Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution

Chapter 37

1790

WE WATCH THE NEW YEAR’S FIREWORKS FROM OUR BALCONY, and with every explosion, Paschal squeals with delight.

“Look at the colors!” Henri shouts.

But I can’t. When Curtius said everyone was coming tonight, I assumed he meant everyone who had been with us on Noël. He didn’t say that Marat, on the run from the king’s authority, would be coming here to hide. So while Henri is explaining the science of fireworks to me, my eyes wander to the shadowy figure in the corner. His head is wrapped with bandages soaked in vinegar, and the stench is repulsive. His face is covered with open sores. Curtius whispered to me that he caught these from hiding in the city sewers.

This is my first clue that the year 1790 will be filled with unpalatable news.

On the thirteenth of February, the National Assembly passes a law forbidding monastic vows and dissolving every ecclesiastical order. Nuns are dragged into the streets to be whipped, and monks are given six months to marry or be killed. The Pope, without his own army, without any real power at all, sits in the Vatican while convents all across France are closed. Priests who are allowed to remain with the Church are instructed on the new order of things: before the Pope, before salvation, before even God Himself, there is the nation.

In the Church of Saint-Merri, the priests must wear the tricolor cockade over their holy vestments, and the altar has been defaced to read, “Glory be to God and the Nation.” At every Mass, before every prayer, the priests must ask God’s blessing over the Revolution. And in Marat’s newspaper L’Ami du Peuple, he repeats Diderot’s vicious philosophy: “Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”

Seven days later, news comes from Austria that Joseph II, the queen’s eldest brother and the Holy Roman Emperor, has died. He has been her greatest hope, and now Leopold II, a brother she’s never really known, has inherited the crown. Madame Élisabeth tells me this has crushed the queen. If Leopold refuses to offer his help, where will the king turn?

It is blow after blow for the royal family. In the spring, when Marie-Thérèse is to celebrate her First Communion, there are no gifts or celebratory feasts. The ceremony is held at Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois. The king does not dare to attend, and the queen is forced to watch from behind a curtain. Madame Élisabeth confides that Marie-Thérèse asked her father why her friends could celebrate their First Communions, while she could not. She was told that any sort of fête would be too extravagant. In this, I feel sorry for Madame Royale. Every child across France receives gifts for this passage. When I ask if the dauphin was in attendance, Madame Élisabeth’s face turns pale. “He had a fever,” she says quietly. “The doctors say he is coughing up blood.”

At some point, I think, God must look down and take pity on the royal family. But the terrible news doesn’t stop. In April, the National Assembly votes to transfer all four hundred million livres of church property to the state. Camille and Marat applaud this new law as saving the nation. Catholics, they write, have secret royalist tendencies, and schools run by the Church teach pupils to love God and, even worse, the king.

But no one is thinking about who will run the hospitals and poorhouses when the anniversary of the Bastille approaches. Instead, a celebration—larger than any celebration to come before—is planned for the fourteenth of July. The National Assembly is calling it the Fête de la Fédération. On the Champ-de-Mars, a tremendous stadium has been built for the occasion. Tens of thousands of people flood into Paris to take part in the festivities. The fête begins with deputies from foreign nations parading with their flags to remind us that we are one people, one race, one human nation. The Swedes, the Turks, the Mesopotamians—they are all here to celebrate this great oneness. Then Lafayette mounts a podium to swear an oath to the Constitution, which is still in the making, and the entire stadium falls silent.

“We swear forever to be faithful to the Nation, to the Law, and to the King, to uphold with all our might the Constitution as decided by the National Assembly and accepted by the King, and to protect according to the laws the safety of people and properties, transit of grains and food within the kingdom, the public contributions under whatever forms they might exist, and to stay united with all the French with the indestructible bonds of brotherhood.”

The king takes his place at the podium to swear his oath. Then the queen appears, and when everything is finished, there is cannon fire all around the Champ-de-Mars.

“Study these faces,” Curtius suggests. “These are men you may never see again.”

With two family members as captains in the National Guard, I am introduced to every foreign delegate. There is John Paul Jones, the Scottish fighter who has founded the American Navy. And Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet Common Sense inspired the Americans to rebel against England. It was over a year ago that Wolfgang gave me a copy. These men have traveled to Paris for this occasion, and both believe this is a great day for France.

“Not every action the Assembly makes will be for good,” Paine tells me. “But tyranny can never be allowed to flourish.”

Perhaps I should be happy. But I see the misery of Madame Élisabeth when I visit her, and I hear of the way the people treat the queen, and I have to think it cannot be this way in England. Not even King George III, who is said to be mad and ruled by his son, is slandered in the streets and spit on in his gardens.

In all of this, there are two events that bring us real joy. Near the end of July, Abrielle is delivered of a healthy son. He is christened Michael Louis Grosholtz, and although the baron does not come to see him, no child has ever brought his family greater happiness. His bassinet may not be lined with silk, but he will never be cold and he will never go hungry.

Then, in December, Lucile brings us the news she has been waiting years for. She and Camille are finally to marry. In this new world of assemblies and liberty, Camille has become someone of great importance. When the king is forced to sign the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, commanding all priests to swear an oath of loyalty to the nation or be labeled a dissident, it’s Camille’s paper the people turn to for information. And when the Assembly abolishes all hereditary titles of nobility, it’s Camille’s paper that inspires the celebration in the streets. He has become a man of rousing metaphors, and Lucile’s father has turned down proposals from men with incomes of twenty-five thousand assignats a year to give her to Camille.

The wedding is held in the fashionable Church of Saint-Sulpice, with its view of the Left Bank and its Italian colonnades. I am wearing the very best gown I own, and the pearls around my neck are a gift from Curtius.

I look around the church and see many of the faces from our new Fête de la Fédération tableau. There is Lafayette, sitting with his pretty wife, Adrienne. And there is Mirabeau. He looks terribly frail for such a large man. He is sitting at the front of the church with a bloodied handkerchief around his neck. When I ask Curtius what this is for, he tells me, “The leeches. He uses them for his eyes.” When I recoil, he adds, “Apparently, the Salle du Manège has poor ventilation, and no one can see. The room is filled with smoke, but it’s the only place they can find that is large enough to house the Assembly.”

I look back at Mirabeau, who is clearly suffering. It can’t just be his eyes. His cheeks are hollow, and my guess is that his syphilis is very bad. He is sitting next to the Duc d’Orléans, who returned to France several months ago with a new name, Philippe Égalité. He has proclaimed himself a man of the people and is now a member of the Jacobin Club. Nearly everyone here, including my uncle, has also become a member. Every law, every act, every possible decree, is debated endlessly before the Club, with the hope that the members who hold positions of power will return to the National Assembly with a single agenda. They are all men of dreams, but none of them speak as long or as passionately as Robespierre.

If I lean to the side, I can see him near the altar in a pale blue coat and silver cravat. He is acting as witness for Camille. I wonder if, in their schoolboy days together, they ever imagined standing in Saint-Sulpice with all the important players of the nation behind them. When the ceremony is finished, Robespierre steps back while Camille shouts triumphantly, “Lucile Desmoulins!”

The entire church erupts into applause. Then we are on our feet and moving to follow the happy couple out the door.

“Perhaps that will be us someday,” Henri remarks, and I can hear the edge in his voice.

“The Austrians are at our gates,” I tell him. “You know Curtius can’t leave his position now. There could be war at any moment. Today, tomorrow—”

“Next month, next year …”

I can see the mistrust in his face. He’s beginning to believe that I don’t love him, that I’ll postpone our marriage forever. “I hope I’ve never given you any cause to doubt how much I love you. Or that I want to marry you.”

“Then let’s do it now. Today.”

“Henri—”

“How long will this continue? Last year, Curtius promised to resign his post. So when will it be? Another year? Two? I’m a patient man, Marie, but everyone has a breaking point. You must make a choice. Do you want to be Rose Bertin or Vigée-Lebrun?”

My eyes fill with tears. Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun was the queen’s artist. She married a fellow painter named Jean-Baptiste, and the pair of them have traveled across Europe together, arranging commissions and painting portraits. They have a daughter, little Jeanne Julie Louise. Somehow, Vigée-Lebrun has balanced motherhood with art. But how am I to do that? I can’t. Not yet.

Henri wipes away my tears with the back of his glove. Then he puts his arm through mine. “Think on it,” is all he says.