Finding Emilie (18 page)

My husband has told me he intends to ask for official authorization to sequester Voltaire at his ancestral home in Cirey. It is a dull place, and house arrest there will be a dreary thing for such a sociable man. Still, Voltaire is pleased, since the house is but a two-hour ride from the border of Lorraine, which is still, thank heaven, independent enough from the reach of the king to offer safe haven should he need to escape quickly. On his end, Voltaire has agreed to use his own money to renovate the château while he is in residence. An excellent bargain according to my husband, since the place is in a terrible state of disrepair.

I have faith in the marquis as the most respectable and esteemed man I know. He continues to offer no protest at Voltaire’s intimate involvement in my life. Perhaps it gives him a feeling of being in some
way equal to the acknowledged genius of the age that he is willing to share something of such value as a wife. We do not speak of such things out of mutual respect for each other but it is clear his acceptance is more than grudging, since when he is home from his regiment at the front, he invites Voltaire to accompany us everywhere.

It is time to dress for dinner, and I must break off this letter. Please write again soon, hopefully with at least a morsel of better news.

Your adoring and ever-affectionate,
Emilie, Marquise du Châtelet-Lomont

1765

“D
ELPHINE, PLEASE
choose, so I can get some of these fabrics off at least one chair. If I don’t sit down I’m going to collapse.”

“Please, Maman, just one more?” Delphine clasped her hands as fervently as if she were praying to a statue of the Virgin. “If I could choose five dresses instead of four, it would be so much easier!” The mercier came over to take the swatches of fabric from a chair in the corner of the shop, and Julie sat down with a resigned sigh.

“We’ve been here for two hours and it’s almost dark,” Julie said. “They’re lighting the streetlamps already.”

“Lili, please,” Delphine begged. “Help me just a little more!”

Lili, whose choices had long since been recorded in the mercier’s order book, put down the intricate piece of brocade she had been examining to while away the time. “They’re just dresses!” She shrugged.

“Just dresses?” Delphine’s eyes widened in disbelief. “They’re for Versailles!”

“It’s all equally beautiful, really,” Lili said.

“Well, that’s the problem!” Delphine said, choking back tears. “Look at this—yellow like butter.” She touched one sample. “And this—yellow like daffodils.” She scolded the cloth as if it were responsible for putting her in such a difficult position. “How can I choose?”

Lili shut her eyes and waved her finger back and forth, before stopping and opening her eyes. “That one!” she said.

“Don’t mock me!” Delphine said, wiping her eyes. “This is supposed to be a wonderful time, and you’re spoiling it.”

“It was, for the first hour,” Julie chided, “but I’m about ready to choose for you if you don’t hurry up.”

“Perhaps if Mademoiselle stood by the mirror and we held them up again to her face?” the mercier suggested, but it wasn’t going to help. Delphine’s fair beauty seemed to be equally accented by every color he had laid out for display.

“I know!” said Lili. “We’ll pretend there’s a crowd of invisible people watching—handsome men of course, and fashionable ladies from Versailles.” She folded a swatch of taffeta and covered Delphine’s eyes, tying it in the back. “I’ll spin you around and they’ll choose for you, like magic. Hold out your finger.” She guided Delphine in a tight circle. “Point,” she commanded. Delphine’s finger picked out a lavender-colored silk.

“I love that one,” Delphine whispered. “I think it was always my favorite.”

Julie heaved a sigh of relief as the girls finished off the task in a few minutes. “Time to get home,” she said. “Tomorrow’s the milliner and the shoemaker.”

Lili groaned. “Delphine—pick the hats for me,” she said. “I don’t want another day like this one.”

“Really?” Delphine perked up. “I’ll get to pretend I’m ordering twice as many for me!”

“I can hardly wait,” Julie said as she shooed them both toward the door. “And I’m sorry to keep you so long,” she said to the mercier, shaking her head in Delphine’s direction.

Night had fallen and the lamplight from inside the shops on the Rue Saint-Honoré cast a glow over the wares behind the glass—intricate porcelain snuffboxes and figurines, delicate cakes and pastries, books in embossed leather, and feathery hats. Julie had given orders for the driver to stop at the apothecary for some chocolate to take home, and as they waited for him to come back with the package, Lili watched as a young boy scrambled up to set candles inside
the glass enclosures of the lampposts. Another man, perhaps his father, followed behind with a long pole tipped with a small wick.

“The mercier will have to go home in the dark,” Lili said, looking up a cross street. The overhanging roofs would have made it gloomy any time of day, but the street was already impenetrable to the eye long before the light in the sky was completely gone. “He’s a nice man. I hope he doesn’t have far to walk.”

“Moi aussi,” Julie murmured. “I wish they lit the lamps all the time, instead of just at the new moon, and then only a few places. No wonder There’s so much crime. People beaten and robbed in the street … it’s black as ink most nights.” She looked out the carriage window. “The light is quite beautiful, isn’t it? Imagine if the whole city were lit—but I suppose taxes would be frightening if the king decreed something like that.”

“We do pay our bills, don’t we, Maman?” Lili asked.

Julie smiled. “Of course.”

“Does the mercier pay taxes too?”

Julie exhaled, looking out the window. “Far more than we do. The nobility is exempt from most of them, and tries to get out of the rest. I guess he pays for the lights and doesn’t really get the benefit, except in front of his shop.”

Delphine shuddered. “I’m glad we’ll be safe at home soon,” she said, taking Maman’s hand. “Especially with four new dresses to discuss over supper!”

Maman didn’t seem to hear. “There are many things wrong with France,” she said. “The reason I wanted to have a salon was that if I couldn’t do anything about it myself, at least I could draw together intelligent men who might find a way.”

“It doesn’t look as if they have yet,” Lili said. “But I’d rather put up lights than work out a philosophy about them.” She turned to Julie but they were now passing the old cemetery of Les Innocents, beyond the last streetlamp of Rue Saint-Honoré, and the darkness inside the coach made her unable to see Maman’s face. Lili felt the
coach pick up speed, as if hurtling through the now dark and narrow streets was preferable to taking a minute longer to arrive safely in the courtyard of Hôtel Bercy.

“Am I wrong, Maman?” Lili went on. “Abbé Turgot seemed to think that helping people could have dire consequences, and I see his point. But still, if the mercier pays taxes, why isn’t his own street lit?”

“It’s a good question for the abbé.”

“He scares me a little,” Lili admitted. “He knows so much more than I do.”

“Then try asking him another way. Why not use Meadowlark? I imagine others will argue for you quite forcefully after a story makes your point.” She leaned across toward Lili, as the light from one of the hôtels along their route shone briefly on them. “Meadowlark is more than what you said—a girl whom strange things happen to. She’s your voice, Lili. Don’t you want it to be heard?”

*   *   *

“Meadowlark and Tom got off their camels in the African oasis and saw that all the people were wearing rags. ‘I thought this place was supposed to be rich from trade with the Musulmen,’ Tom said, as a woman wearing a tattered veil turned toward them.

“‘You there!’ Meadowlark called out. ‘Why are you dressed that way?’

“‘Because I don’t have anything else to wear,’ the woman said. ‘I used to have a different veil for every day of the week, but I don’t know where the rest of my clothes have gone. The only reason we’re not all naked is we sleep in what we have on. Otherwise, this would probably be gone in the morning too,’ she said, shaking the hem of her gown.

“Just then three philosophers walked by. ‘Why are they dressed better than you are?’ Tom asked.

“‘I don’t know,’ said the woman. ‘Only ordinary people seem to lose everything the minute they get it …’”

The men in the room were shifting their weight as Lili read, and the rustle of fabric caused her eyes to dart around the salon. They don’t like it, she thought, but feeling Maman’s hand on her shoulder gave her the courage to read on. A few minutes later, she came to the end:

“The three philosophers went down an alley to a grand building near the town walls. Invisible, Meadowlark and Tom tiptoed in before the doors closed. They went into a dining room where a grand meal had been laid out on dishes of gold. Through a window, Meadowlark and Tom could see trunks full of clothing, including hundreds of veils, being loaded onto camels, while the caravan driver handed a bag of coins to a servant.

“He came in and poured the coins on the table. ‘Your proceeds, messieurs,’ he said. The philosophers leaned back and patted their bellies.

“‘It’s good to live in a land of surplus,’ they all agreed.

“‘I guess in Africa, the more you need, the less you have,’ Tom said when they were safely back among the stars.

“‘And the more you have, the less you notice,’ Meadowlark replied.”

The room was silent, except for the clink of a brandy glass set down too hard on a table. Lili looked up at the serious faces of the guests at the salon. Finally, she heard one pair of hands clapping. “Brava!” Jean-Étienne Leclerc cried out, and slowly the others joined in.

Once his face had returned to its normal color, Abbé Turgot gave Lili a nod of acknowledgment. “Surely, mademoiselle,” Turgot said, “you don’t mean to imply that philosophers are some kind of parasite living off what rightly belongs to others?”

“No, sir,” Lili said. “But I don’t believe there’s any substitute for looking around the streets at what is real for common people. With further thought to the views you expressed here a few weeks ago, I decided it would be worth the possible consequences down the road
to make sure that everyone could afford bread today and rely on having it tomorrow.”

Leclerc clapped again, but Lili scarcely heard him. “Abbé Turgot,” she went on, “please remember this is just a silly story about a place that doesn’t exist. I mean, who would go around stealing people’s possessions and treating them as if they were part of their personal treasury? It’s quite absurd, really.”

“Not at all!” The booming voice belonged to a man in an embroidered silk vest under an elaborately trimmed velvet jacket. His eyes had the peculiar squint of someone whose excess weight had accumulated in the face, and a wattle of flesh bobbed beneath the knob of his chin as he spoke. Lili had never seen him at the salon before, and he had slipped in unnoticed while she was reading.

“Some people have more because others have less,” he said. “It’s a simple principle in a finite world, Turgot, and I can’t say I believe it is entirely wrong that it should be that way. But it’s a fact, as mademoiselle’s story points out, that those who eat at a golden trough do so by impoverishing others.”

“I don’t impoverish anyone!” another of the guests replied. “I give to charity, and I’m certainly not guilty of gluttony.”

Several other men laughed. “You’re only a glutton for losing at cards,” one said. “And for the ladies.”

“No harm in that, is there, Comte de Buffon?” another asked over the roar of their laughter.

Comte de Buffon? The keeper of the Jardin de Roi, the King’s Garden on the far side of the Seine? Why hadn’t Maman told her he was coming?

“So here is the delightful prodigy Madame de Bercy has been hiding from the world,” Comte de Buffon said, coming over to Lili. He bowed and kissed her hand. “I feel I must immediately write to Monsieur Voltaire at Ferney to tell him he had better return to Paris or he may find himself dethroned!”

He peered into Lili’s face. “I heard your mother’s wit in what you wrote, and I am charmed to see a little of her in your face.”

“My mother?” Lili looked over at Maman, who was glowing with pleasure.

“Yes,” Comte de Buffon said. “I knew her quite well, and I am sure she would be delighted to see grown men squirming at the truth of your words.” He bowed again. “Would you do me the honor of accepting an invitation to dinner someday soon? I’m sure my nephew would be delighted to escort you around the gardens first, and show you my laboratory.”

Jean-Étienne Leclerc had eased through the other guests and was standing by the count. “I’m the nephew,” he said. “I hope you’re not disappointed.”

Lili had never had a good opportunity to look at the young man she had known only by his last name. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, with light brown hair showing underneath his powdered wig. His eyes were blue and his skin almost as fair as Delphine’s. He was as slender and tall as his uncle was portly, but both of them had eyes that penetrated hers, not in an intimidating way, but curiously, as if they were trying to see whether she might be coaxed into a smile. Almost immediately she was.