his wig. “Jacques-Louis!” he cries. Then, “Marie! You have come to make the model?”
“Yes,” I tell him, holding up my leather bag.
“He was assassinated. Killed for his belief in liberty and equality. They will come for me next. If they came for Marat, they must come for me.”
I am startled by his use of the word must.
“You can’t imagine the scene,” Robespierre continues, gesturing toward the apartment behind us. “There is blood in the bath, across the walls, on the tiles. When the people hear of this, do you know what they will do? They will carry him through the streets like a martyr!” he exclaims, and I am sure I hear envy in his words. “Tomorrow, this will be in every paper,” he adds. “For months, this is all we will hear about—”
Jacques-Louis interrupts him. “In this weather, the body will not last long …”
But Danton does not move. I think of asking him about Madame Sainte-Amaranthe, but with a murderess waiting upstairs, now is not the time. I follow Jacques-Louis into the hall of the apartment and am surprised to see a woman’s touch in the furnishings.
“Does a woman live here?”
“Simonne Evrard,” he says.
“He is married?” I hadn’t known. What sort of woman would wish to bind her fortunes with Marat?
“He met her last year.”
I imagine she is young. An idealistic and foolish child. We reach the stairs, and I can hear several men speaking above us. They are questioning a young woman, who is responding to them in a clear, calm voice. She does not sound like a killer.
Jacques-Louis studies me before we climb. “I know you are not a woman of weak c
onstitution. But this death …” He chokes on his own words. “It is gruesome and unnatural.”
And the deaths of the innocent men and women Marat sent to the guillotine are not? I say firmly, “I have brought a sachet.” I take a small pouch of smelling salts from my bag. But whatever is awaiting me upstairs can never compare to the severed limbs and heads stacked in the charnel house of the Madeleine.
We climb fifteen steps to the second floor. A woman is sitting on a wooden stool, her hands tied tightly behind her back. Several men are standing above her, enjoying the view of her torn dress. Whatever happened here, there was a violent struggle. There is a bruise on her cheek, and I am struck by the even beauty of her features. I can see there is intelligence in her eyes.
“I know you,” she says. “You are the sculptress Marie Grosholtz. You make masks of those who have died on the scaffold.”
“Yes.” That this should be my reputation in Paris—a vulture flapping around the carcasses of the guillotine’s victims—makes me physically ill. I raise the smelling salts to my nose and inhale.
“When it’s my turn,” she says quietly, “I hope you will remember that I am the martyr, not him.” She looks to the open door of the bathing room, where Marat’s body lies in a tub of water and blood. The scene is less hideous than many I’ve witnessed. In fact, there is a calmness on his sharp, unpleasant features that was never there in life.
“What is your name?” I ask her.
“Charlotte Corday.”
“How old are you?” With her tattered dress and disheveled hair, she appears to be sixteen or seventeen.
“Old enough to execute,” Jacques-Louis replies. “A devil in women’s garb.”
But I think she is an avenging angel. She is as pale and serene as a Grecian statue, with her hands bound and her breasts exposed. I offer her my fichu. “For modesty’s sake,” I say swiftly to Jacques-Louis.
Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution Page 38