Finding Emilie (6 page)

“I’m sure she did. And what do you think?”

Lili scowled. “The baroness told me I should think less. Or argue less at least, and keep my thoughts to myself. She said no one will want to marry me if I demand attention for my ideas all the time.”

Julie’s cheeks flushed. “Well,” she said, “I wouldn’t suggest saying this to Baronne Lomont, but I find your ideas, and Delphine’s, the most beautiful things about you. And if you ever decide not to have any more thoughts, I think you might as well go live with the baroness. I’m sure it would be pleasant having her full approval.” She smiled at Lili’s consternation. “I was trying to be funny,” she said. “Of course, you’re staying right here, thoughts and all.”

Julie stood up. “I have a suggestion. Why don’t you come down this evening to my salon? Delphine can come too if she’s feeling well enough. I think you may understand things a little better if you have a chance to discuss them with my guests. There’s one in particular I’d like you to meet before he leaves Paris.”

One of the kitchen servants had appeared in the door and stood waiting for Julie’s attention. “I have to see about supper now,” Maman said, “and you need to put on a pretty dress and have Corinne arrange your hair.” As Julie walked toward the servant, she glanced back over her shoulder at Lili. “And don’t forget to bring your mind.”

S
HE DID
what?” Gabrielle-Anne Breteuil whirled around to face her husband.

“Emilie spent half what she won playing trictrac on books,” Louis-Nicholas repeated. “But at least they were reputable—science and math mostly.”

“I don’t care how reputable they were. Surely you don’t think the host will be amused that she can’t play next time because she has no money left to wager.”

“I think fifteen-year-old girls are likely to be forgiven most anything,” Louis-Nicholas said.

His wife scowled. “But her parents are not. We’re being ridiculed even as we speak! We don’t provide our daughter with sufficient money and she must gamble to have the funds for what she wishes? We have a disobedient child who does what she pleases whenever we’re not watching? How can you bear to think people are saying those things?”

Gabrielle-Anne sat at the dressing table in her bedchamber, the easiest way to turn her back on her husband, and began running a brush through her hair so violently its silver frame banged against her scalp. “Wagers are to avoid being bored to death by the game, not because one cares about the money. How could our daughter not know that?”

Louis-Nicholas sighed in defeat. “I’ll replace what she spent, and I’ll go with her next time to make sure she loses all of it.” He thought
for a moment. “She told me she wasn’t trying to be greedy, but that she couldn’t manage to lose. She said she understood it was unseemly to appear excited about money.”

“I’m not sure Emilie understands anything of importance at all, since you’ve filled her head with such nonsense.”

Such criticism had been hurled at Louis-Nicholas so often that he accepted it without comment. “I’ve tried to explain to her that her intelligence was charming in a girl, but not in a young lady. I’ve told her more than once that no man of quality will choose to marry someone whose head is buried in a book all day. Every time, she insists she’d rather have the book than the man.” He thought for a moment. “I was wrong to indulge her. I admit it. And I have come to agree with you that we should send her to be presented at court, and have her remain long enough at Versailles to improve her manners.”

Finally hearing something that pleased her, Gabrielle-Anne turned toward her husband. “And we must make it clear that while she is there, she must attract at least one suitable offer of marriage.” She sniffed. “Books, indeed!”

1761

“Y
OU WANT
to know how to arrive at love? Real love? Not just self-serving charity or cheap sentiment?” Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s face flushed a deep red and tiny flecks of spittle flew from his mouth as he spoke with Lili in a quiet corner at the salon. “A divine light is inside everyone, and only those who don’t give in to pretention and falsity can experience the love at the heart of God’s creation.”

Though she had just turned twelve, and his intensity would have frightened people much older, Lili leaned in closer to meet his gaze. “But how can I not give in to falsity if I don’t know what’s true?”

“The mind is easily deceived,” he said, tapping the side of his head with one finger. “Start by suspecting anything your heart doesn’t want to believe. And if you are seeking truth, you will find it in the natural order of things, not in your catechism.”

How can he say something so dangerous? And interesting. “Yes, that may be,” Lili said, looking down for a moment to think before turning her solemn brown eyes back toward him. “But I don’t really know for myself if what Newton says about gravitation is true, any more than I know for myself if God rested on the seventh day. We can be wrong about the natural order of things, too, can’t we?”

Rousseau smiled as he tucked his loose gray hair behind his ears. “You are young my dear. Children recognize truth and they will follow it naturally, even if they don’t fully understand. Frightening and bullying are necessary only to force false ideas onto them.”

The loose end of an upholstery nail stabbed one of her fingers, and only then did Lili realize she had been gripping the frame of the chair. She let go and clasped her hands together in her lap. “Many of the things they teach at the convent don’t make sense to me, but they say people who don’t believe them are damned. Aren’t you afraid of that?”

Rousseau shook his head. “Truth dictates that there can be no inconsistency between natural law and religion. If they clash, it’s because one of them is wrong.”

“But the church says it is the one true faith, and straying from its teachings imperils one’s soul.” A golden door slamming shut at the entrance to heaven, Lili thought. Tumbling into the flames of hell, with wild-eyed demons clutching at his legs. Doesn’t he care about such things?

“The one true faith!” Rousseau hissed with scorn. “Any religion is as good as another as long as it honors God as the creator. That it must do, because anything else denies the great truth at the core of everything, and nothing but falsehood can come from that. One faith is as good as another if it calls ‘moral’ what accords with natural law, and respects the dignity and freedom of everyone.”

He chopped the air with his hand to emphasize his point. “None of this false piety and priggishness and none of this ‘Thank you, Lord, for making me better than other people.’ That is the biggest waste of your spirit I can imagine.”

“So Musulmans and Jews aren’t despised by God?”

“What do you think?” Rousseau leaned toward her and his voice calmed almost to a whisper.

“I don’t know any,” Lili said.

“But if you did?”

“I think I would try to see them as people first.” An image of the man being abused by the two noblemen in the square came into her mind, but before Rousseau could answer, Julie came up beside them and he got up from his chair to acknowledge her.

“Monsieur Rousseau,” Julie said in a voice that was at once firm and teasing. “I am certain you have been telling Lili wonderful things
about listening to her own heart, and I wanted her to hear you say them. But I hope you are also reminding her of the power others have over young lives, and that you are cautioning that whenever she listens to her own heart, she should think twice before speaking her mind, since most people are more receptive to something other than the natural and unencumbered truth.” She looked at the gray-haired man. “Am I not correct?”

“Sadly so,” he said, nodding to Lili with a sly smile. “And you are now duly cautioned.” He took in a quick breath. “I almost forgot that I brought madame a gift.” He went off for a moment and returned with a book that he handed to Julie. “It’s just been published.”

“Émile,” Julie said, tracing the embossed letters on the leather cover.

“It’s about the proper way to raise children.” He nodded in Lili’s direction. “I think you will find in it much of what I have said to mademoiselle this evening.”

“I am truly touched,” Julie said, letting out a breath that emphasized the softness of not just her bosom, but the heart underneath. “Not many people are honored to receive a new work straight from the hand of one of France’s great men of letters.”

She hooked her arm around Lili’s elbow. “But now I really must get Lili off to bed. Despite your fears that such education is ruinous”—she gave him a teasing smile—“she is returning to the Abbaye de Panthémont tomorrow.”

Lili made a sour face at the mention of the convent. “I thought for a moment we had reasoned the abbey out of existence,” she said, “but I’ll try to think about what you’ve told me while I’m there.” She gave Rousseau a small, quick curtsey, and after wishing him a pleasant evening and giving Maman a kiss on the cheek, she bolted up the stairs to see if Delphine was still awake.

LILI’S MIND WAS
in turmoil the following morning as she jostled in the carriage heading to the Abbaye de Panthémont. She’d liked what
Monsieur Rousseau said at first. It was encouraging to think that her own ideas could be right even if the church said otherwise, but Rousseau had truly gone too far. The cathedral of Notre-Dame wasn’t just a building. It was God’s house, and the Abbaye de Panthémont was too. They weren’t built to enshrine false ideas. The sheer size of them ought to prove that. They had to honor something right and true. They simply had to. And what about all those martyrs’ gruesome deaths—it wouldn’t be fair at all if the religion they died for wasn’t the true one.

Annoyance flickered across Lili’s face. Maman had promised she could bring her questions to the salon whenever she wished, and now, when just one visit had given her hundreds more things to ask about, she was on her way back to the abbey instead. And worse, Delphine wasn’t there to grumble with her about it. Delphine’s sore throat had developed into chills and a fever, and she was so listless that Maman allowed her to stay home a few more days. To avoid dealing with Baronne Lomont, who kept a close eye on Lili’s whereabouts, Maman had sent Lili back alone.

She glanced down. She had gotten no further that the first page of Emile, which she had taken from the table where Maman had left it. “Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of all; everything degenerates when it falls into the hands of man,” he had written. Everything? A vision of Maman singing at the harp while Delphine played the piano came to mind, and Lili shook her head. Monsieur Rousseau was obviously wrong about a great number of things.

The carriage slowed to a stop, and a moment later the footman opened the door. “Horse came up lame,” he said. “I’m going to bring another from the abbey. It’s not far. Mademoiselle would prefer to stay in the carriage?”

The golden light beckoning through the open door on a beautiful fall morning made her put the book down. “I’d like to wait outside,” she told him.

Descending from the carriage, she stood in front of the walls of a large building she did not recognize. “Where am I?”

“We had to come another way,” the driver answered. “Some disturbance near Saint Benoit, so I took Rue de l’Université instead.”

Lili walked around to the other side of the carriage. Small, open fields with low fences and tiny buildings lay in front of her, extending as far as she could see in the direction of the Seine. This is Paris? she wondered, making a full circle that revealed nothing but a jagged line of gray rooftops in every direction.

Along the usual route, walls and buildings cast permanent shadows, and rattling carriages and boisterous voices made a constant din all the way to the abbey gate. Here, the air was dreamlike in its quiet. A harvest bonfire on the far side of the field permeated the air with a scent that seemed more holy to Lili than the incense at mass. The horse nickered and bobbed its head, as if it were blessing her thought.

Perhaps I’ve made a wish without knowing it. If life were a fairy tale, Lili thought, perhaps a magic spell caused the horse to come up lame, so that she didn’t ride by without noticing that an enchanted field had suddenly appeared on the way to the abbey. But reality seemed magical enough, producing this small patch of the natural world just when Rousseau had made her want to think in new ways about exactly such things. It’s like the whole city is my mind, Lili thought. It’s all been built by others, except this one spot where I can try right now to see things for myself.