Revolution (23 page)

41

12 May 1795

Only the hopeless love God.

Have you ever seen a beautiful girl spend a second more at Mass than she must? Will a rich man kneel if there’s no one to see him?

The ugly, the fat, the poor, and malodorous. Lepers dropping bits of themselves. The cheese-breathed and pock-faced. St-st-stutterers. Droolers and twitchers. Lunatics. The scrofulous. No one loves them, not even their mothers, yet they will tell you—with rapture in their voices—they will say, God loves me. Desperate for love, any love, even His meager offerings.

You will ask why I did it. You will judge me. But only a saint would have done otherwise, and I am no saint.

I was tired of His endless silence. I wanted noise. I wanted the hurricane swell of applause. Whistles and shouts and ringing bravos. The pattering of roses flung onto the stage.

I did not want His cold love. I wanted human love—clasping, selfish, and hot. I wanted to smell the rank sweat of the men in the pit as they bellowed and stamped and the rich perfume of the high-priced whores in their boxes. I wanted fishwives to bare their breasts and merchants to throw their purses. I wanted love—reeking, drunken, hungry love.

What player ever wanted less?

This is how it was for me before. Before the devil looked my way. Before Orléans made me his own …

I stood alone onstage at the shabby Theater Beaujolais, head down, picking at a callus on my palm. I’d escaped my uncle and his damned puppets to come here. I’d just given Audinot, the owner, lines from Juliet. It was good, my audition. So good that the prompter stopped eating. The stagehands stopped hammering. And up in the rigging, the lantern boy wept. But it didn’t matter. It never mattered.

She is not beautiful, Audinot said. And she has no bosom.

He didn’t even try to keep his voice down. I hated him for it.

She recites well and her expression is most sensitive, said the lackey at his elbow.

The parterre does not pay to see sensitive girls. Only pretty ones, Audinot replied. He smiled at me, oily as a mackerel. Thank you, miss. Next!

And this is how it would be after. In a year, perhaps two. When the revolution was over, the madness ended, the king back at Versailles. This is what Orléans promised me if I would do his bidding.…

A summons would come from the National, addressed to Alexandre Paradis, for Alexandrine was no more. None mourned her, least of all me, for Alexandre made a far prettier boy than Alexandrine had a girl. I would be given small parts at first—servants and soldiers, fools and gravediggers. Then Chérubin in Figaro, and with it a good review. Orléans himself would see to it. Next I would do Shakespeare’s Tybalt. Claudio and Ferdinand. Then Damis in
Tartuffe
. Rodrigo in
Le Cid
. Until one night, I would stand in the glare of the footlights, applause breaking over me like thunder for my Romeo. There is stamping, clapping, shouting—and none of it paid for. A man is crushed in the pit. Women faint in the stalls. The next day, a critic writes that my naturalness rivals that of the great Talma himself. Another that my delivery is unmatched in the history of the theater. A third compares me to a young god.

Though it is December, there are flowers in my dressing room. There are cakes and wine. A ring from Boehmer’s. Women and men come to stare at me as I wash off my paint. They press coins into my hand and kiss me. There are proposals of marriage. And of other things, too, but I’ve paid surly Benôit to protect me. He sits in a chair, one leg thrown over the arm. We pose as a pair of bloods and pay the ushers to put about stories of our wenching and fighting. And I, who have been hungry and cold, eat capon and sleep upon a feather bed.

I tried to be goodly. I tried to be godly. But I got so tired of being ignored.

Cry your grief to God. Howl to the heavens. Tear your shirt. Your hair. Your flesh. Gouge out your eyes. Carve out your heart. And what will you get from Him? Only silence. Indifference.

But merely stand looking at the playbills, sighing because your name is not on them, and the devil himself appears at your elbow full of sympathy and suggestions.

And that’s why I did it. Why I served him. Why I stayed.

Because God loves us, but the devil takes an interest.

13 May 1795

The queen did not know me. I barely knew her. Only one year had passed since last I saw her, yet she had aged twenty. Her blond hair was turning white. There was a gauntness in her face and deep lines about her eyes.

I was brought to her apartments by the Tuileries’ governor. He informed her that a new page to the dauphin had been appointed. She gave the man a disdainful glance and asked him about my family. He informed her that I was from good Republican stock, knew the Rights of Man and my duties, and turned on his heel.

Majesty, it is I, Alex, I whispered, after he’d slammed the door behind him.

She looked at me again. Her eyes widened. She smiled. I told her that I tried to get in to see Louis-Charles many, many times, but was always turned away. I told her I never gave up and though it had taken me a very long time, I’d finally found a way. I told her all these things, just as I’d been instructed.

She called for Louis-Charles. He knew me right away. He ran to me, kissed me, and hung about my neck. I hugged him tightly, lifted him off the ground, and spun him around. The queen laughed to see us. His happiness was her own. From then on, we spent every day together. I did my duties—helping Louis-Charles rise and dress, attending him at meals, keeping his chambers tidy. But mostly, I sang songs for him, told him stories, played games, as I had at Versailles. He was lonely and so glad of my companionship.

I love you, Alex, he told me as we played tin soldiers. You must never leave me again.

I love you, too, Louis-Charles, I said. I won’t ever leave you again. I promise.

I kept that promise. For love him I did. For nearly two years I spent almost every waking hour with him. Until he was taken from me. But I never left him. And I never will.

Orléans bought me the position. He bribed the governor of the Tuileries. Told him I was his bastard son and that he wished to help me make my way in the world. He assured the man that I was a good Republican and a Jacobin. Like he himself.

He wanted me to be his eyes and ears in the palace. To go where he—a revolutionary now, who had distanced himself from the king—could not and tell him all I discovered. What did the king do that day? Whom did he receive? To whom did the queen write? Who tutored the dauphin? Did any send him gifts? Rumors swirled about Paris—whispers of counterrevolution, of foreign intrigues, of plots to liberate the king.

I was to be Orléans’ spy.

Why me? I asked him the night he took me to his rooms. Why do you not get a boy to do boy’s work?

I have, he said, three times over. The first—a stable boy—got a maid with child. The second—a footman—joined the army because he liked the uniform better. The third—a cook—was killed in a brawl. I need a boy who thinks with his big head, not his little one. Since they do not exist, I have fashioned my own.

He had watched me all along. At Versailles, cavorting for Louis-Charles in my cap and britches. At the Palais, giving out Hamlet and Romeo. I, I myself, had given him the idea.

Do this for me, he said. Do it well, and when I no longer have need of you, I will put you onstage. At the National. The Opéra.

I was not quite the fool he thought I was.

I will never be on a Paris stage, I said, and well you know it. I am too plain to play Juliet or Iphigénie. And too good to play chambermaids.

Then play Romeo. Benedick. Philinte. You can do it. Have you not done it a hundred times? Nightly at the Palais-Royal?

This was a novel idea. I thought on it, then said, And if I will not do this thing?

Then you will go to prison. Four guards saw you take my purse. Have you forgotten my promise of the Ste-Pélagie?

Promise is it? I said, snorting. I call it threat.

Orléans smiled. I have no need of threats, he said.

Something bloomed inside me then—a black and fearsome dread. I did not want to be a spy, a telltale. I was worried my reports might somehow harm Louis-Charles and his family. But there was something else inside me, too, something far less noble, and oh, how his words fanned its fading embers.

Orléans saw it in my face, he must have—some pale flicker of conscience warring with my ever-burning ambition—and hurried to damp it.

Hear me, sparrow, he said. I mean the king no harm. He is my cousin, my blood. I wish only to help him. Your reports will aid me in this. If you tell me the Spanish ambassador has sent a tapestry to the queen or toys to the dauphin, I know there may be hope of aid for the king from Spain. Do you not see what occurs all around you? Even you cannot be so blind. The nobles have been toppled. The clergy, too. The revolutionaries will not stop there. It is the king’s turn next. Yes, the king.

I wanted so much to believe him. To believe he meant to do good. To believe I did.

But the king has his people’s love again, I said, testing him. He went to the Assembly last winter. He made an oath there to defend liberty. He promised to support the constitution. He went to the Celebration of Unity in July and swore to uphold the decrees of the Assembly. All of Paris was there and all saw him do it.

Not all of Paris heard him, Orléans said. I did. I heard the words stick in his throat. It is not enough, the oaths he made. For Roland, yes. For Desmoulins and Danton. But not for Robespierre. He is the most dangerous sort of man, Robespierre—one who will do good at any cost. The king is in great danger, and his family with him. That is why you must do this. To help me help him. To help all of them. There may yet be time to avert disaster.

I was still suspicious. You do not really care what happens to the king, I said. You wish to trade on the love I bear Louis-Charles. To use that love for your own ends. Whatever they may be.

How he laughed then. Ah, sparrow, tell yourself that if you must, he said. It is an easier thing than the truth.

And pray, sir, what is that?

That I trade upon one thing, and one thing only—the love you bear yourself.

14 May 1795

I went back to my family’s room to tell them I was leaving, that I’d found employment with the Duc d’ Orléans. Theatrical work, I said. It was not completely a lie.