Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution

Chapter 54

FEBRUARY

17, 1793

The tocsin you hear today is not an alarm but an alert: it sounds the charge against our enemies.

—GEORGES DANTON, REVOLUTIONARY LEADER

HE HAS HEARD THAT I AM THE ANGEL OF DEATH, RESURRECTING those who have gone before us, so he has come to me. He looks exactly as I have sculpted him for our National Convention tableau, with a firm jaw and a chest so wide that Curtius had to use extra horsehair for his model. I should send him away. This is the man who, alongside Marat, called for the massacre of the Swiss Guards. Now is the time to exact my revenge.

“I have ridden nonstop for three days,” he says. His clothes are filthy and worn. “Please. She is in the Madeleine Cemetery. They say you are there every night.”

“For the dead,” I reply harshly. “Not for the buried.”

“I have unburied her! Please,” Danton begs. “She is in her coffin. I have opened the lid and she is perfectly preserved. She died while I was at the front.” He cries into his hands, and although I should detest him, I am sorry for his loss. I think of my mother, torn apart by the deaths of Johann and Edmund. She would want me to turn Danton away. No, she would order it. But then I think of what Madame Élisabeth would do. “I will get my bag and shawl,” I say.

I go upstairs, and Isabel asks if she should come with me. “Not this time.”

“You are going alone?”

“With a man from the Convention.”

She is wise enough not to ask who he is. My mother is in the next room.

I follow Danton through the streets and down the familiar path to the Madeleine Cemetery. The air is dank and smells of coming rain. I should have brought more than a shawl. A heavy white mist has settled over the trees, and only the burnished glow of Danton’s lantern lights the way. We pass through the cemetery’s iron gates, and the guard calls for us to stop. When he sees who I am, he tips his hat to me. I have become as familiar as the gravediggers in this place.

“We’re here for Gabrielle Danton,” I say.

The old man nods. “You know the way?”

“Yes,” Danton replies.

I follow while Danton navigates a path between the markers. Although others are tossed into paupers’ pits, Gabrielle has been granted her own place in the earth. I wonder if her death was punishment from God for the sins Danton committed against innocent men. Do blameless women die for their husbands’ deeds? Is that how God works? Or is He merciful and forgiving, like our sans-culotte Jesus?

Danton stops before a gravestone bearing the name of Gabrielle Danton. A pair of shovels rest against a fresh mound of dirt, and next to the frightening hole in the earth is a wooden coffin. “Gabrielle,” he whispers.

This is my moment for revenge. As he pries back the lid, I consider telling him that she is too far gone for a mask. But then I close my eyes briefly and think of his pain. He is weeping openly over her corpse. I know I should be afraid. After all, these are the scenes that nightmares are made of. But I have seen such death these past three months that nothing frightens me anymore.

I kneel over her coffin and look into the face of a beautiful woman the same age as I am. Her black hair covers her shoulders, and she has been dressed in a handsome taffeta gown. There is no sign of injury to her face and no way of telling that she is dead and not sleeping. “How long has she been gone?” I whisper.

He sobs. “Seven days.”

I have never seen a body preserved like this. What would he have done if she had deteriorated completely?

“Can … can you model her?” he asks.

I look down at his wife. How strange to think that the birds above us will wake up tomorrow to blue skies and life but she will never open her eyes again. Even the fichu around her neck will outlast her. “Yes,” I say quietly. “I can.”

He holds the lantern while I work, and when I am finished, he asks how long it will be before he will have her back. It is not healthy, what he is doing. But I ask him, “A bust or an entire figure?”

“Her entire figure. With the same dark hair,” he adds desperately.

I think of the models still left to do, including a replacement for General Dumouriez, whose defeat last month has resulted in his disgrace. “Two weeks.” I stand, and he closes his eyes. “Danton,” I say gently, “she has left this world.”

“She has not left my world!” His voice echoes through the cemetery, and I take a step back. “I am sorry,” he says at once. “I don’t know … I can’t control …”

“I have known loss,” I tell him. “I understand.”

He searches my face. He must know of the event I am referring to, and his voice is full of emotion when he replies, “I am sorry.”

But we are all sorry when loss comes for us. The test of our character comes not in how many tears we shed but in how we act after those tears have dried.