Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution (42 page)

This is my first clue that the year 1790 will be filled with unpalatable news.

On the thirteenth of February, the National Assembly passes a law forbidding monastic vows and dissolving every ecclesiastical order. Nuns are dragged into the streets to be whipped, and monks are given six months to marry or be killed. The Pope, without his own army, without any real power at all, sits in the Vatican while convents all across France are closed. Priests who are allowed to remain with the Church are instructed on the new order of things: before the Pope, before salvation, before even God Himself, there is the nation.

In the Church of Saint-Merri, the priests must wear the tricolor cockade over their holy vestments, and the altar has been defaced to read, “Glory be to God
and the Nation.”
At every Mass, before every prayer, the priests must ask God’s blessing over the Revolution. And in Marat’s newspaper
L’Ami du Peuple
, he repeats Diderot’s vicious philosophy: “Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”

Seven days later, news comes from Austria that Joseph II, the queen’s eldest brother and the Holy Roman Emperor, has died. He has been her greatest hope, and now Leopold II, a brother she’s never really known, has inherited the crown. Madame Élisabeth tells me this has crushed the queen. If Leopold refuses to offer his help, where will the king turn?

It is blow after blow for the royal family. In the spring, when Marie-Thérèse is to celebrate her First Communion, there are no gifts or celebratory feasts. The ceremony is held at Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois. The king does not dare to attend, and the queen is forced to watch from behind a curtain. Madame Élisabeth confides that Marie-Thérèse asked her father why her friends could celebrate their First Communions, while she could not. She was told that any sort of fête would be too extravagant. In this, I feel sorry for Madame Royale. Every child across France receives gifts for this passage. When I ask if the dauphin was in attendance, Madame Élisabeth’s face turns pale. “He had a fever,” she says quietly. “The doctors say he is coughing up blood.”

At some point, I think, God must look down and take pity on the royal family. But the terrible news doesn’t stop. In April, the National Assembly votes to transfer all four hundred million livres of church property to the state. Camille and Marat applaud this new law as saving the nation. Catholics, they write, have secret royalist tendencies, and schools run by the Church teach pupils to love God and,
even worse
, the king.

But no one is thinking about who will run the hospitals and poorhouses when the anniversary of the Bastille approaches. Instead, a celebration—larger than any celebration to come before—is planned for the fourteenth of July. The National Assembly is calling it the Fête de la Fédération. On the Champ-de-Mars, a tremendous stadium has been built for the occasion. Tens of thousands of people flood into Paris to take part in the festivities. The fête begins with deputies from foreign nations parading with their flags to remind us that we are one people, one race, one human nation. The Swedes, the Turks, the Mesopotamians—they are all here to celebrate this great oneness. Then Lafayette mounts a podium to swear an oath to the Constitution, which is still in the making, and the entire stadium falls silent.

“We swear forever to be faithful to the Nation, to the Law, and to the King, to uphold with all our might the Constitution as decided by the National Assembly and accepted by the King, and to protect according to the laws the safety of people and properties, transit of grains and food within the kingdom, the public contributions under whatever forms they might exist, and to stay united with all the French with the indestructible bonds of brotherhood.”

The king takes his place at the podium to swear his oath. Then the queen appears, and when everything is finished, there is cannon fire all around the Champ-de-Mars.

“Study these faces,” Curtius suggests. “These are men you may never see again.”

With two family members as captains in the National Guard, I am introduced to every foreign delegate. There is John Paul Jones, the Scottish fighter who has founded the American Navy. And Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet
Common Sense
inspired the Americans to rebel against England. It was over a year ago that Wolfgang gave me a copy. These men have traveled to Paris for this occasion, and both believe this is a great day for France.

“Not every action the Assembly makes will be for good,” Paine tells me. “But tyranny can never be allowed to flourish.”

Perhaps I should be happy. But I see the misery of Madame Élisabeth when I visit her, and I hear of the way the people treat the queen, and I have to think it cannot be this way in England. Not even King George III, who is said to be mad and ruled by his son, is slandered in the streets and spit on in his gardens.

In all of this, there are two events that bring us real joy. Near the end of July, Abrielle is delivered of a healthy son. He is christened Michael Louis Grosholtz, and although the baron does not come to see him, no child has ever brought his family greater happiness. His bassinet may not be lined with silk, but he will never be cold and he will never go hungry.

Then, in December, Lucile brings us the news she has been waiting years for. She and Camille are finally to marry. In this new world of assemblies and liberty, Camille has become someone of great importance. When the king is forced to sign the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, commanding all priests to swear an oath of loyalty to the nation or be labeled a dissident, it’s Camille’s paper the people turn to for information. And when the Assembly abolishes all hereditary titles of nobility, it’s Camille’s paper that inspires the celebration in the streets. He has become a man of rousing metaphors, and Lucile’s father has turned down proposals from men with incomes of twenty-five thousand assignats a year to give her to Camille.

The wedding is held in the fashionable Church of Saint-Sulpice, with its view of the Left Bank and its Italian colonnades. I am wearing the very best gown I own, and the pearls around my neck are a gift from Curtius.

I look around the church and see many of the faces from our new
Fête de la Fédération
tableau. There is Lafayette, sitting with his pretty wife, Adrienne. And there is Mirabeau. He looks terribly frail for such a large man. He is sitting at the front of the church with a bloodied handkerchief around his neck. When I ask Curtius what this is for, he tells me, “The leeches. He uses them for his eyes.” When I recoil, he adds, “Apparently, the Salle du Manège has poor ventilation, and no one can see. The room is filled with smoke, but it’s the only place they can find that is large enough to house the Assembly.”

I look back at Mirabeau, who is clearly suffering. It can’t just be his eyes. His cheeks are hollow, and my guess is that his syphilis is very bad. He is sitting next to the Duc d’Orléans, who returned to France several months ago with a new name, Philippe Égalité. He has proclaimed himself a man of the people and is now a member of the Jacobin Club. Nearly everyone here, including my uncle, has also become a member. Every law, every act, every possible decree, is debated endlessly before the Club, with the hope that the members who hold positions of power will return to the National Assembly with a single agenda. They are all men of dreams, but none of them speak as long or as passionately as Robespierre.

If I lean to the side, I can see him near the altar in a pale blue coat and silver cravat. He is acting as witness for Camille. I wonder if, in their schoolboy days together, they ever imagined standing in Saint-Sulpice with all the important players of the nation behind them. When the ceremony is finished, Robespierre steps back while Camille shouts triumphantly, “Lucile Desmoulins!”

The entire church erupts into applause. Then we are on our feet and moving to follow the happy couple out the door.

“Perhaps that will be us someday,” Henri remarks, and I can hear the edge in his voice.

“The Austrians are at our gates,” I tell him. “You know Curtius can’t leave his position now. There could be war at any moment. Today, tomorrow—”

“Next month, next year …”

I can see the mistrust in his face. He’s beginning to believe that I don’t love him, that I’ll postpone our marriage forever. “I hope I’ve never given you any cause to doubt how much I love you. Or that I want to marry you.”

“Then let’s do it now. Today.”

“Henri—”

“How long will this continue? Last year, Curtius promised to resign his post. So when will it be? Another year? Two? I’m a patient man, Marie, but everyone has a breaking point. You must make a choice. Do you want to be Rose Bertin or Vigée-Lebrun?”

My eyes fill with tears. Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun was the queen’s artist. She married a fellow painter named Jean-Baptiste, and the pair of them have traveled across Europe together, arranging commissions and painting portraits. They have a daughter, little Jeanne Julie Louise. Somehow, Vigée-Lebrun has balanced motherhood with art. But how am I to do that? I can’t. Not yet.

Henri wipes away my tears with the back of his glove. Then he puts his arm through mine. “Think on it,” is all he says.

Chapter 38

A
PRIL
–J
UNE
1791

War is the national industry of Prussia
.

—C
OMTE DE
M
IRABEAU

M
IRABEAU IS DEAD
.

I am in the workshop when I hear the news that the great voice of the Revolution has passed. A year ago, almost to this date, it was Benjamin Franklin. Now, it is the man who was only recently made president of the National Assembly. At first, there is the hope that the news is wrong. Then there is talk that perhaps he has gone to the countryside to escape from politics and live incognito. But when Mirabeau’s body is displayed to the public, the wailing and beating of chests begins.

Immediately, we make the bust of Mirabeau the centerpiece of our Salon, and the people who come dressed in black to mourn his passing would fill a stadium. On the day his ashes are interred inside the Panthéon—built to reflect the great masterpiece in Rome—the Assembly requests our bust for their procession.

“The Revolution has been the making of us,” Curtius says as Robespierre carries away the wax head.

I reflect on this. While good men like de Flesselles and de Launay have died, we have thrived. While the Swiss Guards are mistrusted for being the king’s men, Curtius and Wolfgang are greatly respected as captains of the National Guard. Why does life carry some people on the crest of the wave while others drown beneath the water?

I look across the room to a white certificate hanging above the
caissier’s
desk. It is the Assembly’s official recognition of Curtius as one of the
Vainqueurs de la Bastille
. In a splendid ceremony at Notre-Dame, he was given this document along with a sword inscribed with his name. We are good patriots. That is clear for anyone to see. And perhaps this is why Jacques-Louis David helped Curtius become a member of the Académie.

I remember the moment when the news arrived—as exciting as the night the letter came from the king to say that he’d be visiting our Salon. At last, the recognition of my uncle’s talent has come. It doesn’t matter that I wasn’t made a member as well. What matters is that the Salon de Cire will finally be in every guidebook to Paris. We have been recognized by the Académie as worthy of being seen, and for the rest of his life, perhaps on his gravestone, my uncle will be Philippe Curtius, member of the Académie Royale.

But Austrian and Prussian troops are amassing at our border. The fear that the Revolution may be crushed drives two men to break into the Tuileries and attempt to take the queen’s life. Marat, now a master of sensationalism, has written on the front page of his
Ami du Peuple:

Five or six hundred heads would have guaranteed your freedom and happiness, but a false humanity has restrained your arms and stopped your blows. If you don’t strike now, millions of your brothers will die, your enemies will triumph, and your blood will flood the streets. They’ll slit your throats without mercy and disembowel your wives. And their bloody hands will rip out your children’s entrails to erase your love of liberty forever.

All of Paris is in a frenzy. Our family has cleverly played both sides, and if the queen’s Austrian allies march into France, we will not have much to fear. But men who’ve been outspoken against the king? They’ve gambled everything, and they have no choice but to press forward. It will be their lives in danger if the queen’s brother Leopold II gathers his troops to restore the monarchy. So now, more than ever, the Assembly appreciates the men in the National Guard. They will be the ones to fight against any invading army hoping to prevent a Constitution from being signed. The king’s aunts have both escaped to Rome, and each day is more dangerous for the royal family. When I visit Madame Élisabeth in June, she confides in me that everyone in the Tuileries is despondent.