Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution

Chapter 60

MARCH

–MAY

1794

MY MOTHER IS HYSTERICAL. SHE FINDS ME IN THE WORKSHOP, transforming the figure of the Duc d’Orléans into a different member of the National Convention. “Marie!” she shouts, and when she appears, she’s not wearing her fichu or her cap. “Marie, they have arrested Danton and Camille!”

I stand from my bench. “How do you know?”

“I just came from the bakery.” She is breathing heavily. “They were speaking about it in the lines. They have imprisoned them in the Palais du Luxembourg.”

I untie and hang up my apron, then put on my fichu. “I am going to see Lucile,” I tell her. “I’ll be back before noon.”

The streets are nearly empty. Who wants to venture out when it is obvious now that no one is safe? Not even Robespierre’s oldest school friend, Camille. I cannot fathom how Robespierre could give the orders for his arrest; he stood as a witness for him at his wedding. My God, he is Horace’s godfather! I reach Camille’s apartment on the Place Odéon and bang on the door. When there is no response, I let myself in. Somewhere in the house, a woman is weeping. I follow the sound until I reach the salon.

Lucile Desmoulins is alone. For the thousands of followers her husband has had, in this moment of tribulation they have all abandoned her. She looks up to see who has come. “They have taken him, Marie! Rob-Robespierre has signed the order!” She is beside herself, hardly able to breathe.

“Shh,” I say, stroking her hair, the way Henri used to calm me. “Lucile, it is only an arrest. There will have to be a trial.” I keep stroking her hair, willing her to be calm.

“You know these trials!” she cries. “There is something wrong with him,” she says. “His own friend. His only friend!”

It’s true. It was Camille he trusted, Camille he turned to, and now, like Judas, Robespierre has betrayed him.

“He was jealous. He saw this grand apartment, and he was consumed. He thinks Camille has betrayed his principles, that he’s no longer a man of the people because he owns a stable. But I provided him with his horses. He wants equality for all even if that means we are all living in the dust. And he will get it, Marie. He will achieve equality if that means cutting off every perfumed head.”

Including his own?

“He lives off charity. He prides himself on the fact that he owns nothing, wants for nothing.” There are footsteps in the hall, and then seven soldiers appear in red and blue uniforms. This cannot be real, and I think of the passionate young girl who came to our salons hot for the cause of liberty. One of the men steps forward. “Lucile Desmoulins?”

She begins to shake. “Yes,” she answers feebly.

“The Committee of Public Safety has ordered your arrest. Do you come willingly, or shall these men bind your hands?”

“I’m a mother!” she cries, looking from face to face. “Please, I’m a mother!”

“You should have thought of that before you betrayed your nation.”

“Marie, take Horace and bring him to my parents.” She looks around the room, and I don’t know how to help her or what to do. “Please let me say good-bye to my son,” she begs.

“Citizeness, our orders are for your arrest. You will come with us now or we will take you by force.”

“Horace!” she screams as they lead her away. “Horace, I love you!”

The heavy doors of the apartment slam shut, and there is silence. The curtains rustle in the wind like a woman’s skirts. I look around the chamber, at the tables and chairs and the handsome escritoire. Then I collapse onto the marble floor and weep. A child’s cries startle me from my misery. I climb the stairs and find Lucile’s little boy nestled in the blankets of a mahogany crib. He is crying, but I have no way of feeding him. He needs his mother. I take him from the only chamber he’s ever known and carry him through the streets to his grandmother, Madame Duplessis. When she sees the precious cargo I am carrying, she understands and her world is crushed.

WHEN THE DEATH sentences are read, I am not there to hear them. But my mother and Isabel find me in the workshop, and I can read from the lines on their faces what has happened in the Salle de Spectacle.

“Even Lucile?” I whisper.

“Yes. When they asked for Camille’s age,” Isabel says somberly, “he told them, ‘I am thirty-three, the same age as that sans-culotte Jesus, a critical age for every patriot.’ Women were weeping.”

“But no one stood up for him?”

“No. They were too afraid.”

I look to my mother, who always seemed young and beautiful to me. But in the last two years she has aged. I remember how the queen appeared just before her death. It was an old woman they sent to the guillotine, not the happy, laughing young royal who would run through the fields of wildflowers in her Hameau. “When will it be?”

“Tomorrow. Marie,” my mother begins, and I can hear in her voice that something has changed, “you must not go to the Madeleine Cemetery this time.”

I blink back my tears. “Maman, I have no choice—”

“There is always a choice! Those men today who voted for Lucile’s death, they made a decision to condemn an innocent woman.”

“Because of Robespierre.”

“They still had free will!”

Isabel is lost. She cannot understand our conversation in German.

“My mother believes I should not go to the Madeleine. She doesn’t understand that if I refuse, I am signing our own death warrants.”

“I understand,” my mother says in French.

My cheeks are wet. I remember Charlotte Corday. In her last speech to the Tribunal, she told them, “I die so that a hundred thousand people may live.” For as long as my family wanted life, I owed them my trips to the Madeleine Cemetery. But now my mother is firm. “And Isabel and Paschal?” I ask her.

“If they come for anyone, they will come for us.”

So I refuse. I do not go to the Madeleine to search for the bodies of an innocent mother and her earnest husband. And on the tenth of May, when the Committee takes the life of Madame Élisabeth for being related to the king, I spend the morning in my room praying over my rosary. It is what the princesse would have wanted me to do.

That evening, there is a knock at our door. It is too early to be the patrols. Isabel answers while my mother and I hurry into our warmest clothes. We have laid out our sturdiest boots and best dresses, and we slip on two fichus and two pairs of gloves. Though it is May, there is no telling how long we may be gone. I can hear gruff voices approaching the stairs, and I whisper for my mother to hurry. “Another hat,” I tell her.

When the men arrive, we are ready. I have spent a lifetime reading people’s faces, and I need only one look at Robespierre’s to know that he has come for our arrest. When animals have finished attacking their prey and there is nothing left to eat, they will attack each other. This is the real reason he has come.

“Citizeness Grosholtz,” he says, as if he has not known me by the name of Marie for seven years. “Is it true that you have refused to cast the masks of the traitors who have recently been put to death?”

“Yes,” I tell him.

He waits for more, but I offer him nothing. He turns abruptly to my mother. “And you?”

“We can no longer sleep at night,” she says. “Death haunts our dreams.”

“That is the price true patriots must pay.”

“Then we are done paying.”

He studies her for a moment, then snaps his fingers. “Arrest them.” Four soldiers step forward. If they were expecting a fight, they will be disappointed. I look into Robespierre’s eyes. There is only arrogance and self-righteousness there. No pity, not even the glimmer of recognition. Robespierre levels me with his gaze. “May Saint Denis watch over you.”

WE ARE TAKEN to Les Carmes prison on the Rue de Vaugirard, and despite the warmth of the night and my layers of clothing, I am shivering. My mother holds my hand as we pass through the gates. Les Carmes once belonged to the Carmelite monks. Now it is the worst prison in Paris.

Inside the monastery we are inspected for weapons or anything of value. Our gloves are confiscated, and when the chief jailer sees my mother’s rosary, he throws it to the floor and crushes it underfoot. “Do you speak French?” he shouts into her face.

“Yes.”

“Then you can understand this. There is no God in Les Carmes. God died on the scaffold with the rest of the aristocrats.” The soldiers around us laugh. “But there is money.” He smiles. “As-tu de la sonnette?”

He is asking if we have brought enough livres-assignats to pay for our bedding. “Yes,” I say at once, and indicate the guard who has taken my purse. “Inside.”

The jailer holds out his hand. “Give it to me.”

A black-haired guard passes him my small leather bag, and the jailer empties the contents onto a desk. He sorts through the paper, then looks up at me. “It’s enough,” he says grudgingly. Was he hoping we could not afford a bed, since straw is cheaper to provide? “Will there be more next week?”

I think of my instructions to Isabel. That she must find us wherever we are and leave money for our keep, but she is never to reveal her name to the guards. “Yes. Another fifty-six livres-assignats.”

He studies me, and I meet his eyes. I am not a liar. There will be money. “Take them to the first floor,” he says sharply. “There is space in the room with our lovely Rose.”

The black-haired guard smiles. “Welcome to Les Carmes. Although I do not expect your stay to be long.” He produces a key to the prison door, then turns the lock.

My stomach tightens, and I grip my mother’s hand. A pair of guards walk behind us in case we decide to run. But where is there to go? The passages we are led into are dark and windowless. And the stench … When I cough, the guard says, “Get used to it. It’s even better in the day.” The halls are lined with buckets of human waste. Where do they empty them? And what do they do when the heat creeps in and the flies begin to gather?

Two years ago more than a hundred priests were massacred in these halls, and I now see that the walls are still stained with their blood. My mother crosses herself, and the guard behind us makes a warning noise. But what more can they do to us? We are in hell. The jailer was right. There is no God in Les Carmes.

We reach a cell, and the guard slides a key into the lock. There is the sound of voices on the other side, and as the door creaks open, the lantern light falls over a room filled with beds and burning candles. “New prisoners!” the guard shouts.

We are pushed inside, and the door swings shut behind us. I listen as the guard turns the key in the lock; then there is silence. My mother and I stare into the dimly lit chamber. There are twenty beds and at least fifteen women, all with the same short hairstyle, cut at the neck. One of these girls, dressed in a long chemise gown and tattered slippers, rises from her bed to greet us.

“Welcome to Les Carmes,” she says kindly. “I’m Rose de Beauharnais.”

“You and your husband came to my Salon many years ago,” I say. She is so thin, and her face is so pale. “You both wanted portraits.”

“You are Marie Grosholtz?”

“And this is my mother, Anna.”

“This is Marie Grosholtz,” Rose announces. “The wax modeler from the Boulevard du Temple.” She directs us to a pair of empty beds.

“Why are you here?”

My mother and I sit across from each other while the women gather around. They are all so young. How did they end up in Les Carmes? “I would not make the death masks of Lucile Desmoulins or Princesse Élisabeth. They were good friends to me, and I would not dishonor them.”

Rose’s eyes fill with tears. “And your mother?” she asks.

“Has the misfortune of being related to me.”

The other women nod understandingly, and one of them puts her arm around Rose’s shoulders. “Don’t cry,” she encourages. But tears are rolling down Rose’s cheeks.

“She weeps whenever someone new is brought to our cell.” The woman smiles. “I am Grace Elliott.”

“The Duc d’Orléans’s mistress,” I say. All of Paris knows who she is.

“His former mistress,” she adds quietly. “There were many other women after me, but we always remained friends.”

“Is that why you are here?”

She laughs sadly. “Do any of us really know why we are here?” She looks around, and the women shake their heads. “We are much like your mother. We’ve been imprisoned because of those we’re related to, or those we’ve slept with. Rose’s husband was arrested two months ago, and they came for her next. They were both sent here.”

“To Les Carmes?” I exclaim. “There are men here?”

Everyone laughs, and a blond woman steps forward. “My dear, you have come to the most exciting prison in Paris. Every morning the soldiers arrive with the carts and the jailer reads out the names of those bound for the guillotine. But each day you survive is another day of freedom.”

I don’t understand.

“Louise is talking about sexual escapades,” Grace explains.

I study the blond woman’s face in the candlelight. I have seen her before. “Louise Contat?” I ask. “The actress from the Comédie-Française?”

She makes a little bow. “I may be climbing the scaffold soon,” she says, “but ’tis only a change of theaters.” All the women snicker except Rose, who looks as though she may faint. “Tomorrow, we’ll all get up and wait for the lists, and when that is over we’ll go and find our men.”

“Most of us have someone,” Grace explains. “Even Rose, when she isn’t crying.”

My mother and I look to Rose, who says unabashedly, “My husband has found Delphine de Custine, and they are a far better match than we ever were. I have found Lazare Hoche. That is what Louise means by freedom. And if you become pregnant, there is a ten-month stay of execution.”

A soft murmur fills the room. I think of Henri in London and the life we might have had. By now, he surely will have found someone else. My eyes fill with tears.

Rose instructs me to lie down and get some sleep. “Is there anyone you have left?” she asks.

“My husband,” my mother says, though of course they are not married. “Plus my daughter-in-law and grandchild.”

“I am sure they will visit.”

“Is that allowed?” my mother asks.

“If they are willing to pay. My children used to come with Fortune.”

I frown and Grace explains. “Her pug dog. But it’s not allowed anymore. She should not tell you these things. Even if they come, it will be dangerous for them. Do not hope for it.”

“And tomorrow?” I ask. “What will happen?”

“Whether or not your names are called, they will cut your hair. Then, if you are not bound for the carts, you are free to do as you please. Once a week, they allow us a newspaper.”

My entire life has revolved around news. When it’s happening, where it’s being made, whom it’s being made by. But the news now will be here, in the corridors of Les Carmes. “How long have you been imprisoned?”

“Five months,” Grace replies.

I am stunned. “And they have not called your name?”

“Sophie has been in here for seven.”

“So there is hope,” my mother whispers.

Grace gives her a smile that once won the hearts of men like the Duc d’Orléans and the Prince of Wales. “There is always hope.”