Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution (55 page)

J
ANUARY
31, 1793

I shall be an autocrat, that’s my trade; and the good Lord will forgive me, that’s His
.

—C
ATHERINE THE
G
REAT

E
VERY COUNTRY ON EARTH HAS TURNED AGAINST US
. E
NGLAND
, Russia, Holland, Austria. When their monarchs hear of King Louis’s murder, they unite in their horror and condemnation.

Empress Catherine the Great has declared mourning for all of Russia, and in England the prime minister, William Pitt, has called the king’s death “the foulest and most atrocious deed which the history of the world” has ever seen. I can find nothing in the papers to indicate what America’s President Washington believes. Perhaps he is neutral. But whatever he feels, we have made more enemies than we can fight.

On the first of February, the Convention declares war on both England and the Dutch Republic. Curtius says this is a preemptive strike, that England would declare war on us anyway. But I think it is pride. The hulking figure of Georges Danton stands before the Convention and swears that the limits of France will someday reach “the ocean, the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees.” When I ask my uncle what he thinks of this, he closes his eyes and shakes his head.

I imagine Wolfgang and Henri reading this news, and I wonder what will happen to them now. What will happen to us all? Their letters have stopped. Nothing arrives in or leaves from Paris except for soldiers. At night, the patrols go from house to house, searching for weapons, powder, illegal flour. Anyone caught hoarding is sent to prison. Then on the fifth of October, to cheer the populace, we are given a new calendar. From this day forward, no one is to celebrate the Catholic festivals or use the calendar that dates from Christ’s birth. “We are a nation of thinkers,” Danton declares, “and as such, we shall celebrate the glorious rationalism that has brought us to such liberty.”

Not a single journalist in all of Paris dares to point out that our new liberty has imprisoned us within the city. That our dead are buried the same day they die—in mass graves—because there is no longer room and even gravediggers are not allowed outside the city gates. And so we all must pretend to embrace this new calendar. Those who do not use it are branded enemies of the
patrie
.

“Repeat the names,” my mother instructs, and we listen while Paschal recites the names of the months.

“Vintage, Fog, Frost, Snow, Rain …” He hesitates on the sixth month.

“Wind,” she says helpfully. We are all sitting at the
caissier
’s desk, and it is very important he get this right.

“Wind,” he repeats after her. “Seed, Blossoms, M-Mead—”

“Meadows,” I say.

“Meadows, Harvesting, Heat, and Fruit.”

Isabel claps. “Very good.”

“And what year is this?” my mother asks.

Paschal frowns. “Seventeen ninety-three?”

“No,” Isabel says forcefully. “It is Year Two.”

“But I don’t understand.”

“The first year began on September twenty-second, seventeen ninety-two.” The day France declared itself the First Republic.

“But how?” He doesn’t see how he could have been alive before time began.

“That is the decree of the Convention,” she explains.

“But it doesn’t make sense.” He is frustrated.

“It doesn’t have to,” I tell him. “You must simply learn the rules and obey.”

“Is that what liberty means?” he asks earnestly.

The three of us are silent.

“No,” I say. “That is what tyranny means,” but I don’t explain.

Paschal repeats the names of the months again, but we do not ask him to memorize the fruits, animals, and minerals associated with each day. Now that the Convention has declared the Church an enemy of the
patrie
, no day shall ever be associated with a saint again. Instead, on the twenty-second of September, we are to all praise the grape. On the fifteenth of March we must remember the tuna. The twenty-second of April is reserved for the fern, and we shall not forget the onion on the twenty-first of June. In a similar fashion, all Christian holidays have now been abolished. Despite the fact that the Jacobins have called Jesus our world’s first
sans-culotte
, we are to celebrate the glorious attributes of the canine instead of Christ’s birthday on the twenty-fifth of December. But these are things that are impossible to explain to an eight-year-old child.

On October 21, however, Paschal’s questions are impossible to avoid. The street criers are shouting that the Cult of Reason is now to replace Catholicism and that the first celebration will be held tonight in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in praise of the Goddess of Reason.

“Who is the Goddess of Reason?” Paschal asks. “Is she real?”

My mother clenches her jaw. “No. She is blasphemy.”

“Maman!”
I exclaim. There are patrons in the Salon, and we are sitting at the
caissier
’s desk.

“I don’t care!” she shouts.

“Yes. You do.”

There are tears in her eyes. I leave the desk to buy a newspaper, and when I return, I read it to her in German. She must understand the seriousness of this. All deaths, marriages, and births are now to be registered under the civil registration law and not in the Church. And all saints and images of worship are to be taken down. Only statues of Citizen Jesus may remain. Synagogues have been closed down, and Jews who wear their
peyos
long must cut them off. From this day forward, all churches will be turned into Temples of Reason, and any person found harboring priests or rabbis will be killed.

My mother is silent, listening.

“What is it,
Grand-mère
? Is it very bad news?”

My mother takes Paschal’s hand in hers. “Yes. May God help us,” she whispers.

Chapter 54

F
EBRUARY
17, 1793

The tocsin you hear today is not an alarm but an alert: it sounds the charge against our enemies
.

—G
EORGES
D
ANTON, REVOLUTIONARY LEADER

H
E HAS HEARD THAT
I
AM THE ANGEL OF DEATH, RESURRECTING
those who have gone before us, so he has come to me. He looks exactly as I have sculpted him for our
National Convention
tableau, with a firm jaw and a chest so wide that Curtius had to use extra horsehair for his model. I should send him away. This is the man who, alongside Marat, called for the massacre of the Swiss Guards. Now is the time to exact my revenge.

“I have ridden nonstop for three days,” he says. His clothes are filthy and worn.
“Please
. She is in the Madeleine Cemetery. They say you are there every night.”

“For the dead,” I reply harshly. “Not for the buried.”

“I have unburied her!
Please,”
Danton begs. “She is in her coffin. I have opened the lid and she is perfectly preserved. She died while I was at the front.” He cries into his hands, and although I should detest him, I am sorry for his loss. I think of my mother, torn apart by the deaths of Johann and Edmund. She would want me to turn Danton away. No, she would order it. But then I think of what Madame Élisabeth would do. “I will get my bag and shawl,” I say.

I go upstairs, and Isabel asks if she should come with me. “Not this time.”

“You are going alone?”

“With a man from the Convention.”

She is wise enough not to ask who he is. My mother is in the next room.

I follow Danton through the streets and down the familiar path to the Madeleine Cemetery. The air is dank and smells of coming rain. I should have brought more than a shawl. A heavy white mist has settled over the trees, and only the burnished glow of Danton’s lantern lights the way. We pass through the cemetery’s iron gates, and the guard calls for us to stop. When he sees who I am, he tips his hat to me. I have become as familiar as the gravediggers in this place.

“We’re here for Gabrielle Danton,” I say.

The old man nods. “You know the way?”

“Yes,” Danton replies.

I follow while Danton navigates a path between the markers. Although others are tossed into paupers’ pits, Gabrielle has been granted her own place in the earth. I wonder if her death was punishment from God for the sins Danton committed against innocent men. Do blameless women die for their husbands’ deeds? Is that how God works? Or is He merciful and forgiving, like our
sans-culotte
Jesus?

Danton stops before a gravestone bearing the name of Gabrielle Danton. A pair of shovels rest against a fresh mound of dirt, and next to the frightening hole in the earth is a wooden coffin. “Gabrielle,” he whispers.

This is my moment for revenge. As he pries back the lid, I consider telling him that she is too far gone for a mask. But then I close my eyes briefly and think of his pain. He is weeping openly over her corpse. I know I should be afraid. After all, these are the scenes that nightmares are made of. But I have seen such death these past three months that nothing frightens me anymore.

I kneel over her coffin and look into the face of a beautiful woman the same age as I am. Her black hair covers her shoulders, and she has been dressed in a handsome taffeta gown. There is no sign of injury to her face and no way of telling that she is dead and not sleeping. “How long has she been gone?” I whisper.

He sobs. “Seven days.”

I have never seen a body preserved like this. What would he have done if she had deteriorated completely?

“Can … can you model her?” he asks.

I look down at his wife. How strange to think that the birds above us will wake up tomorrow to blue skies and life but she will never open her eyes again. Even the fichu around her neck will outlast her. “Yes,” I say quietly. “I can.”

He holds the lantern while I work, and when I am finished, he asks how long it will be before he will have her back. It is not healthy, what he is doing. But I ask him, “A bust or an entire figure?”

“Her entire figure. With the same dark hair,” he adds desperately.

I think of the models still left to do, including a replacement for General Dumouriez, whose defeat last month has resulted in his disgrace. “Two weeks.” I stand, and he closes his eyes. “Danton,” I say gently, “she has left this world.”

“She has not left my world!” His voice echoes through the cemetery, and I take a step back. “I am sorry,” he says at once. “I don’t know … I can’t control …”

“I have known loss,” I tell him. “I understand.”

He searches my face. He must know of the event I am referring to, and his voice is full of emotion when he replies, “I am sorry.”

But we are all sorry when loss comes for us. The test of our character comes not in how many tears we shed but in how we act after those tears have dried.

Chapter 55

A
PRIL
7, 1793

In order to ensure public tranquillity, two hundred thousand heads must be cut off
.

—J
EAN-
P
AUL
M
ARAT

T
ERROR
. T
HIS IS WHAT
D
ANTON HAS UNLEASHED IN THE WAKE
of his wife’s death. He is urging the National Convention to establish a committee to root out every enemy of the
patrie
and send them first to prison, then to the guillotine. He is like a man possessed, preaching about enemies wherever he goes, from the Jacobin Club to the floor of the Convention. This war against conspirators has given him a new reason to live, and he is not alone in his crusade. In one of his recent placards, Marat has calculated how many criminals can be guillotined in a single day. Even Robespierre has joined the call for a committee responsible for hunting down the enemies of equality.