Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution

Chapter 47

AUGUST

28, 1792

Five or six hundred heads cut off [would assure] your repose, freedom, and happiness.

—JEAN-PAUL MARAT

IN LOSING THREE BROTHERS, I HAVE GAINED A SISTER. ALTHOUGH Isabel has greater cause than any of us to abandon herself to despair, she is the one who washes the dishes and cooks the food when my mother is too ill with sorrow to get up. It is Isabel who marches into my mother’s room and demands that she leave her bed for good—that this is what Johann would want her to do now that several weeks have passed. And it is Isabel who insists that the time has come to reopen the Salon.

She sits across from me in the workshop, sorting glass eyes by color while I finish the model of Rochambeau. From the moment she arrived, she has kept herself busy. Cooking, cleaning, sorting, arranging, playing with Paschal. I suspect this comes from not wanting time to think. “It is very kind of you to help my mother the way you do,” I tell her.

She looks up at me, and every emotion registers on her face. I imagine the tableau I would create of her. The Butcher’s Daughter, I’d call it. And people would recognize simply from the width of her mouth and the set of her eyes that she is strong, earnest, a hard worker. “It is the least I can do,” she says. “Your mother and Curtius have been kind to take us in.”

I put down my paintbrush. “Of course. You are family.”

“Not all families are as generous,” she remarks. “So when do you reopen the Salon?”

“When men like Marat and Danton are no longer in power. My brother warned me,” I tell her. “Edmund said that we would be planting the seeds of anarchy.”

“Marie, you cannot blame yourself.”

“We were part of it!”

“Then every citizen who ever put on a tricolor cockade was part of it. This is your business. My father butchered lambs for a living. Some were our pets. But that was his work.”

I think of the royal family, imprisoned now in the medieval fortress known as the Temple, and wonder if Madame Élisabeth has remained so resilient. Everyone who was found with them in the Tuileries that night was sent to La Force prison, including the beautiful Princesse de Lamballe. How do you live knowing you have caused other people’s misery?

“You must reopen the Salon,” Isabel says. “Johann always believed in this. He believed in you. My little sister was all he would talk about.” I search her face for the lie. “It’s true. When he wasn’t talking about Paschal or the Swiss, he was talking about you. Whatever happened in that courtyard, Marie, he died a happy man.”

She didn’t see the corpses. She doesn’t understand …

“I know that they were slaughtered,” she whispers. “But I’ve seen animals die, and death is quick. What is important is the happiness that came before it.”

THAT EVENING, I speak with my mother and Curtius in the kitchen. Though it’s Tuesday night, there will be no salon. I doubt there will ever be gatherings in our house again. I join them at the small table where my mother would normally be preparing food for our guests. Instead, she and Curtius are entertaining Paschal.

“Marie!” my nephew exclaims. He is a lovely child, with dark curls and expressive eyes.

“What do you have here, Paschal? Hot chocolate?”

“Do you want some?” he asks.

“No, thank you,” I say. “But perhaps you can go and find your mother. Tell her we will be having coffee soon.” Paschal slips out the door. I turn to my mother. “Isabel believes we should reopen the Salon.”

“I don’t have the time for that right now. Paschal—”

“Can sit with you at the caissier’s desk. Maman, Johann and Edmund are dead. But two of your children are still alive, and you have two grandchildren, one of whom is here. I understand that you are still grieving. But we will always be grieving. So what do we do? Let the rest of our lives turn to dust because evil exists and has stolen something from us?” Her lower lip trembles, but I continue. “What do you wish to teach Paschal?” I ask her. “Strength or weakness? I know what you taught me, and it was always strength.”

“Anna,” Curtius begins, “Marie is right.”

There are tears in her eyes, but there is also resolve.

Though it is not a joyful event, we reopen the Salon with new figures of the generals Luckner and Rochambeau, and Paris has not forgotten us. The lines are as long as they have always been, filled with jostling children and sans-culottes. My mother and Isabel sit at the caissier’s desk with an excited Paschal between them. I show Isabel the books and how to write a ticket. “Is it always like this?” she asks me. She is impressed. “No wonder …”

No wonder Johann was so proud.

I am expecting the model of Rochambeau to be the greatest draw. I hear women in line wondering aloud what he’ll look like, and men guessing that he will be tall, as all generals ought to be. But it’s the model of Lafayette that causes the greatest stir. It begins with one man remarking loudly that a traitor like Lafayette should not be displayed. Then a group of sans-culottes begin shouting to the other patrons to come and see.

“It’s true. A model of Lafayette!” I hear someone cry.

“Why would they display an enemy of the patrie?”

“Because they speak German, just like the queen!”

I rise from the desk and hurry into the workshop, where Curtius is modeling soldiers. “They are about to riot in the Salon,” I cry, “over the model of Lafayette!”

He follows me out the door, and the crowd around Lafayette’s figure has grown even larger. Women are tearing at his clothes, and a man has taken out his dagger to scratch at the waxen face. My mother and Isabel are at the door, trying to keep people from pushing inside. In a moment, it will be a stampede.

“I am responsible for this model!” Curtius shouts, but no one can hear him. He stands on the desk in Jefferson’s Study, where the figure of Lafayette is conferring with the ambassador. “I am responsible for this model!” he shouts again, and this time the angry patrons stop to listen. “And as its creator,” he lies …

I hold my breath. As its creator what?

“I sentence Lafayette to the guillotine!”

It is madness. Shouting, applauding, whooping madness. The men pick up the figure of Lafayette and follow Curtius to the window, where he drags his wooden replica of the guillotine onto the street. Outside, the crowds start singing “La Marseillaise,” and the women begin waving their cockades in the air.

Henri steps from the door of his exhibition and comes to stand at my side. “More publicity?” he asks.

“No,” I whisper, sick with dread. “It was this or they would have killed us.”

He studies my face to see if I am jesting. Then I take his hand and close my eyes.