Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution

Chapter 20

MAY

29, 1789

This hardworking German [Philippe Curtius] produces colored wax heads of such quality that one could imagine that they are alive.

—MAYEUR DE SAINT-PAUL, EXCERPT FROM TOURIST BROCHURE

“MEET THE DEPUTIES OF THE ESTATES-GENERAL!” YACHIN cries. “Then come see the greatest thieves in France!”

“Will the queen be there?” I hear someone ask, and the people in line begin to laugh.

Commoners, noblemen, tourists from England—they are all crushed together: the rich want to walk through Jefferson’s study, while the poor wish to see Robespierre in the Estates-General. This is success even greater than when the royal family came to visit, and the customers can’t shove their twelve sous at us fast enough. The Journal can write of Robespierre, but we show him the flesh. The Courrier can paint a picture of the Salle des États with words, but we have brought it to life. And only the Salon de Cire can show Danton as he truly is in life—towering, immense, with a chest like a barrel and hands like heavy plates.

“We shall have to limit the time they’re inside,” Curtius says. “Otherwise, this line could go for days.” We sit at the caissier’s desk from ten in the morning till ten at night. When we close the doors, there are men and women returning from the theaters who want to know when we’ll be open tomorrow.

“Eight in the morning,” I reply.

“And how much for entry?”

“Fifteen sous.” My mother stares at me.

As they walk away, I hear one of them saying, “I’d rather see models than read the Journal. The papers are so tedious.”

“Fifteen sous?” my mother asks when they’re gone.

Forget fifteen sous. “We could charge twenty!”

My mother looks uncertain, but when eight o’clock arrives and the line stretches down the Boulevard du Temple, there is no doubt that this is a winning approach. Curtius and I decide to include posters in every room explaining the tableaux. Each day, as more news comes from Versailles, the posters will change. All of Saturday is a triumph. But as the last patrons are pushing through the door, a rider comes with the message that my brothers will be arriving tomorrow.

Curtius shakes his head. “It would be better if they didn’t. Think of it, Anna,” he says in German. “What will Edmund feel?”

She looks at the room that’s been transformed into the Salle des États, then at the figures in Jefferson’s Study. “He will understand that this is business,” she says firmly. “He will see how we have made a great success.”

“He doesn’t care about success, Maman. Tell them we’ll go to Versailles instead.”

But she won’t hear of it, and when the carriage arrives on Sunday evening, I pause on the doorstep to tell my uncle, “We’ve taken in three thousand sous since Friday.” That’s three times what we would normally make. “He will be enraged.”

Curtius gives me a look. “Then try not to provoke him.”

This time I won’t need to.

MY BROTHERS LEAP from the carriage, Wolfgang first, and when he wraps me in his arms, I smell the scents of narcissus and sandalwood in his hair. He embraces my mother, and she smells the change, too. I have told her about Abrielle. But she will wait for him to say something first.

“Welcome home.” She kisses both of his cheeks, then does the same for Johann and Edmund. “Come inside. We have coffee waiting.”

“And something to eat?” Johann says hopefully.

“This is Maman,” I reply. “The table is full.” We set it this afternoon, leaving Yachin to help Curtius while my mother roasted meats and I prepared the desserts. There will be pastries and almond milk, plus Johann’s favorite cheeses, Gloucester and Gruyère.

“I see the streetlights are still out,” Edmund remarks. “The Estates-General hasn’t changed the world.”

We step into the Salon, and everyone falls silent. My mother closes the door behind us, and Wolfgang gives a low whistle. The tableau of Robespierre, Danton, and Mirabeau is the first room you see. “It looks just like the Salle des États,” Wolfgang says.

“Very impressive,” Johann adds. “Did Marie do this?”

Edmund’s eyes are accusing. “You are no better than the libellistes. We spoke of this!”

“And while I heard your concerns, I also heard the voice of the people—”

Edmund turns on our mother. “Aren’t you supposed to guide this family? Where are your principles?”

My mother inhales sharply.

“Perhaps you don’t have any. After all, you live with a man you’ve never married. No better than a common cocotte really.”

Curtius reaches out and grabs Edmund’s throat. He is going to kill him. I can see it in his eyes.

“Don’t!” Johann cries. He and Wolfgang pull them apart, and Johann shouts into his brother’s face, “What’s the matter with you?”

I rush to comfort my mother, who is weeping into her apron. “He didn’t mean it,” I say. “He isn’t rational.”

“I’m perfectly rational!” Edmund shouts. His face is red, and his neck is swelling. “But I’ll never stay in a house of harlots and traitors.” He is gone before Curtius can go after him.

We look to my mother, and for a moment there is only the sound of her weeping. Upstairs, the roasted meat and coffee are getting cold.

Wolfgang wraps his arm around her shoulders. “He says a lot of things,” Johann soothes her. “You don’t know him, Maman. We have to live with this. He has a temper. Everything offends him. Nothing is ever good enough.”

We lead her upstairs, and my brothers and I try to be cheerful. We talk about the king, and what the queen is wearing. Then Wolfgang tells us all about Abrielle, though he swears my mother and Curtius to silence.

“I’m in love,” he reveals, “and I wish to marry her.”

“A baron’s daughter?” Curtius is uncertain. “Wolfgang—”

“I would like to meet Abrielle,” my mother says.

Dinner is spent thinking of the ways in which Abrielle can be convinced to elope.

“You could pretend to ravage her,” Johann suggests, “like Mirabeau.”

“Mirabeau was a comte.”

“And now is not the time for buying titles,” Curtius says.

“Even if I had money, I wouldn’t spend it on a title. I’m not—” He almost says “Edmund,” then glances at my mother. “Robespierre. I don’t wish to pretend to be something I’m not.”

“The baron has noticed Wolfgang’s service,” Johann says. “He might give his blessing.”

But who can believe that this is likely? She will have to either run away or be caught in a position of dishonor. In both circumstances, Wolfgang might be arrested.

“The baron’s blessing then,” my mother says. “We must all pray for that.”

AFTER I WATCH the carriage with Wolfgang and Johann drive away, I’m thankful to see Henri sitting on the steps with his barometer and a lamp. He comes out once a day to record the weather. It helps him predict when to launch the balloons. His face is set in concentration, and though I feel as if I’m interrupting a tableau of The Handsome Scientist, I step into the lamplight illuminating his work. “Did you see Edmund leave?” I ask quietly.

He looks up at me, then nods. “He asked if I helped to build the new room.” He moves the lamp to make room for me, and I take a seat beside him. “He sounded enraged.”

“Curtius and I tried to warn my mother,” I say. “She wouldn’t believe us. And the things he said to her …” My eyes fill with tears for Maman, because she loves him so much. “He threatened never to return.”

“Do you think he’ll keep that promise?”

“I don’t know.” There is very little I know about Edmund. We are seven years apart, but we might as well be twenty. “Tomorrow, my mother will be writing to him, begging for forgiveness,” I predict.

“But she has two other sons. Why does she need him?”

“Because it’s always that way.”

He is quiet for a moment, thinking, perhaps, of whether he should go on. Then he says, “Jacques is not my only brother. I have a younger brother named Guillaume.”

I didn’t know. “Is he dead?”

“It’s possible. He and my father used to fight about his gambling debts. My mother would come weeping to my father, begging him to pay them off and swearing that if he didn’t, the debtors would kill Guillaume. Then one night, my father refused. He told Guillaume that if the debtors killed him, they would be doing us all a favor.”

I cover my mouth. “He didn’t mean that.”

“No. But then my brother didn’t come back. Not for my father’s funeral, and not when my mother was dying. Bitterness does strange things to people.”

“Yes.” Edmund has carried the anger of not being born to a man of great lineage like a shield on his back, turning a hard shell to the world whenever it threatens him. “But your father must have been beside himself with regret.”

“I don’t know. Perhaps he felt relief. Every night it was Guillaume. What has Guillaume done? Whom does Guillaume owe? What brothel are we going to have to drag him from in the morning? And there were always the fights to set him free. But he was my mother’s youngest child. Her petit. He could do no wrong in her world.”

I study Henri by the light of his lamp. His full lips are turned down, and his eyes are lidded. There is no bitterness in his voice. Just sadness.

“Edmund can be very cruel,” I say. “He called my mother a cocotte.”

“Is that what’s angering Edmund? That your mother and Curtius don’t marry?”

“And a thousand other things. That we aren’t descended from Bourbon kings. That he isn’t entirely Swiss by birth. That he doesn’t have a father …”

“Some men are born searching. Perhaps Edmund would be that way even if he had a father.” He hesitates before asking, “So why doesn’t your mother marry Curtius?”

I take a deep breath. “This can never go beyond us,” I warn.

“Of course not.”

“She doesn’t know if my father is dead. He was wounded in the Seven Years’ War. When he came home, he was a different man. Before he left, he liked to sing and play billiards. And he had friends all over the village. But after the war, all he wanted to do was drink. And he was a violent drunk. Edmund was seven. He must remember how it was. No money. No food. She gathered us up one night while he was drinking, and we ran away. She had been saving money. Washing neighbors’ clothes. When we came to Paris, Curtius’s exhibition at the Palais-Royal was the first business she approached. He agreed to give her work when he discovered she cooked sauerkraut.” I stare into the night. “A woman with four children and not a sou to her name … Anything might have happened. But they became partners. And now …” There’s no need to say what she is now, or how incredibly important they are to each other. “But she can never marry Curtius. She would have to prove my father’s death. And what if he’s alive?”

“Does Edmund know?”

I shake my head. “And he must never find out. He would go searching for him.” The bell of Saint-Merri begins to chime. It is nine o’clock. I should go, but there is something in Henri’s face that compels me to stay. If I sculpted him, it would be like this. With the golden light of the lamp falling across his hair, shadowing his chiseled features.

“So do you think you will ever marry?” he asks.

I search his eyes, and my palms begin to sweat. Does he plan on proposing? I try to imagine life as Henri’s wife and find it impossible. But then I think of how he told Curtius that he was fortunate to have me and I wonder. “I … I don’t know.” Now I sound like Camille. “Until the Salon is successful—”

“What is success?”

“A place in the Académie Royale,” I say quickly. “And two hundred patrons a day.”

“I should think you had that this weekend.”

“Yes, but to sustain that … think of the work. How would I do that with children?”

“There are men who will wait to have children,” he says. “And there are ways—”

I flush. “But it’s not a science, is it? An accident might happen.”

We watch each other in the candlelight, and the noise in the street seems to disappear. There are no carriages or horses or drunken brawls. The woman on the corner selling roses to the theatergoers melts into the background. There are only Henri and me on the steps. He smells of amber. It’s a scent I gifted him last year from Fargeon’s, the best perfumery in Paris. He reaches out to take my hand, and I let him. But I must remember my ambition.

“I can wait. I’m in love with you, Marie. You don’t have to say it yet,” he tells me. “I know you like to think things through. Make plans.” He kisses my neck, and I close my eyes. It is greater bliss than anything I have known. “But plan on this,” he whispers. “I want to marry you.”