Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution (5 page)

The count stood in the vestibule and watched the furnishings of his house, some of which I am sure had been there for decades or even for over a century, leave and wished all his departing guests good day, as if, after dancing dozens of quadrilles, they were about to have their footmen help them into waiting carriages. As one grizzled old man, smiling and carrying one of the embroidered armchairs, passed him, the count clapped him on the back and said, “Rest well in that now, Father.” The count only left the vestibule, ostensibly to get himself another glass of the champagne Etienne had brought, when he saw the hunting tapestry being carried out.

My brother now sat by me on the marble stairs, beside the fallen oak armoire. It was also our childhood being carried out: the chairs and couches we remembered ourselves or others we knew using, or the tables we had rested our refreshments on, or the clock we had heard chime. The count finally closed the great doors. He waved his arms—“
Things
,” he said, “all
things
. They mean nothing in themselves—except the tapestry, except the tapestry, but even that—we ’re safe, aren’t we? No one harmed; a peaceful, happy crowd. It could be so much worse. And the finest pieces, of course, like the dining table, my bureau upstairs, our beds—too heavy to carry. The Beauregard coat of arms is pinioned too high for any to reach. Etienne—where’s that champagne hidden in the garden? I stuck some cheese up on a high shelf in the kitchen. Annette, see if there’s any eggs left in the nests in the barn—I doubt that any hens are left—what’s the matter with you two?” He opened his arms wide, as when he had welcomed the peasants. “It is our distinct privilege to dine tonight on omelette and champagne.” Etienne went to fetch the hidden bottles. The count’s arms were still spread wide, as if he were welcoming something that hadn’t arrived. I embraced him, and his big arms went around me. I felt his body shake and heard a sob that he caught in his throat. “This is my home,” he said. “This is my home.”

Etienne and I left the château de Beauregard the day after the looting; the countryside was quiet, and some of the peasants were even back working in the count’s fields. It had been quite a holiday for them.

In spite of the turmoils of the summer, in the back of my mind I always knew Etienne would be leaving to start his medical studies, as my father had at his age. We had to act in our everyday life as if the world had not changed. I had partly hoped, though, that the Revolution would keep the Sorbonne from starting, but suddenly the day was here, looming like the old stone church before us, immovable, blocking out the light. Jean, Papa’s groom, had driven us down to Louis XII Square for Etienne to get the
diligence
that would take him east, through Chartres, to Paris, the violent heart of the Revolution.

He had said good-bye to Maman and the others the night before.

Paul and Marguerite had come to dinner. We had said the sacking of the château de Beauregard was just some peasants wanting gifts and to see the irony of the most powerful man in the region making them omelettes. It was really quite amusing, we said. Papa and Paul knew better, and we talked to them after dinner.

Now it was a chilly autumn dawn. The square was deserted. The ornate Louis XII fountain lapped by us in the quiet morning.

“Be careful,” I said. “Don’t trust new friends. They may not be your friends nowadays.”

My bold brother had turned eighteen at the end of August. No older sister was going to give him advice. He wore his invincibility like a cloak. I had felt like that once, when I was sixteen. Monsieur Leforges’s dancing instructions had taken that away.

Etienne thanked me and looked over my shoulder for the
diligence
coming into the square. We could hear it lumbering through the slowly awakening streets. I touched his arm. “I have something for you,” I said.

The coach was entering the square. It stopped by the fountain. I pressed into Etienne’s hand a watch that I had bought for him, on a silver chain with a miniature attached to it. He opened the miniature, saw the likeness of me, and quickly shut it again. I kissed him, and he stepped into the
diligence
. He waved from the window and I waved back; then I watched his carriage roll noisily out of the square, and the only sound again was that of the ancient fountain.

Etienne had been my best friend for these past several years. Marguerite was my confidante in many things, but she had her family.

Etienne was my companion. I wrapped my shawl tighter around me.

The cathedral was still in shadow. The cobbles were wet with dew. I had never been here at this hour, and I didn’t know how cold and dark Louis XII Square was at dawn.

Now I would move to chez Vincent, the house of Marguerite’s family on top of the steep hill across the river in Vienne. Maman had already resumed her old theme of marriage. It was tiresome for me; I still had no taste for it, and now with Etienne gone I would be more vulnerable.

Papa was at the hospital all the time or attending patients. Besides, I had a job to do at chez Vincent. Marguerite’s attention was taken up with her two-year-old son, Gérard, and I was to entertain and tutor her eight-year-old daughter, Marie.

She and I read together, practiced piano, and drew pictures of the vine rows that stretched down the steep hill of her father’s property toward the river, or of the small fountain in the courtyard in the sunlight. She took her drawings seriously, and they frequently had much more style and precision than mine. I also taught her dance steps that we practiced together, as at a ball, songs by Lully, and some simple things about writing one’s thoughts down and making observations.

Today was a gray day over the river, with an early autumn crispness that made me think of the beginning of the hunting season, of the contentment that shone on Papa’s face as if the world held no greater joy than this moment in the early morning: with the smoke of the breath of horses and of men on the air; with his daughter mounted beside him; with the hounds barking about the heels of the horses; just before we dashed through the waist-high grass in the meadow and pursued whatever adventure the day had in store. I decided my next job would be to teach Marie to ride.

This morning I started the lesson with a passage for Marie to read from Rousseau’s
Emile
: “The only moral lesson which is suited for a child—the most important lesson for every time of life—is this: ‘Never hurt anybody.’” I had her memorize those three words and who said them. “Imagine,” I said, “what the world would be like if everyone tried to follow Rousseau’s
most important lesson
?”

Marie said it would be a very nice world.

She also liked word games, and in the late morning we were looking out the dormer windows at a funnel of fog creeping up the river.

“I have a riddle for you, Marie.”

“What is it?”

“Why is the fog like a magician?”

She thought awhile. “Because they both make things disappear,” she said and smiled.

“You’re right.” The riddle was too elementary for her, but it was all I could think up, and I wanted it to lead me to another lesson. “For instance, can you see the river?”

“No.”

“It has disappeared, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. Is knowledge through the senses the only knowledge we go by? In this case, which is true: the senses that tell you the river isn’t there, or your intellect that remembers that it is?”

“The intellect.”

“According to what I see, the sun travels in his golden chariot across the sky every day. Is that true?”

“No, the sun never moves.”

“Precisely. So sometimes if we go only by what the senses perceive, we can be misled. We hold by what the intellect knows to be true. You’ll find that in the quotidian, the world of the senses, especially in these days, people will make up excuses and justifications for hurting someone, but Rousseau said his lesson was
for every time of
life,
so the intellect holds on to that truth.”

“I will test the senses now,” she said. “Maybe I can see the river from the terrace.”

I followed her out. We were both hatless and without our shawls, and I could feel the cold fog piercing my linen dress. I could see it swirling in front of the chestnut tree, veiling half of its limbs.

“What is that?”

Marie pointed to a dead bird amid yellow leaves beneath the tree. I could not tell whether the bird had died of cold or from the attentions of one of Marguerite’s cats or both. “It’s a dead bird.”

Marie walked slowly up to it and looked at it closely.

“Let’s go back in the house.”

“It’s beautiful,” she said, and lingered, then followed me. Then she went back to the bird, and I followed her. You could see the spine of each blue-black feather, and the short ribs that arched off to either side, whitish against the dark feathers. You could look at all the things you could not see when it was moving so fast in the sky or skittishly in the branches. The little body in the middle was lost in the wide fan of dark feathers, and Marie was squatting by it.

“May I bring the bird inside?”

“Just remember how it looks, and we ’ll draw a picture of it, as if it’s still flying in the sky.”

We sat near the fire and held our palms out to it until they were as hot as we could stand it, then Marie spread her paper out on the floor, where she liked to lie on her stomach on the Savonnerie rug by the fire and draw. Once when my parents visited, my mother took this opportunity to explain to little Marie that this was not a very ladylike position, to which my father immediately replied, “Look at her fine drawing. This is the position in which inspiration strikes her. I would not sacrifice art for vanity.” Marie kept working on the floor by the fire, and it became her regular place.

At the noon meal the chestnut tree outside the windows had now completely disappeared in the fog. “Why is the fog like a magician?”

Marie asked her mother. She never received an answer because Françoise, Marguerite’s maidservant, announced that someone was at the front door. Marguerite got up to answer the call: muffled voices, then her piercing scream. I told Marie to stay at the table and ran to my sister.

“Papa,” she sobbed. “Papa’s been killed. A riot, a grain riot, on the embankment,” she got out. I looked at the boy from the
préfecture
, as if Marguerite had got it wrong. I didn’t break down at the time, like my sister, because I didn’t believe the messenger. Papa could handle himself. He had gone through riots before this summer. He just stayed calm when everyone else was insane. He had even administered to fallen rioters. He was known in the town. There was some mistake.

“There is some mistake,” I said to the boy, uncomfortable in the doorway with all the crying.

“A mob was looting a grain barge, Mademoiselle,” he said to me.

When I didn’t answer, he added pleadingly, as if it would help me believe him, “You know what the bread prices have been, Mademoiselle. People were hurt. Some had been beaten by the bargemen. Your father was on his way to attend to a patient...”

He trailed off, and it seemed silent for a long time.

When I was younger, I had accompanied Papa on some of his rounds, and he had sent a note yesterday to chez Vincent, asking me to join him this morning. I had not seen him for a month, since Etienne left for Paris. “Papa asked me if I wanted to come today,” I said to my sister, “and I said I was busy tutoring Marie—Marguerite, perhaps I could have—”

“Annette, you just would have been harmed too—”

The messenger stood there watching us.

“I’m sorry,” I said to him. “Please go on.”

Marguerite sank now to a carved settee in the vestibule. It took all my effort to stand there and listen to the boy tell me something that I could not, in reality, acknowledge.

“Monsieur Vallon had stopped to attend to their wounds—”

“Whose wounds?” I said.

“The rioters hurt by the bargemen. Those bargemen are big. It’s just that there were so many of the rioters. Monsieur Vallon was kneeling by one of them when the mob rushed again on the barge. It is thought that because of his dress he was taken for an aristocrat.”

“How was he—”

“Monsieur Vallon was struck on the head, and the crowd—”

“How do you know this?”

“A bargeman, Mademoiselle, escaped.”

“Where is...Papa?”

“At the Bishop’s Palace—pardon me, it’s the Town Hall now.

They burned the barge; the captain might survive.”

“My mother?”

“She has already been notified, as has Monsieur Vincent.”

“Then you are free to go. Here, for your pains.” I rummaged in the purse in the pocket of my skirt. “This can’t have been pleasant news for you to relate, either.”

“Thank you, Mademoiselle.”

I shut the door and turned to my sister. She looked strange, crumpled on the bench where people sat in their finery, waiting for a footman to bring around a carriage. Marie was now by her side. “What’s wrong, Maman? What’s wrong, Maman?” she said, her voice rising as she repeated it, but Marguerite could not answer the child.

I sat now with my arms around her on the couch. She could not lift hers. I felt the sobs rack her body now, and I also saw Marie, distressed, beside me. I would hold my tears until I was alone.

“Come to the fire,
ma pauvre
. Grandpère’s been hurt,” I said to Marie. “Please help me get your mother to the drawing room. She can rest better there.”

“Come, Maman, come and rest,” Marie said, and lifted her mother’s arm.

At the touch of her child, Marguerite seemed to become suddenly conscious of us around her, and said, “I’m sorry,” and we led her into the room with Marie’s drawing material still on the floor by the fire, with the bird’s wings spread out against a blue sky, and I lay my sister down on a chaise longue there and took Marie back into the dining room. I hoped Marguerite’s scream had not waked Gérard from his nap.

We sat silently, not touching the plum tart that still sat before us.

The fog had cleared now, and an autumn wind ripped more leaves from the chestnut tree. You could hear the wind in the eaves of the house, like a low moan. The room was cold.