Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution (50 page)

“You are different from the other scarf and ribbon lady,” I said. “Is this your table now?”

“Things are always changing,” she said.

I fingered the fine ribbons. “I could use another white one,” I said.

“It goes with anything.”

“With an aigrette for one’s bonnet, perhaps? I am Jeanne Robin, and I am a member of a certain philanthropic institute.”

“Madame Williams. I have heard of the good work you do. And I have changed my mind about helping you.”

A middle-aged woman and her mother approached the table.

“Look at these pretty ribbons,” said the older lady. “Wouldn’t you like to wear these at a dance?”

“They can make any hat, no matter how plain, look like it’s a holiday,” Jeanne Robin said.

“What holidays?” the old lady said. “As I recall, Michaelmas came and went without anyone noticing.”

“Come, Maman, I need a new hat before I get a new ribbon for it,” and they walked on.

“A certain officer named Lieutenant Leforges—” Jeanne Robin said, in a soft but lilting voice over the scarves.

“Excuse me, you said
Leforges
?”

“Yes, you know a Lieutenant Leforges?”

“I knew someone of that surname, a long time ago.”

“People make new identities for themselves these days. He may be the same man, or—”

“It’s no matter, please continue.”

“This officer, together with a sans-culotte—you can’t miss them, one elegant, one straight from the streets of Paris—will be in the square in front of the Louis XII fountain tomorrow around ten. This morning there the lieutenant forced locals to watch him and the sans-culotte almost destroy the beautiful fountain because of its name. Now the people can’t use it. You’ve heard that ancient church properties—here in Blois, Saint-Louis Cathedral and the churches of Saint-Nicolas and Saint-Vincent—now pay rent as ‘national buildings.’ This lieutenant, working for the new representative-on-mission from Paris, is collecting rents from these national buildings throughout the Loire Valley. (I understand he also gives dance lessons to officers’ wives in the evening.) He will move on to Amboise in two days. Just observe him tomorrow morning. We ’ll decide later, after he has collected his rents, how we can make better use of them than he. I’ll be by the fountain in the square by noon.”

“That is all?”

“Scouting the enemy is the first stage of an engagement. If you wish to do more, decide after that. The founder of our institute has great faith in you.”

“Until tomorrow, then,” I said. “These are pretty,” I added, my voice raised to a regular marketing level, “but I don’t need them now, thank you,” and proceeded to a table piled high with heads of lettuce.

“Annette! Annette!” My friend Isabelle Tristant, whom I had not seen in a long time, rushed up and kissed me. She said she had heard I had been in trouble. Was I all right now? Where was I living? She said she liked my bonnet with the white silk ribbon. She would like one like that. She had heard I had a daughter! She didn’t even know that I had married my English friend! Shame on me for not telling her. And how like me to be so secretive. In convent school, I had always kept from her, Isabelle, what I was reading or writing. But how charming to have a little baby! Isabelle was sure my baby was a very pretty little girl. But Isabelle never saw me at dances anymore.

She saw Angelique. It must be dull, sometimes, being a mother, Isabelle said.

I remembered what Maman had said about Isabelle and her mother’s visit to chez Vergez when I was in prison. I wanted only to disappear. But I was saved from responding to her barrage of questions and comments when a fashionable older lady joined us. Blonde ringlets danced above her shoulders, and silver earrings in some design I couldn’t recognize peeked out from the curls. Isabelle smilingly said, “But you remember my
maman,
Annette.” True, I remembered her as always a “lady of style and taste,” but with dark, not fair, hair. I recognized her eyes and features now.

“Ah, Annette”—Madame Tristant laughed—“don’t be confused.

It is I. It is just the new mode, from Paris. I secretly always wanted to be blonde, like your pretty sister Angelique. Well, now, it’s all the rage to be blonde, and it’s inexpensive. Would you like to know my secret?” She leaned in as if to whisper to me, and as she did so, I saw her earrings closer, and I inadvertently stepped back. My shopping basket slipped from my arm, and I just caught it before all its contents tumbled out. As it was, only one head of lettuce fell on the ground. I picked it up, leaving some leaves on the paving stones.

Madame Tristant’s earrings were in the shape of little guillotines. I didn’t want to know about the hair, now. “The new mode, Annette,” Madame Tristant said, not in a whisper, “and I’m
surprised
you don’t know it—is a blonde wig made from counter-revolutionaries who lost their heads!” She sounded excited, as if she were a girl finding out about a new fashion that she was going to wear now to a dance. “I
know it’s wicked,” she said, “but when else will one have the opportunity to be blonde, ever? Usually good wigs are so expensive. And
these earrings came with the wig, too. Can you believe it? An ensemble for the
femme patriote
. You know fashions change with the times, and Monsieur Tristant always says, ’show that you’re a good republican; let them see that you’re a good republican.’ It’s like wearing a cockade, but much more
à la mode.
”

“I want to get one too,” Isabelle said, “but Maman says we must wait till the next shipment from Paris.” Isabelle giggled.

I felt light-headed and dizzy. I was afraid I would fall onto the table of lettuce heads. I grabbed the table edge. “Angelique is doing well, thank you.” It was the only thing I could think of to say. I added, “Excuse me, I have to go. I’m late—my daughter,” and I almost ran from the square. I heard the din of the market behind me now, but I was in my own roaring, silent world.

Later that day I asked Claudette to go back to the market to purchase a Normandy cheese and to give a simple note to the lady at the ribbons table. When I had recovered my reason, I realized Madame Tristant had given me an idea.

Please provide me with a blonde wig—but not from Paris. I would
like, once again, to go to a fancy-dress ball.

—Madame W.

I sat with Caroline in my lap at the Café de Liberté (formerly Café Louis XII, named after the fountain) and sipped a tisane. The morning sun sparkled in the remains of the Louis XII fountain. Not far behind it were the abbey and the church of Saint-Nicolas. And there, giving orders by a wagon at the edge of the square, stood my old dance instructor: he who first had inspired me to love; he who had betrayed me, and he who had denounced William and the count and would have been responsible for their deaths. His boots sparkled like the water in the sunlit, ruined fountain. His belt buckle and buttons shone. His white trousers were pressed smooth and tight. He had more gold braid on his blue coat than any officer I had ever seen, and he was only a lieutenant. A tall red plume topped the cockade on his black hat. He always had on some costume or other.

His assistant, on the other hand, a large man, wore a short, stained brown jacket with a red collar, no waistcoat, ragged striped trousers, and the red woolen bonnet that was at once the identity and the symbol of every sans-culotte
.
Stringy, greasy hair hung down his face. A pipe seemed glued to his mouth, and, like some old primitive, he carried about with him a small wooden club.

I had heard a lot about his kind from the people whom I had helped in the secret room at chez Dubourg and at the count’s lodge. The sans-culottes, a real political force for the Jacobins in Paris, had also become infamous outside of their city for terrorizing the provinces, for whom the sans-culottes had nothing but contempt. Usually in a gang of about six to eight, they accompanied representatives-on-mission from Paris, beating and hauling off villagers who resisted conscription, searching for and arresting refractory priests, and setting fire to crops of the families who had protected the draft evaders or hidden the priests.

Now the sans-culotte in our square in Blois placed the club down in the wagon and lifted out a statue. Lieutenant Leforges was commanding him to place the statue at the edge of the erstwhile fountain.

The fountain, I thought, should be lapping with water and noisy now with sounds of women washing and gossiping. It is unnatural to see a fountain in the middle of a square, in the mid-morning, deserted and still.

Now that the statue was in place, I saw that it was of the head and torso of a naked woman. The sans-culotte went around the square informing locals that, if they were true patriots, they had to come now and witness the ceremony that the lieutenant was about to perform. I knew that Monsieur Leforges loved to hear himself speak.

When his sans-culotte had intimidated about forty people and stood on the side of the square, holding his club, watching them, Lieutenant Leforges strode in front of the crowd, rested his left hand on his gleaming sword hilt, raised his right arm, and called out: “Citizens! In Paris recently, an ex-aristocrat, now enlightened citizen, celebrated our liberation from the bonds of religion by dutifully performing a ‘republican mass.’ Since, in all things, the provinces are ordered to follow Paris, it is my privilege to enable you to witness, and to participate in, our own ‘festival of freedom.’ Behind me you see the ruins of what was once a grotesque medieval homage to a despot”—with a flourish, Leforges waved his arm to the smashed fountain—“and beside me you see a beautiful resemblance to the female figure. I hereby baptize this statue Goddess of the Republic,” and he scooped up a handful of water from the fountain and poured it over the head of the statue.

“Now Citizen Gauchon will act as my assisting priest,” and Gauchon left his place watching the crowd and lumbered up to his superior. After Lieutenant Leforges had whispered to him and gesticulated impatiently, Citizen Gauchon cupped his big hands and commenced pouring water over the head of the statue. As he did so, Leforges took a wooden cup from his coat pocket and held it between the breasts of the statue. When the cup overflowed, he lifted it above his head and said, “Behold, the Chalice of Liberty. This water from a king’s destroyed fountain, blessed by the Goddess of the Republic, is your wine; I, Lieutenant Raoul Leforges, am your priest. Drink and be reborn!”

And he first lowered the cup to his lips, then held it to Citizen Gauchon’s, then Gauchon with his club herded as many of the locals as he could—some hurriedly left the square—into standing in line and sipping from the cup as Lieutenant Leforges lifted it to their lips. He made them wait as he took a pretty girl aside and had her perform Gauchon’s part now, pouring the water over the statue so the lieutenant could refill the cup from between the statue’s breasts. His back was turned as he did so, and some of the citizens who had just had their communion spat the water out not far from the fountain. Lieutenant Leforges turned and praised the pretty girl to the crowd as a true lover of liberty and of
la patrie
.

I had had enough. If Jeanne Robin wanted me to see Monsieur Leforges’s character, I had known it for a long time. I paid for my drink and, with Caroline in my arms, left the café. Then I heard the lieutenant exclaim, in a classically trained voice that rang over the square: “It is now time for the climax of our festival of freedom! Only the unpatriotic would want to part now.” The crowd, which had other things to do that morning, now threatened with being called counter-revolutionaries, gathered again.

Lieutenant Leforges took a small blue vial from his pocket and held it up to the crowd. “Behold,” he said. “This vial speaks of your oppression by the hated priests and kings. With
this
they held you in awe of their power—it is the vessel that holds the
Holy Tear of
Vendôme
!” Even though Gauchon was watching them, one could hear a collective gasp from the people in the square. “I see you recognize it,” said Leforges. “And well you might. It kept you in thrall for centuries, coming back to receive its ‘magic’—a supposed tear, almost two thousand years old! Think of it! What deplorable ignorance! If your Christ ever did shed a tear, do you honestly think it would still be here?”

At this point I shouted from the back of the crowd, “My own father, a learned doctor, was once aided by the Holy Tear!” People turned and looked at the mother holding her baby. Monsieur Leforges couldn’t see who it was and seemed amazed at the oddity of being interrupted. I went on, “Furthermore,
mass, priest, chalice,
and
goddess
sound like religious words to me. I’m sure the good lieutenant is aware of the law that grants him the freedom of his conscience to believe what he likes, but not the freedom to express his religious beliefs. And I’m sure the lieutenant would want everyone,
equally,
to abide by all the laws of the republic. But is not a ‘communion with a goddess’ an expression of religious belief?” Some of the crowd actually dared to laugh. And being laughed at, being humiliated, was the one thing that Monsieur Leforges could not abide.

Before he could think what defense he could muster, I addressed the crowd. “Now, how many of you have known someone or have heard of someone, an uncle, a grandfather, an old neighbor in your quarter, who has been healed by the Holy Tear of Vendôme? Go on. Don’t be afraid. I am not asking for an expression of religious belief, but for a report of actual cases.”

“I,” said a man’s low voice.

“That’s right. Let the others hear,” I said. I was walking now to the front of the crowd.

“I,” said another man, a little louder.

“And I,” said a woman’s voice, loud and clear.

Then almost the whole crowd rang with, “I, I,” like a chant.

I glanced up at Monsieur Leforges now and saw the shock of recognition on his face when he realized who it was who had been inciting the crowd. This was my delicious revenge. The poised dancing master looked from me to the crowd now, in open defiance of him.