Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution (26 page)

There is a great deal of clapping and hollering over this. Henri asks me, “Did the king really fall asleep during Necker’s speech?”

“Yes. And he snored.”

My uncle laughs. “The queen didn’t elbow him in the ribs?”

“All of Versailles was watching.”

Henri shakes his head. “This wouldn’t be happening under Louis XV.”

“I would have to agree.” The broad figure of a woman obscures our view.

“Mademoiselle Bertin.” Henri rises.

“Oh, just Rose.” She smiles widely for him, and though I know I shouldn’t, I feel the sudden urge to keep her standing. But Henri gives up his chair and finds another for himself. “Thank you.” She flutters her lashes at him. They look longer than usual. Certainly they’re fake. “Monsieur Curtius. Marie.” She seats herself and orders a coffee. “So tell me. What have I missed?” She leans forward so that her breasts nearly tumble from her dress. It’s completely unnecessary. Where’s her fichu? But Henri doesn’t seem to notice.

“A lot of grumbling against the monarchy,” he replies. “And tomorrow, the royal family goes on parade.”

Rose dismisses this information with a wave of her hand. “Of course. I’ve already been asked to dress the queen.”

“And how are her spirits?” Curtius wonders. “First the dauphin, now this …”

“Devastated,” Rose confides. “She’s said to me that she’s no better than an actress, staging a performance for an audience that will hiss at her. But what can she do? She has encouraged the king to surround Paris with soldiers.” Rose’s eyes dart about the room, to see who might be listening, but the café is too noisy for anyone else to hear. “She thinks he must quell this rebellion with force.”

“If that happens—”

“Oh, it won’t,” Rose says. “The king can never make a decision. Louis”—
Rose has called him by his first name!
—“can’t decide between a green waistcoat and a brown.” She turns to me. “I hear the Salon is turning a handsome profit these days.”

“Much like your boutique. When’s the last time the queen ordered so many dresses?”

Rose grins. “Perhaps the royal family should parade more often.”

B
UT THE PROCESSION
is not successful. The people line the roads from Paris to Versailles and watch their monarchs pass in stoic silence. I refuse to watch a woman crippled by the loss of her elder son forced to dress in her finest silks to convince people that the nation is more important than personal grief. And it is. But when is the queen allowed to weep, to face the misery of loss?

The fishwives taunted her for not producing a child after she arrived in France. And then, when the child came, they cheered in the streets and lit fireworks in the sky. Now, it’s as if Louis-Joseph, with his curious eyes and hopeful smile, never even was.

I can’t imagine the sorrow of the queen when she learns that forty-seven members of the nobility have already joined the National Assembly, following the lead of the Duc d’Orléans. We rush to re-dress his wax model in a black coat with a white cravat. Though it’s galling to me, the Duc’s figure dressed in plebeian clothes is an astounding draw. People pay twenty sous. Then twenty-five. There are so many visiting Englishmen that we send our signs to Yachin’s father to have them translated into English. As a printer, he can do these things. Although I cannot read the signs, I hang them in each room of the Salon.

It is all happening quickly now. Without daily trips into the Palais-Royal, it would be impossible to keep up with the news. On the twenty-third of June, the king visits the National Assembly against his Finance Minister’s wishes, and declares that the divisions between the three estates must remain. He orders the errant members of the clergy and nobility to return to their own assemblies. As Camille describes it for us that night in our salon, Necker is so outraged that he resigns his post.

“And then Mirabeau stood on his seat and declared to the entire Assembly, ‘We are here by the power of the people, and we will not leave except by the force of bayonets.’ Can you imagine?” Camille is nearly crying with joy. “He challenged the k-king!”

“And Necker?” Lucile asks.

“Oh, Necker returned to his post,” Camille says. “The king spent the afternoon begging.”

“So what will happen?” Henri asks.

“I don’t know!” Camille thrives off of this uncertainty. “I have to return to Versailles tomorrow. I have two articles I’m working on for the gazette.”

“And something else,” Lucile adds coyly. “Go ahead. Tell them.”

Camille looks around the table. We are a smaller group tonight: Robespierre and the Duc have not been here since finding fame in the Assembly. They have not even seen themselves in wax. “I am writing my first political tract,” he says.

“He calls it
La France Libre.”

“I heard two publishers have already turned it down,” Marat retorts. “Are they so frightened of angering the king?”

“P-perhaps,” Camille stutters. “But I won’t be discouraged. We’ll find a press.”

“He is writing about a republic,” Lucile explains. “About throwing off this mantle of tyranny and embracing freedom.” If Lucile were a man, she would be right there with Camille.

“It’s radical,” Camille admits. “But it’s nothing the Americans haven’t proposed.”

“Only this is not America,” Curtius points out.

“It could be. It
will
be. Give it time, and this National Assembly will rise above the king.”

W
E ARE IN
the Café de Foy on the twenty-seventh of June when we hear the news. Just as the sun is about to set and the streetlamps of the Palais-Royal are being lit, a man stands at the doors to the café and shouts that the Revolution is over. The Third Estate has won, and the king has ordered both the clergy and the nobility to join the National Assembly. He has legitimized this strange, new body of government, and now every vote shall be counted! Men begin dancing in the streets, and women are waving their handkerchiefs from the windows, shouting down to their neighbors that the Third Estate has triumphed.

“We should leave,” Henri says suddenly.

I look down at his coffee. It’s not half finished. “With all this excitement?”

“Couldn’t you hear what the men were saying behind us?” Henri asks. “Unless you consider troops converging on Paris exciting, we should find a carriage or walk.” He fetches my uncle, interrupting his conversation.

Whispers are exchanged, and Curtius comes to me at once. “In a few hours, these men will all be drunk. We should get home.”

But pushing through the crowds of the Palais-Royal is nearly impossible. There must be thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of people celebrating. Vendors are selling boxes of fireworks for twelve sous. Once, these bright lights were strictly reserved for celebrations in Versailles, but suddenly anyone can purchase them. The rockets and serpents screech their way through the air and light up the sky in different colors. Children are clapping at the noisy displays, and I wonder what their parents will do if soldiers surround the Palais-Royal. There’s no finding a horse and carriage, but it’s only thirty minutes to the Boulevard by foot.

Every stranger we pass bids us good evening, and one man shouts, “It’s a fine day to be a patriot!”

“Patriots, equality …” Henri shakes his head. “Everyone is celebrating as if there’s bread in the bakeries and oil in the lamps. But what has really been accomplished?”

“Lower taxes?” I ask.

“They haven’t voted. Anything might happen between now and then.”

It takes an hour to reach the Boulevard du Temple. When we arrive, my mother is standing on the steps, her hands on her hips and a lantern at her side. “Where have you been?” she cries. “You left for the Palais five hours ago.”

“You have no idea what it was like,” Curtius says. “Thousands of people—”

“Well, did you hear the news?”

“Yes. The National Assembly can go forward.”

“Not that. The king is sending soldiers! It’s all over the Boulevard. He’s sending the Gardes Françaises along with the Royal German Regiment.”

“Foreigners,” I whisper, “from Germany and Switzerland.” Because the French can’t keep their own soldiers from deserting, they are forced to look outside their borders. The Royal German Regiment has hired men who will have no compunction about firing on French citizens.

Curtius follows her into the house, but I remain on the steps with Henri. I slip my hand into his, and we sit down together to watch the fireworks. “I hope it’s the beginning of something better,” I say.

“For the Salon?”

“For everyone. We had no bread last night. My mother couldn’t find any. Yachin says his family hasn’t eaten bread in months.”

“We are living off meat and mushrooms in our house.”

“That’s what Curtius says we’ll have to do. Everyone is growing mushrooms. I wonder how long there will be bread in Versailles?”

“Are you going back?”

“This Friday. But Madame Élisabeth only wants me for two days a week now.”

“Lucky for me.” Henri wraps his arm around my waist. “Obviously, she doesn’t know what she’s missing.”

I lean my head against his shoulder and inhale the scent of his hair. For the rest of my life, I will associate the sweetness of almond oil with Henri. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if there were no Salon, if I were simply an heiress and had nothing to do with my days but be with him. Of course, that’s unrealistic. If I were an heiress, I would be married off to an old man with a fortune in property. “I think the princesse may be more interested in news than in wax,” I say. “I’m the only one who will tell her the truth.”

“Not the entire truth?” Henri pulls away and searches my face.

“Certainly not. But most of it.”

“Be careful.”

“I know. That’s what Edmund said.”

“No word from him still?”

I shake my head. “I doubt there will be. Not until all of this is over.” I hear murmuring on the other side of the door and wonder if my mother is listening to us. There’s no disguising what we’re doing out here, but neither Curtius nor my mother has mentioned it. “Do you think they’re listening?” I whisper.

“If they are,” he says loudly, “then they should know that I intend to marry their daughter, Marie Grosholtz.”

“Shh.” I giggle.

“What? There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Is there?”

I lean forward and brush my lips against his. “No,” I whisper. It is the first time I have kissed him this way, and his response is passionate. It is to his credit that he has never asked me to follow him inside, into his home, his chamber, his bed. Because I’m not sure I would have the willpower to say no. And if I go to his bed, then why not marry him? So instead, we remain outside, where theatergoers doing far worse things take no notice of a couple embracing on the steps.

Chapter 22

J
ULY
3, 1789

I would not exchange my leisure hours for all the wealth in the world
.

—C
OMTE DE
M
IRABEAU

A
LETTER HAS ARRIVED FROM
R
OBESPIERRE PRAISING TWO
men from the National Assembly and suggesting that we include them in the Salon de Cire. My uncle passes the envelope to me before my carriage arrives for Versailles. I stand in the door and read Robespierre’s small, cramped handwriting in the light of the rising sun: