Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution

by Michelle Moran

  “Thank you,” Charlotte whispers.

  Jacques-Louis clenches his jaw, but I will not be threatened by him. Not when this young woman has shown such courage. “Are you ready?” he asks me.

  The bathing room reeks of vinegar and blood. In the rising heat, the body is beginning to bloat and smell. He has been stabbed once in the chest, an obviously fatal blow, although it’s doubtful that death would have come at once. He must have had time to shout to his wife, or perhaps to his servants, who came running to find the murderess with her knife. His head rests on his naked shoulder, and his arm is draped limply over the tub. He is still holding a quill, while the papers he was working on float amid the blood and water. I wonder how many lives will be saved because of what Charlotte Corday has done today.

  I begin the process of making a plaster mask, and while I wait for it to dry on Marat’s face, Jacques-Louis says, “The Convention will want a full figure. Bath and all.”

  “They want me to take his bath?”

  “Or create a replica. It doesn’t matter. Take the ink, the quill, everything.” He covers his nose with his shirt and breathes deeply. “When the model is finished”—he comes up for air—“I will make a painting of it.”

  It will be a great deal of work. “I will have to sketch this first.”

  “Of course. I made my own sketches before.”

  “While he was dying?”

  “Of course not!” Jacques-Louis flushes. “I came … for a visit.” He means he came to deliver names. “When I arrived, he had already been murdered. His wife was screaming, and while she ran to find Robespierre, I stayed with the body. All of France will recognize his sacrifice when I am through. And the funeral …” Jacques-Louis is already imagining the grandness of the event. He has been behind every public funeral since this Revolution began. “We will honor him as he deserves.”

  It takes all my restraint not to rip the mask from Marat’s face.

  Outside, Robespierre is pacing so frantically that it’s difficult to hear him. “We will find these conspirators if we have to search through every closet in Paris. No one will be above questioning. Not women, not children—”

  “The cast is done,” I tell him. “When the model is finished, where shall I send it?”

  “To the Convention,” he says, then he contradicts himself. “No—to the Revolutionary Tribunal. And we shall keep it as a reminder of our dangerous work.”

  Though I know the risk I am taking, I say, “Perhaps I should return to the Temple. If revolts are being plotted, it is possible the royal family will know of them.”

  He studies me through his green-tinged spectacles, and I realize that I have made a mistake. “I do not think that is a wise decision,” he says slowly. “I believe the royal family has enough wax saints.”

  I CANNOT STOP thinking about Robespierre’s words. Did the soldiers tell him? And if so, why? They had no reason to believe that the figure of Saint Denis was anything other than a warning. I recall Madame Royale’s expression when I handed the wax miniature to her aunt. Did she report it to the guards, who informed Robespierre? But why would she do such a thing?

  In the privacy of the workshop, I tell Isabel what happened. She puts aside her broom, and the color drains from her face. “It was a warning,” she says.

  “Yes, but who told him?”

  “Obviously, the girl.”

  That is what I think as well.

  “Marie, they will be watching you,” Isabel warns. “First the model of Saint Denis, then your fichu.” I have told her about Charlotte Corday. “They are going to think you are a conspirator!”

  I am thinking of the young woman who murdered Marat. Of her strength and courage. “They plan to execute her today,” I say. In the restaurants, her name will be on the back of every menu, among a list of others who have been sentenced to die. The crowds have been gathering since early this morning, and as soon as the bells chime noon, she will be brought to the scaffold.

  “Have you been asked to model her?” Isabel asks.

  “Yes.” I think of her request that I remember her as the true martyr, and not Marat. What must it be like for Charlotte to know that I will be the last person to touch her face, her hair?

  That evening, before we leave for the Madeleine Cemetery, I stand in the hall and look at myself in the mirror. As hard as I try, I cannot find the woman I saw in the glass of Henri’s salon. That woman had been confident and single-minded, filled with lofty ideas about her place in the world. She was as deluded as men like Camille and Marat. Now I see where my talent has taken me. I am dressed almost entirely in black. Only the apron around my waist adds any color, and tonight, when I return from the charnel house, my mother will have to wash it again and again, rinsing the blood from the cotton and the dirt from the trim. I am thirty-two years old without a husband or children, and when I lie down tonight, it will be in a bed empty of warmth and love. Who will inherit everything that I have learned?

  I go the the cassier’s desk and take out a quill and paper. I must write to him. Then at whatever the cost, I must find a ship that can take a letter to London—either through Belgium or Spain. Tears blur my vision, falling onto the paper and smearing the ink so that twice I have to begin again. The night I refused to leave with Henri will shape my life. Like my brothers’ deaths, there will be before love and after love. I will never love a man like Henri again. But I do not write this. If I am to free him, I must tell him that there is someone else. Unless there is another man, he will wait. Seven years, ten years … Now his life in London may go on without me.

  When Isabel finds me, I am sealing the letter. She looks at my face, then down at the name on the top of the envelope.

  “I have freed him,” I whisper.

  She understands. Isabel never needs an explanation. She links her arm through mine and we walk silently to find the corpse of a young girl who was much braver than I. But we are not alone in the Madeleine Cemetery. When we reach the charnel house, a group of men are standing above the headless body of Charlotte Corday. They are dressed in black, and a bearded man is in the process of undressing her.

  For a moment, I am paralyzed by fear. Then I realize what is happening. I have heard of men like this. “Isabel,” I shout, “run and find the guards!”

  “Wait!” the bearded man stands. “We are physicians.”

  Isabel pauses at the door.

  “We have been sent here by Robespierre,” he explains.

  I back away. “I don’t believe you.”

  The old man holds up a white-gloved hand. “We are here to inspect her virginity.”

  I step closer to Isabel.

  “Robespierre has been elected to the Committee of Public Safety. It is now his job to investigate any enemy of the patrie. He believes that this woman may have had a lover, and if that is the case, this man may have helped her plan the assassination of Marat.”

  And these are the lengths he is willing to go to, to discover conspirators? I think again of Robespierre’s words to me in the Rue des Cordelières and shiver. “We will wait outside.”

  Five minutes later, the men emerge, their faces solemn.

  “Well?” Isabel whispers.

  The bearded man turns to us, and I can see disappointment in the lines of his face. “She was a virgin.”

  Chapter 58

  AUGUST–OCTOBER 1793

  Courage! I have shown it for years; think you I shall lose it at the moment when my sufferings are to end?

  —MARIE ANTOINETTE

  IT IS UNTHINKABLE. A QUEEN, OUR QUEEN, THE QUEEN OF France, has been separated from her family and moved to the Conciergerie prison to await a trial on the charge of treason. When the criers begin to shout the news, I turn to my mother in the doorway of our Salon. “Curtius warned me that this would happen,” I whisper.

  “This is the Committee of Public Safety’s doing,” she accuses. “They are the ones who have voted for this.” Her lower lip begins to tremble. “I think of the monste
rs we have sheltered in here …”

  “None of us could have known it would come to this.”

  “But Robespierre! He was so polite, so well-spoken. Curtius trusted him.”

  We are both silent. In a little more than a month, it will be Michaelmas. But every week, a letter comes to us from the front. There is another general they would like Curtius to investigate. Then another, and another. Each report he sends to the Committee is positive. Every man is a patriot, no man is an enemy. But how long before the Committee grows tired of innocence and begins to suspect him as well?

  Throughout August and September, I hear news from the soldiers in the Madeleine Cemetery of what life is like for the queen. They have imprisoned her in the darkest, dampest cell, without any changes of clothes or a bath to keep herself clean. They say that she walks barefoot for want of shoes, and that the black gown she wears is so tattered that, as summer turns to fall, she will feel the change on her skin. “While she was strolling across Versailles in her fancy silk shoes,” the guard outside the charnel house says with a laugh, “my wife was wearing rags. Let’s see how she enjoys it.”

  But the silks and taffeta were expected of her. When she went barefoot in the tall grasses of her Hameau, every paper in France mocked her as a peasant. So what did they want? When she tried to economize, her own courtiers turned against her. Whom is a queen supposed to please? Her people? Her court?

  On the twelfth of October the queen’s trial begins. My mother does not come, but Isabel and I find seats the night before in the Salle de Spectacle, where the Convention now meets. We sit in the public galleries until morning, watching the gloomy space fill with spectators, lawyers, and eventually the members of the National Convention itself. Of course, it is all a grand farce. They will find her guilty, and nothing she can say or do will change that. The only surprise will be where they send her. Either back to Austria or to some convent in the Alps.

  When the trial begins, a man announces, “Madame Capet,” and the doors are thrown open for the woman who once held Europe in her thrall. Every spectator in the Salle de Spectacle gasps. An old woman appears in a simple white gown; her shoes are worn and her white hair is cropped carelessly at the neck. Yet for all her misfortune, she moves with the dignity and grace of a queen.

  She sits and listens to their accusations in silence, even when they charge her with molesting the dauphin. “Still no reaction?” the prosecutor thunders from his podium. “Even when you are charged with corrupting your own son?”

  There is a murmur in the galleries. Then, for the first time, she speaks.

  “Because Nature refuses to answer such a charge brought against a mother. I appeal to all the mothers in here! Do you truly believe this?”

  There are many in the crowds who are openly weeping, despite the danger of being seen to do so. Now that the prosecutor has had his wish and the queen has spoken, he hurries through the rest of his accusations without stopping to ask if she wants to reply.

  The next day, the verdict is read. Guilty, on every charge.

  There is a stunned silence in the Salle de Spectacle as the punishment is announced. In three days, on the Place de la Révolution, the queen shall meet her death as a traitor to the patrie. Isabel grips my hand, and there are women in the galleries who collapse in a faint.

  When we return to the Boulevard du Temple, my mother and Paschal come running. They have already heard the verdict and want to know if it is true. “Have they really sentenced Madame Capet to death?” my mother asks.

  “Yes,” Isabel replies.

  The three of them look to me, and I say, “I won’t do it.”

  “You must,” my mother cries. “If you refuse, they will know—”

  “What?” I shout. “What will they pretend to know?”

  But Isabel’s voice is steady. “If you refuse, they will accuse you of treason. They have sent women to the guillotine for less.”

  “It is one head,” my mother says.

  “The queen’s head!” I cry. I am trembling.

  “What would Curtius want you to do?” Isabel asks.

  He would want me to choose life over death, whatever the cost.

  But I do not go to witness the miserable spectacle of the queen’s last moments. When the time comes for Isabel to walk with me to the cemetery, I stop in the Salon and pull a hidden rosary from beneath the shirt of Robespierre. “The last place anyone would ever look,” I tell her.

  We pray together in the darkness of the Salon. Although it’s possible that God has abandoned France, we ask forgiveness for what we are about to do, and for His protection in whatever lies ahead. Last, we pray for the queen’s soul.

  Chapter 59

  NOVEMBER 6–8, 1793

  She screamed, she begged mercy of the horrible crowd that stood around the scaffold.

  —ÉLISABETH VIGÉE-LEBRUN, ROYAL PORTRAIT ARTIST

  I LOOK AT THE SLIP OF PAPER THE SOLDIER HAS BROUGHT TO ME, and my hands begin to tremble. “This cannot be right.” But the young man is firm. “Those are the names. The cafés are printing them on their menus. Go early if you want a good view.”

  I wait for the young soldier to leave before I show Isabel the names of those who will be executed tomorrow. “Anyone who has ever been a royal or associated with one,” I whisper. “The Duc d’Orléans, Madame du Barry, the Princesse of Monaco!”

  “And anyone who has ever spoken out against Robespierre, The Incorruptible.” She points to the bottom: Brissot, Vergniaud, Lasource, Madame Roland … “I thought Madame du Barry escaped to England?”

  “She returned to retrieve her jewels,” I say. Death, for a handful of gold.

  I go to the kitchen to show my mother the list. “So for all his posturing,” she says, “calling himself Philippe Égalité, they have turned on the Duc d’Orléans as well.”

  Robespierre preached against despots, and now he has become one himself.

  “We must go and show our support of this,” my mother says quietly. “If they are willing to send their greatest supporter to the guillotine, they will send anyone.” She has not seen anyone die on the scaffold since the terrible device was first unveiled. “We will go early,” she adds, surprising me, “so that the members of the Convention see us.” She looks into the hallway toward Isabel’s room. Many of the spectators bring children, carrying them on their shoulders. “We will leave Paschal here and lock the doors.”

  The next morning, we are awake at dawn. A fine mist hangs over the streets, and carriages are navigating the slick cobblestones with care. My mother whistles for a cabriolet, and the driver guesses, “The Place de la Révolution?” We are no different from the thousands who will wait in the cold to see illustrious lives come to an end. I wonder how the Duc must be feeling, knowing this Revolution he helped to create will take his own life. There must be rich irony in this for some, but I find I can take no pleasure in it.

  We are among the first to arrive in the square, so just as my mother had hoped, we find places next to the area reserved for the members of the National Convention. Robespierre, of course, will not be here. He never attends an execution. But Danton may come, and certainly Camille, who knew the Duc well. By eight o’clock we are already surrounded by people, and by the time the tumbrels arrive it is impossible to see the end of the masses. Unlike the king, common criminals are forced to ride in open carts, regardless of the weather or the abuse of the crowds. But today, no one is hurling stones. This is a different kind of execution. “Philippe Égalité” was a man of the people, and few seem sure of the charges against him. There was talk of treason. But isn’t there always talk of that? And what of Madame du Barry, who must be fifty now, and far removed from her days as Louis XV’s mistress?

  The tumbrels roll with jerky movements over the cobblestones, and the prisoners are pitched forward each time the horses are forced to stop. Even from a distance I can recognize the Duc. He is the largest man in any of the carts. Like the others, he has been dressed in red. Is he thi
nking about his cousin, whose execution he voted for almost a year ago? Now, he will die by the same blade.

  It is the prerogative of the Revolutionary Tribunal to decide on the order of deaths, and the prisoner they wish to punish most always goes last. Men must watch their wives and children die. Particularly hated traitors are forced to wait until the razor has lost its edge after so much work. It is Madame du Barry they are asking to go first. They call her name, and she stands in the tumbrel. Despite her age, she is still alluring, with piercing eyes and jutting cheekbones. They have chopped her hair carelessly at the chin, yet the cut only serves to emphasize the smallness of her neck and the delicacy of her features. A soldier reaches to grab her hand, and she pulls away.

  “Not yet!” she screams. But the executioner is waiting. Two men step forward to take her arms, and she struggles against them. “Why are you doing this?” she cries. “What have I done? Tell me, what have I done?”

  They escort her to the scaffold, but she is too weak to make it up the steps.

  “Get up!” one of the soldiers commands, but her legs have given out.

  “Don’t hurt me,” she begs. “Please,” she screams to the crowd, “don’t let them hurt me!”

  They drag her to her feet, and my mother buries her face in her hands.

  “Please!” du Barry is screaming. It is heart-wrenching to see. “Just one more moment!” But the executioner forces her down on the plank. “Just one moment more. Just one last view of the sky!” The plank slides forward, and her head is trapped in the wooden lunette. “Don’t let him do this to me!” she is screaming. “Somebody save me from this!”

  But there is no one to save her. France’s heroes are dead.

  Sanson pulls the rope, and the blade comes down swiftly. He holds her head up for the crowd to see, but there is no clapping. Just a long, mortified silence. She is the first of the guillotine’s victims to struggle. While the others have gone like sheep, she wanted life, and she fought for it.