Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution (7 page)

“And I would like to be more buxom,” I reply.

She stares at me, then breaks into laughter. “Very well, Mademoiselle Grosholtz. Very well.”

Chapter 5

F
EBRUARY
3, 1789

Man was born free and everywhere he is in shackles
.

–J
EAN
-J
ACQUES
R
OUSSEAU

I
T IS THE GREATEST SUCCESS WE HAVE EVER HAD
. D
ESPITE THE
pouring rain, the line for our Salon has stretched to the Rue Saint-Honoré for nearly three days. It is as if all of Paris has heard that the king and queen have visited our waxworks, and no one wants to miss the chance to see what the royals themselves have laid eyes on. While I have rushed to complete a new model of young Louis-Charles for display, there is no need to sculpt his older brother. The dauphin’s sickness has kept him small and thin; he has hardly aged at all. I hope the court physicians are watching him closely. It will destroy the queen to lose two children in such a short time.

I am about to tell our barker, Yachin, to come in from the rain when Curtius stops me at the door. “Let him shout,” he says. He is smiling. All of his effort in teaching me as a child was not in vain. Someday, he can retire from the Salon knowing that his life’s work will not be shoved away in some attic; that I will do whatever is required to keep our waxworks in the public eye. “Let the line grow.”

“We can’t possibly accommodate so many customers! There are at least three hundred people out there.” I have done the calculations. “Even if we let in twenty an hour—”

“We’ll give anyone who doesn’t make it inside a front-of-line ticket for tomorrow.”

Of course. It’s brilliant. And then it occurs to me. “What about a helping of
Käsespätzle
? Three extra sous for the
Käsespätzle
eaten by the queen!”

We grin at each other. He and I could sell ice to the Empress of Russia, and in the salon that evening, while Robespierre is announcing that he and Camille have passed the first round of elections to nominate the deputies to the Estates-General, I am thinking of how tomorrow we will have Yachin shout that the queen’s
Käsespätzle
is being served. I am so wrapped up in this image that I don’t hear the conversation pass on to the subject of the king’s recent visit. Everyone is looking in my direction. I hope I haven’t spoken my thoughts out loud.

“Mademoiselle Grosholtz?” Robespierre repeats. “I asked what the king said when he came face-to-face with the bust of Rousseau.”

This is an obsession of Robespierre’s. A week doesn’t pass without him questioning us over what Rousseau was like when he visited: how he dressed, what he ate, and where he went to play chess when he wasn’t playing in our salon. “The king asked if the man was as brilliant as his writing,” I tell him.

Robespierre sits back as if I have slapped him. “The king has
read
Rousseau?” His glasses have slipped down his nose. He pushes them up with his thumb. “What does he know about the
Social Contract?
Or
La Nouvelle Héloïse
? Or the
Confessions
?”

“Nothing!” the Duc exclaims. “My cousin has always been an impostor.”

“And the queen?” Robespierre demands. “What did the queen have to say?”

I wish I had another answer for him, since I know how this will reflect on Her Majesty, but I don’t lie. “She asked if he dressed like an Armenian.”

Robespierre looks triumphantly around the room, pausing to nod meaningfully to Camille and my uncle. “What have I told you?” He has neglected his food, and while everyone else eats, he pushes back his chair. “Vanity! And while our countrymen are starving, she is decorating herself with diamond aigrettes! Did she mention,” he asks rhetorically, “that his Armenian robes would bar him from attending her Grand Couvert? That he would be laughed at in her gilded halls at Versailles?” My mother and I exchange looks across the table. “Do you think she cares that we are suffering from the worst harvest in living memory? That candles are to be had only by the wealthy and flour by the even wealthier?”

“Of course not. It’s a plot!” Marat interjects, speaking for the first time tonight. Because he never bothers to swallow before he speaks, we can all see his sharp teeth covered in food. Marat narrows his eyes, and now he truly looks like a feral animal. “The monarchy knows its way of life is in peril, so they plan to starve the populace into subservience!”

“You don’t really believe that?” Henri asks, aghast. “The monarchy could easily deploy the army to smother any rebellious acts.”

“Not in the Palais-Royal!” Marat shouts.

The Palais-Royal is owned by the Duc. Once it was a vast garden shaded by chestnut trees, but eight years ago the Duc had the trees chopped down to make way for a sprawling shopping arcade. Anything can be found in the Palais-Royal: Madeira wine, English shoes, Indian coffee, exotic women. Until last year, we rented one of the Duc’s shops to house the museum, but the prostitutes who lingered outside were driving our wealthy customers away. The Palais-Royal has become a veritable den of iniquity, sheltering every type of thief and anarchist. But since the grounds belong to the Duc, the king’s soldiers are forbidden from policing inside any of the hundred and eighty arcades.

“And if the king took back the Palais-Royal?” Henri asks.

“He would never do that!”

Henri fixes Marat with a practical gaze. “He is king. He may do as he wishes.”

I am impressed with his rhetoric.

Everyone looks to the Duc to see if he agrees. “I have been banished twice to the Villers-Cotterêts. What is to stop my cousin from exiling me entirely and taking the Palais-Royal for himself?”

“The p-people!” Camille exclaims. “W-we—we would never allow it. The Estates-General meets at Versailles in three months,” Camille reminds him. “We will s-see then how loud the voice of the people can be.”

“I hope louder than their costumes,” the Duc remarks. “I am told that the Third Estate is required to come entirely in black. Black three-corner hats, black coats with tails, plain black cravats, and black knee breeches. The clergy, however, will be wearing scarlet silk.”

Robespierre leans forward. “And the nobility? What will the nobility be wearing?”

The Duc sighs, as if it pains him a great deal to relay this message. “Their hats will be designed in the style of Henri IV, and their vests are to be of black silk, trimmed in lace and embroidered with gold.”

It is as if a powder keg has exploded. Everyone begins shouting at once, with the exception of the Duc, who sits back and watches the fire that he has ignited. When my mother and I rise to clear the plates from the table, Lucile grabs my arm.

“Do you see why Camille is so upset? They wish to humiliate us!”

“But Curtius told me yesterday that they are giving us greater representation. They are doubling the number of deputies who represent the Third Estate to a thousand.”

“That’s right. They can dress our deputies in sackcloth, but this meeting of the Estates-General is going to change everything. It
has
to change everything.” Her dark eyes suddenly fill with tears. This is about more than representation for her. This is about whether she will be able to marry the man of her choosing. Though I have never asked, I doubt that her father knows she sneaks away with Camille. They have been coming to us for only a year, but it has been seven months since they first vowed to marry. And now that Camille has passed the first round of elections to be made a deputy of the Third Estate, perhaps it will come to pass.

“Will your father consent to the marriage if Camille can distinguish himself somehow?” I ask.

Lucile looks over her shoulder to see if he is listening, then leans closer to me. “Yes, there will certainly be a better chance. There are a hundred thousand livres waiting for the man who claims my hand. Camille is only a lawyer, and my father has already turned him away once.” She blinks rapidly, to stop the tears from falling. “He is a brilliant writer. There are great thoughts in his head.”

“And I am sure he will make an impression at Versailles.”

This relieves her greatly. “Do you think so?”

I look across the table at her intended. He is so engaged in what he is saying that he has lost his stutter entirely. “Yes,” I reply, although I don’t add what sort of impression. There is no room for passion like his at court. I think of the king’s recent visit, and the quiet reverence with which his family treated him. I doubt that any man has ever been allowed to grow red-faced with rage in His Majesty’s presence.

“Wealthy men have asked for my hand,” she says. “Men who could improve our family’s standing.”

“And your father has turned them down?”

“I have, and now my father has given me a year to decide. It must all happen within a year.” There is panic in her voice, and for the first time, I am thankful that I am not the daughter of a wealthy man. I reach out and squeeze her hand. “What about you?” she asks. “Isn’t there anyone you care for?”

“I have an exhibition to care for,” I reply. “And there are options open to an unmarried woman with ambition. Look at Rose Bertin. From an ordinary seamstress to the milliner of the queen. She is the wealthiest self-made woman in France!”

“But whom does she come home to?”

I am surprised at Lucile’s naïveté. A woman like Rose may come home to any man she chooses. “I am sure Rose is not lonely. Money means that there are always people around you.”

After I leave to help my mother clear the table and serve the coffee, I watch Camille and Lucile from the kitchen. She is whispering something in his ear to make him blush. If Camille becomes a deputy, it will be his responsibility to take his city’s
cahiers
to Versailles. I have heard that there are more than fifty thousand
cahiers
being drafted, and that these lists of grievances are long. The people are demanding that all citizens be equal before the law. They are declaring that it is not right for the First and Second Estates to be free from taxes. Some of the
cahiers
request the abolishment of censorship in journalism. But nearly all demand that the
lettres de cachet
be abolished. The people live in fear of these
lettres
, which allow anyone to be arrested, so long as the king has signed the document. For jealousy and vengeance, husbands have imprisoned their spouses, then taken up with mistresses. Parents have imprisoned unruly sons and sent away daughters who have refused good marriages. And though he has issued more than ten thousand, there is evidence that the king does not read these
lettres
, that he signs blank forms and the police fill in whichever names they wish.

I think of the Marquis de Sade, currently imprisoned in the Bastille under a
lettre de cachet
drafted by his in-laws. A thousand things conspired to send him to this place, including poisoning prostitutes in Marseille and imprisoning a young woman until she made an escape from his second-floor window. But his must certainly be the rare case of justice being served. If the Estates-General can accomplish nothing more than the banishment of these
lettres
, it will be a success.

As the coffee is finished and everyone rises to leave, Curtius asks Henri to stay behind. “I am having some trouble with the du Barry model,” he says. “Since we moved her for the king’s visit, the mechanical heart is no longer working.” This is one of my uncle’s favorite figures, not because she is scantily dressed but because he has fitted her with a beating heart that makes the model’s ample chest rise and fall. Visitors always bend closer for a look, and some have sworn that they can even hear her breathing.

“Have you tried replacing the pump?” Henri asks. I follow them down to the du Barry tableau. I watch as Henri steadily tinkers with the model, his hands moving lightly over her wax breasts, and suddenly the wine from dinner has flushed my cheeks. After a few minutes Henri declares, “It was the valve.” The heart is beating again, and mine flutters under my fichu. I fan myself distractedly with my hand, but neither of the men seems to notice.

Curtius claps him heartily on the back. “Henri, I don’t know what we would do without you. How is that exhibition of yours going?”

Henri smiles broadly, and I wonder how many women linger after his shows hoping he will smile like this at them. Quite a few, probably, though they are wasting their time. Like me, Henri is married to his work. But experiments with hydrogen do not pay the rent, and so Henri has taken on the task of putting on scientific shows. “I am about to install a new exhibit,” he tells us.
“The Auricular Communications of the Invisible Girl
. Perhaps you would like to see it tomorrow?”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “But I have—”

“We would love to,” Curtius interrupts.

What’s the matter with him? He knows that Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe is to bring her daughter in for a sitting. I put on my best showman’s smile. “I look forward to seeing the Invisible Girl.”